Chapter 31

ChapterThirty-One

Alistair stood before the front door, his fist pressed against his lips. He’d watched her through the glass for quite some time now, assuming that Thea would eventually give up and make her way toward the building.

She didn’t.

She paced back and forth like a madwoman. He could see her lips moving, so he could only assume she was muttering to herself or to Browning while she walked by a patchwork bag of her things that had clearly ripped in her journey. If anyone walked by the house, they would think he was about to be robbed. Or cursed. Or worse.

At this point, he didn’t care what anyone else thought. All he cared about was that the woman of his dreams stood outside his door again, and he couldn’t say a word to her.

What would he say? “Welcome back to this house. I’m sure you never thought you’d come back here. I’m sorry you had to?”

That was a horrible way to greet her after so many years. How long had it been? Alistair counted on his fingers as she started her next round of pacing. He thought it had been ten, but the years had wandered past him so quickly he couldn’t be sure.

Who was he kidding? He knew it had been exactly ten years, three months, and seven days since he’d seen her last. That was why they were back in the school year, that was why the winds were already growing a little chilly, and the leaves had turned into a deep red surrounding his house.

And damn it, after all this time, he had missed her more than he wanted to admit.

“She’s still out there pacing, is she?” Nora stopped beside him and put her hands on her hips.

“She is.”

“I guess that means she didn’t know she was going to be working here, then.”

“The addresses are a little confusing.” He couldn’t remember there being any addresses in Waterdown. Everyone knew where everyone lived, and if they didn’t, then they knew the neighbor. She probably hadn’t thought it would be so difficult to find his home, and she’d not expected to come here again, anyway. “Maybe she got the words mixed up?”

“Are you trying to convince yourself that she’s working for a neighbor and that another young woman from Waterdown will turn the corner at any minute?” Nora snorted. “No one in this house is that lucky.”

He bristled at her tone. “We’ll be lucky to have her working for us. Thea is a hard worker, I remember that much. Something so integral to her personality wouldn’t have changed, even in so many years. If anyone in this house is unlucky, it’s me. But I will manage just fine.”

Nora’s brows lifted higher with every word that he said. Finally, she dropped her hands from her hips and held them up. “I wasn’t meaning to imply that the new mistress wouldn’t be able to do the job, Alistair. Only that we’re all in a rather unlucky situation, considering she won’t even walk up to the front door.”

All the anger in his chest deflated like she’d poked him with a hairpin. Of course, she hadn’t meant any insult. Nora didn’t have an unkind bone in her body.

“Wait,” he said. “Mistress?”

With a saucy wink, Nora turned down the hall and called over her shoulder, “I’ll let her in the servant’s entrance and get one of the boys to help with that bag of hers. We’ll get her all settled in the kitchen and then you can meet with her if you want. Or not. Up to you.”

“She’s not the new mistress of this house!” he shouted after her, but some part of him enjoyed thinking that she was. Mistress of the Orbweaver Manor. He’d never thought he’d hear such words, but they felt right even if the house grumbled almost immediately.

If the house didn’t like the idea, then maybe that was something he needed to consider.

Alistair tried to stay out of sight. He didn’t need to lurk in the windows to see if she came into his house, but... Well, his feet were stuck to the floor, and all he wanted to do was make sure she got into the house safely. That’s all.

At least, that’s what he told himself. But as the door to the servant’s entrance opened below the stairs leading into his house, he realized Thea would be less than six feet away from him. He could have opened the door at any point and looked into those lovely, dark eyes.

His breathing turned ragged. Alistair struggled to focus as she picked up her bag on her own and marched toward the hidden stairwell. Her jaw was set, and her brows furrowed. He only had a few seconds to glance over those features and realized that she’d changed in ten years.

He didn’t know how. Alistair didn’t have enough time to really look at her face before she rounded the stairs and disappeared. The tail of her skirts drifted around the corner like mist moving amongst the undergrowth, and he had the same flashing vision in his mind. A witch stepping out of the moors, will-o’-the-wisps tangled in her skirts and around her hair. A witch who called to him more than any other ever had.

Sighing, he rubbed his forehead and told himself to return to his office. There would be time to meet her—time to see her again.

And yet...

The front door clicked open as though the building itself knew what he wanted. The faint hint of her perfume blew toward him, and he inhaled the scent of pine and wild places that he’d not been able to indulge in for years.

How could she do this to him? How had he done this to himself?

Alistair would never survive with her under his roof. He’d constantly be wondering where she was, what she was doing, and if she was comfortable. How was he supposed to manage this on his own?

He turned around, ready to head back to his office when he realized he hadn’t told Nora where to put her. Thea couldn’t stay with the other servants. She wasn’t... she wasn’t a servant, and he refused to think of her like that.

He rounded the corner that he hated to walk by. The basement door was right next to the door that circled down into the kitchens, and the chilly air that blew out of that room coiled around his ankles. If he let it, he knew the god in their basement would drag him down into the depths of that darkness and drown him.

Shivering, Alistair made his way down to the kitchens. He knew that’s where they would be. Nora always told him that people were more comfortable in warm kitchens than anywhere else in the house. Even in this one.

The sound of voices made him slow.

“You’re the new secretary, then?” Nora said, along with the sound of a pot banging down on the stove. “There’s a lot for you to do here, but I think you’ll fit in just fine. Would you like a tour of the house?”

So that was his head maid’s plan. She would pretend not to know that Thea had been here and walked these halls before.

A long pause was Nora’s answer before he heard her voice. Her lovely voice that always sounded as though she were about to burst into song. “No, thank you. I know my way around.”

“Oh! So you’ve been here before?”

Another long pause. “In another lifetime, I suppose. I’ll work hard here, though. You don’t have to worry about that. The job agency said I’ll only be part time as a secretary. What else needs to be done around the house?”

They chattered on for a while about the work that Nora usually did on her own. Alistair leaned against the wall, letting their soft voices wash over him. The sounds were not something that he was used to hearing in this house. A quiet, immediate camaraderie of two women who had worked their entire lives for what they wanted.

Nora had always been kind, but hearing her together with Thea made his heart squeeze in his chest. This was what he had dreamt about all those years ago. He’d sneak down into the kitchens in the middle of the night, wondering where his wayward wife had gotten off to. Only to find her in the kitchens like he always used to sneak off to when he was a boy. For a few moments, he imagined he was in that life. That none of the nightmares had happened, and they’d gotten married. Started a family. Breathed new life into the Orbweaver name.

“Oh!”

His eyes snapped open in horror, only to find Nora standing in the doorway to the kitchens, her hand pressed against her heart.

Thea’s voice echoed from the room beyond. “Are you all right?”

Frantically he shook his head, eyes wide, heart thudding in his chest. He didn’t want to see her. Couldn’t see her. What would happen if Thea realized he’d been lurking in the shadows like some monster out of a story? He’d never live down the embarrassment.

Gesturing wildly, he tried to convey that he didn’t want Nora to tell Thea that he was standing right here. Although his flailing arms likely meant nothing to Nora, whose eyes were tracking his movements with confusion.

“Uh,” Nora stuttered before clearing her throat. “I forgot I have to bring tea up to the master of the house. My apologies, dear. Are you all right in the kitchen alone?”

The stove gave a rather large belch and clank, and Alistair winced in sympathy for the poor woman beyond, who had been so terrified of those stoves. They were old then, and now they were ancient. The sounds they made appeared to be that of a living creature.

Thea let out a little chuckle that he swore filled the room with a bright light. “I’ll be fine. Do you mind if I make myself some tea?”

“Just be careful of the stove, darling. It tends to bite.”

“Bite?”

Nora pinched her lips together, unimpressed that he was still standing in front of her. “The flames, I mean! It can get a little out of hand, sometimes. Those old stoves, you know how they can get.”

“Ah.” He heard Thea shuffle through the room and then the clink of what he assumed was a canister of tea leaves. “I’m not afraid of fire, Miss Nora.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, knowing he was at fault for that. Sure, he hadn’t taken part in cursing Waterdown. He hadn’t even known his father was going to attack, but he could have. If he were more active in his father’s life, then he might have known what Balthazar had planned. He might have saved them all.

“Good for you,” Nora said as she swept toward him and angrily yanked his arm.

He allowed himself to be dragged up the stairwell without looking behind him to see if Thea had noticed the commotion. But he didn’t appreciate how Nora tossed him away from the stairwell and then glared at him.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re going to lurk like that? No wonder the poor girl was terrified to walk in here. This house is enough to rattle the best of us, Alistair Orbweaver. You cannot make it worse by scaring her at every chance you get!”

“I wasn’t trying to scare her! I came down to let you know that she will not be sleeping in the servants’ quarters.” He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to stare down his nose at her. “Does that cool your anger?”

She blinked at him. “No, it doesn’t. She should be with the people she’s going to work with. Although, there are few of them left. And the servants’ quarters are by far the least terrifying place in this house.”

He disagreed. Those rooms were safe, but they shared a wall with the basement. He’d hear the maids talking about hearing groans at night and how it sometimes felt as though they were being watched in their sleep.

Thea didn’t deserve that. He wouldn’t allow her to go through it.

“The last time she came here, I gave her a tour of the entire house,” he said. “The only place she felt safe was my room.”

“Because you were there.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, because there was something about that room that specifically made her feel safe. I don’t know if it’s the years of the protection spells I cast, or what. Something about that room made her feel secure, and that is where she is going to stay.”

Nora blinked at him, and then her jaw fell open. “You moved out of your bedroom? You’ve always had that bedroom.”

He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s my house now, Nora. I suppose it was only a matter of time before I took the master bedroom.”

“I just... How will you feel safe?”

Now that was a question. He wouldn’t, most likely. His father’s ghost would haunt him until the wee hours of the morning. But... he’d endure.

It would all be worth it if he knew for certain that she didn’t live in fear here especially while she worked for him.

Alistair forced a smile and shook his head. “I’ll be fine, Nora. Just see that she settles in well enough. I had some butlers bring old furniture in the room, so there’s at least a comfortable bed and a wardrobe for her to use. The rest... Well, she brought enough to make it feel somewhat like home.”

The way Nora watched him made his skin crawl. As though she peered underneath his skin to the soul beneath that wanted to hide how strong he felt for her. That he would give up anything to know Thea was happy here.

Nora bit her lip and hesitantly said, “It’s been ten years, Alistair.”

“I know.”

“It’s been ten years,” she emphasized. “I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but I can guess what happened right after. You are the most important person in this house. You are the only one who can keep this house running, and I know how important that is to you.”

“I fail to follow.”

“Keep your wits about you. It’s been a long time since you two have seen each other, and a lot can change in ten years.” Nora fisted her hands in her skirts and dropped into a curtsey as though that might make her words easier to swallow. “Don’t give too much of yourself to a woman who might have already moved on.”

He watched Nora walk away from him while his stomach rose into his throat. Had she? Moved on, that was.

He didn’t know what he’d do if he found out that she had a family back in Waterdown and was only here for the money. It was entirely possible.

Alistair tugged at the neckline of his shirt, which felt far too tight. Then he decided to go to his study, where there was plenty of work to dive into. Not to distract himself from the worrisome thought, of course. Just to work.