Chapter Thirteen
Grace
I knew Tom wouldn’t give up so easily. I was so certain that the noise and the footsteps had been caused by him, but when Nick looked around outside, he saw no sign of anybody.
Worse than finding evidence of a trespasser, he’d found nothing, and nobody.
Only our private fears answered the question, then, and haunted us in our sleep.
Nick tossed and turned during the night, though I tried to soothe him by stroking his forehead, smoothing away his hair.
When I finally drifted to sleep myself, I saw my mother.
She was laying down by the tall windows of my bedroom in Crowthorne House, not our house in the Dales, looking just as she had in her own bed.
Her long, straggly white hair fell over the pillow, and her skin was sallow against her grey nightgown.
On a low moan, she turned her head to face me, though I could clearly see she was dead.
She groaned, the way the dead do, with the release of built up gases.
Her mouth opened, dark and fleshy, like the inside of.
..no, it couldn’t be. But it was. It was the rotten flesh inside a fig.
And from it, in a shock of terrible yellow and black, crawled a vicious-looking wasp.
It mounted her lip and flew from her lower jaw, its buzzing alarming and loud, increasing in volume until it drowned out my screams.
“Grace, Grace, darling – it’s all right.”
Nick was above me, holding my face in his hands.
“You’re all right now. It was just a horrible dream.”
“I can still hear it –” I gazed about the room, adjusting to the half-light of the early morning.
Nick held his breath, as if anticipating something.
“Were you dreaming of your father?” he asked, his voice tight, as if he was afraid of the answer.
“My mother,” I said softly, peering about as I still detected that awful humming noise from my dream, only much fainter. Finally, I found it. “There!”
I pointed toward the terrace windows.
“What is it?” Nick asked, looking around the room, perplexed.
I crawled from the bed and went to the window where the wasp batted against the panes, crawling and flying and falling helplessly, trying to get out.
There were no open windows, and it was the dead of night, with nothing to indicate how it had managed to get in.
The wasp drew away from the window and circled my head, its wings humming furiously, as if I’d irritated it.
I batted it away as it lunged for me, and screamed as it made another attempt to sting me.
I tore one of my slippers from the carpet and batted it away with the sole on its next attempt, sending it back against the window.
It dropped with a light thud onto the ledge, wriggling.
Nick appeared beside me, watching the insect struggle.
“I didn’t mean to kill it,” I said. “I just didn’t want it to sting me.”
“He’s done for, I’m afraid,” said Nick. “Look away and I’ll finish the job.”
I did as he asked while he took the slipper from me and whacked it. Then came the sound of the window opening as he shooed the wasp’s body out into the night; a treat, no doubt, for the crows.
“Now I’m just as guilty as you are,” said Nick, planting a kiss on my forehead. He turned me and held me from behind, his hands reaching up to my breasts. “Let’s go back to bed before it gets too light outside. I want to be with you before I return to my room.”
“I hate sneaking around like this because of her,” I said bitterly, though I closed my eyes and lolled against him as he massaged and plumped my breasts. “We’re doing nothing wrong. Maggie is an employee of yours. Why should we care what she thinks about us?”
But Nick was too lost in lust to answer me, and instead his mouth left my neck and sought mine, sweeping me away with him. He left me, pulsing and sated, nestled down in the sheets we’d just made love in, as twilight fell over the room. I drifted, this time, into a peaceful, loving sleep.
A burning sensation woke me abruptly. The bedroom was flooded with bright morning sunlight.
I sat up, startled, my breaths coming short.
My skin was in agony, the rash raw and practically sizzling.
I touched my face and ran my fingers over the skin of my burning arms, pebbled and red and raw.
I leapt out of bed, wincing against the pain, and made for the window to pull the drapes closed – who the hell had opened them?
– and found they were tied neatly to the wall.
My sore, helpless skin throbbed as I struggled with the ropes, but they were tied so tightly that it took an agonising amount of time just to tug one free.
All the while, the sun's low glare scorched me, my skin weeping.
Tears streamed down my face. The shutters.
I needed to close the shutters. They were locked against the window frames, bolted in place, with no sign of the key – the key that was always on the windowsill.
Now I was groaning against the searing pain, my skin tightening, burning, turning redder by the second.
This was the curse my father left me with, after the very first night.
The shock destroyed something within my nervous system, and I was left with this cross to bear thereafter, never again able to enjoy the sunshine.
Some days I was able to forget about it, but now, it was painfully real.
I beat my fist against the window with its evil rays and span around to find my tonic from the doctor, hoping I could smear it all over my skin and then hide somewhere, anywhere, where the cruel light couldn’t reach me.
But when I got to my dressing table, the tonic was gone too.
“She’s stolen it!” I wept, despairing, not knowing what to do.
I ran to the hallway and was greeted with beaming light, the shutters and drapes opened all along the hall, and in the stairwell, blocking my escape.
I cried out for Nick and, reeling against the pain, threw the door shut once more.
I ran, crying, to my bathroom, where it was at least dark and windowless.
I tore at the taps and splashed myself with the cold water, desperate to soothe the awful burning pain.
I was soaked through when Nick burst into the room, throwing his arms around me.
“Oh god, Grace, what’s happened to you? How did this happen?” He shouted into the bedroom. “Get all the shutters closed! She can’t cope with the sun!”
“There’s no key, Nick! The key’s missing!” It was Maggie’s voice I could hear. “I’ll run to the kitchen, we’ve got spares – just give me a moment.”
“It was her!” I cried as Nick put his arms around me again. “It was her, I know it was her!”
“Who? You think Margaret did this?” He paused, frowning, considering it sincerely. “She wouldn’t.”
“She’s taken my cream, my tonic for my skin – she’s taken it and bolted open the windows and tied up the drapes. She wants to hurt me, Nick! She hates me. She hates us being together!”
“She’s unhappy about it, yes, but my god, she’d never want to hurt you, Grace. I’ve known Margaret my whole life,” said Nick, infuriating me.
“Who else?!”
That seemed to snap him out of it. Maggie was the only one who would even know how the shutters worked, where the keys were, and the only other person who entered our rooms at any time, let alone during the small hours.
The staff for the funeral business kept set hours and didn’t stay in the house. That left only her.
It crossed my mind, briefly, that this could be Tom’s doing – but he had no way of entering the house and, besides, he would be more likely to kidnap me than to hurt me.
Nick wrapped a towel around my shivering body, patting it gently against my sore red skin, and left the bathroom in silence.
I could just about make out his voice when Maggie returned, and he demanded from her an explanation.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could hear their tone – his demanding, hers desperate, and then serious, low.
Their conversation turned to urgent whispers.
Nick returned to me, looking more troubled than ever. He ran a hand through his tousled hair.
“It wasn’t Margaret. I don’t have an explanation, but it wasn’t her.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“I am,” he said, planting a soft kiss on the crown of my head.
“It’s dark in there now. I’m going to call out the dermatologist to make a house call.
If I throw enough money at her, I’m sure she can adjust her appointments to accommodate you.
She’ll bring more of your tonic, and anything else she can treat you with.
My god, darling, your skin is rose-red.”
“I don’t know how long I was exposed for. Light wakes me up very fast, sir, usually – any hint of direct sun and my eyes open. Someone did this to me deliberately,” I said, talking fast, unable to make any sense of the ordeal I’d just gone through.
“Rest now, darling. I can finish with Mr Taylor while you recuperate. It’s Monday. I’ve my meeting with the investors this afternoon, and I always keep my schedule free to accommodate that. There’s no work for you to rush back to.”
Nick left the house every Monday afternoon without fail to meet with his various accounting and investment bodies, but I’d always found it curious that they didn’t meet him here, the way Dorian had, in the office.
Not to mention the fact that they met so frequently, and that I wasn’t taken along with him to see how that aspect of the business worked.
When I asked him, Nick said they had some ongoing work to do, and that when it was finished, he would have more time to spend privately with me.
Still, something felt off about it.
“Can’t you cancel on them just this once, and be with me instead?” I asked, almost petulantly. “I feel horrible. I just want to lay in your arms.”
“It’ll be better for you to lay in your bed alone and let your skin settle, darling. I would be no help to you whatsoever,” said Nick.