(Jermin's POV)
A hidden watch, a hidden wait.
The white marble halls on the darkest nights carried the weight of secrets. I knew them all, or at least, so I imagined.
Until Alice.
Until her silence spread far louder than footfalls.
I hung around outside, glass of whiskey clenched in my hand, shirt clinging to the back of my torso with the sticky tack of wakeful sweat. Dummy camera models? Naturally. Knew it. Call it gut instinct. Or perhaps it was because the house adjusted to her presence--as if it was aware that she was a guest and a phantom.
She had no idea I was spying. Not yet.
But then I went to the door and she was leaning over the drawer-my drawer, the drawer my mom had kept locked like it held her soul-and suddenly it was time to wake up.
"What in the hell are you doing?"
She spun around as though caught red-handed. But that face-God, that face. Wide, watery eyes. Trembling lips. Silk hugged her contours. It would have been believable on a lesser man.
Tight in her chest where it was some life preserver: "I couldn't sleep. I came here to think."
"In the dark?" I said quietly, almost whining, my eyes fixed on the motion of her throat rising and falling on that lie.
She let one tear run down her face. Just one. At the exact right time. Her father would have been so proud.
I moved over towards him, but slowly. Not menacingly. Not yet.
"I whispered, you miss your father," she said.
She nodded her head down as if to mean shamefaced and murmured low, "I thought he was paranoid. Control-fixated. But the older I get, the more I see him."
The more she talked, the stronger the scratch down beside my rib cage, that insistent burning of wanting something that I knew I shouldn't touch.
"Did he ever tell you why he disliked my mother so intensely?"
She shook her head. "He never called her name. Only warned me about smiling with knives in one's back."
I laughed roughly, hollowly. "That's fair."
I reached out before I could stop myself from rubbing my knuckles against her face. Soft. Warm. Real.
"You cried at the wedding," I said. "I thought it was fear, but it seems to look like hate."
She did not move. Did not blink.
"Both perhaps," she breathed.
And maybe I should have stepped back. Maybe I should have summoned guards or locked her in her bedroom or insisted she reveal what the devil she knew about the contents of that file.
But I did not.
Instead, I moved forward. Her breath caught. Mine slowed.
It was infuriating: lavender and lies.
I pushed a hank of hair out of behind her ear. She didn't flinch. Brave, this one. Or idiotic.
"You would scream," I whispered in her ear.
She didn't gasp for air. "You'd come to silence me."
It gave me a curl of amusement.
"Or perhaps I'd pick you up and kiss you."
Her eyes flashed. Unspoken, something flashed back and forth between us. Memory. Desire. Fury. All tangled up in the room of a breath.
I rested a hand on her waist, her robe so thin I could feel the shiver underneath. And in that instant-God have mercy came very nearly to kissing her.
Very nearly.
But that is what men like me do. We do not kiss what we do not own.
So I backed off, cursing myself as weak.
"I don't want to make the same mistake again," I growled.
She rested her head, voice husky. "What mistake?"
"Wanting something which leads to blood."
I walked away.
And for the first time in years, I did not down my drink.
_____________________________________ The east gardens were heavy with weight the following morning. All of the unspoken things.
I was interested and stood on the balcony that faced the east gardens, drinking lukewarm coffee, watching her afar. Alice. Lady Hunt now, by law, would otherwise not bear the same title of preference. Inside those immaculate hedges, she walked like a queen surveying a kingdom she had secretly planned to burn. Within.
She wore pale blue, hair loose in a bun, face serene.
But I knew better.
She hadn't gone into that study.
She hadn't searched for that specific file.
You don't mess around in this house.
My mother had concealed that Holloway file intentionally. The papers of their enterprise. The threats. The conditions. And the final red-stamped line, the last one.
I had no idea if she had read it all yet. But she would, and when she did, she would know the truth: her father was not the man she thought him to be.
Mine wasn't.
Maybe neither of us ever really knew our parents.
"She's testing you," a voice behind me said to me.
I turned. Victor-head of security, childhood friend, my only remaining link to the truth.
"I know,"
And who gave her permission to take that file away?
I made her think she had brought it along.
Victor's eyebrow rose. "Copy?"
Two steps ahead, every time. I said.
He nodded brusquely, but there was something else in his eyes. "She won't leave. Not until she discovers who killed Holloway."
I gulped down another swallow of coffee, as if I could pretend not to know the bitter burn. "Let her dig. With each concealed truth she uncovers, she's that much closer to the same ledge that I'm on."
Victor crossed his arms. "And when she jumps?"
I grinned icily. "I'll be waiting."
That night at the estate, as was the tradition, it was arranged a dinner à deux was arranged. Along with her. No servants.
A twisted idea, perhaps. Perhaps because I want to see how she moves in the faint light and before the unbroken food array before her.
She came late as always. "Your chair," I said to her, pushing it back for her.
Did not blink. Did not thank me. Just sat and adjusted her dress.
"I heard you sleep well," I said to her, watching her intently.
"You can say that I dreamed," she said to me. "Nothing wrong. Just clear."
"Anything nice?"
She looked at me. "I was drowning. Water was warm."
"Cold water is what most people dream about."
"Hasn't married into your family."
Silence at the table. She was playing with her salmon, I with mine. Between us lay a bottle of wine, which we both avoided crossing.
"You were close to kissing me last night," she said, her voice constricted.
I didn't even lift my head. "I once came close to shooting a man. Doesn't mean I did."
"Why not?"
I did eventually look at her.
"Because you would have let me."
The air was so stretched with tension between us.
Then she suddenly stood up.
"Thank you for dinner, husband," she said softly.
And in an instant, she was gone.
But her perfume remained.
So did her silence.
And as I poured myself another glass of wine and stared into the blood-red combination, I knew something dangerous:
She wasn't the only one tormented by spectres.
Mine were merely better dressed.
"Thank you for dinner, husband," she whispered.
And suddenly, she was gone.
But her perfume remained.
So did her silence.
And as I filled a second glass of wine and gazed into the blood-red vortex, I knew something perilous:
She wasn't the only one tormented by spectres.
Mine were merely better dressed.