He holds out a hand to me. The gesture is so oddly intimate, so at odds with his stuffy cadence and ramrod-straight posture. I find myself staring at his lips again.
You’re here to help him, Winnie. It doesn’t matter that he’s the most beautiful man you’ve ever met and he kisses like the hero of a smutty romance, he’s your boss now and you can’t think of him like that.
I step around the teddy bears and over the trains and place my hand in his.
His cool fingers envelop mine, squeezing a little in his excitement. He pulls me to the other side of the room and snaps at Reginald to light the candles.
Does this part of the castle not have electricity?
Reginald rushes around, lighting candles in sconces on the walls. He hands Lord Valerian a candelabra, which he sweeps dramatically over a table.
“This is one of my model train sets. I was quite enamoured with trains for a time. Something about the way they connect places, how once there were no trains at all and the next moment, they were the centre of life, commerce and adventure.They interest me.”
I gasp again. I know I’m starting to sound like the heroine of a gothic romance with all this gasping in the castle, but I can’t help it. On the table stands a perfect scale replica of Argleton village – all the shops I perused around the village green are there, including Zen and Tonic, Glazed and Confused, and the Nevermore Bookshop. The pub even has little meat pies and baskets of chips sitting on the outdoor tables. A model of the London train I arrived on waits in the station as a line of people board, and a goods train sits on the tracks outside the village, pulling several tanker wagons and containers. There is even a replica of Black Crag Castle overlooking the wooded valley.
Lord Valerian barely gives me a chance to take in the details before he drags me across the hall into the next adjoining room. “Here is my pottery studio.”
Another grand drawing room has been haphazardly filled with potters’ wheels, bags of clay and pigments, racks of tools, and an entire wall stacked nearly to the vaulted ceiling with shelves and racks of pots, mugs and vases in various stages of finishing. Lord Valerian flicks on the lights – this room must be one of the few with electricity – and the bright-coloured glazes pop before my eyes, sucking me into a delirious world of colour.
I gaze around in awe. “There’s akilnunder the window. Isn’t that a fire hazard?”
“Quite possibly. Come, come.” He drags me around several bolts of fabric and flings open the doors to a magnificent ballroom. “Here is where I keep my loom.”
Hisloom?
Sure enough, all the fancy antique furniture had been pushed to the side of the room to make way for an enormous contraption that fills the entire marble floor of the ballroom. Warp threads stretch between two enormous rollers, while the floor is littered with discarded wooden shuttles and threads of wool, silk and glittering gold. A half-finished tapestry sits in the machine – a herd of wild horses dances across a brightly-coloured landscape filledwith wildflowers, their bridles stitched with gold thread, as waves in shades of jewel and azure roll beneath their hooves.
“You … you made this?” I reach out to run my hand over the threads, unable to believe something so beautiful is real.
“It needs so much work.” He nods disdainfully at several rolled tapestries resting against the wall. “I intended to finish it so I might master the Flemish technique, but instead, I became enamoured with painting, so it waits here for my enthusiasm to return. However, according tosome, one cannot host a ball with a loom in the middle of one’s ballroom, so it has to go.”
How does one man have the time for all this? From the intensity with which Lord Valerian speaks of his “distractions”, I get the sense that they aren’t simply hobbies, but passions that consume his every waking thought.
“Lord Valerian?—”
“Alaric, please.” He nods formally, which gives me no confidence that I should stop calling him Lord Valerian.
“Forgive me, but these … distractions of yours … I think you’re being quite hard on yourself. You’re not a hoarder.” The word sticks in my throat. “At least, not yet. You’re an artist. You have a brilliant creative mind, and you have the time and space to indulge your creative pursuits. You are not hurting anyone, and the castle, if a little cluttered, isn’t dangerous to you or others. Why do you wish to wipe all of this away when it makes you happy? You could hire another venue for the ball?—”
“I’d happily host the tedious affair at the bottom of the river,” he snaps. “But my mother insists it must be at my castle. It will be the first time she’s visited me here.”
His voice cracks a little.
Ah, a difficult mother.
I can relate.
The vice that’s gripped my chest ever since he said the “h” word loosens, and a slow smile creeps over my lips. “You called the right woman. I’ll help you get this place in order beforeyour mother’s visit, and I can show you my Winnie Wins System to help you manage your hobbies after I’m gone so things don’t get quite this bad in the future. When does she arrive?”
“Six weeks from today, the evening before the ball.”
I wince.
Lord Valerian nudges one of the tapestries with his boot. It slips against its friends and the entire pile topples over and rolls across the marble floor. Lord Valerian looks back at me and smiles coldly.
“You are wearing an expression that suggests you do not believe you can achieve this task.”
I peer around at the rolled tapestries, the trays of lopsided ceramic pots, the bloodyloom. “I can do it. But I’m going to need your help.”
