“What on earth – ” I began, shaking my head in confusion.
A hand encircled my elbow, turning me away from the scene. I gasped. It was Maggie.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, her lips thin around her teeth, bared as if she might bite me. “You’re not well.You’re supposed to be resting.”
Eugenie snorted, tearing Maggie’s hand from my arm.
“She can do what she likes. Who the hell do you think you are?”
But Maggie paid her no mind. She focused on me. “He wouldn’t want you here, Grace, especially once he realises that you’ve followed him.”
“How else would I know where to look?” I asked, though I wasn’t interested in explaining myself to her. “He told me he was at a meeting, and I find him here.”
“It’s none of your business. You’d do well to mind your own,” said Maggie tersely.
Eugenie chuckled by my side quite incredulously, as if she couldn’t believe Maggie’s audacity. Her expression was as serious as a damn heart attack, ignoring Eugenie entirely.
“I mean it, Grace. Nick won’t like this behaviour at all. Trust is important to him,” said Maggie.
“Well I won’t point out the irony there,” I said, almost spitting the words. “Who are those people he’s with?”
“They’re associates. If you come with me now, I won’t tell him you followed him here,” said Maggie. I noticed she was dressed for the service, too, in fine black clothes and a hat with a net covering half of her face, as if she were attending a funeral.
“Am I supposed to be scared?” I asked. “Do your worst. He loves me. The sooner you accept that, the better.”
The wordlovemade her mouth twitch and twist as if she’d been administered a sharp squeeze of lemon to the back of her tongue.
“If you don’t come back to Crowthorne House now,then not only will I be forced to tell him that you followed him here, but I’ll have to tell him a few other things, too,” said Maggie, speaking in a low steady voice that unnerved me.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like the fact that you keep visiting the mortuary outside of working hours. That you take his key and creep downstairs to take a look at the – ”
“Shut up,” I spat, not needing to hear any more. “I’m entitled to be around the mortuary. I work there. It’syouwho followsme.”
“Strange behaviour for a young woman,” said Maggie. “Especially one who thinks she can come swanning in and seduce the director – a man who is still lost and grieving, who once had a lady on his arm just like you.”
I worked to keep my voice steady, my heart pounding its way out of my chest. I glanced uneasily behind me at the commotion. Nick was bent low on the ground, seeing to the person thrashing and grunting on the ground. They appeared to be having some kind of seizure.
I turned back to Maggie, sneering. “You’ve no right insinuating anything about me, especially after that trick you pulled last night. I know it was you who drenched my room in light, knowing what it would do to me.”
“If you had any sense, you’d go back to that house of yours in the Dales. It’s all done up, all ready to be lived in.” Maggie drew a key from her pocket and slapped it into my palm. It was the key to Heather House, the same one I’d given Nick when he promised to fix the damage. “But I think there’s probably a reason you don’t want to return there. The same thing that still gives you nightmares. Am Icorrect?”
My blood ran cold. I began to shiver. Maggie’s stone-cold eyes looked right through me, seeing me naked and bare.
“Like what?” I asked, challenging her.
She made to speak, opening her lips, and then seemed to think the better of it.
“You’relittle more than his mistress,” she said, finally. “Nothing else. Once he’s finished using you, it’ll be you packing your things, snivelling over your suitcase, on your way out the door – not me. Do yourself a favour, Grace. Go sooner rather than later, before you hurt yourself.”
Maggie glared at me a final time before stalking past me, continuing down the aisle to the front row.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Eugenie, putting a comforting arm around my shoulders. “I can’t see that meddling old cow letting you get any answers today. Not unless...unless you want to go marching up to him right now.”
I could see that option had lit a fire behind her eyes. I’d only need to give the word for her to be swept away in the excitement of a dramatic confrontation; but my own flame had been dimmed. Maggie’s words, calling me a mistress, stung worse than the sores on my arms and face. I felt truly beaten up. My heart was as wounded as my skin, to think that Nick might only be using me for comfort.
Nick was a noble man, a truly decent man, and if Eugenie had asked me that morning if I thought he loved me, I’d have said, wholeheartedly,yes. I’d have told her that he showed me how much he loved me every night, every inch of me, sometimes until dawn.
