Chapter 23
ALEX
‘Alex?’
Nick thundered into the study like some kind of giant, heedless of whatever else might be in here tormenting her.
Nothing. There was nothing. Dear God, Alex, she told herself, get a grip.
She didn’t know what had just happened but it wasn’t ghosts. There was no such thing as ghosts. There was always a logical explanation.
Unfortunately, at the moment, that logical explanation was that she had suffered a traumatic brain injury.
No. Not that either.
She tried to make herself breathe, as she pushed herself up from the ground.
Nick caught her, lifted her back into the chair, his eyes frantic. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing. I…’
He’d want to call Patricia. And then it would be hospitals and brain scans and medication and who knew what else.
No. Just no.
‘I fell over.’ Oh God, that was worse.
He was so close. She could see the flicker of disbelief in his eyes, the way he frowned at her in excruciating detail. He leaned over her, one hand on either arm of the chair as he studied her so there was no way she could escape.
‘What happened?’ he said again, more gently this time, but still painfully insistent. Slowly, carefully. ‘You can tell me. No matter how strange it might seem. I know this place, remember? I live here. I—’
And there it was again. He lived here. She was about to throw him out of his home. The guilt of it rushed up inside her. And after it came indignation.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, aware of the stubborn tone in her voice. He glanced down. She was still clutching the charm Maeve had made, so tightly that she risked crushing it.
‘You saw something,’ he whispered. It almost felt like an accusation.
‘I saw…’ She stared up into his face and desperately wanted to tell him.
To admit it. She hadn’t just seen something.
She had felt something, heard something, something had attacked her…
But if she did that, it would make it real.
And she was all about challenging superstitious nonsense, about uncovering frauds and revealing truth.
It couldn’t be ghosts. It simply couldn’t be. She had lived her whole life disproving that, over and over again.
If she even suggested it to Gabe and the others she would never live it down.
If it wasn’t her imagination or a hallucination, someone had to be doing this to her, someone who wanted to scare her so much she left Wildewood Hall. And the most obvious candidate for that was Nick Walker.
Alex had lived through a campaign of intimidation once. Just because she had stood up to a terrible man and exposed him for the monster he was. She was not afraid of Nick. She’d seen monsters in real life. They didn’t have to be supernatural.
The land of the living was more dangerous by far.
Then Nick’s left hand came up to cup the side of her face, his touch so gentle and careful, tender. As if she was something to be treasured and cherished. This man she barely knew.
She ought to flinch back or pull away. She ought to tell him to back off. Accuse him of… of… whatever it was she thought he was doing. Trying to frighten her off, make her doubt her sanity or her belief. She ought to tell him to go to hell.
She did none of those things.
Alex pushed herself up and kissed him. She didn’t know why. She didn’t really know how she found the strength. But she had to do it. It didn’t feel like she had a choice in the matter.
His lips met hers, warm and hungry in a way that made her ache inside.
His hand still cradled her face, and she grabbed his shoulder to keep herself upright.
His mouth opened to her and Alex pressed on, a desperate and needy kiss, her tongue darting forward to meet his.
He knew what he was doing, that was for sure.
It was the kiss of a man who knew how to kiss, knew the nuances of pressure and how to use lips, tongue and teeth to devastating effect.
Alex gasped into his mouth and was answered by a low rumbling moan in his chest. A sound of need. Perhaps of submission.
She wanted him. Wanted him more than she could ever remember wanting another human being.
She pushed him back without releasing him until the backs of his legs were at the edge of the desk and he was forced to sit on it, still kissing her, his hands beginning an exploration of their own now.
She pulled at his t-shirt so she could slip her fingers underneath it.
His body was tight and superbly muscled, a lean and powerful creature made from hard work.
His abs jumped beneath her touch and, moments later, his hands had found the curve of her breast on one side, and of her waist on the other.
He pulled her against him and there was no doubting his arousal now.
She could feel him through the jeans, hard for her.
The shape of it burned against her body, and she moved, pressing closer until he gasped aloud.
And how she wanted him.
Any second now, any moment…
That soft, sibilant laugh rippled through the room, dark and dangerous. Nasty. Someone was laughing at her. At the two of them.
Someone or something.
Alex froze and Nick pulled back, his dark eyes widening in horror. Actual horror. He was almost lying back on the desk and Alex was astride him, ready to pin him down and ride him into oblivion given half the chance. They were still half clothed. Barely. The relevant half, which was a relief.
‘I—’ she began, and stopped because she simply didn’t know what to say. There weren’t any words. This was awful.
‘I should—’ His voice failed him too. He licked his lips and she felt a wild urge to kiss him again. Consume him. Make him hers.
Alex slid off him, trembling with the effort of withdrawing, and the shame of what had just almost happened.
‘Alex,’ he murmured and he sounded so unsure. Regretful… and something else. Something like guilt.
She let herself slump back into the chair, her face flaming as she forced herself to look at him, sitting on the edge of the desk, still painfully aroused. Her face heated with embarrassment and tears stung her eyes.
Fuck, she thought. Fuck, shit and indeed, bollocks.
What had she been thinking? Well, no, not thinking. She had not been thinking at all. He was an employee. She owned this place. If the legal team found out about this… Oh Jesus Christ, what had she done?
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know… I didn’t mean… that was…’
Inexcusable. She didn’t know what had come over her. She had no words for how bad it was. These were all things she should be saying but the words kept dying in her throat when she tried to voice them. What on earth could she say?
‘It’s the house,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it just…’ At her confused look he trailed off, unwilling to finish.
‘The house?’
‘You’ve sensed it, haven’t you? You’ve seen them, heard them? Please, Alex, I’m sorry. I should have said something right from the start. But I—’
The house? How was he using the house as an excuse?
‘That had nothing to do with the house, Nick.’ She couldn’t keep the snap out of her voice.
The problem was she didn’t know what had caused it or why.
All she had known was that she wanted him.
She wanted him so badly it made her crazy.
He was handsome, unbearably so. And beneath the grumpy exterior was a man who used it as a defence, as a way to turn people away and protect himself and his daughter…
and this house too. No doubt about it. He was trying to get her out of Wildewood Hall.
Was this all part of that plan? A new tactic? Seduce her and then blackmail her?
Or just convince her she was seeing things, hearing things, sensing things, that the house of her nightmares was out to get her?
It had all the trappings of a haunting that would make The Ghost Patrol team lose their collective shit, send the fans into paroxysms of delight online and launch the ratings through the roof.
But she didn’t believe in any of that. Not really.
The alternative though? That she was losing her mind, that she was hallucinating, that she had just tried to assault a man twice her size, an employee no less…
Oh God…
‘You have to know the reputation this place has,’ Nick continued as if she hadn’t said anything at all.
He hadn’t moved away. Just sat there on the edge of the desk, his legs still framing her, gazing down at her, like some kind of glorious Celtic sex god with his long, dishevelled hair, and the huge dark eyes, pupils still wide with desire, flecks of green and gold in the deep brown encircling them.
His mouth, his throat, his hands… the way those hands had felt on her bare skin…
She felt her body starting to respond all over again, the heat inside her rising, the need to reach out and brush her fingertips over his skin, to breathe him in again.
Don’t think about that, she told her brain, her brain which just laughed at her and went on doing what it wanted.
‘I know about the ghost stories,’ she told him. ‘I don’t believe them. I have spent my life showing people that ghosts don’t exist. I don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘What if they believe in you?’ he asked, as if it was the most normal question in the world.
Somewhere in the house a door slammed. Then another. And a third. One after the other, all the doors in Wildewood Hall, it seemed. Alex stared only at Nick, and frowned.
‘Who are they?’ she asked, quietly. All her walls were crumbling, and she was losing the battle to hold on to her staunch scepticism.
He shrugged and that shadow of grief flickered over his beautiful features. ‘Anyone who ever died here. They’re trapped. All of them. That’s what Theo thought anyway. He was sensitive to it. Like you.’
‘And this?’ She waved a still shaking hand between the two of them. He got her meaning thankfully because she wasn’t ready to start describing what had just happened. Not right now.
Got her meaning and a hell of a lot more, it seemed.
Nick blushed. Actually blushed, the colour rising high on his face, and all down his neck, down below the fabric of his rumpled t-shirt.
Alex found her mouth going dry again at the thought of that flush spreading across the perfect chest she’d caught a frantic glimpse of, the one her hands had ranged across.
She had to force her breath to calm again, and she waited.
Nick hung his head and chewed on his lower lip in far too distracting a fashion before finally answering.
‘Yeah. This. This happens. Like, not to everyone. There has to be something there first. A spark, an attraction, but it happens. Like this… to you, to me… And Theo too. There’s one ghost – I mean, not just one, there’s loads but one in particular – more active than any of the others.
Stronger. He plays games with people, with emotions.
With desire. They call him the Master of the Revels, Blaise Chambers. ’
Alex knew that name.
‘Blaise?’ A shiver ran up her spine, and she recalled the painting outside her room. His portrait.
The one she’d tried to take down, which someone had hung back up, the one she had been meaning to ask Nick to remove, but somehow the thought always seemed to slip her mind before she could.
That Blaise Chambers…
And suddenly a flood of memories came to her.
‘Behave or Blaise will get you.’ Her father used to laugh about it. Gran had not found it funny at all.
Chambers was said to appear from time to time, walking the halls, lounging in the morning room or the drawing room, and Alex knew of incidents in family lore where servants and guest fled in horror after a night here thanks to Blaise and his wandering ghostly hands.
Arnold had mentioned him too.
Alex remembered the Latin on the painting, that knowing face and the triumphant smirk…
Omnes contra omnes, quos amabant, convertam, et meam, corpus et animam, faciam.
Arnold’s research suggested that, when he died, Chambers had left that message scrawled on the walls of this very house, over and over again. Some of the more gruesome versions of the tale said it was in blood, because why not? One portrait was not enough. Not for him.
How he had done that when his last living victim, or lover depending on the story, Richard, the sixteenth Baron de Wilde, had blown his chest open with a musket, Alex didn’t know, but when did such folktales make sense?
There was even a story about the lost de Wilde treasure, stolen by the man who had manipulated and tried to destroy them. There was a book about him on the shelf over there too, she thought. But she didn’t want to go anywhere near it right now.
Then something hit her.
The links Arnold had sent reported that some people heard the sound of his parties – or orgies, more correctly – but when investigated found all the ground floor rooms quiet and empty.
There were so many rumours and half-remembered tales about the man, in life and in death, that he had entered into legend.
And, she hadn’t put two and two together at the time…
But she’d heard them too.
In her dreams, but also when she was younger, when she stayed here. But her recollections were so muddled between reality and dreams…
‘Sally used to say… when he wants something… Alex, he doesn’t stop.
He manipulates people. Me, Sally, Theo…’ Nick stopped, drawing in a shaky breath, and Alex tried to figure out what on earth that meant.
Because she didn’t really want to ask, or find out.
‘And he never stops. Not until he has what he wants.’
She swallowed hard, her throat almost too tight to do so.
‘And what does he want?’ She knew the answer that was coming. There wasn’t really any other answer possible. But that didn’t mean she actually wanted to hear it.
Nick said it anyway, and the crushing finality of it all closed around her like a trap.
‘You. He wants you. The last of the de Wildes.’