Blaise Chambers. The portrait outside her bedroom door. She had taken it down the other night. Because who wanted a lecherous perv looking at your bedroom door all night?
Alex woke that night to noises from downstairs again. And this time she wasn’t dreaming. There were voices, laughter, and music. Glasses clinking together. It sounded raucous, a party, happening right underneath her in her supposedly empty house. She turned on the light but the sound carried on.
Enough, Alex thought. She was going to get to the bottom of it. If Nick was bringing in people to party away here at night while she slept, they were going to have some very stern words. And if that really was the case, he’d be out on his ear, contract or no contract. The lawyers would be all over it.
Tired, cranky and ready for a fight, she flung open the bedroom door. Blaise Chambers’ portrait leered at her from the wall. Nick must have put the bastard thing back. Alex grabbed it, yanking it off the wall so hard the string holding it snapped and she reeled back a bit to take the weight. Right, she’d bring this downstairs as well. She could use it as a weapon if she had to. Throw it, and whoever was making the racket, out on their ear.
As she reached the foot of the stairs she was aware that the tenor of the sounds had changed. It wasn’t just a party now. It was something else. A very different kind of gathering. Low moans, gasps, grunts – the unmistakable sounds of people having sex. More than just a couple too. Laughter, but sultry, full of lust and edged with mockery.
Alex froze, still holding the framed portrait behind her in a suddenly numb hand. Her body felt flushed and needy, as if hearing all that happening just on the other side of the morning room doors made her react in a way she would never have expected of herself.
Desire. Need. Want.
Alex swallowed hard and glanced down at the picture she was still dragging along behind her. He looked up at her, dark eyes hungry, his mouth twisted in a mocking kind of smile.
Blaise Chambers.
I will set all of them against all of those they have loved, and I will make them mine, body and soul.
Alex let the picture thump to the ground, and everything suddenly went quiet. Everything. She was standing in the dark hallway, looking at a closed door, and there wasn’t a sound coming from the other side. Not anymore. But her heart was thundering inside her chest and her body felt like it was wound up like a spring. The ache deep down below her stomach, the rush of warmth and hunger, the sweat that prickled her hypersensitive skin…
Alex flung the door open. The room was empty, still and silent, the curtains closed so only a sliver of moonlight cut through the gloom. There was no one there. Not a soul.
She backed up, leaving the picture lying there, Blaise Chambers sneering up at her from the floor. This was mad. Had she still been dreaming? Or was she hallucinating? Things like this didn’t just happen. There had to be an explanation.
She was halfway up the stairs again when she noticed the figure at the top, dark and terrible, looming over her. She couldn’t make out his features but he was definitely there, as real and solid as she was. A man.
‘Nick?’
It couldn’t be him. The figure was nowhere near as tall or as broad.
The laughter came from just behind her. A child’s laugh, bright and mischievous. And Alex recognised it. From somewhere in the back of her mind, from somewhere long ago. She knew it.
Alex tried to take a step back. Her foot came down in empty air and, the next thing she knew, she was falling backwards. Her head caught a glancing blow off one of the thick newels carved with leaves and foxgloves, the world exploded in light and pain, and everything after that was black.
CHAPTER 15
NICK
Sally had always said Nick slept like the dead. That the house could be falling down and he wouldn’t hear a thing. But tonight, he couldn’t sleep at all. How could he?
The house was unsettled. So were the woods. They always reacted to each other.
And he knew why. Of course he knew why.
Alexandra de Wilde…or rather Dr Alex O’Neill. She had laid claim to the land and the woods had heard her. It all came back to her. She shouldn’t be here at all. But what could he do? He couldn’t make her leave.
He tossed to the side and stared at the photos beside his bed. Theo had taken the picture of him and Sally, that glorious day in the woods, when the sun had shone on them and they had thought there was no danger. He didn’t have one of Theo who had always preferred to be on the other side of a camera anyway. ‘Who’d want to look at my ugly mug?’ he’d said with a laugh. But he hadn’t been ugly. He’d been beautiful. Just like his sister. Nick closed his eyes with a groan, dismayed to find his thoughts going there again. When he opened them, Sally gazed back at him from all those years ago, judging him the way she alwayshad done. She could always take one look at him and see into his soul.
Whereas Theo…Theo would drive him up the wall, argue with him over anything, and make him laugh so hard he thought he’d cry. Theo had been a breath of fresh air.
How did he explain any of it to Alex? That there was nothing wrong with the plumbing. That the moment she left the room he had turned on the water and it had been crystal clear. That the house was unsettled by her presence here and so was he.
So unsettled.
He would sound like a madman. He could only imagine what her lawyers would make of that. They wanted him out of Wildewood Hall.
Alex wanted him out of Wildewood Hall. That was why she was here, wasn’t it?
