Lost Among the Living(72)

“What is it?”

“You need to leave.”

He pulled the stocking from my foot. We were silent for a long moment. I could hear the soft sound of his breathing.

“You mean it, don’t you?” he said in a whisper.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying not to notice that my hands were cold with fear. “I’m exhausted. I can’t even think straight.”

Still he sat looking at me, his fingers curled around the back of my bare ankle. He did not take his eyes from my face. He had such a gift for stillness, my husband did, such utter control of every nerve and muscle. He watched me for a long moment, his expression impossible to read. It was this stillness, I saw now, this ability to be silent and the endless patience to wait, that had made him such a good spy.

Without a word, he set my foot down on the coverlet and rose from his chair.

“Get some sleep,” he said. A moment later, the door clicked softly shut behind him.

I was trembling. The skin of my legs still burned where he’d touched me. I reached out and switched off the lamp, then lay on top of the coverlet, still in my dress. I wondered briefly if the maids had made up another room for him. If they’d talk of us the way they talked of Dottie and Robert belowstairs. They sleep separate.

But he had only told me to get some sleep. He had not said good night. And Alex never said anything without meaning.

I curled into a ball and closed my eyes.





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE



It was dark when I awoke, and I was in bed with Alex, and I had been dreaming.

I blinked against the blackness, and at first, as the dream vanished from my memory like cobwebs, I did not fully grasp that Alex was against my back, his arm slung around my waist. I jerked and rolled over in surprise.

I was still wearing the silk peacock dress, still lying on top of the coverlet. Alex, too, was lying on the coverlet, fully dressed in his white shirt and trousers; he must have been sleeping, though now he was awake, his head lifted from the pillow, his body tense. His hand squeezed my hip, and I realized he’d awoken me. He whispered my name.

“What is it?” I whispered back.

“I heard something,” he said. “I thought—there it is again.”

From the woods outside, far off in the trees, came the lonely sound of a howl. It rose, echoing, spiraling upward, and then it subsided again. The tone was so eerie, so despairing, it could have come from a human throat.

“What the devil,” Alex hissed as it growled into silence.

I was afraid—there was no way not to be when that howl pierced the air—but exhilaration pulsed through me at the same time. “It’s Princer,” I said. “You can hear him?”

Alex looked down at me. “What did you just say?”

“She calls him,” I said. “She whistles when she wants him to come. But I thought I was the only one. You mean you actually heard it?”

He frowned at me, but all I could feel was a wild whoop of triumph. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one who could hear these things, see them. If I could show him the leaves—if he could see—

“Jo,” Alex said softly, “what are you talking about? Who calls him?”

“Frances,” I replied. “She doesn’t do it often—I’ve only seen it the once. The other times, it’s just Frances, watching me.”

The mention of Frances’s name seemed to shock him, and I watched his expression flicker as he got it under control. Perhaps, I thought, he can hear Princer because he killed Princer’s mistress. But that didn’t explain why I could hear him, too.

“You’re saying that Frances is—” Alex’s tone turned from shocked to incredulous. “You’re saying she haunts this place?”

“She’s lonely,” I said. I had to make him understand. “She wants to communicate. I thought it was just me—it’s only me who has seen her. But you just heard her dog.”

Alex frowned and focused on the window again. I watched him closely in the moonlight, his flawless profile, the perfect fearlessness of his posture. I studied him for signs of guilt, but I realized I didn’t know what guilt looked like on Alex, not anymore.

“It seems to have stopped,” he said after a moment. He turned, the moonlight no longer tracing his profile. Then he blinked, and seemed to see me, my shoulders bare, my hair lying across the pillow. “Come closer,” he said. “It’s cold.”

I felt myself go stiff as the triumph left me and I remembered where I was. “What are you doing?” I asked him.

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t invite you into bed with me. In fact, I asked you to leave. There are plenty of bedrooms in this house, you know. A dozen of them.”

“They’re all full because of the party.”

“Then you should be sleeping on a sofa.”

His gaze narrowed on me. “I’ll abide by your rule,” he said, “but if you think I’m sleeping anywhere else, think again.”

“And that’s it?” I asked, exasperated. “You’re just going to sleep in your clothes every night for the rest of your life?”

He raised an eyebrow, and in the dark I felt my cheeks flush hot. “And if I find myself another bed?” I asked.