‘She died in 1967.’
Well, that was just stupid. Her dad would have only been ten. Alex stared at the portrait for another long moment, studying it. ‘Okay, well it couldn’t have been her then. My gran…Gran was here when I was little. She looked after me while the men were off—’ She waved a hand dismissively. ‘Maybe she wasn’t my actual grandmother then. A housekeeper, or something?’
Oh God, had her grandfather had a live-in lover that he’d pawned her off on? Gran had talked about him affectionately enough, as if he was a foolish but loveable man. Alex had never seen it herself. Gran had been the one to tell her that he was doing his best, that he was trying to help. Even that he was trying to protect her.
Her grandfather, protecting her? She’d not questioned it, partly because she’d not believed her. But what had he been protecting her from?
Nick chewed on his lower lip drawing her attention back to him. That was far too distracting a thing for her to contemplate right now. Because if she started thinking about his lips…
Alex drew in a deep breath. ‘You wanted to show me this?’
Nick shook his head but didn’t say anything further to her. There had to be a logical reason for him to show her. And why she remembered a different gran, one that couldn’t be this woman. She’d work it out.
Another thing to research. There was every possibility that all this was some kind of new tactic to make her give up the house sale or…or…just to make her look like a fool. She didn’t know. It was unsettling and she really didn’t like it at all. But she followed him as he continued down the hall.
‘This one,’ said Nick, and stopped in front of a portrait of a young girl. It had to be a couple of hundred years old. She wasgolden-haired, with the de Wilde blue eyes, and she held a bunch of wildflowers in her small hands, not unlike the ones Maeve had woven into the circlet. Behind her, the line of the woods outside the house rose like a dark threat.
‘Margaret de Wilde, youngest daughter of Hugh, the fifteenth Baron de Wilde. Died in 1806. She was seven. They called her Daisy.’
Alex frowned. Daisy…?
But before she could ask more questions, he turned around and waved his hand at another portrait. This was more modern, the girl in it from perhaps the 1920s. ‘And this is Rosalind. You’ll hear about Rose as well. And Dickie and Reg, Cecil, and maybe even Cornelius. And others. Maeve sees their portraits around the house, and in the books, the old photos and…’ He sighed again.
She didn’t press him in the brief pause. Her head was spinning. Those names.
‘I wanted to take her to a psychologist last year but Patricia says she’ll grow out of it eventually and to just let her have her childhood. Not to stifle her imagination, you know? But that’s one of the reasons I don’t really want her here in the house too much anymore. She stays with Patricia during the week because of school anyway. I thought she’d make friends in the village but…’ Another sigh. His eyes glistened as he turned away and Alex felt the wave of pain coming off him as if it was a physical thing. ‘She just tells us she already has friends here and they’re more fun.’
Alex reached out before she thought about what she was doing, her hand coming up to the centre of his back, right between his shoulder blades. His body was warm but he was so tense, a coiled spring. All she meant to do was offer him a little comfort, a bit of understanding. But for a moment he froze, like an animal about to attack, or flee. Then, slowly, he seemed torelax into her touch. His scent wound itself around her again, as did the way she just needed to breathe him in. It was addictive. Intoxicating.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I didn’t mean to bring up the past.’
‘The past has a habit of throwing itself right in your face around here, Alex. I’m sure you already know it.’
He nodded to a final portrait, one half in shadows at the end of the hall. A man in a linen shirt. A modern painting in oils, beautiful and so very true to life. As if he might step out of the frame at any second. Her father. In his thirties. The same age he was when he died.
But he hadn’t looked like that when she last saw him.
‘I’ve never seen that before,’ she said, her throat so tight she had to force the words out.
‘Your grandfather commissioned it after he died. Your dad, I mean, after he…’ He trailed off awkwardly. ‘You know.’
She nodded, staring. Unable to tear her gaze away. ‘Mum always said he was handsome. I mean, I remember him but he was…he was my dad. I just thought he was old. I’ve seen photos of course, but…well, she put a lot of them away. And old photos degrade, don’t they? I don’t know where they went after Mum died. I suppose Ken has them somewhere…my stepfather, I mean…’ She was rambling. She couldn’t help herself. This portrait was so much more than any photo could ever capture. It was as though it had been plucked from her own memories. He was standing in a glade in the forest, green-gold light streaming around him through the leaves. The standing stones were just visible behind him.
Where he died, she thought bleakly. The woods outside this very house.
‘Run, Alex! You have to run. NOW!’
No, that was earlier. That was in the house. Wasn’t it?
The cold arched roof of stones closing over her and the stench of mulch.
She didn’t remember. It was all tangled with nightmares, her recollection so confused. Why had she needed to run? What from? Had there been an intruder or…or something else?
He’d pulled her back from the patch of welling darkness, pushed her towards the narrow stairs and the shadows had closed in on him instead?—
That had to be in the house, there wouldn’t be stairs in the woods. But how could there be trees in the house?
The gleam of gold beneath rotting foliage. Eyes that didn’t see, but saw everything, the mouth hanging open, hungry and waiting.
