“I bet you could handle me, Nadine.” She blushed again, making a little sound of incredulous disbelief, and he forced himself to turn away so she wouldn’t see his smile. It was the first time he’d smiled in weeks and it felt very nearly wrong to do so here. Sobering, he said, “Come, keep up. I don’t think you want to be here when my parents come back.”
“Where are they?”
“Some donors meeting. For a historical society they’re a part of.” Rather ironically, since the parts of their history that would be of the most interest to the public were the very parts they strove so hard to hide.
“For Ravensgate?” she asked presciently.
“Yes, and others. It was my idea that they join. They get a rather large tax break for the conservation easement.” He ran a finger over the patterned wallpaper, picking up traces of ancient dust that clung to his skin. “This house breathes history.”
She didn’t say anything else but he was aware of her attention as if it were a tangible force. He wondered what she was thinking. The house had an effect on everyone who stepped over the threshold, but some were more susceptible than others. Nadine seemed particularly sensitive, studying their possessions as if trying to derive deeper meaning.
He steered her by the shoulder towards the carriage house, where they kept all the cars. The further they got from his family, the more her confidence seemed to expand. When she backtalked him about his Rolls and flouted her determination to dig into the past, come hell or high water, he found himself growing amused again. Enchanted, even.
At the wedding, he had been attracted to her face and body, yes—he’d always liked a soft-looking woman who could give him a good fight—but there had been many women he found physically appealing that he hadn’t bothered to pursue. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, precisely, that drew him to her, but it had something to do with the determined way she held herself as she navigated her way through the world, and the way she looked at him when she could barely bring herself to meet his eyes.
They were restless, those eyes. She had restless hands, too, except when she was talking and then she held herself very still, as if every word required her utmost concentration. Very serious. Very earnest. His brother hadn’t credited her for that because he clearly saw her as her sister’s double, but Noelle was no more like her sister than a river stone was a lode of unpolished quartz. There was a quick mind behind those misty grey eyes. In the proper setting, he suspected she would be quite striking. She already was.
“I know you know more than you’re letting on about Noelle,” Nadine said, though she blinked at the volume of her voice in the car. “You, and Odessa, and Ben.”
“Is that right? And what’s your plan? Are you going to torture the information out of us?”
“I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said haughtily.
His laugh was startled from him, like a dark bird taking flight. “Oh, Nadine. You have no fucking idea.”
“You know what I think,” she said, as if he wasn’t half-ready to carry her back into his house and throw her down against his sheets to find that out for himself, “Ithink you’re trying to scare me. Because you’re afraid of what I’m going to find out about you and your weird and creepy family.”
“Clearly, it isn’t working,” he said. “Or you’d be having an evening nightcap with Helena Peters right now, toasting to my ruin. So if your plan is just to needle me to death with those little kitten teeth of yours, I suggest you revisit the drawing room or find yourself another ally.”
“I don’t like you,” she said sulkily.
“I’m devastated,” he informed her dryly.
Nadine iced him out, gripping her thighs with white-knuckled hands. Beyond the window, the town was quieting. Most of the residents had retired to their homes, their lights glowing like yellow eyes where they peeped through the trees. The tourists and commuters had departed and now the town appeared to be slumbering like a large, lazy beast.
Argentum had an early curfew that had never needed to be enforced. The town had been dogged by dark whispers of what happened to girls who stepped out after nightfall for years. They had said that his great-grandfather liked to ride unmarried young women down on horseback, and the rumors hadn’tchanged that much, except now he was dragging girls away in foreign cars.
“Fine,” she snapped. “If you’re not going to answer my questions about Noelle, why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on with this town? Why are they acting like you’re—”
“The devil incarnate?”
“You said it,” she told him primly. “Not me.”
“Mm. I don’t think even you could resist me if I was able to get you alone.” He remembered the way she had fled from him halfheartedly, backing far more slowly than he suspected she was able. “All towns need their demons, Nadine.”
He spoke seductively, and was surprised to see a look of devastation on her face. When she turned away, he found himself feeling thwarted and uncharacteristically at a loss.
She didn’t say anything else until they had pulled up in front of Jessica Mayhew’s house, headlights off. There was a flickering light in what he assumed was the living room. Nadine stared at the house, pulling at the loose threads of her shorts. She made no move to leave.
“Some of those rumors are true, you know.” He stretched his arm over the back of her seat, leaning towards her confidingly. “I have taken girls into those woods.”
Her eyes darted involuntarily towards the treeline, and then away. “I don’t care. They’re your woods. You can do what you want in them.”
“How very pragmatic of you.” He smiled when she turned up her nose. “Don’t be like this, Nadine. We’re on the same side. I want your sister found as much as you do.”
The words had a faint ring of truth. Noellehadn’tdeserved to die.
His brother should have kept her safe.
