Chapter 38

Thirty-Eight

3:03

Our Saturday had been blissfully peaceful.

And Duncroft, when I wasn’t chasing anyone through the walls or being drugged, was heaven.

Ian and I had started it with a lazy morning in bed (and that was also heaven…in a bed). We’d gotten up to take a long walk on the moors with Danny and Portia. Ian and I then spent the afternoon in the kitchen. Bonnie and I made a fraisier to be served with dinner while Ian chatted with us and made me fall a little bit further for him as he watched me work like I was sculpting David.

He also demanded to lick all the bowls.

The first was sweet, watching him taste my work was hot.

Now, it was our final night, and I’d packed as Portia instructed me.

In other words, I’d saved the best for last.

Walking into the sitting room at six forty-seven that night, I came out wearing a black evening gown with mesh panels at the sides and all of the racer back, except along the zipper. It had a cut at the neckline, a slit up the side, fit my upper body like a dream, and fell in graceful folds to the floor with a small train at the back.

Ian, wearing an impeccably cut three-piece black suit and white shirt opened at the collar, took one look at me and whispered in a silken voice I heard across two rooms, “I’ll never tire of you.”

I stopped and swished my hips, replying, “Well, thank you, milord.”

“The paparazzi won’t be a problem. But they will feed on you. You’re dazzling.”

I stopped swishing and stood stock-still.

He held a hand out to me. “I’ll fuck you in that dress later and enjoy thinking about it all night. Now come here, we’re already late.”

Mutely, still overwhelmed by what he said, I went there and took his hand.

When he had purchase of it, he reached for the other and twisted it gently so he could see my outer forearm.

The bruise (one of many, but the only one visible in that dress) where I’d slammed my arm on the doorjamb had risen in brownish-purple relief.

I then watched with absolute fascination as he raised that bruise to his lips and touched them there tenderly.

And yes. After that, I fell for him even further.

Finally, arm in arm, of course, like we were strolling the Serpentine, he led me down to the Wine Room.

* * *

Ian stood by the bed, his suit still on, only his trousers open, and he fucked me while I lay on my back, fully clothed.

Yes, he’d tossed my skirt up.

I watched the savagery of his expression, felt it driving into my body, and I came for him with just that.

While I did, I heard my dress tear as he wrenched it at the bodice before he tugged my nipple.

I cried out and came harder.

When I came down, I watched with captivation and awe as he worked for, then found his.

He bent over me when it left him.

He kissed me tenderly and then promised, “I’ll have your dress mended.”

“I’m never wearing it again, but I’m keeping it, and I want it to stay torn as a memory of just how awesome that was.”

His eyes heated, and he kissed me again, but not tenderly.

I stroked his cheek when he finished and whispered, “You’re dazzling too, you know.”

Ian smiled at me.

* * *

I slept but did not dream.

Even so, I opened my eyes, and I knew why.

I looked to the time on the tablet.

It was three oh three.

I slid away from Ian, and in the moonlight, walked through his bedroom, his bathroom, to his closet.

We’d carried on with our activities, fallen asleep naked in our exhaustion, so I put on my pajamas, shrugged on Ian’s big, navy velour dressing gown that was on a hook, but I’d never seen him wear it, and walked out.

I stopped this time to see through the moonlight he’d turned to his back, covers up to his pecs, and he was asleep.

He was still lord of the manor in his slumber.

Sheer beauty.

He was no longer secretly being dosed with Valium, but I knew why he slept now, and since I didn’t want to be gone from him long, I walked out.

I found her in the Sherry Room, a light lit by her side where she sat in the corner of the sofa, another one lit on the table between the two chairs facing it.

“There you are,” Lady Jane said, setting her phone aside and smiling beatifically at me. She floated an arm before her. “Sit with me.”

I went in and sat.

She had a tall stack of leatherbound books at her side on the couch. She picked them up and I knew their heft with how she did it. She put them on the low table sitting between us.

“I believe these are yours now,” she said.

“Is the house talking to me?” I asked.

She did that head tipping thing and replied, “I believe it knows. I also believe that’s fanciful. But you did arrive on your first day with us at three oh three.”

Oh God.

Here we go.

“What does that mean?”

She sat back. “It is true that Wolf was not pleased he was going to be saddled with their sworn enemy’s daughter as a wife. It’s also true that Alice felt the exact same thing. Wolf and his father went to the castle on the cliff for the betrothal meeting fully expecting to be slaughtered when they reached the bailey. They weren’t. They were treated to a generous banquet. Alice was presented to her future husband, and it wasn’t that they hated each other on sight. It was they hated each other before they saw each other. This meeting, Daphne, did not go well.”

“How do you know this?”

“Women were often discounted in history, but the women of this place,”—she reached forward and laid her hand on the books—“told their own stories.”

I looked to the books.

I looked back to her when she spoke again, and she’d returned to being ensconced in the corner of the couch. The better to be comfortable while she answered all the lurking questions I had about Duncroft House.

“Wolf may not have wanted his bride, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t beautiful. So he would find to his frustration that he wanted something else from her. Unfortunately for him, she wasn’t keen on giving it. Furthermore, she had a radiant smile and a gentle soul she showed not to him, but to others, thus his servants and vassals quickly fell in love with her, and he quickly became enraged they had from her what he did not. They clashed. Arguments and miscommunications and misunderstandings. Wolf, too, was a fine specimen. Alice didn’t want to be taken with him, but she was. She found his honesty and disdain for courtly gestures refreshing. His men adored him, and she discovered it was his hearty sense of humor, generosity and loyalty that made it so.”

She hesitated.

I nodded to tell her I was listening, though she couldn’t miss it, since I was listening avidly.

She went on.

“One night, during a rather passionate argument, they both discovered why they fought so much. And for the first time in their marriage, they made love. This was such a momentous occasion. She couldn’t know, because there were no clocks at the time, but it’s understood by countesses since, from her retelling of her recollections of that night, this event put a lasting mark on this place. And it occurred very early in the morning. At three oh three.”

I felt a whoosh as my breath left me.

Lady Jane kept talking.

“From then, every earl and countess has been married at three oh three. Because, and this was lost from record, except for what the countesses knew, but back then, Alice and Wolf’s love was known as unrivaled, even by Paris and Helen, Antony and Cleopatra. It’s the fate of the time and lack of resources that the minstrels’ favored story of Wolf and Alice wasn’t written down for all to know.”

She took in a breath, and then continued.

“She despaired every time he went to war. She rejoiced when he came home. She gave him five children. They mourned the loss of two. The bones of a pretender are not buried under the foyer of this house, Daphne. Forever entwined, the bones of Wolf and his Alice are there. He died, at what was an old age back then of seventy-three. The next day, she simply didn’t wake up. Everyone said she loved him, and her body understood she couldn’t live in a world without him. So it coaxed her spirit to join his.”

“You have to know, as beautiful of a story as that is, this is freaking me out, Jane,” I informed her.

“I know. And I’m afraid I’m not done.”

Great.

“Dorothy Clifton’s death was an accident.”

Oh my God!

It was breathless this time when I asked, “How do you know?”

“Because Virginia had no love for her husband, but she adored his son. And George adored his stepmother. Thus, he hated Dorothy and how she behaved, openly hurting the only mother he ever knew or would ever know. People were very taken with him playing his flute. All except Dorothy. She teased him about it. Told him it was unmanly. That night, in a child’s tantrum, he snuck from his bed, and while William was consoling his wife in a session in Jacaranda, and David was imploring Virginia to thaw to him in an argument on the moors, Dorothy, her playthings not available to her, was in a foul mood. Drinking alone, George found her and tormented her with his flute. Playing it, even as she told him to stop. She chased after him. They made it to the top floor, and she tried to wrest it from him. Somehow in the struggle, she fell over the balustrade to her death.”

And there it was.

“And George never played again,” I whispered.

She shook her head. “Never again. It was a loss. He was extremely talented. But he went on to do wonderful things regardless.”

“And you know this because he confessed it to Virginia,” I deduced.

“Yes.” She tipped her head to the books. “She protected him like any mother would and kept her silence. She even endured years of others thinking she was a possible murderess. But she wrote it down in these journals, like every countess has done. Our history is faithfully shared among each other, from Alice. Secret, but shared, to help the next, and warn others. At some point in modern times, the sheets of rolled parchment were painstakingly copied to the books. We all keep account of our time here at Duncroft.”

“But both William and David were having an affair with Dorothy?” I queried.

She nodded. “This would have no effect on Virginia, except relief. It gave her a reprieve from David’s desperate machinations to make her fall in love with him. The only lasting tragedy for her was George’s upset that he felt responsible for Dorothy’s death. For William’s part, it had the unusual result of making him see how deeply Rose hurt because of his love for Virginia, and his dalliance with Dorothy. It also made him realize he’d somewhere along the way fallen in love with his wife. He worked for it and earned it. She forgave him, and they eventually moved from here to a small home in town where his practice flourished, and they did too.”

Well, at least there was a happy ending for Rose.

“Did Dorothy die at three oh three?” I asked.

Her brows ticked together. “Why, no. It was around midnight.”

“Things are happening to me at three oh three, Jane. Is it the house?”

“I feel the house knows its mistress. But no, dear, outside of that, it doesn’t talk to us. It doesn’t involve itself in our lives. It’s just a house.”

“Then that’s one serious coincidence. Just tonight, it’s three oh three when I woke up.”

“That’s because you are you,” she said softly, “and I am me.”

“What does that mean?”

“You got a Wolf. You got an Augustus. A Walter. And I got a David.”

My heart broke for her, and you could hear it in my, “Jane.”

She waved a hand in front of her and said, “My lot. I love him regardless of his flaws. He’s given me two loving and handsome sons. We’ve managed to have happy times, once I learned to live with his penchants. He loves me, as David truly loved Virginia. He just thought he could do what he pleased. Just as David thought.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I pointed out.

“Did you forgive Ian for his high-handedness this morning?”

I did.

Damn.

“Some of us have bigger things to forgive. Ian was out of order in how he spoke to you. Perhaps understandably, but out of order. Daniel was out of order in how he handled Portia. But if we care for them, we find a way to forgive. I’m not perfect either. Richard is social. I’m an introvert. He loves to travel. I prefer to stay home. He finds his way to happy with me, even if, in several important respects, we don’t share the same interests. It’s no excuse, but I do sometimes wonder if I spent more time with him doing the things he enjoyed, if he wouldn’t have strayed.” She gave me a small smile. “But then I remember it’s no excuse, and he knew who I was when he married me, so that’s simply his lot, as I have mine. He did try to change me, but I’m me. Unchangeable. And the same with him.”

I didn’t have a response to that because she was right, and her choices weren’t mine, they were hers, and for my part, I had no choice but to respect them.

“I’m sorry about Lou,” I murmured.

“Don’t be,” she said forcefully. “You’re not supposed to have favorites, but you gel with certain people. Ian and I get along splendidly. He butts heads with his father. Daniel can sometimes frustrate me. Richard adores him. Daniel wanted me to like Portia, Richard wants to give his son everything. The writing was on the wall with a meeting of the family. And Louella is family. It was inescapable. Awkward, but inescapable. Now,”—she kept her eyes steady on me—“even more so.”

Well, as to that.

I looked down at the books. “I’m not the countess.”

“Oh, my dear, I think we both know you will be.”

I felt a lump in my throat.

“I despaired,” she said quietly. “He so worried he’d turn out to be like his father, he let many suitable women slip through his fingers. He’s a gambler. In a way, he made his fortune gambling. But he wouldn’t gamble on love. Until you.”

Until me.

I crossed my arms and rubbed them with my hands, like I was hugging that thought to me.

“It’s only been a week, and I know I’m falling for him,” I admitted.

“I know that too,” she pointed out the obvious.

“But he’s not Wolf or Augustus,” I said carefully.

She smiled a knowing smile. “Ah. The tragic Cuthbert. Yes, he did give Joan children, but not her first. Her first was a true Alcott, Thomas’s son. I know, I know,” she said when I opened my mouth. “You wonder how she could know. Women of that time were careful to provide heirs, it gave them power. She was careful to provide Thomas an heir, a true one, in hopes of gaining some power. But the Alcott men have had a thing for blondes. Joan wasn’t blonde. She was dark with blue eyes the color of sapphires. You can see this in her portrait upstairs.”

I didn’t have to, I’d been up there, and she was indeed dark.

So this meant it was not only Joan who gave the Alcott line their royal ancestry, but also their coloring.

I loved that she took over that way and enriched her line even if Thomas didn’t deserve it.

Duncroft did.

“All this doesn’t explain…” I took a hand from my arm and flipped it out. “You and me here, right now. It’s eerie.”

“Of course it’s not. You leave tomorrow. With what’s going on with my son, this conversation had to happen. I’ve been waiting for you here since ten thirty.”

“Oh,” I mumbled.

“You can’t know how glad I am with how taken he is with you. You’re a lovely woman with a kind heart. But I hope you never have to sit and wait until your son is done with his love so she can have a conversation with his mother.”

I scrunched my nose.

“Exactly,” she decreed.

“But I came right to you.”

“This is my space. Where else would I be?”

“Your bedroom,” I suggested, not adding or about a hundred and fifty other rooms in this house.

“I would hope you wouldn’t disturb a woman in the middle of the night in her bedroom,” she sniffed.

No matter what she said, or how she explained it, it didn’t change the fact this was weird.

And I didn’t buy the three oh three thing. There was no way to cypher three oh three was exactly when Alice and Wolf first made love. Or me dreaming about Alice and Wolf at all. I might have seen the painting, but dreaming about them like I did made my noting in passing of it a stretch.

Most of all, the numerous uncanny things that happened at three oh three.

Not to mention, Dorothy giving me the fatal clue as to what killed her. Or my dreams telling me about Rose and Joan before I even knew they existed.

Oh, and one couldn’t forget that something pulled that throw off my head so I didn’t tumble all the way down the stairs.

It sounded crazy, but even so. It didn’t just fly off.

This house was looking after me. I felt it. I knew it.

But…whatever.

Coincidence or supernatural, I had no argument with the results.

“One last question. What happened to Joan, George’s mother?”

“This is still a mystery, perhaps solved by what Joan wrote in the journals herself, and what Virginia discovered later. This being the butler at the time, a prim and proper man by the name of Johnson, found himself in the most unfortunate of circumstances. He fell in love with a maid. After some time of longing glances, eventually unable to resist her pull, they began an affair. Joan discovered it and had him sacked, without references, the maid too. They couldn’t find employment without references, fell on hard times, and Johnson and Joan were seen later, arguing in the village. That very night, she was hung in the buttery. Johnson, nor the maid he’d taken as his wife, were seen again.”

“So…the butler did it.”

Her lips quirked. “It would seem so.”

“A lot sure has gone on is this house.”

Her gaze slid to the books momentarily and then she gave me a small smile and said, “You can’t imagine.” She stood. “Now let’s get to bed. If you’d like to read some tomorrow before you leave, I’ll run interference for you. In the meantime, I’ll keep these safe for you.”

I still wasn’t sure they’d be mine because I wasn’t sure Ian would remain mine.

But I hoped he would, so I grinned at her and said, “Thanks.”

We turned out the lights and headed together into the hall, yes, you guessed it, arm in arm.

We made it to the foyer.

And as we did, sensing movement, we both looked up.

And at the body in the black dress plummeting down, I let out a blood-curdling scream.