A book lay in the middle of the floor. It couldn’t have fallen off anything, not and landed right there. But there it was, on the rug in the middle of the study.
Alex stared at it, and then looked for gaps in the shelves or anything that might explain it. There was nothing obvious.
Maeve giggled. ‘Silly Daisy,’ she said, ‘always showing off.’ And she skipped off, leaving Alex there, holding a circle of knotted reeds and twigs, staring at a book which couldn’t possibly be where it was.
When she finally made herself pick it up, she found it was a book of family history. Her family.The de Wildes of Kilfayne, 1805–1815.
The page was open to a short entry.
Tragedy in Wildewood Hall.
6th March 1806, Margaret de Wilde, beloved daughter of Hugh, fifteenth Baron de Wilde, was victim of a tragic accident in the great hall. She was but seven years of age.
Just a year older than Maeve, Alex thought, and the chill that swept over her didn’t feel natural at all.
CHAPTER 20
NICK
The woods were unsettled today. He could always tell. He felt it stirring beneath his skin, trailing through his hair, and winding itself around him from the moment he woke from what little sleep he got.
Sally said the woods had always reached out to those who needed them. And Nick needed them more than ever.
Alex had been lying on the floor at the foot of the stairs, just like Sally had been. That image was etched into his mind. He’d thought…God, for that horrific moment he’d thought she was dead too. And that it was all his fault.
Because it was all his fault. He had never been good enough. He had promised Patricia he’d try. But how?
He shook himself. He couldn’t get lost in those feelings today. He had Maeve with him. He couldn’t leave her in the house alone, and he needed to be alert while she accompanied him. She had already slipped off, back indoors when he was working at the front of the house. He’d fished her out of more than one supposedly locked room since Patricia had left her with him. Maeve could vanish in the blink of an eye, and he was beginning to suspect that she knew the ins and outs of Wildewood Hall even better than he did. Servants’ stairs, attics,all the secret places, including the unsafe bits. She slept on the camp bed in his room and even that didn’t help.
He needed to keep an eye on her. As well as everything else.
Maeve clung to his hand as they walked deeper into the woods, and she chatted away to him, telling him about something she’d made for Alex, and how the house didn’t want her there.
That was what he was afraid of.
‘You weren’t bothering her, were you?’ he asked.
‘I never bother people, Daddy. I’m a joy.’
He stopped in his tracks and looked down at her.
‘Who told you that, munchkin?’
Maeve smiled back up at him with blissful self-confidence. ‘Granny.’
He breathed out slowly, forcing his racing heart to calm. Patricia. That made sense. Patricia had said it to Maeve. She had probably said it to Sally when Sally was a child.
Because Sally had always said that, laughing, whenever he called her out on something. It was frivolous, a joke between the two of them.
Don’t be silly,mo stór. I’m a joy.
Later on Theo had joined in on it as well.
And God help him, they were. Just like Maeve. His joy.
Well, they had to be to contrast with him. The most miserable man in the world, Theo would always say with that trademark grin. Theo could always make him smile.
‘What were you doing today, pet? If not pestering Alex? You wandered off while I was working in the gardens.’
