He stood there silently, his jaw clenched.
“Gold,” I said, all the tired of the day swallowing me in a smothering wave. “Isn’t that just gold.”
I started down the hallway, which opened into the sitting room where Neds were standing near the door.
“We leaving?” he asked hopefully.
“We’re sleeping,” I said.
Left Ned swore.
“Rooms are this way,” Abraham said.
I picked up my duffel and my rifle and followed through another wide, well-lit hallway with even more rooms and halls and alcoves reaching off from it.
“Mr. Harris,” Abraham said. “This will be your room.” He stopped and opened a door to the left.
It was a lovely, modern-looking suite that probably cost three times what I paid Neds in a year.
“And where’s Matilda sleeping?” Right Ned asked.
“Just down the hall.”
“Get some shut-eye,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Tilly . . .”
“It can wait,” I said. “But I promise, you and I will talk. Room’s this way?” I started walking, and Abraham followed.
He opened a door on the right.
I sucked in a breath, caught off my footing by its extravagance. Every room I’d been in was tastefully under decorated. But this room was nearly the size of my entire house, and completely packed with fineries and luxurious fabrics, fripperies and art.
I’d never seen a place so well appointed.
“This is too much,” I said. “Much too much. I’d be more comfortable with something less fussy. Like a broom closet.”
“All the broom closets are full,” he said. “Of brooms. There are no less-fussy rooms to put you in. And for . . . everything . . . this is not too much.”
“Is there a shower?”
He didn’t step into the room, but pointed over my shoulder. “Bedroom is through that door. Shower there. I’ll be out in the main area. If you need anything, let me know.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a time machine? So I can go back and ignore you knocking on my kitchen door, and this”—I waved at the room around me as I stepped in—“would never have happened.”
He made atsksound through his teeth. “I’m afraid the time machine is on back order.”
“Of course it is.” I sighed and walked toward the bathroom. “Good night, Abraham Vail.”
“Good night, Matilda Case.”
I heard the door close.
The room was silent in a way I’d never experienced. No wind across the roof, no birdsong sinking through the walls, no creaking and settling of old wood or ticking of bugs.
Silent as death.
I didn’t like it.
