Beauty in Spring (Beauty #1)(2)
“But the gate’s locked,” he points out.
“I have a key to the gatehouse, so I can go through that way.” Which is a lie, but I do know a way to enter the estate. When uncertainty tightens his mouth, I reassure him, “They probably just forgot which day I was coming. I’ll find someone up at the house.”
Though clearly unhappy with my decision, George obligingly retrieves my big rolling suitcase from the trunk. Outside the car, I pull on my lightweight jacket to ward off the chill in the air. The breeze sweeping across the grounds has a dank odor clinging to it, instead of the fresh and clean scent that I recall from years ago.
“You sure you’ll be all right, dragging that luggage up the lane?”
“It shouldn’t be a problem.” I extend the suitcase’s handle. “It’s not heavy, and the lane is paved. It should roll easily.”
“All right, then. Now I’ll be stopping at the pub in the village for a bite of lunch. I expect I’ll be an hour or so before returning to London, so you ring my mobile if you change your mind, and I’ll drive here to pick you up.”
His kindness helps to ease my despair, renewing my natural optimism and the hope that brought me here. Surely the situation can’t be so very dire.
Warmly I thank him, then wait until his car is out of sight down the narrow country lane before walking in the other direction. A stone wall surrounds the estate’s grounds, with access gates the size of a standard door installed at regular intervals around the perimeter. Even when I lived here, those particular gates were always locked, but that never stopped me—and Gideon—from using one of them before.
The gate on the east wall is missing one of the vertical wrought-iron bars. The narrow gap allowed us to slip through as children—though by the time he was seventeen, Gideon had almost grown too large to fit. The last time we’d attempted it, he’d had to fight his way through the gap.
My step falters. That last time had been the night of my fifteenth birthday. Ten years ago, minus almost one month. The night he’d first kissed me. The night that had ended with something—something, I still don’t know what it was—chasing us back to the safety of the estate. Then Gideon had gotten stuck pushing through the gap, and I remember the absolute terror and racing of my heart as I desperately pulled on his arm, trying to help drag him through, all the while hearing the growling approach of something through the dark.
I’d…almost forgotten about that. Because in the days following that night, my entire world fell apart. The next morning, Gideon came down with a terrible fever that worried his parents so deeply they’d flown him to see a specialist in Switzerland. Soon we received word that his fever had broken and he was on the mend. But even before they returned to Blackwood Manor, my father resigned and we left for the States.
I suppose in that time since, I told myself that Gideon and I simply overreacted to whatever had been out there on that moonlit night. I told myself that the overwhelming fear had followed hot on the heels of the thrilling excitement of our first kiss—and that we’d probably been spooked by a wild pig, but adrenaline and hormones had blown every snuffling grunt we’d heard into those ravenous growls and that bloodcurdling howl. Even right afterward, we’d been laughing at our own fear. Gideon had been limping as we’d crossed the grounds, because between my pulling and his shoving his big body through the gap in the gate, he’d ripped open a deep scratch on his leg. Yet we’d been laughing, giddy with sheer relief, and already teasing each other about who had been the more frightened—with Gideon claiming that the monster had been right on him at the end, and he’d demonstrated the hot feel of its breath against the back of his neck by bending his head and opening his lips against my throat, gently biting the skin there. I’ve never forgotten that. I’ve rarely thought about the rest, though.
Yet approaching the access gate now, my heart is pounding with remembered terror. My gaze scans the woods edging the lane, my heels tapping out a quick rhythm on the asphalt in my hurry to reach the safety behind the wall.
I haven’t grown much since I was fifteen. Turning sideways, I slip through the gap in the bars as easily as I did then.
But I can’t get my rolling suitcase through. I struggle with it until I’m breathless, but the suitcase simply won’t fit through the gap. Even if I unloaded the contents, the rigid frame still wouldn’t pass through.
Just lovely.
But not a real problem. Despite the gray skies, no rain is expected today. And when I reach the manor house, there will either be someone there or there won’t be. If it’s the first, we can come and collect my suitcase. If it’s the latter…well, then I’ll be rolling that suitcase to the village. So perhaps it’s easier to leave it here now instead of hauling it back and forth across the estate grounds—and there’s little fear that it will be stolen, since hardly any traffic comes out this way.
Even if it was taken, the suitcase contains nothing of real value, anyway. I only own one thing that I couldn’t bear to lose, and I wear that around my neck.
The thin gold chain and teardrop diamond pendant was a gift from Gideon on that same birthday. He’d fastened it around my throat moments before he kissed me—and moments after he told me that I’d only be wearing it until we were old enough for him to replace it with a ring, because I was meant to be his.