‘Was it unexpected? Her departure?’
For Lillian had made it sound as much. As though it were sudden. Unplanned.
Jem’s gaze darted towards the door Ava had disappeared through. ‘Not entirely, no …’
‘How so?’ Damien asked, not looking away.
Jem’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly for a moment, and then a door opened behind him, and Ava stepped through.
‘I’m ready now,’ she called.
Damien nodded, his gaze raking once more over the man – his freckles, his copper hair, a look of utter bewilderment in his eyes.
Damien tipped his hat quickly, smoothing his brow. ‘We can continue chatting next time. It was nice to meet you, Master Jem.’
‘Nice to meet you too, Mr—’ The man fumbled, for Damien hadn’t given him a name in return.
And nor do I plan to, he thought, as he followed Ava into the next room.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Damien thought it would look like a storage room – dark, dusty, and stuffed with wooden crates from floor to ceiling. That was what he’d been expecting as he left the scent of lavender behind.
Instead, the room was warm – a fire crackling within it, and it was bright enough to make him blink. And then Damien felt his heart hitch in his throat – because for a moment, just a moment, it looked like his old house in London. That summer, when he and his mother had cut their holiday short and returned back to Portman Square early to find all of their belongings were still clothed and covered, white linen sheets draped over every sideboard, every chest of drawers – every piece of furniture they had. The weather had been awful that year, and a summer spent on the beach was suddenly less desirable when the sand was grey and wet, and the sky a roiling mess – and then he had come home, to find his home transformed into something from a picture book.
Instead of sofas there were now hiding places, instead of garderobes there were now mysterious doorways to other worlds. And though he was now a man grown, his fingers still itched to twitch back every corner, to see what hid beneath them.
‘Don’t touch that,’ said Ava, as he slipped a finger underneath the nearest linen and lifted it to check. ‘I covered these to make themlessinteresting.’
‘Ah, well, that’s where you’ve gone wrong,’ said Damien, readingLaudanumin great, bold lettering before letting the cloth drop back into place. ‘For theonlything one wants to do when one sees something covered up is uncover it.’
Ava chuckled a little. ‘I thought it would belessdistracting this way.’
‘Did you?’ said Damien. ‘What’s the oddly oval-shaped thing in the corner?’
‘Take a seat,’ she said gently, directing his attention to the only two chairs in the room, positioned next to the window, the sunlight warm against the windowpane.
Damien hesitated.
‘It won’t be like last time,’ she said softly. ‘I promise.’
‘I’m going to count,’ she said – her voice gentle, a caress against his mind – and she did not make it past five before he found himself slipping, sliding beneath the warmth, the sound of waves still humming in his ears.
‘I want you to think of either your mother, or your father this time,’ whispered Ava’s voice. ‘Whichever feels safest.’
Damien felt a cold ache, like pressing his toes into frigid water – the numbness of it.
‘Try and picture a place that was special to them,’ Ava said. ‘Important to them. Try and anchor yourself there.’
The darkness before him shimmered, contracting and separating until he began to see something in the gloom.
He was back in his father’s study – the must of leather and old books mingling with the sweet, spring air that curled through the open windows. His father wrote hundreds of letters. Great tomes of them – though he never spoke more than a handful of words to Damien. How could it be – thathe would say so little to his son, and yet so very much to the strangers who would receive these letters?
‘He is a very busy man,’ was the only answer Damien ever got when he asked. ‘If he could spend more time with you, he would.’
Damien wasn’t sure that was true. His mother would seek him out – take him for long walks by the lake, or rides with him – he on his stocky pony, her on her fine, chestnut bay. Sometimes the nanny would join them, sometimes they would be alone – but his father never came. He was always too busy spending his words on other people to spend any with Damien.
And so one day, when his father was walking the estate, and his mother was napping upstairs, he’d sneaked into his father’s office.
