14. Winnie

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WINNIE

Mina: Winnie, it was so fun to meet you last night. Isis is sorry about all her vampire talk. I’m sure your boss is totally human and a completely normal guy who just happens to look damn fine in a frock coat. We’d love to have you back at next week’s book club…that is, if you haven’t decided we’re all bonkers!

“ G ood evening, Lady Winifred, Countess of Clean. Did you enjoy the book club?” Alaric asks the next day as he enters the ballroom, his hair damp from his evening swim and his face an unreadable wall of sexy stone.

I can’t decide if I’m happy or disappointed that he’s wearing a shirt this time.

I managed to stay in bed until 2 PM today. I didn’t sleep, as usual. The nightmares woke me around 5 AM, my sheets damp with sweat, my body crawling with invisible bugs. And then I stared at the ceiling while my brain swirled around everything the book club said about Alaric – all these oddities that, if I were a character in a paranormal romance, would make me believe that I was unwittingly working for a centuries-old vampire.

But I’m not a character in a book. I’m a totally normal, slightly neurotic clean freak with an odd, grumpy client who is definitely not a murderer. Or a vampire.

I told myself over and over that I didn’t believe Isis’ nonsense, but I still couldn’t make myself stop thinking about the way Alaric held me when I fell as if I weighed nothing at all, and touching the graze on my neck where his sharp teeth scraped my skin.

In the end, the only way to shut my brain up was to pick up another book from the stack Mina sold me. I started a new series the book club insisted I read – about a heroine who was going blind and worked in a magical bookshop that brought infamous fictional villains to life. The heroine had three love interests – Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes, and a shapeshifting raven named Quoth, and they solved murder mysteries around a quaint English village. Mina told me that she wrote it under a pseudonym and I could see why she hadn’t put her name on it – the books were inspired by her real life (minus the magic and the fictional villains brought to life, because those things are impossible, obviously), and they were racy .

A blush creeps over my cheeks just thinking about them.

Or maybe that blush is caused by the intensity of Alaric’s anthracite gaze, or the curl of dark hair plastered to the side of his face that my fingers itch to tuck behind his ear. Or the crazy thought that if he were a vampire, I might not care.

“Book club was fun,” I tell him. “I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.”

I hate to admit how true that is.

Patrick and I didn’t laugh that much. He was serious and driven, focused on building his bespoke window company, which at the time was what I thought I wanted in a partner. Someone who had their life together, who had career goals and valued experiences over stuff.

I did all my laughing with my oldest friend, Claire. She knows all my secrets. She’s the only person I’ve ever trusted with the truth about Mum. Not even Patrick knew the full extent of it, although he lived with the fallout. More than once he called me a clean freak or a drill sergeant after I threw out something he wanted to keep or he found me scrubbing the bathroom in the middle of the night after one of my dreams.

But Claire had been inside Mum’s house. She helped me clean the first time the council threatened to evict Mum. She could have spent her holidays in Majorca, but instead she spent them trying to convince my mother that she didn’t need twenty-two tea cosies or five boxes of expired hot sauce. I thought Claire was a real friend.

Now I know better.

“I’m pleased that you had a good time.” Alaric moves nearer, his leather boots clicking against the marble. “And you had no trouble in the village? No would-be murderers crashing your meeting or lurking in the shadows?”

I open my mouth to tell him about that face staring in the window, but the dark tone in his voice makes me pause. He studies me, fire flaring in the corners of his eyes. Even though the fire Reginald lit barely penetrates the chilly room, warmth pools inside me, as if the butterfly has made itself a tiny campfire.

I think of the way he leapt in to rescue me at the pub and the protective way he held me, as though I were something precious to him and not a stranger.

I think of Danny O’Hare, infamous menace to women, lying in an alley with the blood drained from him.

I force a smile. “Not a murderer in sight. Besides, I have my dagger. Not that I know how to use it.”

“As long as you aim the pointy end at the monster, you should be fine.” Alaric’s shoulders relax. “Speaking of pointy things, I got rid of the swords.”

“I see that.” And I saw Reginald wink at me as he handed me my evening hot chocolate, so I know he’s stored them away somewhere.

“I have found someone to move the loom. They will arrive in a few hours.”

“A few hours?” I wince. “That’s not much time to get all these tapestries out of here so they can get to the loom.”

I’m not looking forward to an evening manoeuvring heavy tapestries on very little sleep. I move towards the call button.

“I’ll get Reginald. It’s going to take all three of us to move these. I don’t know how you managed to roll and stack them?—”

Alaric picks up the nearest rolled tapestry. I move to help him, but he tosses it over his shoulder like he’s the morally-grey hero in a gothic romance and it’s a damsel running from his castle. He carries it over to the patch of empty floor we cleared and unrolls it.

“How did you do that? That thing has to weigh hundreds of pounds! I don’t want you to injure yourself!”

Alaric doesn’t answer. He kicks the tapestry, sending up a cloud of dust as it thumps against the marble.

I can’t help it. I gasp… again .

It’s a depiction of the valley. I recognise the curve of the stream, the rocky crag with the castle perched atop it. What I don’t recognise are the knights fighting in the foreground, swords clashing, bodies twisting as they meet in the thick of battle. One horse tramples an enemy knight beneath its feet. There’s a raw kind of realism to it, as if it had been rendered from memory, as if the viewer was regarding the scene from atop their own horse before they dived into the fray.

“This is the Battle of Black Crag in 1626,” Alaric says. “My interpretation of it, anyway.”

“Alaric, it’s beautiful,” I whisper. “I know this battle was centuries ago, but it’s as if you were there. Why do you have this rolled up? It should be on display.”

“I couldn’t display this.” He makes a face as he points to a horse’s flank. “The proportions are all wrong. And this soldier’s arm is the wrong length. And this sky here? What was I thinking? It needs to be repaired, but I never have the time. I get distracted.”

The butterfly that lives permanently in my stomach around him is joined by a friend, but their churning stirs memories I’d rather forget.

“No wonder you have trouble throwing things out, Alaric. You’re a perfectionist.”

He regards me, his face expectant, and there’s something delicate about the stone of his flawless features that brings to mind the way I’d tiptoe through the narrow pathway in my mother’s living room, carefully placing each step so I didn’t send a stack of her stuff toppling down to bury me. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Yes and no. Holding yourself to a high standard is good, but taken to extremes, it means it’s difficult to make decisions because you’re afraid of getting things wrong. Perfectionism can be a way for people to avoid finishing things or, in your case, displaying them.”

“Is this what a professional organiser does?” Alaric’s tone is light but the storms on the edges of his eyes tell me that I’ve hit a nerve. “Try to get into their clients’ heads?”

“Yes,” I say firmly. “I’m not a psychologist, but understanding how your brain works is key to keeping the castle clean after I leave. It’s the Sustain part of the Winnie Win’s System.”

Alaric’s mouth flicks down in the corner. I’ve seen that before, too – clients who think that my job is to come in for a day, solve all their clutter problems, and then they don’t have to do any work. Many of my clients have never had to do any work on themselves.

But I don’t think this is Alaric’s issue. I think he’s the opposite – all these hours alone with his thoughts, digging deep into these ‘distractions’ of his, I think he knows that the mess in the castle is created by the mess inside his head, but he’s afraid of what clearing up that mess might reveal.

“You’re being too hard on yourself,” I say softly. “These tapestries are beautiful, and even if you only see the mistakes, you should be proud of creating them. Not everyone can do this.”

His lip quirks. “Really? Not everyone spends their days locked inside a grim castle teaching themselves mediaeval textile techniques?”

“I know, can you believe it?” I grin. “I think you should put these out where people can see them.”

“No one will see them. I never have guests at the castle.”

“You have me.”

The words hang between us, taking on a weight and importance I hadn’t intended. Alaric’s eyes meet mine, and there’s such vulnerability there that my thoughts scatter like pool balls after an overly enthusiastic break.

All too quickly, my gaze and memories return to his lips. I think about that moment, in the pub, when I sank into him, when I was so in the moment that I didn’t care what people saw, what they thought of me.

I think about all the rules I’ve made for my life, all the boxes that I contort myself to fit inside because I want to be free of that horrible place. How I’m putting rules on myself now – he’s your client, he’s dangerous – because I’m terrified that he could be the ruin of me.

Or that I might be so raw and heartbroken that I want to be ruined.

I swallow, look away. I can’t think these things about my boss, about a client, and especially not about someone who walks the same path as my mother. I shore up my castle walls, reinforce my defences against those those anthracite eyes and that infuriating half-smile. I turn back to him to find him a cold mask once again.

But I know better. I’m the organiser – I see everyone’s dirty secrets.

“Once we’re done with the cleanup,” I say, keeping my voice bright, “I think you should have guests. I bet if you invited some of the villagers over for a party, you’d enjoy their company.”

And perhaps they wouldn’t accuse you of being a vampiric murderer.

Alaric looks as if he’d rather eat his tapestry.

“Fine, fine,” I grin. “I’ve got two weeks to convince you that it’s a brilliant idea. Right now, Lord Strongman, throw that tapestry over your shoulder and let’s hang it in the upstairs corridor. You have all those gaps on the walls where paintings used to live – I think we can find a home for every one of these beautiful, not-perfect tapestries.”