Chapter Sixteen
Nicholas
While Margaret comforted Louisa and attempted to settle her in Grace’s room, I called the infirmary.
My bellowing voice carried down the halls, echoing in the stairwell.
I spoke of costs and safeguarding and their duty to look after their patients, and all the while I knew it was me who had failed, me who had become distracted.
I alone was responsible for keeping Louisa safe, and I’d allowed her to go wandering, to be manipulated by that low-grade brute from the Dales.
I alone had broken my vow of honesty to Grace, the very vow I insisted she make to me.
The only two women I had ever loved in my life now had my duplicity in common. Both, I had promised to cherish and protect, and both I had failed.
It had never mattered a single jot what anybody else thought of me. Only Louisa, and now, my precious Grace.
I ended the call, sweating. I threw off my jacket and let it hang over the wooden carving of the crow by my window.
If only I had more time, I could have set things right.
I could have finalised my divorce from Louisa – which had already taken years of bureaucratic delays because of her condition, not to mention my own denial and reluctance – and Grace would have been none the wiser.
I could have told her everything. I could have been honest. But afraid as I was of losing her, of pushing her away back to Heather House, I withheld it from her, like I did the rest of society, who all thought Louisa had died in the fire. The fire they believed I was responsible for, not her.
Only my peers smelled a rat, but to hell with them. As long as I was continuing my commitment to take care of Louisa, keeping the vows I’d promised to her, that was enough for me. In sickness, and in health. That had always been the case, until Grace came along.
But how could I have laid the truth of Louisa on poor Grace’s shoulders, when I believed her to be too young and vulnerable to cope with it? If Margaret were to be believed, then she wasn’t so innocent...but then neither was Louisa, and I had only loved her more fiercely for it.
Your troubled little girls.
Flames crackled in my memories as I closed my eyes.
I sensed the heat, the fearsome wrath of a malevolent beast, growing so big it almost swallowed Crowthorne House whole.
When I opened my eyes, the flames were nowhere to be seen, smelled, or felt.
All in my mind, I reminded myself. All in my fearful mind, and in my terrible dreams.
I returned to Margaret and found Louisa curled up on the bed, her hands in prayer beneath her cheek, with only the dimly-lit lamp providing any light beside her.
A storm was building up outside, battering the windows with the wind and rain.
Guests would soon be arriving; it was far too late to cancel and lose face.
It was now just a question of safely returning Louisa to the infirmary, although that was the least of my worries.
I was more concerned with the devil downstairs, no doubt working his way into Grace’s mind, convincing her to return to him.
Grace, I was sure, would be strong enough to rebuff him, and fight him off if necessary, just as she had that night when I threw him off the property. She had Eugenie with her, too, and she was a strong character.
But still an uneasy feeling was eating away at my insides, preoccupying me. Then I had a distinct feeling of emptiness, and I feared that Grace was gone, already left the building.
“They’ve assured me they’re on their way to collect Louisa,” I told Margaret in a soft voice, keen not to disturb Louisa on the bed. “I will follow in the car and ensure she’s safely returned back to her room. While I’m gone, I need you to speak to Grace, to comfort her –”
“I’ll do no such thing,” said Margaret, folding her arms and leaning back on her heels. “I’ve said all I can say to that girl. I’d hoped it would never come to this, that she’d never find out this way, but you wouldn’t listen, would you?”
“Such care and consideration,” I said sardonically, watching Margaret bristle as I shook my head. “If it weren’t for all the talk of killing things and sneaking into mortuaries, I might actually believe you had some love for the girl.”
Margaret’s obsidian glare darted from me to Louisa, pressing her lips tight, desperate to shout back at me.
“It’s the truth!” She hissed. “I was beside myself when I realised what she liked to do – what she was interested in. She isn’t normal! She’s wired up wrong!”
“And who in this house has ever been wired up correctly, Margaret?” I asked. “Who in this room alone could be considered normal?”
She shook her head in disgust but said nothing more, looking away from me over her folded arms.
I stroked the thin, wispy hair on Louisa’s head a final time and left the room, taking the stairs two at a time. When I entered the hallway, I found Eugenie, looking lost.
“Nick, she left. She left with him,” she said, tears spilling from her spidery-eyelashes onto her cheeks. “I told her she could be with me, but she chose to go with him! She had this awful, vacant look in her eyes, like she’d given up...”
“How could you let her go?” I bellowed, startling her.
“You let her go!” She shouted back at me once she’d regained her courage, pointing an accusing finger at my face.
“You did this to her! You wrapped that woman upstairs in a black scarf to hide her face from the world, so nobody would know it was your supposedly-dead-fiancé rolling about on the church floor. Grace had no idea she was even alive, let alone that you were married to her, you two-faced bastard.”
I flinched at that word, bastard. It was a recurring word throughout my childhood, thrown at me like a rock whenever it suited my brother, Alexander. For a time I’d thought that was the worst thing he could do to me, until he found more brutal forms of torture.
Adrenaline flooded me, disabling those thoughts of Alexander.
He didn’t matter now. All that mattered was Grace.
I pushed past Eugenie to the front door, opening it to the staff from the infirmary, their raincoats disguising their white hospital-grade uniforms. Beyond them, at the wrought iron gates, guests were making their way in, here to enjoy the Christmas eve party.
There was no time – no time at all for any of this.
“Hurry, come in, come in,” I said, leaving the door ajar. “She’s upstairs. You’ll need to take her out the back way – Margaret will show you. I’ll meet you outside.”
I showed them to the lift and crammed them in, pressing the button relentlessly until the doors closed and hid them away. Then I ran back to Eugenie, ready to change my tone.
“Look, I’m sorry for shouting at you. I’m in a mess about Grace. I have to get her back from him immediately. He’s violent, you understand? He wants Grace for himself, and now she’s been devastated, she’ll be putty in his hands. I need you to tell me where he’s taken her.”
“Home, was all he said – that he was taking her back home where she belongs,” said Eugenie, massaging the space between her eyes with her fingers. “I shouldn’t have let her go with him. I should have chained her down if I had to.”
“I know you tried your best,” I said stiffly, attempting to hide the wild beating of my heart, and the shaking of my hands. “Did he say how he would be taking her home?”
Eugenie gestured forlornly toward the door. “I heard a truck rumble to life. It was probably his.”
It made sense. I knew very little of Tom, but I knew his business was in farming, and it was likely he drove a truck. If he was driving her home, then I would have a good chance of catching up to them – that is, if the storm didn’t continue gaining momentum.
“Good. Now, I need you to help us all out, all right? I need you to greet the guests as they come in and distract them while I take Louisa back to hospital,” I said, holding Eugenie by the shoulders.
She shrugged my hands away, glaring at me distrustfully.
“Like hell am I doing that. Let them all see her!”
“Eugenie, you want me to get Grace out of that violent lout’s hands, correct?” I spoke to her through gritted teeth. She nodded, but reluctantly. “Good. Then I need you to handle things here. The longer I wait, the further ahead they’ll get.”
She groaned, pacing a few steps with a deep frown. Finally, she relented.
“I’ll handle your stupid party,” she said, just as the front door opened and the first crowd bundled in, dripping rain onto the tiled floor. “Just get her back.”
I wasted no more time. I hurried to the office for my wallet and a coat, and ran outside into the downpour, where they were guiding Louisa across the gravel towards their van.
I fought the madly furious urge to go straight after Grace, and took the time to ensure Louisa was calm and safe.
I kissed her forehead and whispered promises in her ear, that I would return, that I would visit her just as soon as I could.
My heart ached unbearably to see her in this condition, despite the years, decades, that she’d been this way.
“She’s gone, hasn’t she?” Margaret shouted above the rain. The infirmary staff were buckling in, shutting the van doors. “He’s taken her.”
“Stay here and oversee the party. I’ll get her back if I have to run him off the road,” I said. “And if it takes me all the way to the Dales then so be it, but I’m bringing her back with me.”
“Mind yourself, Nick,” she said, a baleful tone in her voice.
I knew what that tone inferred...I’d been a savage child, fuelled by anger, distrusting of everyone around me. Margaret was the only living person who knew that about me.
Sometimes that anger had shown itself in violence, but only toward other men.
I had once sent a college friend who had teased me about my heritage into a short coma, resulting in deep shame for my parents, and a guilty plea for me in the dock.
I was given a community punishment and a suspended prison sentence, largely owing to my background, and the influence of my adoptive parents and their peers.
It was a gilded cage.
Had I never unleashed my rage on that friend, I would have no criminal record, and I could have left Crowthorne house to do anything, be anyone.
Someone my real mother could have been proud of as she looked down from heaven.
Instead, my criminal status chained me to this house, sealing my destiny to work with the dead, running the family business.
Alexander had so many devilish plans for his brother’s enslavement, working under his command.
But then I’d met Louisa, and found the slightest glimmer of hope that life may not be so dreadful after all.
I gave her everything I could, determined to make her happy, to make her feel safe.
All the things I craved for myself and never achieved.
We entered marital bliss, and lived a life I had only dreamed of.
That is, until the first of the fires broke out. Until I discovered she was more than I could handle.
I glanced uneasily at Louisa in the van, tears prickling my eyes. Wishing, even now, that I could save her. Wishing that we still had time, even if the woman I loved was long gone. Even if my heart now belonged to Grace.
“Make sure Louisa is comfortable,” I said, making no promises.
Lightning flooded the sky in luminous silver and flooded the gravel courtyard with light.
I hurried to the Rolls Royce, determined to catch them up, to show Grace I wanted her, needed her.
That no matter where she went, I would follow her, to a dark, cold death if I had to.
She was coming back home to Crowthorne House with me, and she was going to live as my wife until we could sign on the dotted line and make it official.
I needed her. I needed her to need me.
Thunder rumbled faithfully above me as I pulled out of the courtyard and drove into the night.