6. Winnie

CHAPTER SIX

WINNIE

Claire: Winnie, I know you’re ignoring my messages because you’re still angry at me, and you have every right to be. I just wanted to see if there was anything I could do? You mean the world to me and I want to help you through this difficult time. Perhaps I could call a mobile masseuse? Or I could send you one of those pecan pies you love so much? Just tell me how I can fix things.

E ighty percent of my body freezes at the sight of those anthracite eyes fixed on mine, revealing none of the surprise that I feel.

The other twenty percent of my body – my legs – don’t get the message. They collapse from under me. I stagger forward, trip over a large model locomotive, and go flying.

“Argh!”

I sail through the air, limbs twisting as I try to stop myself from falling on what looks suspiciously like a glass terrarium filled with cacti. But no amount of acrobatic talent I do not possess will save me from my spikey doom, so I close my eyes and brace myself for pain.

But no pain comes.

Instead, something cool and hard slides beneath my arms, lifting me from the ground.

I open one eye.

Lord Valerian holds me beneath my armpits like I am a clumsy child he’s rescued from disaster, which isn’t that far from the truth. Those dark, fathomless eyes regard me with ire, and the corner of his mouth quirks up in what could be annoyance or amusement.

How did he move so fast?

His desk is on the far side of the enormous drawing room, yet somehow he crossed the distance in less than a blink without tripping on anything, and is now holding my entire body weight with no visible signs of strain so that I don’t fall face-first into a glass box filled with spikey balls of doom.

I search for those eyes, a thousand unanswered questions bubbling up inside me. But he’s pointedly staring at the wall behind my head, his jaw made of stone.

“Are you quite alright, Miss Preston?” he says in that deep, ragged voice of his, the one that hums through my body as if someone had melted down ten of Louis Armstrong’s trumpets until they were nothing but molten metal and then poured that into my veins.

“I tripped on a train,” I say lamely.

“Quite so. Here, let me?—”

“No, I can?—”

Lord Valerian sets me down gently. I get my feet beneath me and stand upright, dusting off my clothes and trying to rid my body of the odd tingling sensation from where he touched me. Like last night at the pub, his touch is surprisingly cool, but I figure that’s what happens when you live in a draughty medieval castle. Your body temperature adjusts to become more like a turtle, or a velociraptor.

He’s dressed in tight-fitting trousers, knee-high leather boots, and a loose white shirt dotted with paint. His dark curls flop over his eyes, making him look more like a seventeenth-century poet than a rich toff. Where does he get his clothing from? His great-great-great-great-great grandfather’s steamer trunk?

I expect him to smell of dust and paint, but his scent is the same as it was at the pub last night – winter spices and haunted groves. The kiss brushes my memory again. I can taste him on my tongue. My hand flies to the spot on my neck where he raked his teeth over my flesh, feeling the roughness where he left a small scratch…

“I got the wrong train,” I blurt out as a lone butterfly slams against the walls of my stomach. “I came here yesterday by accident, so I stayed the night at the pub and then met Reginald today, but it was a one-in-a-million mistake and in no way reflects poorly on my organisational abilities. I mean, it does , obviously, but I swear that I really am quite good at cluttering cleaner. I mean, cleaning clutter?—”

“Let us not mention it.” Lord Valerian clears his throat, and I know he’s talking about more than my awkward fall. “Mrs. Winifred Preston, I apologise?—”

“It’s Ms,” I say. “Always Ms.”

His eyes whip to me then, and my breath stills.

“ Ms. Preston, I apologise that you’ve come all this way for work that is so obviously beneath your skills. All I have is a few canvases and art supplies lying around, nothing to be concerned about, but we are hosting a ball at the castle in three weeks, and my valet is convinced that my things will develop sentience and devour our guests.”

I don’t acknowledge the truth of that statement. One thing I’ve learned from Mum is that people like her are in denial about how bad things are. Their stuff isn’t just stuff – it’s a precious dragon hoard, and my job is to help them protect it from filthy hobbitses. “This is my job, and I enjoy it. I’m happy to be here. Why don’t you explain to me what you’d like to achieve during my visit? I’ve read the brief from Faye but it was quite vague.”

“Very well.” He sweeps an arm around, indicating the vast room that I think might’ve once been called a study, judging by the enormous desk, piles of books, and dusty globe in the corner. All fancy rich people’s studies have the same globe. I reckon Elon Musk hands them out for free so people will be his friends. “I live here alone, save for Reginald. Over the years, I have acquired several…distractions. These activities keep my mind active and bring me joy, but recently, Reginald has been watching a programme on the television and is convinced I may have a disease. Now, normally, this idea would be preposterous because I cannot become ill. Reginald believes I am suffering from a disease of the mind, one called ‘hoard.’ Is that right, Reginald?”

“Hoarding, sir,” Reginald replies. “I think he might be a hoarder, ma’am.”

“He found your company on the computer. Your website said you could clean any mess, big or small. Well, I have a mess in my castle, and an even bigger mess in my head, and Reginald believes you may be able to help me.”

Deep breaths, Winnie.

That word, hoarder , punches me in the gut. People toss it around affectionately to describe their little collections of frog figurines or their messy desk in the office, but nothing about hoarding is funny.

If Lord Valerian is a hoarder then…I am going to work even harder. It’s going to test the very limits of the Winnie Wins System, but I know I can help him. I have to help him.

I plaster a smile on my face and indicate the half-finished locomotive that attacked me. It’s almost large enough for a person to sit on.

“I noticed the model trains. And you’re painting?”

Lord Valerian sweeps his arm dismissively at his desk. I step over three more model trains and a broken record player, shuffle around another pile of teddy bears, and step up to the antique desk beneath the window where several canvases rest on paint-splattered easels.

I gasp.

The paintings are beautiful.

No, beautiful is not the right word. They’re arresting .

Lord Valerian has been painting the landscape he sees from the towering mullioned window on various nights. Tonight’s effort is streaked with deep violet, the moon a cold eye glinting off the water in the stream winding below. Others show wind-tossed trees and tempest clouds, or crisp, midnight-blue summer skies and spindly, foreboding trees.

“You’re talented, Lord Valerian.”

He frowns. “They are hopeless scribbles. I have many years of practice ahead of me before I’ll be happy with them.”

I study his porcelain features and steady anthracite eyes, trying not to blush as I remember those soft, full lips against mine. He’s young, perhaps a few years older than me. He’s too young to be holed up in this castle trying to become a master painter.

“You said you had other hobbies?” I need to get a full sense of what I’m dealing with. The biggest part of being a professional organiser isn’t actually the cleaning up – it’s getting to know your client so you can understand how they think, and then you design a system around that. I’ve learned that the way to get people like him to open up is to get them talking about the things they’re passionate about.

Of course, the only thing most of my clients are passionate about are designer shoes.

“Yes!” Lord Valerian’s face lights up. It’s as though someone has flicked a switch inside him, and he goes from being a grumpy gothic villain to an excited schoolboy. “Come. I will show you.”

He holds out a hand to me. The gesture is so oddly intimate, so at odds with his stuffy cadence and ramrod-straight posture. I find myself staring at his lips again.

You’re here to help him, Winnie. It doesn’t matter that he’s the most beautiful man you’ve ever met and he kisses like the hero of a smutty romance, he’s your boss now and you can’t think of him like that.

I step around the teddy bears and over the trains, and place my hand in his.

His cool fingers envelop mine, squeezing a little in his excitement. He pulls me to the other side of the room and snaps at Reginald to light the candles.

Candles again? Does this place not have electricity?

Reginald rushes around, lighting candles in sconces on the walls. He hands Lord Valerian a candelabra, which he sweeps dramatically over a table.

“This is one of my model train sets. I was quite enamoured with trains for a time. Something about the way they connect places, how once there were no trains at all and the next moment, they were the centre of life, commerce, and adventure. They interest me.”

I gasp again. I know I’m starting to sound like the heroine of a gothic romance with all this gasping in the castle, but I can’t help it. On the table stands a perfect scale replica of Argleton village – all the shops I perused around the village green are there, including Zen and Tonic and Nevermore Bookshop. The pub even has little meat pies and baskets of chips sitting on the outdoor tables. A model of the London train I arrived on waits in the station as a line of people board, and a goods train sits on the tracks outside the village, pulling several tanker wagons and containers. There was even a replica of Black Crag Castle overlooking the wooded valley.

Lord Valerian barely gives me a chance to take in the details before he drags me across the hall into the next adjoining room. “Here is my pottery studio.”

Another grand drawing room has been haphazardly filled with potters’ wheels, bags of clay and pigments, racks of tools, and an entire wall stacked nearly to the vaulted ceiling with shelves and racks of pots, mugs, and vases in various stages of finishing. Lord Valerian flicks on the lights – this room must be one of the few with electricity – and the bright-coloured glazes pop before my eyes, sucking me into a delirious world of colour.

I gaze around in awe. “There’s a kiln under the window. Isn’t that a fire hazard?”

“Quite possibly. Come, come.” He drags me around several bolts of fabric and flings open the doors to a magnificent ballroom. “Here is where I keep my loom.”

His loom ?

Sure enough, all the fancy antique furniture had been pushed to the side of the room to make way for an enormous contraption that fills the entire marble floor of the ballroom. Warp threads stretch between two enormous rollers, while the floor is littered with discarded wooden shuttles and threads of wood, silt, and glittering gold. A half-finished tapestry sits in the machine – a herd of wild horses dance across a brightly-coloured landscape filled with wildflowers, their bridles stitched with gold thread, as waves in shades of jewel and azure roll beneath their hooves.

“You…you made this?” I reach out to run my hand over the threads, unable to believe something so beautiful was real.

“It needs so much work.” He nods disdainfully at several rolled tapestries resting against the wall. “I intended to finish it so I might master the Flemish technique, but instead, I became enamoured with painting, so it waits here for my enthusiasm to return. However, according to some, one cannot host a ball with a loom in the middle of one’s ballroom, so it has to go.”

How does one man have the time for all this? From the intensity with which Alaric speaks of his ‘distractions,’ I get the sense that they weren’t simply hobbies, but passions that consume his every waking thought. I reach out to finger a strand of gold on the tapestry.

“Lord Valerian?—”

“Alaric, please.” He nods formally, which gives me no confidence that I should stop calling him Lord Valerian.

“Forgive me, but these…distractions of yours…I think you’re being quite hard on yourself. You’re not a hoarder.” The word sticks in my throat. “At least, not yet. You’re an artist. You have a brilliant creative mind, and you have the time and space to indulge your creative pursuits. You are not hurting anyone, and the castle, if a little cluttered, isn’t dangerous to you or others. Why do you wish to wipe all of this away when it makes you happy? You could hire another venue for the ball?—”

“I’d happily host the tedious affair at the bottom of the river,” he snaps. “But my mother insists it must be at my castle. It will be the first time she’s visited me here.”

His voice cracks a little.

Ah, a difficult mother.

I can relate.

The vise that’s gripped my chest ever since he said the ‘h’ words loosens, and a slow smile creeps over my lips. “You called the right woman. I’ll help you get this place in order before your mother’s visit, and I can show you my Winnie Wins System to help you manage your hobbies after I’m gone so things don’t get quite this bad in the future. When does she arrive?”

“Three weeks from today, the evening before the ball.”

I wince.

Lord Valerian nudges one of the tapestries with his boot. It slips against its friends and the entire pile topples over and rolls across the marble floor. Lord Valerian looks back at me and smiles coldly.

“You are wearing an expression that suggests you do not believe you can achieve this task.”

I peer around at the rolled tapestries, the trays of lopsided ceramic pots, the bloody loom . “I can do it. But I’m going to need your help.”

“I have work to do.”

You’re a bloody peer. You’ve never worked a day in your life.

I indicate the mess. “ This is your work. You can put down your paintbrush for a few hours each day and help me out.”

“As you wish. I am your humble servant, Ms. Preston.”

Why does the way he says that, in that gravelled voice of his, make my knees shake?

I beam at him. “Let’s do this.”

His shoulders relax a little. Do I imagine the tug at the corner of his mouth is a half-smile trying to assert itself? “We may begin immediately, if you are not too tired. I keep nocturnal hours, so I will be awake for some time yet. If you require any supplies, simply provide Reginald with a list and he will procure them for you. Reginald,” he calls out. “Show Ms. Preston to her rooms.”

“Wait a second, my rooms?”

“Why, yes. You’ll be staying in the castle with us. It will save you making the trip to and from the village every day.” He turns back to his paintings, flicking his gaze back to me as he selects a paintbrush. “Is this agreeable to you?”

I’ll be living in the castle?

When Faye said the job included accommodation, I assumed she meant I’d have a room like the one above the pub.

It’s highly inappropriate for me to stay in my client’s home, but I don’t exactly have anywhere else to live for the next three weeks, and when faced with Lord Valerian’s half-formed smile and fathomless eyes, I find myself unable to protest.

“No. Yes, I mean, that’s fine.” I order my racing heart to sort her shit out. “Show me to my rooms.”

Reginald appears silently in the doorway, carrying another candelabra. “This way, Ms. Preston. I’ve already taken your bags up to the tower.”

I follow Reginald back down the winding corridor to the Stabby Chic entrance hall. We ascend the staircase. As we climb, the castle changes around me.

We pass through a library that leaves me breathless. Carved mahogany shelves reach to the high ceiling, each one packed haphazardly with books. More books sit in tall, dusty stacks on the floor, and in the centre of the room beneath a glittering crystal chandelier that has been electrified, sits a circle of mismatched armchairs.

This library can’t be frequented by Lord Valerian. Between becoming a potter, mastering tapestry, model trains, becoming an accomplished painter, and – I now suspect – a maker of adorable teddy bears, he doesn’t have the time to read all these books. These must belong to an ancestor – one who also doesn’t believe in organising.

Odd that there are no ancestors on the walls. Some hunting scenes and landscapes remain, but everywhere I look, portraits and statues have been removed. In my experience, the peerage love being surrounded by reminders of their bloodline, but Lord Valerian clearly doesn’t want to be reminded of his.

My fingers itch to start pulling books off the shelves and alphabetizing them. I love touching other people’s books because, at the end of the day, I don’t have to go home with them. I glance at the huge window on one end of the library and the view down the valley partially obscured by towers of books and imagine curling up on a sofa in that exact spot with one of the books from Nevermore Bookshop and a glass of wine…

I’ll be too busy scrubbing and sorting to have a moment to enjoy this place. But at least Lord Valerian will have a beautiful ballroom by the time I’m done.

Reginald hurries me through the library and several more dusty reception rooms that don’t appear to have been touched for some time.

“This way, Ms. Preston. Mind your step.”

He starts to climb a narrow, winding stone staircase into one of the towers. The stairs are uneven, the edges worn away by centuries of use. I keep a hand on the inner wall and work my glutes harder than a hot yoga session to keep up with Reginald.

Up and up we climb, until my head spins. There are no windows in the staircase, only thin arrow slits that let in slivers of pale moonlight. The only other light is Reginald’s flickering candelabra.

What have I signed up for?

Finally, we reach the narrow wooden landing. Reginald throws open a door. “I hope these are sufficient accommodations. Lord Valerian and I worked hard to prepare them. He used to store his stamp collection in here, but we’ve moved those into the corridor downstairs. We had electricity run up here, although you’ll need the candelabra for the staircase. Please, let me know if you need anything at all.”

I step into the room, and discover I’m not done gasping at the surprises this castle throws up.

The circular room is right at the top of one of the turrets, beneath the conical oriel. Two paintings of moonlit forests hang over the bed – Lord Valerian’s work, judging by their gloomy palette and bold, assertive strokes. The bed is made up with bamboo and linen sheets in soft grey and piled high with enough throw pillows to build a fort that could hold off a Viking invasion. Through an arched wooden door, I can see a modern bathroom that I hope has running water. I am happy to accommodate most clients’ strange whims, but indoor plumbing is a necessity.

Tall, arched windows overlook the valley below on three sides. I step up to the largest one and vertigo claims me as I peer down through my feet at a sheer drop. A small wrought-iron table and two chairs sit in front of the window. Upon the table is a basket of pastries and chocolate bars, and a collection of drinks in an ice bucket.

My stomach rumbles. I haven’t eaten since lunchtime. I grab a pastry and bite down. Strawberry cream explodes on my tongue, and the pastry disappears far too quickly.

Reginald points to a wooden panel with a button on the wall beneath the light switch. “This is the call button. You will find one in all the rooms in the house that have electricity. I am used to my lord’s chaotic whims, but you may wish to keep a more regular schedule. If you are ever hungry, or if you need anything at all, please ring for me and I shall come running.”

He says this in a friendly way, but his eyes flicker over my face, and something like fear bristles there.

“Thank you, Reginald.” I set down the second pastry I was about to devour. A cold unease settles in my chest, pushing out my excitement at meeting the beautiful Lord Valerian again and the exciting job he has for me.

Nothing about this house or this job or my new boss makes sense.

How has Lord Valerian had time to acquire all these hobbies, all this stuff?

Why would a young, beautiful toff lock himself away in this castle like a vampire hiding from the light?

How did he stop me from falling on that terrarium?

Why is he afraid of his mother?

Why does he keep ‘nocturnal hours’?

And, most importantly, how did he leave the pub last night without me seeing him?

No, actually most importantly, does he want to kiss me again?

Why do I feel like Jonathan Harker when he first arrives at Dracula’s castle? I feel as though I’m being lured into a trap, like a fly caught in a web, but part of me is excited to meet the spider…