Ever After (3 page)

Something else held me down in the flowerbed. Utter and complete shock.

It was him.

The guy from my dreams, but he had a face.

Was he breathing?

Was I breathing?

My cheeks burned.

Like staring at the sun, it was difficult to look at him for more than a few seconds. So I didn’t.

The maids turned me to face the guy as they pulled mulch from my clothes.

His anger transformed to something else as he scanned the flowerbed, looked to the floors of the house above me, and then back to me. He worked his stubble-covered jaw and balled his fist.

“I’m—I’m so sorry. I must have tripped.” I politely turned Thomas’s hand away. All I needed was to stumble again and pull him down in the flowerbed with me. “I hope I didn’t mess up the flowers.”

I kept the member of the yard maintenance crew in my peripheral. It was sort of hard not to. I turned back to Thomas.

“I’m so sorry. Are you okay? I should have been watching where we were walking. I’m so sorry.” Thomas’s cheeks blazed red as I tried to see around him.

“Who is that?” I asked Thomas.

The guy with the weed eater moved from my sight. He reappeared, standing on the right side of the onlookers as he stared at the fourth floor.

Thomas ignored my question and worked to get me standing in an upright position.

“Your whole backside is covered. I don’t know how you fell from there to here.” Dalton took too much time to dust the back of my pants.

I shoved away his hands.

His mischievous grin returned.

Thomas glared at Dalton and led me out of the flowerbed.

I stomped dirt off my feet and said to Dalton, “I’m going to have to keep an eye on you.”

“You can put whatever you want on me.”

The weed eater guy’s dark red lips pursed, and his strong jaw drew taut. He glared at Dalton.

As if I were the nasty brown stuff dripping from a rusty hole in a dumpster, a clump of gaudy, over-dressed girls close to my age glared at me. As if I were the kind of girl they’d just left with a twenty-dollar bill behind a dumpster, the other guys sneered.

I shuddered.

“What happened exactly?” Thomas asked, his face white now.

“Um, I fell?” Was there a right answer?

“Well, come along, then. Let’s not give them anything else to whisper about.” Thomas tugged me past the crowd. The yard guy sank into the multitude and out of sight.

I’d never had a headache like that. And I was never that clumsy. Tripping, maybe. Falling completely over, never. I could explain tripping over air if I’d seen the amazingly hot weed eater guy first. The front entrance and reception area had emptied of the audience. Hot weed eater guy was nowhere to be found.

Thomas pulled me into the reception room and turned to drop his coat in a room behind the door.

Wagon wheels clattered over the cobblestone drive, horses whinnied, and a driver with a strong deep voice called the horses to a halt. Two horses pulled a buggy up the crowded drive. The man drove right through the rest of the stragglers outside the entrance.

He drove the wagon over the sidewalk and flower bed, stopped the buggy, and hopped down, the wagon creaking as his weight left the strained wood. He had shoulders so broad the fabric of his shirt stretched against its buttons. He turned and came straight toward me.

My feet were rooted.

As if I didn’t exist, the tall, handsome gentleman passed straight through me. In the direction the man had hurried, there was no one.

“…and the reception room was designed by Ethan Kohler, an architect friend of the original owner.” Thomas hadn’t seen the man, so I had to keep cool.

We walked through the heavy wooden doors, and to my left a staircase rolled up the wall of the vestibule. Cathedral ceilings soared over my head. The ceilings and staircase were similar in design.

“…the Sistine Chapel with Greek mythological creatures instead of Biblical symbolism. No detail has been spared. If you look closely, you’ll see that each post in the staircase has a carving depicting a mythological character.”

As I passed, I let my fingers trail over the eyes of Medusa. Rubies?

The house was more like a museum, not a dwelling.

“I especially love the pewter-colored chandelier hanging over our heads.” Thomas pointed. Attached to the center of the cathedral ceiling by a heavy black chain, hundreds of prisms dangled from its jeweled-claw feet. “Four gothic columns set twenty feet apart in a square support the soaring ceiling. Fifteenth or sixteenth century Finnish Tapestries garnish the walls, and reds and blues accentuate the jewels in the staircase.”

My heels clicked on the polished marble floor. The walls were cool smooth stone. Two large urns filled with ferns marked the entrance to the living room.

The whole situation was too amazing to be true. Definitely a mistake in identity.

Behind the left urn, a pair of human eyes peered out, but the ferns arms slapped back together. Children’s giggles burst from the same direction, and my anxiety dipped. Probably the only pleasant family members in the house.

“This is the living room.” Thomas swept his arm.

I stepped inside.

“Ava showcased her priceless stone sculptures and other works of art wall to wall here. To your left, you can probably walk into the tall stone fireplace.”

It was so big a fire inside it would heat the whole downstairs. Sofas arranged in the shape of a
U
faced the fireplace.

A few staff members passed us, nodding politely as they hurried to their tasks.

“It’s something, huh? And this is just the living room.” Thomas grinned.

“It looks like a castle.” A cool draft whisked by my feet.

“You’ll meet the rest of the staff during your stay. They’re probably in hiding right now, trying to stay as far away from Ava’s blood family as possible. It won’t take you long to figure out why Ava left you everything instead of bestowing anything upon one of them,” Thomas said as he took me through the vestibule.

Good. Maybe my dream guy would be in the lineup.

Each time we passed a family member, they were unreceptive to any acts of civility, noses turned up as we passed.

Thomas showed me each wing of the house on the first and second floors, the most important rooms that I would become familiar with if I stayed, Thomas noted.

We rode a metal elevator with sliding cage doors coated in metal curly cues and flowers.

He patted the lever that shut the doors. “This old thing saves my knees daily.”

The elevator screeched and clanked to a stop on the landing of the third floor.

Thomas gave me its short history, then started the metal box into a downward descent.

“What about the fourth floor?” I asked.

“Well, we can go up, but we should stay inside the elevator cage. Bad floors.” He wouldn’t look at me.

“I’d like very much to see it, if that’s okay?”

Thomas reluctantly stopped the elevator and reversed directions. Through the bars, he watched the fourth floor as it came into view.

The elevator groaned and creaked to a stop.

I started to move toward the doors, but Thomas filled the elevator doorway.

I gave him a surprised look.

His voice shook. “We use it for storage mostly. It’s been this way as long as I can remember. Ava started renovations on it until…” He paused. His eyes darkened, and his shoulders sagged with a memory, but he continued. “Until a terrible day in June 1978. A construction worker fell from the window. His body was found on the grounds close to the house. She stopped all renovations that day. It wasn’t the first time something bad had happened here. She grew weary of tragedies linked to the house. But I won’t bore you with a bunch of superstitious legends. Anyway, the staff members aren’t allowed up here without express permission.”

“I would imagine renovations wouldn’t be that hard.”

The wallpaper hung in strips down the walls.

Thomas’s posture straightened to rigidity, and his face paled again.

I pointed to the window where I’d seen the woman earlier. “You said no one is allowed up here? When we entered the house, I’m beyond positive there was a girl standing in that window.”

“I have both the keys to the stairwell, and the elevator is rarely used, so seeing anyone there isn’t likely. Maybe you took a harder fall than I thought.” Thomas straightened his tie and cleared his throat. He patted my back, passing off the incident with a nervous chuckle. “Let’s get back downstairs and get you to your room. You might need to rest.”

“Yes, that does sound good.” My eyelids were heavy.

“A set of service stairs at the rear of the house allows access to each floor,” he said.

A long hallway stretched toward a door with a glass window.

He pressed a button, his eyes flitting back to the window where I had seen the woman. Despite the summer heat, he shivered. Thomas relaxed as the elevator lowered, closing off the view to the dank fourth floor.

We stepped out of the metal box.

“After you’re rested, we’ll venture out to the grounds. It’s actually well-lit in the evening and quite beautiful.” Thomas escorted me to a set of white French doors with glass panes overlooking the vestibule and grand entrance.

“The entrance to the house.” I might not get lost if I stayed on the first and second floors.

“Here are your rooms. First door on the left at the top of the stairs. Not hard to find.” Looking pleased with himself, Thomas stepped back and clasped his hands at the hem of his suit jacket.

I turned and stopped cold. I dropped my arm from his and held onto the doorframe for support.

We’d stopped in front of a Queen’s quarters.

I’d walked through bedrooms of grandly furnished houses on tours in school, but the thought of resting my head on a pillow in one of them…no way.

“This was Ava’s favorite place in the house. Under her express instructions, you are to stay here. She said you’d grow to love the room.” Thomas adjusted his collar and looked both ways down the hall.

“This is too much.” Just one night spent here would be a dream come true. I was afraid if I stepped in, the whole scene would fall away, and I’d wake up.

The feminine curtains and bedcovering contrasted the dark, masculine furniture. Beautiful, yet melancholy.

“Ava prided herself in being a great judge of character, God rest her soul.” Thomas bowed his head.

Beautiful images of trees were carved into the four posters of the bed, and the satin bed covers were softer than the one silk scarf my mama owned.

Four windows filled the opposing wall, spanning from floor to ceiling. Silver sashes scooped back white satin drapes, giving a commanding view of the property.

Ten-inch crown molding bordered silver and white papered walls. A huge, darkly masculine four-poster bed covered in matching white satin blankets and pillows spanned the north wall.

The bathroom was almost the same size as the bedroom with a walk-in closet overwhelmed with clothes. One of the black wrought iron wall decorations probably cost more than every piece of furniture in my apartment.

“This room held special sentiment to the original owners. No one has slept here for over one hundred years.” Staying just outside the threshold, Thomas’s eyes were glued on the carpet.

“She could have chosen any other room for me.” I turned to Thomas.

He looked through the windows behind me. “What Ava wants, Ava gets.”

Weird. She was dead, and they were still scared of her.

The living quarters, other than modernized bathroom fixtures, were perfectly preserved in their original elegance.

The mattress was so soft it had to be full of real feathers. “Whose room was it originally?”

“The honeymoon suite of a young couple in 1879.” His smile fell, and his jaw went slack with a look of dismay. His pocket watch stole his attention. He huffed.

A strikingly pretty female in a ridiculous black and white maid uniform rushed Thomas from the staircase. She pressed a tendril of pale blond hair behind a perfectly shaped ear and clasped her hands behind her back. Giving me a quick curtsy, she avoided eye contact with Thomas. “First of all, don’t freak out. I told Cole, and that’s the first thing he did, freak out. Of course, you know he’s going to freak out. That’s his reaction to everything.”

“Kaitlyn, Allie Knowles. Miss Knowles, Kaitlyn, one of the housekeepers.” He regarded Kaitlyn with dark eyes. “What seems to be the problem, my dear?”

“It seems we’ve…” The girl’s face pinched up, and she looked to the floor. “I cannot believe I’m saying this.”

“What did you do?” Thomas leaned closer.

“Not everything that goes wrong around here is my doing. Either way, it appears…” She paused. “We’ve lost the casket.”

“Lost the—” Thomas’s face reddened, but he composed himself. “How do you
lose
a casket?”

“It was in the parlor near the living room. You know, where the wake was being held.” She made eye contact with Thomas, wincing, waiting.

“And?” His face went from red to purple.

“And now it’s not?”

Kaitlyn bit her bottom lip, staring at an interesting place on the carpet.

“With all due respect, in the future, please speak with me about these matters in private. It’s terribly inappropriate to burden Miss Knowles with such morbid occurrences.” Thomas shook his head disdainfully. “Please excuse me. These tyrants need to put a leash on their kids. One of them must have rolled it—her—out of the parlor.”

“Because that’s a good explanation. It doesn’t explain why the chairs weren’t moved to make way for it to be rolled through.” She followed behind Thomas who waddled down the hall.

I leaned against the wrought iron banister.

Down stairs, Kaitlyn and Thomas headed into a room Thomas hadn’t taken me into. Probably where the body was supposed to be.

A few children ran through the vestibule, giggling and throwing dirt clods at one another. Any one of them could have rolled the casket into another room and moved the chairs back as a prank.

Resolving to take a shower, and possibly get in a quick nap, I turned back to my ridiculously huge set of rooms. A happy couple in an embrace standing on freshly polished hardwood floors beside the large four-poster bed faded before my eyes.