We shared a heavy silence. The rain began again, dripping through the treetops.
“How long, then, would it be?” I asked.
Nick looked up, his face close to mine, still clasping my hand tightly.
“A matter of months. We could be married by the spring, darling,” he said, kissing my fingertips.
I drew him to me and kissed him, long and hard. When we parted, I felt dizzy.
“There’s just the matter of what to do with him,” said Nick, frowning down at Tom’s body. “If his disappearance gives us grief, there could be no wedding and no future for either of us.”
I chuckled.
“People, even the police, aren’t as smart as they like to think,” I said softly. “Despite all the rumours in the Dales about my parents’ deaths, nobody has ever called for my arrest.”
A silence passed between us. Nick looked uncomfortable.
“You must never speak of it again, Grace, to anyone. Not even Eugenie.Especiallynot her,” he said. “Or your luck will run out.”
That sparked another question in me. I wondered howhe could be so calm with what he’d learned, and what he’d just seen, of me – hisinnocentGrace. That, and how he came to have a ligature in his pocket...and how he knew so precisely how to use it. For the moment, I didn’t wish to know, but I would find out.
“I just want to ask one thing about Louisa,” I said into the darkness, my breath a cold white mist.
“Anything,” he said.
“You say she had an obsession with fires. Did you really play no part in that final fire? The one that killed your parents, and Alexander?” I asked, my voice shaking. Now that I knew Nick was capable of murder, anything was possible.
Nick bowed his head and cleared his throat before he answered.
“My parents were accidental casualties. They loved Louisa. But Alexander...his death was revenge for me. She started it in his room.”
I remembered the locked door right beside the pink room.
“But it was never meant to take down half the house and destroy all her things, let alone kill my parents, and almost kill her, too. I managed to rescue her. I tore down a curtain and threw it over her, sparing her, just, from the worst of the burns. I didn’t know she was planning it, or else I’d have committed her long before then. She left me with this legacy, this suspicion among the public, that I had killed them all.
“If the world learned that it was her, that she was insane, they’d think badly of her, and I couldn’t allow that. She had an honest heart with a tortured mind, andit wasn’t her fault. I married Louisa to protect her, and I vowed I would do so until the last. And now, Grace, I vow the same to you. Never will your secrets leave my mouth. Never will this monster hurt you again. Never will the ghosts of your past threaten your happiness today. And I will never, ever again lie to you.”
Nick kissed my wrist. I wanted to lay with him again, and show my love for him, but there wasn’t time. We had to move the body.
“Could we leave him here, in the forest, buried deep?” I asked. “There could be tools in the truck.”
“That would be careless,” said Nick. “It’s too public. It wouldn’t be long before he was found. We’ll move his truck and bury him somewhere remote, somewhere private. Somewhere we can keep an eye on him until we figure out how to dispose of him more permanently.”
“Somewhere like Heather House,” I said. “We can return his truck to the Stoddard farm before morning.”
“No, no, the truck will be abandoned here. We’ll use my car to transport him. It’s a hearse, after all. We need to work fast now.”
I had the distinct feeling that this was not Nick’s first time planning an unlawful burial, but I decided privately to let that curiosity lie. There was clearly more darkness in common between myself and my husband-to-be than I’d ever realised.
Nick moved the truck into the forest, wearing his black leather gloves. He stripped off his blood-soaked coat to avoid leaving smears in the vehicle. Then he moved his car, the Rolls, into the forest, and opened the back end. We wrapped Tom inside Nick’s bloodied coat and, just as if wewere collecting a body without a gurney, we loaded him on together. I lifted his feet, while Nick took the head and shoulders.
Sadness captured me for a moment, to know I was holding the lifeless body of my childhood friend. It didn’t hold for long, but I recognised the feeling for what it was; a wave of grief that would, like everything else, pass over.
We drove on towards the north, sharing a pleasant silence, content in our love for one another. Hours passed.
We turned into the lane approaching Heather House, parking behind the outhouse to avoid being seen by anyone from the road.
The old curse fluttered down like a veil. An immediate heavy, dark sensation came over me, like a hot, wet, blanket, smothering me head to toe. Its weight made me breathless, my legs struggling to drag one foot in front of the other.
