“Send me!”
“Hey—both of you.” Alistair raised his voice. “What’s gotten into you?”
I backed up a step. Matthew took off his cap and scrubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, the scar plainly visible from under his cuff. I shook my head, assuring myself I’d be a fool to entertain, even for a second, the notion that Matthew was truly concerned about me. He only wanted me gone. “I’ll be in my room,” I said.
It was hard to believe I was tired, but for once my body overtook my overwrought mind. After I was left alone in my new room, my shredded things piled in a suitcase on the dresser next to me, I sat on the bed and removed my shoes. I lay back, looking at the old oak-paneled ceiling, trying to catch my thoughts and pin them down, but they would not stay still.
I was, in fact, afraid. I knew it was dangerous, that things were starting to spin out of control. I realized now that a wild kind of alchemy had happened that morning between Maddy and me. She had awareness, thoughts, not just rage. Mrs. Clare said I had upset her, but I wondered if it was so simple, if there was not worse to come.
And now there was the man. Matthew was right about that—it wasn’t safe here. If I was logical, I would leave.
But if I was in danger, then so were the others. Lying there on the bed, I decided I would not leave. We had all been through a war, after all. I knew of so many men who had never come home. After that, what was dangerous to any of us anymore?
I must have dozed, for I opened my eyes to see that dusk had fallen. My room was quiet. My mind drifted; my thoughts slowed.
I had just washed my face and brushed my hair—my hairbrush, at least, had not been damaged—when a soft knock sounded on my door. Assuming it to be one of the maids, I opened it.
Matthew Ryder stood there.
He fixed me with his dark gaze. His cap was gone, his hair tousled and damp, as if he had washed. He wore a clean white shirt that glowed a little in the dusk. He seemed huge and uncouth, his shoulders wide, the muscles flexed under the white fabric. His jaw was dark with stubble. I couldn’t move, couldn’t turn away or shut the door to save my life, as my heart jumped in my chest. In the stillness I could hear him breathe.
I tore my gaze downward with an effort and saw that he carried a small bag in one hand. A white cascade of fabric was draped over the other arm.
“I need to come in,” he said simply.
I looked back up at him, shocked. The thought of letting a man in my room was strange enough, but it was a thousand times worse that the man was Matthew Ryder.
He saw my hesitation, and a look of stubbornness that I was coming to recognize settled over his features. “Sarah. Are you going to play the coy maiden with me?”
I shook my head. Stupid, of course, to think that he would come to my room with any designs on me. He was here on an errand, likely one he didn’t particularly want to do. I stepped aside.
He came in the room and set down the small bag. He unfolded the white fabric from his arm. “The landlady gave me this for you.” He handed it to me and I held it up. It was a nightgown—old-fashioned and frilly, perhaps, but well made.
“How good of her,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of what I would sleep in tonight.”
“Do you like it?” When I looked at him in surprise, he added, “She had several. I picked that one.”
I looked back down at the nightgown, its high collar and extravagant sleeves. I’d be swimming in it, but I wasn’t about to say anything ungrateful. I searched for something positive instead. “I won’t be cold.”
Surprise lit his eyes, then a quick, wry humor. The corner of his mouth quirked slowly up in a half smile of genuine amusement. I’d never seen him smile—a true smile, not a cynical grimace—and for a moment it robbed me of breath.
He saw how I looked at him, and the smile faded away. His eyes darkened, and a purpose came into his gaze, raw and serious. My heart thudded. I was irritated with myself; he fascinated me so, despite how he unsettled me, despite how I mistrusted him. I made myself remember that he didn’t like me, that I was angry at him, and I put the nightgown on the bed.
Matthew picked up the bag again. His expression had changed, hardened into what I thought was almost derision, though I could not think why. “Your arms. Where Maddy touched you.”
They stung, even now. “What about them?”
“I’m going to take a look at them. They’re paining you, no?” He raised his eyebrows in a question, his gaze never leaving me. He must have seen me rubbing my arms earlier, though I was surprised he’d noticed. “I would like to see them, please.”
Show him my upper arms? “Matthew, I don’t think—”
“Sarah.” His voice was rough like a cat’s tongue. “Unbutton your dress.”
My mouth opened in shock. “I beg—I beg your pardon?” I couldn’t do it. I had a thin cotton slip beneath my dress, of course—I wasn’t bare. Still, I simply couldn’t.
“Unbutton your dress,” he said again.
He could have left the room to let me prepare, or he could have sent for a true doctor. But of course he had no intention of doing either. I was in his place, in his job, and worse, the other night I had embarrassed him. I hadn’t forgotten the look he had given me when he saw me in the hall.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” I said. “For revenge.”
Surprise flitted again across his features; it seemed I had managed to surprise him twice tonight. He looked down at the bag, as if its contents were suddenly of high import. When he looked back up, the humor had returned to his eyes, touched perhaps with sheepishness. “All right—yes, there is that. I admit it.”
I crossed my arms.
“But you’re still going to do it.”
My mouth opened, then closed. The smile still played at the edges of his lips, but there was no mistaking the seriousness of his voice, or the way his dark eyes regarded me.
He meant to have his little revenge, then, embarrassment for embarrassment. His gaze traveled over me, down my body, to my waist. I felt its appreciative slide like a hand, and I blushed. Something sluggish and warm started in my veins as we looked at each other. I felt it throb slowly over my skin, through my blood. The tips of my breasts tingled as if they were already exposed. I thought of what he had looked like, nearly naked, the thick planes of his muscles, his slim stomach, the powerful flex of his arms. I thought of that brief moment when he had held me as I ran from the barn, his arm roughly about my waist. I knew the feeling that overtook me every time I looked at him was something that could not be undone, put away, sent back to sleep. It was a threshold crossed, and there was no going back.
And suddenly, I wanted to do it. I wanted to do what he said, to surrender. But also, part of me wanted him to see how I felt, what I thought when I looked at him. Part of me wanted him to know.
“Very well, then.” I reached for the buttons on my dress. Before the first button was undone, my hands were shaking and I dropped my gaze, unable to look at his reaction. A girl’s bravery went only so far.
But he had seen my reaction, hadn’t he? He had seen what he thought was disgust on my face at the sight of him. He’d had no choice. Did his revenge also mean I had to look up and see his derisive stare, even his laughter? I fumbled the second button, unsure.
“Sarah,” I heard him say.
“Matthew, I didn’t mean to,” I blurted, still unable to raise my eyes. “It was an accident. I’m sorry.”
He was silent, so I kept going. Finally I tugged the last button from its place.
The fashion of the time was a boyish look; dresses were cut in a straight silhouette, and ideal females—movie stars, fashion models, women in the advertisements—were slender and flat-chested, long-limbed and long-necked. I, like most girls, knew I did not fit the ideal. I was slim enough, but I was of medium height, not tall and willowy; and my breasts, though not unreasonably large, would protrude, no matter what I wore. The flat drapes of the dresses in the stores never sat right on
me, to my frustration, and so I bought workaday shirtwaists and buttoned blouses, to at least cover my embarrassing shape. They were the best I could do, but they were unfashionable, and I wished hopelessly for a body without curves.
As underwear I wore cotton tops reinforced with a second layer of cloth over the breasts, to keep my chest from unsightly motion as I moved. It was modest as a bathing suit. I told myself this as I looked down at the gaping front of my shirtdress.
Get this over with. In a quick motion I pushed the fabric from my shoulders and down my arms. I stood there exposed, my gaze firmly on the floor, thinking of what he could see. The slope of the tops of my breasts. The rounded shape of their curved undersides through the cotton fabric. If he looked closely, the faint suggestion of nipples—or perhaps he would simply imagine that.
I heard him take a small breath—just a quick inhalation—and I cringed in embarrassment. This was revenge indeed.
“Your arms,” he said.
I looked at them and shock hit me, overtaking the humiliation. My upper arms, where Maddy had grasped me, were circled in dark, mottled bruises. Cutting through the purple and black, the flesh had turned grayish and sick, the marrow of where she had touched me as white, as hard, as dead as chalk. A small sound of horror escaped my throat.
Matthew came close, sat on the edge of the dresser, and took my arm at the elbow, angling it in front of him. “My God. Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” I said shakily. “What is it? What’s wrong with me?”
“Damned if I know. Fu—” He glanced at me. “Devil take it,” he finished lamely. He touched the skin gently with a fingertip, ran it lightly over the chalky flesh.
Something strange happened. For a second, the world disappeared. I saw, right before my eyes, green treetops, and, beyond them, a chimney of red brick, protruding from a house I could not see. I blinked and the image was gone.
“Sarah?” said Matthew.
I shook my head. It made no sense, and yet it had been there. “I don’t know,” I said.
He dropped my arm, rifled through his bag, put it down again. “Stupid—to think I have anything to treat this with. What should I do, do you think? Bandage it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Should we call for Alistair?”
Our eyes locked and we looked at each other for a long moment. For the first time, I knew exactly what he was thinking, because his thoughts echoed my own. Really, we should call Alistair. And yet Alistair would want to take notes; Alistair would want to interview me yet again. Worse, Alistair would want to get the camera, claiming we needed to document my bruises before they faded away. It was the right thing to do, and yet—and yet, Alistair would undoubtedly wonder what Matthew was doing alone with me in my bedroom late at night, with my dress at my waist and my nightgown forgotten.
Matthew cleared his throat. “I think I’ll just bandage them.”
I bit my lip and nodded. “Bandage them. Yes. If they’re worse tomorrow, I’ll tell Alistair then.”
“Do you promise?”
I nodded again.
He bent his head to rummage in his bag. His game of humiliation was forgotten now, and he seemed a little ashamed. “I’m not a monster,” he said after a moment, his voice quiet.
I looked at the wall as he unwound the bandages, and thought of the moment I’d seen his scars. “What happened?” I asked.
He followed my train of thought in a pause of silence. Then a low laugh came from him, a deep cynical chuckle. “Some other time, my dear, I’ll tell you a bloodthirsty bedtime story. Not tonight.”
I sighed. Our moment of intimacy was over, it seemed, even though I sat there in my undershirt. Still, I wanted to keep him talking. “Why do you think that man destroyed my room? I have nothing to steal.”
“He wanted to frighten you,” said Matthew.
“Truly? Do you think he—” Matthew touched the bandage to my arm, and again the room disappeared; again I saw that redbrick chimney, just past the treetops, under a gray sky. The vision came clearer this time. I could see the glossy wet leaves, glistening and bobbing gently, and just past them the chimney, its red brick stained to dark rhubarb in the damp. I felt an urgency come over me—there was something about it, about this mundane picture, that was important and just out of my reach. If I looked harder—
“Sarah?”
I came back into my little room at the inn, the dim gaslight, the heavy wood beams. This was getting embarrassing. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”
He looked at me suspiciously, but did not press. “I said turn around. I’m going to do your other arm.”
I did as I was asked, trying to put myself back into our conversation about the man in my room. “Do you think he was trying to make me think it was Maddy?”
“A ghost in your room?” He grunted. “It’s possible. The real question is, why was he trying to scare you off?”
“Because of Maddy.” This answer I knew. I tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “It’s the only answer. I’ve hardly even spoken to anyone here. There’s no reason for anyone to know who I am, let alone wish me ill.”
Matthew’s voice was wry. “You know nothing of small towns, obviously. Sarah, everyone here knows who you are, who we all are, for miles around. I guarantee it.”
I covered my shock. “Why would anyone bother?”
“Why not? What else happens in a place like this? We were already news, but after this morning’s display we’re probably a sensation.”
He reached down and held up the top half of my dress for me to take. “Here. I’m finished.”
I slid it over my shoulders, my self-consciousness forgotten as I thought over what he’d said. “We may all be a sensation, but it was I who went into the barn. And it was my room that was tossed.”
“Exactly.”
But why? Was it possible that someone wanted me to stay away from Maddy? Why, when she was just a ghost that most people didn’t even believe in? What had the man thought he’d find in my room?
I remembered the strange flashes of vision I’d seen. They were so vivid. Could I actually smell the rainy air, or was that my imagination? The burst of longing, of frustration, had been so clear. It may as well have been a written message: There was more to find here.
I turned and looked at Matthew. “I know you want me to go back to London, but I won’t. Not until this is over. I want you to know that.”
I had expected an argument, but he snapped his bag shut and seemed to consider it. “Why should I leave it be?”
“Because there’s more going on. Something important. And I can help you find it.”
“Maybe you can, and maybe you can’t. If—and I mean if—I leave it be for a few days, what exactly do you propose to do?”
“I want to know more about Maddy,” I said.
He crossed his arms and regarded me. “As it happens, so do I.”
Chapter Twelve
The next morning over breakfast, Alistair announced we were going into town. We had to buy new clothes to replace my ruined ones, and since Alistair had agreed to pay, over my objections, he would accompany me. That left Matthew.
“Will you come, then?” Alistair cut the last piece of his sausage and glanced across the table at Matthew. “Or will you stay and try to fix the recording machine?”
Matthew spared not even a single look in my direction. “I can’t fix that thing,” he grumbled. “I’ll come with you and find something to distract myself.”
Alistair looked at him with wry affection. “Not too many pints of distraction, now. It’s not even ten o’clock. We have work to do.”
“Yes, Mother.”
This got a laugh from Alistair. He looked at me, merriment in his eyes. “You see what I have to put up with, Sarah? He’d better watch out—you’re a much more polite assistant, and you’re a hundred times better to look at.”
I smiled back and wondered at these two men, so different and yet so obviously long acquainted. Suddenly, I wa
s curious about how they met. I did not think Matthew would tell me, so I asked Alistair as we walked over the hill toward town, Matthew trailing behind us alone.
“We met in training, if you can believe it,” Alistair replied instantly. “His bunk was next to mine.” He glanced at me. “I don’t suppose, when you look at us, that you think we have much in common. But we did. Matthew likes to get in trouble just as much as I do. And there are lots of ways to get in trouble in the army, especially if you haven’t seen a battle yet.”
I thought this over and decoded it. Alistair was saying they had been different men then. Young men who had never seen war. Men who thought enlisting to fight the Hun would be a lark. I had met other young men in London just like them in those early days, when it seemed as if every girl I knew wanted to set me up with a potential beau. I had been dragged to many parties with strangers, and everywhere one looked at such parties, there were soldiers and more soldiers. At first, the soldiers had shouted patriotic songs and made crude jokes about the Hun. Later, though, there were only men who looked at women with a strange sort of hunger, mixed with a separation of experience that could never be gulfed. Men who had come back shattered shells, if they had come back at all.
I tried to picture Matthew younger, carefree. The picture would not come.
“We even stuck together on the boat to France,” Alistair went on. “But we were in different regiments, so I lost track of him over there. I fought in France and Belgium for three years, until I got shot in my leg. Bullet grazed the vein in my thigh and I almost died—would have, if I’d been standing half an inch to the left.” His expression darkened, but he shrugged. “Still, it got me invalided out for a while to recover. I was sent to a home hospital in Essex. I slept for three days. When I woke up, guess who was in the bed next to mine.”
“Matthew,” I said.
But the good humor had left Alistair’s face. I began to regret that I had broached this topic. “Yes, well. Matthew was in a bad way, much worse than me—that’s all I’ll say. What happened to him is his story to tell, not mine.” He watched as the trees thinned around us on the road, as the small center of Waringstoke came closer. The sunlight dappled in his hair. He had begun to limp with the length of the walk. “They put me back together again, let me recover all the blood I’d lost, gave me a walking stick. Told me I was good enough to go back and fight some more. I was still waiting for the paperwork to come through when the war ended. I’ve always been a lucky bastard.”
The Haunting of Maddy Clare Page 9