Chapter 21 #2
She nodded, staring. Unable to tear her gaze away.
‘Mum always said he was handsome. I mean, I remember him but he was… he was my dad. I just thought he was old. I’ve seen photos of course, but…
well, she put a lot of them away. And old photos degrade, don’t they?
I don’t know where they went after Mum died.
I suppose Ken has them somewhere… my stepfather, I mean…
’ She was rambling. She couldn’t help herself.
This portrait was so much more than any photo could ever capture.
It was as though it had been plucked from her own memories.
He was standing in a glade in the forest, green-gold light streaming around him through the leaves.
The standing stones were just visible behind him.
Where he died, she thought bleakly. The woods outside this very house.
‘Run, Alex! You have to run. NOW!’
No, that was earlier. That was in the house. Wasn’t it?
The cold arched roof of stones closing over her and the stench of mulch.
She didn’t remember. It was all tangled with nightmares, her recollection so confused. Why had she needed to run? What from? Had there been an intruder or… or something else?
He’d pulled her back from the patch of welling darkness, pushed her towards the narrow stairs and the shadows had closed in on him instead—
That had to be in the house, there wouldn’t be stairs in the woods. But how could there be trees in the house?
The gleam of gold beneath rotting foliage. Eyes that didn’t see, but saw everything, the mouth hanging open, hungry and waiting.
Had she gone to the woods afterwards? She must have…
… deep among the trees, she’d run, screaming for help, for Gran, for anyone. Because something had raced up behind her, something wild and terrible, a hunter, a beast…
A shudder ran through her. The memory was visceral, almost real. Far too vivid. She had to push it firmly away. That was a nightmare, not a memory. It had to be. None of that had happened.
Alex had found her father’s body in the woods, not the house. A heart attack, they said.
How could she remember two things at once? What was she missing?
She dropped her hand away from Nick and he caught it in his.
His touch was warm and solid, his fingers closing around hers, stroking her skin.
He’d held her hand like that when she fell, while they waited for Patricia.
He’d been there with her. Even though it must have been a waking nightmare for him.
‘What are we like?’ she murmured. ‘Standing here, haunted by the dead.’
She ought to ask him about the portrait outside her room, that handsome man with the devilish eyes.
Maybe she could get the two swapped around.
Much better to see her father like that, smiling, bathed in sunlight, every morning.
She reached for her phone in her pocket, intending to show him the photo of Blaise’s portrait, and… and…
The laughter, dark and taunting, swept through the edges of her memory.
The air chilled around her, just for a moment, and then she was breathless as heat washed through her.
She was suddenly seized by a wild urge to just grab Nick’s shirt and pull him towards her.
To kiss him, press her body up against his, to feel that strength and that warmth.
She remembered the thought that had swept over her when she first saw him, that she’d have to climb him like a tree and suddenly she wanted to try.
To push him back against the polished wood panelling and…
Alex sucked in a breath, half desire and half terror. Nick was gazing down at her, his eyes huge and dark, his mouth parted. As if fighting to stop himself from doing the same.
God, how she wanted him to give in. How she wanted to give in. Her heartbeat was so loud she was sure he could hear it and that ache in the depths of her stomach made her breath catch in her throat.
Desire. Need. Lust.
She felt dizzy with it.
He was right there for the taking, something seemed to tell her. A whisper in her ear. A thrumming in her blood. Something twisting inside her, trying to make her abandon all caution to the winds.
‘Take what you want. It’s your right, after all, de Wilde.’
They had been talking about his dead wife, and dead children, and her dead father… but all she could think about right now was demanding that he show her what it meant to be alive in the most primal way possible.
Alex swallowed hard, the very action painful, as if something was lodged in her throat. She forced herself to step back. Nick released her hand, but stood there like one of those stones in the woods, still watching her. Like an oak, rooted to the spot, his face expressionless.
Nick didn’t move for a moment, but then he bowed his head and shrugged his shoulders as if shaking off whatever ailed him.
‘We should see where Maeve’s got to,’ he said, as if nothing had happened at all.
‘She gets up to mischief here. I try to keep her out of the Hall as much as I can. You can understand why.’
She did. Grief did strange and terrible things. Especially with a small girl’s overactive imagination. Especially in a house with such a dark history.
‘You should have lunch, and maybe a lie-down afterwards. Come on, before you get dizzy again. You’ve been overdoing it. Patricia’s picking Maeve up soon. I’ll get her to take another look at you. She’ll kill me if you have a relapse.’
It was an excuse but it was better than anything she had to hand right now. Whatever was happening between them, she couldn’t let it happen again.