Chapter 5
The contract signed, Phaedra put together a peremptory list of supplies she would need to begin her work, and Nathaniel took it with the assurance that he would have them procured on the morrow.
With that he gave her leave, and she wandered back to her room, her steps meandering, as if she would already be half-asleep.
Yet it was not fatigue that made her move in such languid fashion, but the tumult of thoughts whirling through her head.
She had been eager to accept the assignment, thrilled to be staying at such a notable place, yet she could not evict the singular idea, that wisp of a thought that tangled and untangled like an irresolute noose around the delicate neck of her delight.
Doubt.
She turned into the foyer and slowly made her way up the staircase, her hand sliding on the smooth, polished wood of the banister.
She had rejected Nathaniel’s offer to light the gas sconces for her, asking only for a candle to illuminate her way to the room she would find by herself.
She had wanted to feel it, the silence and solitude of the manor, as it settled onto her.
To allow her thoughts to drift and sway on the minute noises awakening among the shadows.
When she finally stepped into her room, she found herself soothed and her mind tamed, every errant thought dismantled and rearranged until she no longer felt the irksome prick of that singular thorn.
Because, in the end, it did not matter. Whatever Nathaniel was hiding, whatever he would not tell her, it would not hinder her in any way. She could stay and do her work, and marvel at the things he could not. She could be content here. Utterly.
She settled into her sheets below the rich, dark canopy of her bed, and her eyes drifted over the walls that almost shimmered with the last feeble light of her candle.
No. Even if this contract seemed too good to be true, even if she would eventually find out whatever dark secret hid under the guise of such handsome features, it did not matter.
The only thing that did, the thing that finally lulled her to sleep, its weight settling on her like bone-deep exhaustion, was the satisfaction that she was finally here.