Petals on the Pillow (12 page)

Annoyed, Kelly walked briskly through the halls to her room. She knew there was a second eraser of the exact same type thrown in with her charcoals. It would have to do.

Once in her room, she took a moment to run a brush through her hair and splash some cool water on her face.

Coming back out of the bathroom, she found the item she needed and turned to leave the room. Before she took another step, however, the cheval mirror in the corner, the one in whose reflection she’d first seen Betsy, caught her eye.

Kelly sat down hard on the bed. The smudge on the mirror that she kept wiping out was back. It had grown again. In fact, sometime during the day it had also taken on harder edges and more form than before. Much more form.

High in the right hand corner of the mirror was the letter “E” in the familiar spiky handwriting Kelly had seen over and over again in Elizabeth St. John’s sketchbooks.

Kelly stood and with slow deliberate steps approached the mirror, hand outstretched. She wanted to see if the smudge could be rubbed out again. She ran her thumb over the letter. This time it didn’t wipe out, but just as she moved her hand away the whole mirror shattered into tiny pieces that rained out at her.

***

Harrison sat in his haven of logic and common sense—his office. He slung his jacket over a coat rack by the double doors and slid into the chair in front of his computer. It fit him like a glove. Long hours spent planning this latest coup had formed it to him. He switched on his computer and stared at the screen as green numbers flickered and flashed on the black back
ground. He needed this. His soul craved the absolute truth and cold logic of numbers. Since Elizabeth’s death and everything he had discovered about her afterwards, the chilly absolutes of balance sheets had provided all the salve his wounded spirit could find.

He looked for the mind-numbing release from his own self
-torment that scanning through reams of stock quotes and company prospectuses had always provided, but today it eluded him. Shifting in the chair and tilting it back, Harrison rubbed his hands across his face and caught the faint scent of Kelly.

Kelly. He shook his head in wonder. Totally unexpected, completely disarming, wholly absorbing Kelly. How the hell had he allowed this to happen? Thank God that one of them had come to their senses last night. He wasn’t quite sure what in hell or heaven would have stopped him last night if she had
n’t darted into her room like a frightened rabbit. Those kisses had been.... Well, he didn’t quite have words to describe what they had been like. Like coming home, but to a place you’d never known existed before.

And he had poisoned that place already by lying to her.

The lies had come before the kisses, he rationalized, but it rang hollow. They were still lies. He wondered why he hadn’t told her the truth about what she had said and what he had seen. He shook his head. He knew why. Because it was crazy. The light on the end of the dock was some kind of optical illusion or a strange electrical phenomena he hadn’t seen before in all his years of living on the edge of the Puget Sound. Kelly had wandered into it and had acted a little strangely afterward. Who wouldn’t act a little off-center after stepping into a freak electrical storm?

That was all there was to it. Had to be all there was to it. Because any other explanation wouldn’t fly in here, in his cozy little world of spreadsheets and stock options where assets and deficits totaled up and spoke their truth to the world and no one could refute it.

He grimaced and rocked the chair back upright, re-addressing himself to the numbers on the screen. But one thing still stirred uneasily in the back of his brain. If Kelly was only exhibiting a reaction to an electrical phenomena, how could she kiss just like Elizabeth one second and like a completely different woman the next? The next question he had to ask himself was a little harder, however. Did he care? Or were those kisses sweet enough that he’d risk plunging into a relationship with a woman who was being driven by God knew what?

He sighed and rubbed at his forehead with his knuckles at the pain in his head that was forming there. Harrison knew what the answer to that question had to be. It had to be no. No way would he risk everything now. So how was he going to keep his hands off Kelly? Every time he was near her, he found himself nearly maddened with the need to touch her, to hold her, to kiss her and more. Oh, there was so much more he wanted to do to her.

He couldn’t. Not now. There was simply too much unfinished business to be taken care of. Clearly, the one thing he could do was keep away from her. It was, after all, a very big house.

Harrison sensed as much as heard the footsteps on the thick carpeting behind him. He swiveled his chair away from his computer and toward the door. Kendra stepped across the office, a pile of papers and her ubiquitous clipboard tucked to her chest. “So what’s the status?” he asked.

She smiled, stepping forward to place the papers on his desk. “Excellent. Everything is going according to plan.”

“Has Clark called?” Harrison asked, quickly working his way through the stack. He signed his name over and over, never bothering to look over the printed pages.

“Several times. He’s starting to sound a bit panicky.”

“Good. He should.” Harrison shoved the stack of papers back across the desk to her. He leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. “What have you told him when he calls?”

“That you’re busy. That you’ll call him when you have the time.” She shrugged. “He’s not happy with the answer, but I’m

not sure he knows what to do about it.”

Harrison nodded his approval. “So what’s next, Kendra?” Kendra sat down in the chair in front of Harrison’s desk. She crossed her long legs and smoothed her oyster shell silk skirt. “Well, let’s see. By tomorrow I should have finished transferring the stock through the string of dummy corporations. My guess is that by about two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, you should own around sixty percent of St. John Industries’ stock. You’ll be unstoppable.”

He smiled. “I feel unstoppable now.”

“You should.” Her voice was a satin purr.

“What about the other effort?” Harrison asked, twisting in his chair. “Have we heard anything back from that?”

Kendra waved her pen in the air in a graceful gesture. “Nothing direct. But we have had a lot of phone calls with vague questions that seem to start with ‘I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend.’ You know the sort. The questions you ask when you don’t really want to be the one asking.” She smiled again. “My guess is that by the time the letters we sent out finish making the rounds, David Clark will be lucky to find a job sweeping airline hangars, much less running an aviation engineering business.”

Harrison’s face crumpled. “I wonder if we went too far, Kendra. I don’t regret getting him out of St. John Industries, but maybe this other is just a bit too much.”

Kendra was out of her chair in flash. She braced her arms on the desk and leaned forward until her face was just inches from Harrison’s. She spat her words out like a cat hissing in anger. “Don’t forget what he did to you, Harrison. He deserves this and more. As far as I’m concerned, he’s lucky you haven’t tried to get him arrested for murder.”

***

Dora Jenkins waddled down the hallway to the kitchen from the servants’ quarters. She winced as her hip sent a twinge of pain shooting straight up her spine. The damp cold evening made her arthritis act up. She drew the sash of her plaid flannel robe tighter around her generous middle. Her feet and calves ached, too, after a day standing in the kitchen cooking, cleaning and supervising the many little tasks that kept Hawk Manor running. She licked her lips, anticipating the pleasure of a hot cup of tea and a little something sweet to share with her husband in front of the telly before they toddled off to bed.

Kelly’s presence in the kitchen when she walked in didn’t surprise her too much, even though it was nearly midnight. Dora had noticed the young woman’s habit of spending her free time in there. She was good enough company and didn’t get in the way too much. Dora acknowledged her presence with her usual brusque nod and an “Evening, miss” and proceeded to fill the teakettle and bang it noisily onto the stove.

Dora pulled a plate from the cupboard and arranged a selection of packaged cookies on it. Her hands automatically placed them in an alternating pattern of dark and light, round and rectangular. She smiled at her little creation knowing that Robert would appreciate the care she’d taken with their snack.

“You always had an artistic touch with food,” a mellow voice spoke in her ear.

Dora spun around. Kelly leaned against the counter next to her.

“Thank you, miss,” Dora said. Something about the girl’s voice had Dora’s brow furrowed with uncertainty, but the teapot whistled and Dora limped to the stove. She poured the hot water into a little china pot.

“Hip bothering you tonight?”

“A bit, miss,” Dora acknowledged, attention focused on getting just the right amount of tea loaded into the little metal ball.

The young woman sighed. “I’ve told you time and again, Dora. You need to see a chiropractor about that hip. All McIntyre can do is push more pills at you.”

Dora froze, tea ball suspended in mid-air over the steaming pot. She pulled herself straight and turned slowly to peer more closely at Kelly.

A soft and knowing smiled shaped her lips. “You know I’m right, Dora.” She straightened from the counter with graceful ease. “The girl was right this morning, too, you know. You really ought to send David a batch of those scones. It amazes me that no one has figured out that the secret ingredients are your homemade applesauce and a little nutmeg, but they haven’t.” She strolled to the kitchen door. “You really should send them,” she said before slipping into the hall.

Dora wasn’t sure how long she stood there, tea ball swing
ing like a pendulum in front of her, but the water no longer steamed when she finally willed herself to move. She set the ball down, but stood for a few minutes longer, hands braced against the counter, until her heart stopped racing.

She knew that voice, knew it all too well. It carried with it good associations, only the best. Sunny days and experimental recipes that both flew and flopped. A colleague in the kitchen and a capable steward of the Manor.
The only one, really and truly the only other person who knew that she put applesauce and nutmeg into her orange currant scones.

But how? Surely it wasn’t possible. Dora shook her head. It may not be possible, but it had to be. Not even Robert knew about the applesauce. Dora wasn’t sure why someone would come back from the grave just for baked goods, but there it was. She set the teapot gently into the sink and, popping a cookie in her mouth, bustled off to the cellar. She’d best hurry
if she was going to get any sleep tonight.

Chapter Eight

“Good morning, Kelly.” Kendra’s smile was perfectly in place, just like the rest of her. Her white blonde hair swept back from her face into a smooth knot, tight against her skull.

Kelly would have felt ridiculous in the navy blue suit with little nautical details at the collar and cuff, but Kendra exuded nothing but confidence. She clearly felt right at home in the outfit and looked at home in it as well. “Good morning right back at you, Kendra,” Kelly replied.

“Sleep well last night?”

“Hmmm,” Kelly murmured noncommittally. They took the last turn to the stairwell.

Betsy sat on the top stairs, looking glum. Her face bright
ened as soon as she saw Kelly. She jumped up and took her hand. “Ready to get started, Kelly?”

“As soon as I’ve had some coffee, munchkin.”

Betsy wrinkled her nose. “Yuck. I don’t know how you can stand that stuff.”

“Trust me. It’s my best friend.”

The three walked down the stairs together. Kendra veered off to Harrison’s study while Betsy and Kelly continued on to the kitchen together.

Dora already had the place hopping when Kelly and Betsy came in. No pots simmered, but the butcher block was covered with flour and Dora stood at the sink to rinse a huge bowl of berries.

“Making more scones, Dora?” Kelly asked while she poured coffee from the pot on the counter.

The bowl clattered into the sink as Dora dropped it. She watched Kelly sit down at the table as if she expected snakes to suddenly sprout from her head. She turned to Betsy and said, “Be a dear and run and get me a pound of butter from down the cellar.”

Betsy shrugged and trotted out obediently.

Dora stomped over to where Kelly still sat sipping her cof
fee. “I did what you asked, you know, for whatever good it did.”

“You did what?” Kelly asked, puzzled.

“The scones,” Dora hissed in a whisper. “I made and sent the scones.”

“Okay,” Kelly said, confused by Dora’s conspiratorial man
ner. “That’s nice. Real nice.”

“Good, then.” Dora nodded in approval. “I wasn’t sure which one of you you were right now. I thought I’d best be sure.”

“Excuse me. What are you talking about, Dora?” Kelly asked, startled.

Before Dora could speak again the door slapped open and Betsy walked in. “Here’s your butter, Mrs. Jenkins.”

“Good girl. Set it on the counter, please.” Behind Betsy’s back, Dora held her finger to her lips in an exaggerated request for silence.

Kelly shook her head in amazement, but shrugged her acquiescence. She hadn’t a clue what had gotten into the house
keeper, but didn’t have the energy to confront her either. She refilled her coffee cup and said to Betsy, “I’m going to head upstairs, honey. You stay here and finish your breakfast. Come up when you’re done.”

Kelly hummed to herself as she made her way up to Betsy’s room, her mind already busy with where she’d start painting. Today was the first day of what Kelly considered the real work of the mural. Everything else up to this point had merely been preparation. Now she could finally get into the part she could really sink her teeth into—the actual painting. Of course, she’d still be working through backgrounds before beginning the actual subjects, but just the idea of getting her hands into her paints put a bounce into her step as she walked the long hall
ways. She was completely unprepared for what waited for her behind that closed door.

When Kelly walked into Betsy’s room, her fingers lost their tingle and went numb at the sight that greeted her. Her coffee cup smashed to the floor, dropping from her limp fingers. All the air went out of her lungs in a rush. She felt as if she’d been sucker-punched, and in a way she had been. All her paint
brushes lay broken and smashed on the tarp under the ladder. Tubes of paint and medium had been squirted on them and left to dry in a sticky half-wet pile.

A moan rose unbidden from her throat. Kelly fell to her kne
es. She picked up her favorite two-inch flat brush, wondering at the rage required to splinter its handle completely. Kelly choked back a sob when she realized all the bristles had been chopped to rough and useless edges. She sorted brush after brush out of the mess. None had been spared. From her widest wash brush to her finest liner, someone had hacked and split each and every one. Most of the bristles had been ripped or cut and all of the handles had been snapped and smashed.

Kelly clutched a handful of them to her chest and rocked back and forth on her knees. She felt the destruction of her tools with a physical anguish that kept her doubled over. She had worked so hard for each one of those brushes, scrimping and saving until she could afford the very best.
Every bit of sable and wood and metal was a tangible commitment to herself and to her talent. Each top-of-the-line purchase showed the world she believed in what she could be and deserved only the very best tools on her way there. She’d skipped meals, lived in apartments with cockroaches the size of rats and worked two and three jobs at a time so she could afford her classes and the right materials. Now that commitment was nothing more than a pile of splinters stabbing at her hand.

She was still crouched on the floor clutching the ruined brushes in her hands when Harrison came into the room.

“Kelly, are you all right?” His voice was sharp with alarm. He knelt down next to her and recoiled when he saw the mess of splintered wood and paint. “What happened? Who did this?”

“Some
one smashed my brushes. I don’t know who. I don’t even know why.” Kelly’s voice quivered. She hated the weakness she heard in it. Harrison’s arm hovered in the air over her shoulders then finally settled to pull her tight against him. His arm felt strong and solid across her back. She buried her head in the comfort of his broad shoulder to block out the sight. Unaccustomed tears prickled like hot needles at the backs of her eyelids.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered into her hair.

The tears leaked out against her tightly closed lids. She wished them back, wished herself strong and dry-eyed. Knowing that what she’d slaved to buy lay destroyed at her feet kept the tears flowing.

Harrison pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Holding Kelly away from him, he dried the tears on her cheeks with a tenderness that made the lump in her throat grow larger. “I never cry.” She sniffed loudly, not meeting his eyes.

“No,” he said gently. “You never cry.”

She stopped trying to fight the welling tears and let them spill over, but bowed her head. The spilled paint seeped toward the sharply creased knee of Harrison’s gray trousers. “You’re going to ruin another suit.”

He slid his arms around her. “It’s just material,” he murmured. “The brushes. Can they be salvaged?”

Kelly swallowed hard, trying to bite back the tears. “I don’t see how. Or how I’m going to replace them.”

“Were they ... of sentimental value?”

Kelly looked up. “Sentimental value?” she repeated.

“You seemed so upset. I thought perhaps they were significant in some way. A gift maybe or a bequest.” Harrison shifted away from her as she continued to stare at him in disbelief.

A sharp thrill of irrational anger ran through her. Words tumbled out of her mouth without her thinking about one of them. “Only a man who could refer to a two thousand dollar suit as ‘just material’ would think a bunch of brushes would be of sentimental value.” Kelly shoved her hair back, running her fingers through it and standing it on end. Pushing up to her feet, she started to pace, gesturing wildly, small hands flashing. “Their significance is that they took me years to accumulate and cost me the Kelly-equivalent of a fortune. The only senti
ment I attach to them is the disgust I felt for every lousy jerk I let pinch my ass when I was cocktail waitressing in the hope they’d leave a bigger tip.” Liar, she called herself, even as she protested to Harrison. They meant you were worth something, that you were a professional who deserved the best tools available.

“Kelly, I’m sorry.” Harrison stood and brushed off the knees of his pants.

She gestured him away with a flip of her hands and sank back down to the floor, burying her head in her hands. “Forget it. I just have to figure out what to do now.”

“If it’s only a matter of money, Kelly—”

“Only money?” she interrupted. “God, Harrison, you should hear yourself talk sometime. In fact, I’m amazed you can squeeze the words out. That silver spoon you were born with must be jammed so far down your throat it’s a miracle you don’t gag on it.” She looked up, intending to fix him with a glare that shot daggers, but Harrison’s distress was so plain on his face that she felt a pang of guilt instead. He hadn’t broken her brushes, after all, and it wasn’t his fault that he had been born rich or that she had not. She rolled the remains of her brushes in the paint-stained tarp and shoved it into the corner. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

His eyes glittered, but his voice stayed calm and even. “You were upset.”

“Am upset,” she corrected. “And I still don’t know what to do.”

“How much would it cost to replace them?”

She shrugged, not entirely trusting her voice when she thought about the enormous job of replacing them. “Around six hundred or so. Another two hundred for the paints.”

“Kelly.” His arm was on her arm, warm and strong. “I could—”

“I know you could, but I’m not sure I can. And if you did, I’m not sure how long it would take me to repay you.” Her hand closed over his.

He shook his head. “Repayment need not be an issue.”

“For you. It would have to be an issue with me. Besides, even if I do take you up on that offer, I’d have to special order some of those brushes. It could be weeks before I got them.” Kelly chewed her lower lip. An idea slowly dawned on her. She knew it would work, at least for a little while. “Elizabeth must have had brushes. Those watercolors didn’t paint themselves.” Kelly felt Harrison stiffen beside her. He inhaled sharply and Kelly thought she could almost hear him count to ten under his breath before he responded.

“She did. I haven’t a clue
where they might be now.”

Kelly looked up at him and saw the strain in his face, but pressed on regardless. “I have a pretty good idea.”

***

Harrison followed Kelly as she threaded her way though the sheet-shrouded furniture that littered Hawk Manor’s east wing. Each step dragged at him and he cursed himself for a coward and a fool. It was only furniture, only things, but the eerie white ghostly shapes taunted him with the mockery of a life he’d led in these rooms. He guessed it had been over a year since he’d walked into the east wing and wished it could have been at least another before he set foot in these halls.

Kelly strode on in front of him, stopping in front of a cluster of furniture tented with a king sized bed sheet in what had been Harrison and Elizabeth’s old bedroom. Kelly crouched down and crawled under the sheet. Harrison lifted it and peered underneath. He dropped it as suddenly as if it had burned him. “What is this place?”

Kelly looked out from where she sat on the floor rummag
ing through a box. Her brows creased in dismay. “You didn’t know about this?”

Harrison shook his head.

Kelly winced. “I promised Betsy I wouldn’t tell anyone. I never dreamed you really didn’t know.”

“Kelly, what is it?” he asked. Harrison’s voice
was thin with tension.

“Got ’em.” Kelly slid out from between two chairs. She clutched two rolled canvas brush sleeves to her chest. “It’s Betsy’s special place to go and think about her mother.”

“I see.” Harrison felt the unwelcome twin pangs of guilt and regret twist his gut at the thought of Betsy alone under this sheet trying to commune with Elizabeth.

“Do you?” Kelly’s eyes were deep pools of heat in the shut
tered light. “I gather she has no other place to do that. She has no one to talk to about her mother. You all go tight-lipped and tense the second anyone mentions Elizabeth’s name. She has no one to mourn with, because she’s barely even allowed to acknowledge that her mother existed. She’s afraid she’ll forget what her mother even looked like.”

Harrison looked up sharply. Kelly’s words echoed in his head. What had Elizabeth said to him the other night in the drawing room? “Betsy barely remembers w
hat I look like.” Where did one woman end and the other begin? Or were they really separate? The thought pained him. He had nothing to guide him here. Nothing but his gut, and that said that there was something terribly wrong. Harrison twisted the sheet aside again. “No danger of her forgetting what Elizabeth looked like in here,” he said, voice laced with sarcasm.

The sight of so many images of Elizabeth actually made him want to physically recoil. He spun around, only to con
front Elizabeth’s formal portrait—the one of her in her favorite yellow dress—leaning against a highboy in the corner. Its dust cover lay at its feet. He scooped the cover from the floor and threw it over the painting.

“Why did you do that? Would it kill you to look at her every now and then?”

Harrison turned around to face Kelly. She stood, hands on hips, chin jutted forward in defiance. Harrison lowered his head. His shoulders slumped. “Yes,” he said softly. “Sometimes I think it would.”