Chapter 5

Five

THE CARNATION ROOM

“I think we should find a way to get Portia and leave.”

I was standing at the window, cradling my snifter of Amaretto, and staring out at the shadowed landscape that, yes…was all but obscured by mist.

Britain’s reputation for fog wasn’t quite as true as everyone not in Britain thought it was, just as it didn’t always rain. Frequent gray days and drizzle was more in keeping with the truth, and fog didn’t happen often.

But when it settled, it didn’t mess around.

And still, this was the worst I’d ever seen it.

Even with my foreboding about that fact, my attention cut directly to Lou at what she said about all of us leaving.

We were back in the Wine Room. She was seated in a leather wingback chair drinking port.

After-dinner drinks didn’t happen for anyone but me and Lou. The minute we exited the Turquoise Room, an irked-looking Richard claimed an aggravated-looking Ian, and they disappeared somewhere. Portia and Daniel said quick goodnights, and they disappeared like they were advanced in age, it was midnight, well past their bedtime, not nine thirty and they were young and spry.

Jane just disappeared.

So now it was again Lou and me.

I walked to the chair at angles with hers and gladly sat in it, giving my feet the rest they needed. As worth it as they were, beautiful shoes could be a pain.

“I know. Dinner was a lot,” I agreed.

“It’s not that,”—she stared moodily into her port—“I just don’t feel good about this place, this visit…these people.”

My reception hadn’t been exactly warm, but it’d been better than hers.

And she’d come into this week with trepidation, and nothing had happened since to make things better for her.

“Do you want me to take you to the train station tomorrow?” I offered.

Her head snapped up, an abrupt and even violent movement that alarmed me, and what she said alarmed me more.

“I think we three should stick together.”

It had been a trying day, but unusually, in my opinion, Lou was overreacting to it.

“They’re just dysfunctional, Lou. We aren’t the soul of adjusted familial relationships either.”

“Daniel is trying too hard. So hard, I don’t trust him one whit. Richard and Jane are…” she trailed off with that, like the walls could hear us talking about our hosts, and she wasn’t comfortable uttering her thoughts out loud. “And Ian is unbearable.”

Ian was arrogant and conceited, arguably justifiably so, he was just that attractive.

He was also a thirty-seven-year-old man who didn’t feel like being controlled by his pathologically controlling father.

Who could blame him?

I didn’t.

In fact, I’d be the exact same way.

In fact, when my father was alive, I was the exact same way.

Though, not in company.

And my dad wasn’t quite as big of an asshole as Richard was, and could often be quite loving, and was always generous.

“Portia is really into Daniel,” I reminded her.

“You spoil her too, in your way,” she replied. “There are so many girls who are not spoiled at all, in truth, so much the opposite, it hurts my heart to think about it. So, when one has the devotion that Portia has, I won’t say a word against it. Except now, Daph.” She leaned over the arm of her chair toward me and went on, “We’re not safe in this house and specifically she is not safe with Daniel.”

I leaned over the arm of my chair too. “Tell me why you say that.”

She shook her head. “It’s just a feeling.”

I hated to say it, but it had to be said. “I have to have more than a feeling if I’m going to talk my sister into leaving the only man she’s ever shown this kind of affection for.”

Lou sat back, looking frustrated, and downed the last of her port.

I sat back too and suggested, “Let’s give it another day, two, see how things go. If they don’t improve, or you still feel weird, we’ll talk, and in the meantime, I’ll chat with Portia. Feel her out about all that’s happening.”

“All right,” she mumbled.

I drank the last of my Amaretto.

Then I jumped because I’d barely taken my glass from my lips and Brittany was there, saying brittlely, “Allow me to escort you back to your rooms.”

Okay, maybe I wasn’t giving enough credence to what Lou said, because the maid didn’t even hide she’d been lurking unseen in order to watch and wait for us to finish our drinks, and then we were to be tucked away like living dolls our owners no longer wished to play with.

Lou and I exchanged another uneasy glance before we dutifully got up, set our glasses aside, and followed Brittany out of the Wine Room.

Outside my bedroom, due to Lou’s mood, I changed my mind about her not seeing my room and asked, “You want to come in? Keep chatting? We could ask Brittany to bring us another drink.”

A peek at Brittany showed no reaction to this, approval or disapproval, or, perhaps, scant proof Brittany was other than an automaton.

“No, I’m actually pretty tired,” Lou said. “That meal was heavy.”

It was heavy.

The petite fours were a disaster.

The dinner was a buttery, cheesy, creamy, saucy, and in the end custardy triumph.

“Okay, see you in the morning,” I replied, touching cheeks with her and giving her arms an affectionate, also hopefully restorative squeeze.

I stood in the hall and watched as Brittany escorted Lou to her room.

Only when she was inside did I duck into my own.

When I did, I found that earlier, I was not wrong.

Turn down service at Duncroft meant there was a soft light coming from the bathroom, the two large, tall, ornate lamps on the nightstands had been dimmed low, and all the others had been extinguished. The covers on the bed had been pulled back and smoothed, the pillows had been fluffed and arranged with the extraneous decorative ones removed and out of sight. And the heavy drapes at the windows had been securely closed.

I walked to the bed and saw there was also a tight, profuse carnation bouquet laid on the fold of the covers. The blooms were a pink that was an exact match to the shade used in the room, it was surrounded by a delicate, creamy netting and tied with an eerily perfectly matching bow.

Portia had told me during cocktails my room was known as the Carnation Room, while Lou’s was known as the Floral Room.

And it looked like they took the room’s namesake seriously.

Chocolates or mints would have seemed too hotel hospitality, for certain, but as with the sheer perfection of everything about the house (aside from its family), this, too, was incredibly weird.

In all honesty, it looked like a bridal bouquet.

And straight up, it gave me the creeps.

I wanted to know if Lou got one too, but then I didn’t want to ask in case she didn’t, and it was another slight.

I grabbed the bouquet, gazed around the room, found a vase with nothing in it, and went about the business of rinsing it out and then putting the bouquet in some water. I left it in the bathroom, moved to the bench at the foot of the bed, and with deep gratitude, sank to it, bent and took off my sandals.

I tossed them on the floor in front of the wardrobe and wandered back to the bathroom to prepare for bed.

* * *

I was coming down the coiling stairs wearing a magnificent bridal gown and carrying a large bouquet of pink carnations ensconced in creamy netting and tied with a pink bow.

The statue on the newel post was bathed in an unearthly white light, so bright it blinded me, but my feet still descended the stairs, steady and true.

A man at the bottom waited for me, tall and besuited, but he was obscured by the bright rays beaming off the statue.

It was only when both my feet were on the marble floor did he come into focus.

Ian Alcott reached to me immediately, not my hand, but my face, cupping my jaw with great tenderness, his head descending.

I tipped mine back to receive his kiss.

And I was on my back in bed in the Carnation Room. There were frilly, pink petals covering the sheets and pillows.

Ian’s hand was still at my jaw, his body warm and weighty atop mine, his mouth plundering my own.

The kiss was a juxtaposition of tender and carnal. My legs moved, restless with desire, trying to generate friction at the zenith, which was suffused with wet.

But the kiss needed to end.

I couldn’t breathe.

Part of me wanted it never to end. It was beautiful. Exciting. Freeing.

But it was killing me.

I tried to turn my head, but I couldn’t.

The hand was no longer on my jaw. Ian’s weight was no longer on my body.

But my head had been immobilized. I couldn’t lift it. I couldn’t turn it.

There was a pillow pressed hard over my face, held down at the sides of my head.

I tried to struggle, but there was nothing to struggle against. No hands attached to wrists or arms I could push away, no body I could buck off.

I kicked. I writhed. I sucked in a desperate breath and pulled in nothing but soft, expensive cotton.

Frantic, terrified, I screamed.

The sound was blood curdling, but it wasn’t my scream.

I heard a sick thud, my eyes sprang open, and I lay panting in the absolute dark, every inch of my skin tingling.

I felt the wet between my legs, the dream having an unconscious and undeniable physical manifestation.

But I was scared out of my brain.

I could still hear that awful screaming.

I heard that terrible thump.

And it felt like someone was in the room.

I sat upright and reached to the lamp, lighting it.

The first of three turns on the knob made the lamp illuminate very dimly, but it was enough to chase away the dark and for my vision to adjust quickly.

There were shadows, but nothing in them.

I was alone.

A bad dream.

Nothing but a bad dream.

Reasonable. It had been a weird day and I was worried about both Portia and Lou.

But damn, the dream had seemed so real. I’d never had a dream that real.

Used to the light, I turned the lamp one click brighter.

Better.

It was then I felt how cold the room was.

Freezing.

My nose was cold and so were my shoulders, which hadn’t been under the covers. But now, with the bedclothes pooled in my lap, the rest of my body was catching up.

This was reasonable too. If I had to pay to heat this monstrosity of a house, I’d turn the boiler down at night as well.

But it couldn’t be more than fifty degrees.

I got out of bed, went to the wardrobe, and pulled a carefully folded cardigan off an interior shelf and shrugged it on, yanking it closed tight at the front and keeping my arms crossed there.

Wide awake and knowing I’d need more than a few minutes to get myself together, find some calm and try to get some sleep, I moved to the windows in order to check on the mist. There was no reason why I did this, it was just something to do that seemed benign after that crazy dream.

I pulled a curtain back a few inches and looked into the night.

I then stood stock-still as I watched Daniel Alcott, wearing a heavy pea coat, walking away from the house, being swallowed by the fog, vanishing.

I didn’t know how long I stood there, but it was my feet getting uncomfortably cold that made me drop the curtain and scurry back to the bed. I shoved my legs under the covers, pulled them up to my lap, and reached to the nightstand drawer.

Modernization had clearly been something that Richard took seriously, because inside the top drawer was fitted with a strip of sockets and USB ports. Both my vibrator and my phone were plugged in, charging.

I engaged my phone.

It was three oh three in the morning.

I felt bile rise in my throat.

Three oh three.

We’d arrived at three oh three that afternoon.

I swallowed down the bile, and that was chased by an involuntary shiver.

I mean, what the fuck?

Was that just a wild coincidence?

And why was Daniel walking into the mist in the wee hours of the morning?

Where was he going?

Why had he and Portia gone to bed so early?

We’d had tea, after meeting Richard and Jane, but I didn’t even know where my sister’s room was in this house. I hadn’t been allowed much time with her, neither had Lou, including during cocktails, when Daniel didn’t leave her side.

I didn’t want to, but I had to.

I pulled my phone off the charger, opened Safari, and typed in Dorothy Clifton.

I’d read the Wikipedia entry in my Alcott Family and Duncroft House research when Portia got involved with them, and again scanned it when we’d been asked to the house.

However, sitting in bed in the Carnation Room, I read it again.

Very closely this time.

Dorothy Clifton had been a silent film star. Platinum blond and beautiful. Very famous. Very glamorous. It had been rumored she’d had a torrid affair with the Prince of Wales years before he’d become enamored of his future wife, the woman he’d abandon the crown for, Wallis Simpson.

She had also, and these rumors were definitely true, been carrying on an affair with the handsome, dashing, but very married Earl Alcott.

For some inexplicable reason, still engaged in this affair, she’d agreed to attend a house party at Duncroft. Multiple attendees, after the fact, let slip that she and David, the earl, had continued their liaison in the very house where his wife lived and was in attendance.

On the last evening of the house party, wearing a stunning gown created by up-and-coming fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, Dorothy Clifton fell over the railing, at the very top of the grand staircase, to her death on the white marble floor below.

Guests and servants all shared she had been quite inebriated.

But many questions remained unanswered about this fall, foremost being why she was on the top floor at all. It housed staff quarters, the tutor’s rooms, and storage. There was no reason for her to be there. With the house party requiring them to see to their duties, there wasn’t even any staff up there.

And both David and Virginia Alcott had not been located until several hours after the incident. When they arrived at the house, they claimed to be engaging in a moonlit stroll that included David alluding to a marital tryst.

In the end, the incident was deemed an accident, regardless of the fact the balustrade twining along the entirety of the staircase was unusually high, nearly four feet tall. Practically impossible to topple over…unless you threw yourself over.

Or you’d been lifted and dropped.

Or pushed.

In the aftermath, for years, the scandal and scuttlebutt clung to the Alcotts and Duncroft like a pall, with ping-pong theories of Virginia doing the deed out of jealous rage, even though she was slight and petite, Dorothy being several inches taller than her, therefore it was doubtful she could manage it physically. Though, not impossible, considering the level of Dorothy’s supposed intoxication.

So aspersions were cast on David, who it was said wished to end the affair, regardless that he very clearly continued to engage in it during the party.

There were whisperings that Dorothy wasn’t even invited to the house, but showed of her own accord, and the Alcotts were too polite to turn her away (though perhaps not too polite not to kill her?).

For Dorothy’s part, it was said she was worried that talkies were sweeping the globe and she’d be cast aside as other actresses had been. She was pressing David to divorce Virginia and marry her.

However, that theory seemed thin, considering the undeniable truth in all of it was, Dorothy was a well-educated young woman from an upper-middle class home. Due to her film career, she was very wealthy in her own right, and reports stated she’d managed her money well, and this bore true. On her death, she’d left over one million dollars to her younger sister, the equivalent of over sixteen million today.

Her sister remained vigilant of these funds, even after the crash that devastated the world in 1929. Indeed, the Clifton family had a penchant for finance and were now considered semi-old money by Britain’s standards, because they were still loaded.

But she was by no means of the stock appropriate for the Earl Alcott.

The entry made no mention of the time she died, neither did several other listings I checked.

There were lots of pictures of her, however, and she was stunning. She didn’t have the doe-eyed, simpering innocence that most female stars of that era possessed.

She was Britain’s version of Mae West: sultry, hooded eyes, buxom, and explicitly sexual.

There were also photos of David and Virginia.

David had the thin-mustached, simmering sexuality and rugged good looks of Clark Gable. I could see shades of Richard and especially Ian in him, but not so much Daniel.

Virginia was a blonde version of Clara Bow, complete with wide, wounded eyes filled with vulnerability.

Apparently, David and Virginia never lived Dorothy’s death (murder?) down, but David was rich and titled (as well as entitled) and didn’t give two shits what anyone thought of him. He went about his business and life as if a woman he’d been having an affair with under his wife’s nose (almost literally) hadn’t died a horrible death in the entry of his ancestral home.

However, within months, Virginia had secluded herself in Duncroft, never to be seen on the London scene again. In fact, never to be seen again, unless someone went to Duncroft.

Something that sounded unnervingly familiar.

When I put my phone back on charge, it was nearing four thirty in the morning.

I considered my vibrator before I reached and turned off the light, plunging the room again in complete darkness.

I ruled against a self-induced orgasm, mostly because the dream with Ian Alcott seemingly marrying me, then making love to me, only to end up smothering me, was not something I wanted associated with a real-life climax.

Unsurprisingly, I had trouble sleeping, but eventually managed it.

Only shortly after to be awoken again.

And this time, someone was definitely in my room.