Chapter 12
ALEX’S MIND wakened to the familiar lemony scent of the household laundry soap. She was in her old room, lying on her stomach in her old bed. When she’d closed her eyes, her stomach had felt comfortably full of warm clam chowder and freshly made tea, and the patchwork quilt her mother had made for her before she’d died had been tucked around her shoulders. That much Alex knew. What she didn’t know was why she couldn’t open her eyes. Was she still asleep?
Something pressed down on top of her, straddling her feet. Edna? Is that you? Alex’s lips wouldn’t open. She gasped through her nose.
The weight moved—stepped—up to her calves. Ivy! Of course. It had to be Ivy.
Alex told her arms to move, but they didn’t respond, and her legs felt clenched in place. Was she paralyzed? What was happening?
The weight stepped up to her knees. It wasn’t Ivy. The leg span was now too wide for a cat. Who’s there? Get off me!
The weight moved to her thighs, her hips.
Help!
The pressure stayed astride her hips, but something else pushed against the center of her back near her lungs. Goose bumps flashed across her body. Was it a human intruder or—the Night Hag?
Anger—or was it terror?—surged through Alex’s veins. It couldn’t be the Night Hag. Demons, if they were real, didn’t have bodies. A mouse with a scorpion tale . . . a glowing cat . . . preternatural mushrooms . . . they had physical forms. Not demons. Ivy, jump on it! Alistair, break out of your bottle! Scratch! Bite!
Heavier.
Breathe! Demons were not made of flesh and bones. They could not kill. Humans were stronger than demons. Leave!
Alex’s senses clenched. She must make whatever held her fast listen to her. She focused her thoughts, her breath, every ounce of her energy on her lips. Open! They didn’t, but her fingers trembled with the exertion.
Finally, some part of her moved! Hope surged through her. Get off!
The pressure steadily lifted from her back.
Go away!
The weight stepped back to her thighs. To her knees. Her feet. The pressure lifted.
Alex didn’t dare breathe.
Footsteps creaked one after the other across the floorboards to the door.
Lift your head. See who’s there. Still she couldn’t move.
One more creak. She waited. Silence.
Alex, gasping, pushed up from the bed, slowly shifted into a sitting position, and placed her feet on the floor. Her gaze flew to the bureau, to her night robe draped over the foot of her bed as she’d left it, to the closed door. Ivy still lay curled atop the blanket on the chair. Who or what had been in her room?
Alex clenched her hands to keep them from trembling. Had she only had a nightmare? Or—or perhaps she hadn’t been fully awake as she’d thought she was, and her mind had played tricks on her. That had to be it. All the day’s talk of murder and the Night Hag must have crept into her dreams. Rick might even be proud of her when he found out she wasn’t as lacking in imagination as she’d always claimed to be. Rick. Was leaving.
Her teeth chattered, and she wrapped her bed quilt around her body. But if what had just happened had been a dream, why had she heard, felt, sensed everything around her as if she were awake? Why hadn’t she been able to move?
She had no answers, but the one thing she did know was sleep would not return anytime soon. She had to find something to settle her nerves. Warm milk had been Edna’s tonic of choice in her teen years, but it no longer seemed suitable.
Ivy snored.
Alex shook her head. How could that cat have slept so peacefully while she’d experienced such terror? On the other hand, if Ivy had wakened to find an intruder in her room, Alex would now have to comfort her, and right then she didn’t want to comfort a scared cat. She wanted someone to hold and comfort her. Or at least offer her a cup of tea—a hot, strong, unsweetened pot of tea. Rick had taught her that remedy for sleeplessness, and it had always worked. That, not milk, was her tonic now.
Glancing about the room, she slipped on her night robe and slippers. Her lantern sat on the end table close to Ivy, but getting it would likely wake her. Besides, Alex could collect the lantern from the table at the top of the stairs. She could make it that far without light. She’d done so many times in her life.
Alex tiptoed to the door, inched it open, and peeked into the hall. No movement. No sound. Perfect.
Staring into the blackness, she ran her hand along the wall until she reached the staircase. She found the table, ran her hand across the top of it. No lantern. Had someone—something—taken it?
Shivers shot down her back. Don’t be an idiot! There is no such thing as a Night Hag. Someone—a person—must have needed the lantern. Perhaps Louis? Maybe he’d also had a nightmare and wanted the comfort of an extra light.
She glanced toward his room and frowned. No light seeped beneath his or any other door. Perhaps a servant had needed it. Nightmares weren’t catching, were they?
Alex ran her hands along the wall until she found the banister. She sighed. This would lead her down to the kitchen. It was all she needed.
At last, she reached the basement floor. A stream of light flowed out from beneath the bottom of the kitchen door. A pot clanged. Alex hadn’t checked the time before she’d left her room. Was it already time for Cook to start breakfast?
She turned the doorknob and stepped inside. A single lantern rested in the center of the worktable, but Cook did not stand behind it. Rick did. Rather, he leaned against the table with his hands pressed flat against the tabletop. His hair hung limply in front of his face. He wasn’t wearing a jacket or a vest, and his white shirt was open at the neck down to his sternum. He didn’t usually sleep in his daytime clothes. Hadn’t he changed? Was something wrong?
He looked up. “Alex?”
She quickened toward him. Even in the lamplight, his face looked pale. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve got a bug, I think. I thought a cup of tea might settle my stomach.” A bowl of tea leaves, an infuser, and an empty water kettle sat on the table in front of him. “I hope I didn’t wake you when I passed your room on my way down.”
Alex studied Rick’s gaunt features, his drooping posture. “How long ago were you there?”
“Five, maybe ten, minutes ago. I didn’t wake you, did I? I’m sorry, Alex.”
She arched an eyebrow. What she’d heard and felt had been directly in her room, not in the hall. And anyway, what reason would Rick have to try to frighten her like that? “I had a nightmare. Like you, I came down for some tea.”
He held her gaze. Sweat glistened along the top of his forehead. “What was your nightmare? Not the Night Hag, I hope?”
“I—don’t know what it was. But sit. You look like you’re going to collapse at any moment.” She stepped next to him, wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and helped him into the chair she’d sat in earlier that evening. “I’ll make the tea. You rest. You have a big day tomorrow.”
“I do?”
“Whether you travel by horse, train, or coach, you’re bound to be tired by the end of it. Being sick will only make it worse.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your treasure. Your partners sent for you, as I recall.”
Rick slouched back in his chair and set his forearm on the table. “That. I sent a telegram telling them I’m not ready to go just yet.” He looked up at her and held her gaze again. “I have a situation here that still needs—adjusting.”
“Oh?” She took the kettle from the table and held it under the water spigot above the sink. “You’re not talking about Aunt Pauline’s death? Uncle Henry’s persistent, but he’s also thorough. I really doubt there’s anything left for me to find, much less anything to take up your time too.”
She set the kettle on the stove, stoked the fire, and headed back to the worktable.
“Alex?” Rick’s voice was almost a whisper.
She looked to him. His
eyes shone up at her despite the low light. She cleared her throat. “Why don’t I tell you about my nightmare while we wait for the tea?”
“Very well. What was it?”
She sat in the chair across from him. With Rick in the room, her recounting of the events sounded to her like a made up tale, but when she got to the part about hearing the footsteps creak across the floorboards toward the door, Rick sat taller.
“A week ago, I’d have sworn what you’d experienced was a dream,” he said, “but after what we underwent today at the Godfrey home, I’m not sure of anything right now. Do you believe it was a nightmare?”
“I don’t know. It seemed so real, and yet when I was finally able to sit up and look around, I found my night robe still lying where I’d put it before retiring. Whatever it was that had climbed on and off my bed would have had to disturb my robe if it had been human, but it didn’t look like my robe had been moved at all. You didn’t see or hear anyone in the hall when you left your room?”
“No. What about Ivy? Could it have been her? Was she glowing or anything?”
“Sleeping. No glowing.”
Rick placed his hand over hers where it rested on the table. “The details have a lot in common with the Night Hag death.”
“The Night Hag’s not real, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Perhaps not, but—” He drew his brows together. “Pauline didn’t die of natural causes, as far as the medical examiner could determine, and yet no one found signs of an intruder in her room, either.”
The kettle whistled. Alex moved to stand, but Rick’s grip tightened around her hand. His gaze deepened.
Sudden heat rose to her cheeks. “What is it?”
“You’re so beautiful.”
She caught her breath, blinked, forced a laugh. “You’re kidding, right? I’m in my nightgown, and my hair’s a mess.”
“You’re never a mess.”
Alex’s muscles stiffened, but she forced another laugh. Compliments often helped Rick work his charm on other people, but they had never worked on her. Had he forgotten that was one of the reasons he liked—used to like—her? “That’s not what you were going to say. You’re up to something, aren’t you?”
“You’re right.” The edges of his lips tipped upward. “That wasn’t what I was going to say. Not then, anyway.”
She glanced toward the stove. Why did he keep looking at her like that? Did he have a fever? “I should get the tea. I think you might be sicker than you think.”
He released her hand. “Yes. Go.”
She got up from her chair, took a white teapot from the shelves on the wall at their left, and set the teapot on the work table.
“You’re also right about me being up to something.” Rick’s laugh sounded strained.
“I knew it.” She grabbed a hot pad and went to the stove for the water kettle. “All right, what is it?”
“You needn’t worry. It’s only what I said before. I don’t want to give up on us, Alex. I want to come home. To you.”
Alex’s heartbeat leapt into her throat. She stared at the kettle, but she couldn’t think, couldn’t make her lips move. “What if that’s not what I want?”
“I hoped—what do you want?”
She returned to the worktable. Hot tears burned at the back of her eyes, but she stared hard until they dried there. What she wanted was for Uncle Henry not to die, for Mary not to have died, and for Rick not to have abandoned her, but none of those things were true.
Rick pushed himself to his feet and, after leaning against the chair back another moment, walked toward her until he stood less than a foot away from her. “I love you, Alex. I didn’t know it until I climbed into the carriage the day I left, but that’s the truth of it.”
Alex scooped two spoons full of tea leaves into the tea infuser and set it in the teapot. She poured steaming water over the infuser and closed the teapot lid. Rick had never lied to her before. His expressions were much too open for him to be good at lying. But even with all those things still true, how could this statement be anything but a lie? “You left,” she said.
“I wish I hadn’t. I wish—” His gaze wavered. “You needn’t worry, Alex. I won’t bother you with this, and I won’t push, but I believe you should know I’m not willing to give up on us. I have every intention of wooing you the way I should have done in the first place. I want you to be my wife.”
Alex’s breath stopped. Never had a man said anything even remotely that blunt to her before. Rick hadn’t even proposed. His parents and her uncle had simply asked them if they would consider marrying, and they’d agreed. What should she say? How should she feel? “I am your wife.”
“Not in your heart. I’ve missed you, Alex. Everything about you. The way your voice cracks when you wake up in the morning. The—” He swallowed.
She bit the inside of her lower lip. She hated hurting him, and, truth be told, she loved and missed things about him too. She’d even come to realize she couldn’t blame him for Mary’s death. The past day they’d spent together had taught her he had loved their daughter as much as any father ever loved a daughter. But when things got hard, he’d left her, and he hadn’t come back until her uncle forced the issue. How could she trust him the way a wife needed to trust her husband after such betrayal? Certainly, sending Vera to her had been a kind gesture, but when looked at in a more prudent light, it had still been a way for him to ease his conscience from a distance. Fay had been right when she’d warned Alex that men like Rick, adventurers, would never be the settling-down kind.
“Friendship is all I want,” she said.
“Well, then.” Rick inhaled, placed both his hands on her upper arms, and turned her toward him. He kissed her softly on the forehead. “Friends it is—for now.”
Her insides rolled over with that physical need for him she’d only recently realized, but she looked up at him with an expression as empty as any she’d used when she’d gone out in public during those first months after Mary had died. Passivity had become her shield. “The tea’s ready.”
He smiled, but his eyes drooped. “We best drink it then. And afterward . . .”
“Afterward?”
“I won’t be sleeping for a while, and I doubt you will either. Why don’t we take another look at Pauline’s room? And bring that cat.”
Alex tilted her head. Had he noticed the connection between Ivy and Louis’s sobs in the Godfrey’s cellar as she had? “I thought you didn’t like her.”
“Feelings have a way of changing over time. I hope.”
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