CHAPTER 7: A Warning in the Dark
1289 Words
Leya breathed deep, she stamped the spasm of fear beneath her in quiet. The notebook was heavy between her fingers, leather wrinkled under her hand pressed against it. She desired the attic desolate of her before person and beast could encounter its door.
She took the journal and floated to the door, hesitant hand around the doorknob so as not to squeak. She jumped at a jump because squeaking back hinges were caught in the quiet of their silent turn. She floated out and closed the door quietly. She floated down creaking wooden stairs silently with no noise whatever through the black mansion halls.
She had to find somewhere where she could sit and read the journal—a spot where they'd never think to search. The servants' block? No, too probable. The library? Too probable. Her mind ran in circles until she recalled one spot that might be beyond their reach.
The greenhouse.
It was towards the house, on the east side of the east wing—unmown and unpicked since Samuel died. Nobody ever went through there.
Leya glided softly through the corridors, her bare feet touching the marble floor. Shadows crept to the periphery of the room and the oppressive stillness, as though the house slept soundly. She edged over to the side door into the garden and stepped outside into it, the cold, sharp bite of the night air on her flesh.
And she pelted more quickly down the cobbles, glancing back over her shoulder again and again, under the weight of unspoken judgment on her shoulders. The glasshouse loomed above her, its grimy, broken panes of windows and sprays of ivy climbing up onto the rooftop.
Leya crossed the creaking sill and stepped in, wet earth and rotting leaves stuffy with their acrid smell. Grime-covered windows let in the moonlight in threads that interbraided bony fingers of darkness on stone. She knelt alongside overturned potting shelves, book open across her lap.
She leaned over in front of the torn piece of paper and the words thereon, following the tear in the paper with her finger. What did Samuel attempt to tell them? Something they do not understand.
She pushed through several pages, muddling through drawings, maps, and meaningless scratchings—location, dates, payments. A record of transactions and affairs and none of these had anything to do with her.
And a second note, scribbled spidery as though Samuel had been interrupted.
"The inheritance is tainted. Don't let L.A. know. Harrison can't interfere—his loyalty is suspect."
Leya's hand trembled. L.A.—she must be a true woman. And inheritance? Whose? Samuel had been rich, anyway, but she hadn't inherited his estate—or not, at least, that she knew.
Footsteps thudding on the other side of the greenhouse made Leya jump. She let the lantern she had borrowed fire from slip from her fingers, falling into the darkness. The beat of her heartbeat against the walls of her ears with footsteps approaching, stumbling and heavy, circling the building.
And a voice, dirty and rotten.
"You'd do well to watch where you're walking, wife."
Harrison.
Leya did not stir, attempting to blend into the air. The door hinge, his black shape and the doorway, face concealed but rolled up very tight, were inside the doorway.
He never came into the room but remained there, his eye slicing through the blackness.
"I know you're in there," he breathed "You're not as silent as you believe."
She was pressed to the stone wall, trying to breathe slowly. His black eye was flashing threat of hunter there, and she could feel cold running through him with satisfaction.
"Slipping off into the night," he was muttering under his breath in a low voice. "Searching where you don't belong."
Leya swallowed hard into the wall, her body tightening. She needed to think—calm down. She still had the diary, and if he was able to take it from her, she'd have no option at all.
"I wonder," Harrison continued, his tone provocatively over a sneer, "what you were looking for. Or maybe that you have something hidden away from me?"
There was a heavy silence between them, and Leya could not endure it. She harrumphed and tried to be harder than she was.
"What are you doing here, Harrison?"
He stalled, there being heavy tension between them. Then he entered, the door closing softly behind him. There was gloom on the floor at his feet as he entered, his slow and heavy step.
"I'd do the same," he growled low in his throat. "Striking, isn't it? A wife out late at night as if she's running from something."
Leya clenched her teeth. "I am not running. I needed some air."
He laughed with a knife edge. "Air. Of course. Is this how they're instructing you to break into vacant houses these days?"
She glared at him, her legs shaking beneath her. "You told me I wasn't here that I was somewhere else. Maybe I'm just trying to figure out why not."
There was a momentary expression on his face—too fast to define. He came in closer to her, and Leya didn't want to move back.
"Cautious is one word, Leya," he jeered, reaching out to sweep the lock of hair from her cheek. His motion was kinder than the venom in his voice. "Especially a place like here."
She recognized the intruding flesh, intruding presence, his closeness given form, intruding into space his touch settling though she had attempted space.
“You’re the one keeping secrets,” she whispered, unable to help the accusation slip out. “Your family’s twisted games—whatever Samuel wanted—it’s all falling apart, isn’t it?”
Harrison’s eyes narrowed, his jaw clenching. “Careful.”
But she couldn’t stop. “I know there’s something you’re not telling me, You’re so determined to hate me that you’re not even seeing what’s really going on.”
For a second, he glared at her as if he would storm—storm, anger, and what else blazed in his eyes. And his arms holding her against the wall.
"Think you've got it all worked out?" he scorned his face against hers, his breath on her skin. "You think I don't see? Your little ceremony—blushing and demure—so I'll let down my guard?"
His fingers were locked on her wrist in a hold that wasn't cruel, his eyes inches from her face where dancing shadows rested.
"Newsflash, Leya," he growled. "I don't trust you. Not a bit. And what you're looking for—doesn't exist."
She wasn't blinking, her eyes burning into his. She said, her voice hard as her eyes, "Perhaps you don't trust me. But you have to learn to distrust people you do."
He felt it burn, that word—some ugly look crossing his face.
His hold on her relaxing her, he leaned forward over her ear, his mouth next to her ear. "Watch me. You don't want to be a target."
And he was gone and running, and she caught her breath and stood there stunned. His eyes swept over her once again and came to rest on the diary protruding behind her.
But something that he did not say to her, besides the fact that he gave her a final cold look before he vanished into the darkness.
The door closed on Leya, and she rested her trembling hand on the frozen surface as she clung to the wall. Whatever Samuel Blackwood's secrets were, they were large enough to bother even Harrison.
And if he was trying to warn her.
That was not the first time that she was not alone in being the target.
- Writer
