by Geneva Lee
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. He paused before taking a large gulp of Scotch. “And how are you connected to her?”
“I knew her first,” I said. I didn’t need to explain the makeshift family tree that branched around the Royal family. It wasn’t a tree, so much as a tangle of vines. Invasive. Growing up and around as it pleased, strangling the lives out of some of its members, twisting around others, and caging the rest of us. An outsider simply wouldn’t understand.
“And you have the same clearance?” Longborn said when I didn’t continue.
“I do. I’m sure I can have someone call to prove it.” For a moment, I considered asking Alexander to do just that. I would never have another problem with Longborn or the local officers if the king called to vouch for me. It was the kind of thing that would impress average men leading ordinary lives. Alexander did owe me one. He owed me a few. But I couldn’t stomach the idea of using my connections to deal with this.
“I’ll find it,” Longborn said. “I’m afraid we're behind the times. Really, it’s more of a hassle than anything.”
I suddenly understood part of his hesitance. I was asking a man to do his job when he rarely had to rise to the occasion to do so. Most of his time was probably spent checking in on the local shops, responding to petty disturbances called in by old ladies, and meeting with the local town council. He didn’t have to deal with bones and closed files and subsequent investigations into the matter by people associated with the Crown.
“I would appreciate it. But what does the age of the bones tell you?” I didn’t want to forget to address it.
“There are always stories about houses this old. It’s hard to know which ones are true. Most of them have been blown up over the years. They’re old wives tales and stories we tell our kids on chilly nights to give them a good scare.” Longborn stared into his class before lifting his eyes. “But sometimes stories are true. The trick is knowing fact from fiction.”
"The bones change the story,” I guessed in a quiet voice.
“Perhaps,” he admitted, heaving a sigh. “I don’t know if there’s a point to dragging up old crimes.”
“It depends on the crime,” I said.
“Will you feel that way if I have to tear apart your cellar?” he asked. “I can speak with the town council, reopen old investigations into disappearances around the estate.”
“Disappearances?” This was only getting worse.
The last thing I wanted was to dredge up bad history. Now wasn’t the time. I needed to focus on my wife and my family. But couldn’t I just ignore what we’d found. “I’d like the file. I’ll have my people look into it. I don’t think there’s cause to bring the town council into things.”
Longborn smiled in understanding. He paused, his mouth opening but hesitated before he spoke.
“Unless that’s a problem,” I said, hoping to prompt him to share what was on his mind.
“Far be it for me, to tell a man how to run his home,” he started, and I got the sense he was about to do just that, “but sometimes the past is better left in the past.”
I often thought the same thing. But every time I tried to move forward, it seemed the past stuck it’s rotting hands out of the earth and dragged me back down to hell. Maybe there were no answers to be found where Thornham was concerned. Maybe I needed to remind myself that I’d never escape my own sins until I learned to let go of the past.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I promised him. I didn’t know what I was going to do when those files arrived or what they would contain. Maybe it would be best to simply pass them to Georgia and have her look into the matter. She had the benefit of distance where things were concerned.
I showed Longborn to the door. He paused at the entrance, taking his hat off the hook next to it and popping it on his head. “Thank you for the Scotch. Call me if you find any other strange discoveries.”
"Should I expect to?” I asked him, puzzled over why he would bring that up.
“I imagine this house has more secrets inside it,” he said simply. “Congratulations on your new baby. Give your wife my best. And Mr. Price, if you don’t mind me saying so, keep an eye on them.”
"I will.”
He tipped his hat one more time before shoving his hands in his pockets and defending the steps towards an old Renault parked in the circle drive. My gaze followed behind him, wondering if his final words were simply good natured advice or a warning.
I shut the door behind him, my fingers glancing over the lock. It was the middle of the day. Humphrey and Mrs. Winters and Rowan would all be coming and going. I wasn’t in London anymore where locking your door was second nature. There was no reason to need locked doors in a house this size, but Longborn’s words lingered in the air around me. I drew my hand back, deciding that it was ridiculous to lock the door in the middle of the afternoon. Then, I went to look for Belle.
I found Nora with Penny in the nursery, rocking her softly. Daylight streamed around her, casting a shimmering glow. She looked up at me and smiled. I returned it and edged quietly out of the room. I appreciated having her here to help. I just couldn’t quite get used to finding her with the baby. That would take time. A quick search of the bedroom yielded no results. I finally found Belle sitting behind my desk, chair turned to face the window overlooking the grounds.
"Waiting for me, beautiful?” I asked, repeating how she greeted me earlier.
She didn’t respond, and I walked into the office toward her. As I reached the desk, I realized its doors were open, a number of items strewn across the top of it, including my father’s gun. It took me a moment to process what I was seeing. “Were you looking for something?”
"Not exactly.”
I picked up the gun and placed it in the back of the center drawer. Then I did the same for a few files. My hands shook a little, rocked by finding her here with a gun so close by, even if it wasn’t loaded. I couldn’t shake the feeling she had been rummaging through my drawers for a reason.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Whatever you’re hiding,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Hiding?” I had nothing to hide from Belle. My life was an open book to her. If only I could say the same about her. “I’m not hiding anything from you, beautiful.”
I waited for her to respond.
“qHey, I mean it.” I spun the leather chair around to discover her clutching a familiar frame in her hands.
“You weren’t hiding this?” she asked, her lower lip trembling.
I should have tossed the photograph of Margot the day I found it. “I don’t know how that got here,” I said honestly. “I put it in a box.”
“It was in your desk drawer,” she said quietly.
I shook my head. That couldn’t be right. I put it in the box myself. “It was,” I admitted. “I’m not sure why you put it there. When I saw it, I threw it in an empty box to toss it.”
“I didn’t put it there,” she said, her voice pitching up an octave. “I just found it there.”
“I don’t mean today.” I had no idea how the photograph had gotten out of the box back into my desk drawer. “When you are unpacking, you must’ve put it in the drawer.”
“Why would I put a picture of your dead wife there?” Belle snapped.
“Why would you do anything?” I asked, losing my cool. Instantly, I regretted it. If Belle had been hurt before, now she was livid. She threw the photograph on the desk with such force the glass cracked, splintering around Margot’s smile. “Oops. Sorry.”
I ignored the edge of challenge in her voice. She wasn’t the least bit sorry. Not that I cared about the damn photograph. “It should never have gotten here in the first place. I didn’t realize I still have it. I’m sorry you found it.”
“The first time or this time?” She pushed up from the chair, backing away from me as she shook her head. “I’m not crazy, Smith. I didn’t put that in your drawer.”
“You were the only one unpacking in here,” I
said. It didn’t make any sense.
“I put a few books on the shelf.” She crossed her arms over her chest protectively. “Your pens in your desk. I looked past the gun I found there. But I had nothing to do with your fucking photo. I won’t make a mistake of digging into your secrets anymore, though. I wouldn’t want you to have to be honest with me.”
“Honest? Where is this coming from? I don’t have anything to hide from you.”
“How did you know I was coming home?” She leveled her blue eyes at me, and I knew I was caught. “I know you didn’t see us coming up the drive.”
It had been a bad lie, and I knew it at the time. If I had seen them, I would’ve stayed outside and helped her carry the baby in. Instead, she found me, shoes off, at the door. But being honest with her about that undermined my arrangement with Nora.
"Fine.” She threw her hands in the air when I didn’t confess. “Don’t tell me. But don’t tell me that you have no secrets either. You’re keeping something from me.”
She stormed out of the room, leaving me to stare after her. I didn’t have secrets from my wife.
But—I did.
I didn’t regret asking Nora to give me updates, especially given that Belle had resisted opening up to me herself. She hadn’t been honest with me about that day at the restaurant. I’d given her plenty of time to tell me. I could live with the intention of those lies. But what about Longborn and the bones? Belle didn’t want to be at Thornham. That much was clear. But I wasn’t certain our problems could be solved by going back to London. And, try as I might, I couldn’t forget the sinister gift she’d received at her baby shower. No one had claimed responsibility for that. There’d been no follow-up. All I could do was understand the message as it was intended when it was sent. In London we were so tangled in the royal family’s vines, that the dangerous weeds that grew into them, bastardizing them even more, could always reach us. As long as we stayed there in Alexander and Clara’s orbit, we would never be free of our pasts. We would never make our own choices. We would always be in danger for standing by the ones we loved. I owed more to Belle and Penny than a life like that. It’s why I couldn’t tell her about the bones. Not until I’d seen the file and what was inside it. Maybe everything had been blown out of proportion. The bones were decades old, he said. But that could be twenty years or ninety years. That made a difference. There was no point upsetting her further until I knew more, not while I couldn’t seem to reach her at even the most basic levels.
That was the real problem. I’d lost my grip on Belle before, watching her slip away from me after she lost our first child to miscarriage. I hadn’t been enough to comfort her then. Now? I was losing her once more. I didn’t want to. I just didn’t know how to reach her.
I glanced at the shattered picture of Margot and shook my head. Reaching for it, I threw it across the room. It hit the wall, the already broken glass tinkling to the ground as the frame cracking into two separate pieces.
Was it even possible to learn from past mistakes? I thought we had everything. Too much, even. We’d had to decide what we wanted. That’s how we’d wound up here in the country with Penny. But somewhere along the line I’d made the wrong decision. I’d calculated based on certain assumptions, and now I needed to backtrack until I figured out where I’d gone wrong. I only knew one thing: I had to reach Belle before it was too late.
I couldn’t wait any longer.
My feet carried me in the direction she left. Somehow, I knew I wouldn’t find her in the nursery. It broke my heart to see her struggle with Penny. I needed to remind her that she was enough. More than that she was everything. When I walked into the bedroom, she didn’t look up from where she sat at the edge of the bed.
I sat next to her, running my hands down her arms as I leaned to kiss her shoulder. Belle turned in to me, without a word. I cupped her chin with my palm and brought her lips to mine. We needed to find our way back to each other. She had to feel the same.
Hooking my arm around her, I guided her onto her back.
“I want you,” I told her, moving to stand between her legs. I drew off her pants and her eyes shuddered to a close.
Her legs butterflied open as I yanked my dick out. We didn’t have all the answers, but we had this. We had each other. I thrust inside her, earning a soft grunt. It had been too long since I felt my wife. Belle grabbed the edge of the bed as I urged her legs up to coil around my waist.
But I needed more. I needed to feel her, kiss her. I needed my skin on her skin. My lips on her lips.
I withdrew and her legs closed ever so briefly as I pushed her up on the bed. They opened again as I climbed over her and joined her again. I rocked slowly inside her, wanting to reawaken this part of our love gently. We’d begun our relationship violently, taking with a hunger that had turned to obsession. Now we had the rest of our lives to enjoy one another. I wanted to savor that.
“You feel amazing,” I murmured, lowering my mouth to kiss her.
She accepted my lips, but she didn’t respond. I pulled back, holding my body over her with one arm and bringing my finger to trace her face.
“Is this okay? We can go slower.”
Belle arched up and kissed me again, but there was nothing passionate about it. It was mechanical and forced and I found myself slowing down as I tried to understand. Maybe gently wasn’t the way to bring us back together. I increased my pace, hammering against her and calling her to me.
“Come for me,” I urged. “Show me.”
Her eyes opened and the flash of blue released me, but as I emptied inside her, it wasn’t Belle staring back at me. But where she should be, there was nothing but a hollow void.
I rolled off her, reaching to hold her but she turned away and made herself small, tugging her knees to her chest. I felt sick. My fingers brushed her shoulder.
“I love you.”
There was no response.
I stayed like that until I was certain she was asleep. It was all I could. I wasn’t even sure she wanted me there, at all.
I went back to my office, defeated, knowing exactly what I had to do. I dialed Edward’s number, uncertain he would answer. He’d gone to even greater lengths than me to separate himself from the Royals. He answered on the third ring.
“She needs you,” I said.
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s lost, and I can’t find her.” I sank into the chair, burying my face in my hand. “I’m scared there won’t be anything left of her to find soon.”
There was a pause. He had a decision to make. But we both knew there was no real choice. “I’ll be there as soon as I can get a flight.”
I hung up with him, hoping that whenever that was, it wouldn’t be too late.
21
Smith
We had barely spoken over the past three days. At night, Belle turned away from me in bed. Thornham also had a fatal flaw that I hadn’t foreseen until then. It was easy to hide on the estate’s sprawling grounds. It seemed I was constantly just missing Belle. I’d grown tired of Nora’s sympathetic smiles when she told me that Belle had gone out for a walk or Mrs. Winters pursed lips as she shook her head every time I asked if she’d seen my wife.
“Lost her again?” she said with disapproval, shaking her head and turning back to the shepherd’s pie she was making for dinner.
My frustration had shifted into uneasy guilt. For the first time, I found myself questioning my intimate relationship with my wife. When I looked back on the other night, I no longer saw it as me trying to reach her, but as a man being too arrogant to realize he wasn’t wanted. Was that why she had been so distant? Was that why looking into her eyes had felt like staring into the bottomless depths of the ocean?
I missed my wife. I loved my wife. I just didn’t know how to find her.
“We’re going to have a guest at dinner,” I told Mrs. Winters. She huffed, beginning to complain under her breath about not getting any warning as she continued preparing the evening meal. I l
eft her there, still muttering. I felt somehow that without complaining, she wouldn’t know what to do with her time. Every night she made enough food for an army. Belle hardly ate anything these days, picking at her plate like a bird. We always had leftovers. The most trouble she would have to go to was to add a seat at the newly arrived dining table.
I gave up trying to find Belle. My wife could hide from me. I would let her if that’s what she needed to do to process this. Something told me that she’d be coming to me sooner rather than later, though.
That afternoon after consulting with Rowan about the project in the back, I decided to grab a quick shower before driving into town to pick up Penny’s Christmas present. I stepped into the shower, turning on the water to rinse off the dirt from outdoors. One thing I hadn’t counted on when we moved to the country was how much goddamn labor it would take to get the place up to scratch. I leaned forward planting my palms against the tiled wall and let the hot water run down my sore neck and shoulders. I’d kept in shape in London, lifting weights and running, but exercise meant to offset the city lifestyle hadn’t prepared me for the rigors of manual labor. Honestly, it felt good. Building something with my hands, making this home for my family? It was one of the most fulfilling things I’d ever done, even if it hurt like a bitch.
As good as it felt, I didn’t have much time if I was going to make it into the village before dark. The days had grown shorter as Christmas drew nearer. Each morning, I woke expecting to find snow, but nothing had fallen yet. Instead, by the time four in the afternoon rolled around, the sky began to darken. In the country, the darkness was so heavy it felt like you could slice through it with a knife.
I shampooed my hair quickly and rinsed. As I turned off the water, I heard footsteps on the tile.
Despite everything, marriage had turned me into an optimist because I couldn’t keep myself from calling out to Belle as I rubbed my face dry with a towel, “You’re too late, beautiful. But I could be convinced to turn the shower back on if you want to join me.”