They walked down the eastern hall, past the bears and wolves. Dorian walked briskly, pointedly not looking at the heads, but Bella couldn’t help herself from reading the plaques.
“Bearfield. December 1944,” read one plaque under a large brown bear head.
“Outside Quebec. April 1903,” said the plaque under a particularly snarly wolf.
“Arctic island. August 1872,” said the plaque under a massive polar bear’s head. “Wait. 1872? That can’t be right. Your father would have been over a hundred and fifty years old when he died.”
“He would have, wouldn’t he?” Dorian said. “That plaque must be a joke.”
But there were older ones. A wolf from 1841. A bear from 1790. The older ones looked much rougher and ragged. The oldest she saw was a pair of wolf heads on the same plaque dated 1756, but the text was French.
What did it mean? Had they been killed by Octavian’s father? She’d seen no evidence of the man outside of a note on a deed in the folder of financials that recorded his name as “Septimus Winterborn.”
Dorian led her down the hall to the very end. The top floor was much narrower than the bottom ones, essentially being two long rows of rooms, bisected by a hallway. The room they entered was small and plain and positively overflowing with papers and boxes of trinkets. It was like how Bella’s mom used to keep their basement. She’d been a real packrat, hoarding every little scrap of anything useful, waiting for the perfect time to use it. It’d taken Bella and her father a year to sort her things after the cancer took her.
“Is every room like this?” Bella asked.
“They were. Vincent and I managed to clear the western wing but it took longer than I’d hoped. Time is running out, I’m afraid.” He blew dust off the lid of a box. The motes danced in the dim light gracefully before vanishing into darkness or exhausting themselves.
“What are we looking for?”
“That’s an excellent question. The simple answer is: a miracle. We’re looking for a miracle. Some evidence of hidden wealth. Stock certificates. Deeds to properties. Proof of mineral rights on some forgotten gold mine. Anything, really. My father swore there was a fortune in here. Enough wealth so that my family would never go hungry, for ten generations. But if it’s here, then it’s a secret that he’s taken to his grave.”
Dorian showed Bella the system Vincent had been using to catalog all of the goods. Most of it was to be recycled or thrown away, seeing as how it was old newspapers or business communications of the most mundane sort. But every paper needed to be read to make sure, and to look for signs of this hidden wealth. He was patient as he spoke to her, gentle even. There was no sign of the beast that hid within him all morning.
She worked through box after box. It was not unlike being forced to read someone’s email inbox, or their Facebook wall. The letters were shockingly mundane and most were not even from Octavian, but rather from his servants, his business manager, his attorney, or one of his many wives. The to-be-recycled pile grew quickly, while the this-is-important pile stayed nearly empty.
After Dorian was sure Bella understood the task, he left her to it, excusing himself. He had more meetings with advisors that day. Attorneys who had worked with his father, mediums who swore they could communicate with the dead and tell him where the treasure was, and others whose purpose Bella could not even begin to guess. Every so often she would come upon some communication written entirely in cipher—a scribbled code of letters and numbers and symbols. She’d take these to Winterborn at once, interrupting whatever meeting he was in—at his insistence.
She asked Chloe at the first chance she had about the treasure, but she said the ghosts had no idea. Mostly because they were terrified of Octavian Winterborn.
Once, when interrupting Winterborn to bring down one of the ciphered communiques, she found him speaking with a surgeon, a young man with close-cropped white hair and a very worried look on his face. She heard the words “elective amputation” as she entered, but both of the men clammed up in her presence and were silent until she left.
What on earth could that have been about? What would Dorian want amputated?
She worked all morning, then took a quick lunch with Chloe, sitting outside on lawn chairs. Chloe told her all about her boyfriend, who worked as a sous chef at a roadhouse in Bearfield called the Growler. The way she spoke about him—there were parts she left out, things that Chloe almost said but didn’t. They shared some secret—drugs maybe. Or perhaps he was a criminal? It was something that Chloe really couldn’t talk about, and since she talked about everything, it must have been personal. Bella didn’t push for answers, whatever it was. It was simply nice to be outside, to be eating good food and talking with a friend. How long had it been since she’d done that?
She’d seen her father that day, through the window while she was working. He was trimming the outside of the hedge maze and scowling. Every so often he shot a look at the front door. Was he worried about her? Or was he trying to avoid her? It was impossible to tell. She’d never met a more stubborn man.
Agatha joined Chloe and Bella outside for a bit. Now that Bella wasn’t her responsibility, Agatha was much warmer to her. She even revealed the secret flask she kept hidden, tucked against the small of her back, where she nipped from some spicy sweet liquor during the day.
But lunch was over too soon and Chloe returned to work. Bella sorted documents and read until night fell, and did the same the next day, and the day after that, without Winterborn.
THE MONOTONY of the task was broken up only by Winterborn summoning her, which happened with increasing frequency. He needed help with the wording of a letter to one of his brothers’ attorneys. And then he wanted her advice on the response he received and what it meant. The estates belonging to Octavian had been divided amongst twelve of the thirteen sons—one of them had been stricken from the inheritance—but they were not of equal value and so the brothers constantly jockeyed amongst each other, threatening to sue or to give valuables away to charity to prevent the others from getting their hands on anything. They seemed to all dislike each other greatly.
But Winterborn seemed to be taking every opportunity to get her closer to him. His hand brushed hers as they reviewed some odd paper. He leaned against her as she read the newest message from his brothers’ attorneys. It gave every encounter an electric sort of thrill and made her long for his summons while she spent long hours on the upper floor. Unless of course, he meant nothing by it. That was possible, and Bella tortured herself with the idea that the attraction was entirely one-sided. Winterborn—Dorian—was so different from Rodney. Every interaction with Rodney had been loaded with entendres and suggestions and intimations that they were only seconds away from getting dirty in a closet somewhere. It was a flattering kind of attention, but also clumsy in its broadness. Dorian didn’t leer. He didn’t suggest a quick shag to pass their lunch break. There was something in his eyes and something in his touch, but his words suggested nothing.
She couldn’t have been imagining it, could she?
Bella had grown up as an only child and had longed always for a sibling. Seeing the messy, cruel squabbles between Dorian’s brothers made her glad for once that her parents had stopped after only one. Also, she was used to rich people having odd names, but the Winterborn brothers were right up there with the Romneys for bizarre first names. Who names a son Charlemagne? Or Xerxes? Or Napoleon? Though they seemed to go by Charlie, X, and Leon, respectively. Even after her time at the law firm, immersing herself in the concerns of the wealthiest, the Winterborns were a whole new kind of weird.
After a week of work, she completed one room. There were more to go. So many more. Dorian had started her on the smallest and easiest of the remaining rooms. The next had weird objects intermixed with the papers, and he tasked her with finding out their worth, as best she could. This meant calling antiques dealers, discreetly, and so much internet research. She was given use of his laptop and her own phone.
She
hadn’t seen the beast in him since she started on the search. She sought for some way to ask him about it, but every way she imagined led only to him freaking out in a rage, and maybe strangling her. Probably he wouldn’t, but it was possible. Intermixed with the personal documents she’d been sorting was evidence of payouts from Octavian’s estate to other parties. They seemed to be a series of payments designed to keep his name out of the press, or himself out of court. There was evidence of Octavian’s great temper going back as far as 1911, when he’d beaten a chimney sweep so hard with a fireplace poker that he’d broken the boy’s leg. There was another story of him hurling a maid down the stairs. And another of him pummeling a server who spilled coffee on the his sleeve. Each of these accounts was met with official denials and large payments delivered anonymously.
Octavian had been a tyrant, nearly berserk when confronted. Was it any wonder his sons behaved so poorly towards each other?
The objects in the second room proved difficult to identify. Many were priceless antiquities that surely belonged in a museum, not in some dusty disused bedroom. And perhaps if they sold them all, they could clear a portion of the estate’s debt and secure its operating budget for another year or two. But that was a stopgap measure that Dorian refused to hear. Either they saved the estate or they sold it. He refused to squander the family’s goods and implied that if they did sell them, his brothers would demand their share. But at the same time, he needed each candlestick and vase roughly appraised, so as to know the true and total worth of the estate for an eventual buyer.
Bella recognized amongst the antiques the coins that Rodney had been taking. Was this where he’d found them? Or was there another stash? She wanted to go to him, to tell him to stop, but he’d been ignoring her ever since she’d been promoted, giving her little more than a nod when he saw her and leaving the room.
In the ledger, Bella noted every item. At the end of her day she left it on Dorian’s desk to review, took a plate from Chloe in the kitchen, and retired to her room where more often that not she fell asleep without eating. The research was exhausting work. The dust made her eyes burn. And she was working against some pressing deadline that Dorian refused to articulate. Whenever she asked how much time they had to finish the job, he’d only reply “Not much,” or “We need to have an accounting complete yesterday.”
Was it money that made the deadline so urgent? Or his curse? His health was failing. He was growing paler every day and his good hours—his daylight hours—seemed fewer. At night he’d lock himself away in his bedroom on the far side of the house, but still his raving could be heard echoing through the halls. Bella longed to go to him, to comfort him. What if her presence drove away his demon? Didn’t she owe it to him to try? She fantasized about nursing him back to health with her cool hands on his fevered brow, but she couldn’t bring herself to try. It was painful enough to hear him in the grips of his curse. To see him maniacal with rage would break her heart.
ONE MORNING she was awoken from sleep by a pounding on her door. It was a rageful, rapid pounding, like Dorian was trying to hammer a nail with his fist.
“Open this door!” he bellowed. “Open up, thief!”
Bella dressed quickly in a silken robe and opened the door. Dorian pushed past her, the handsome face that she delighted in seeing gone. The monster was back. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“Where are they? Where have you hidden them?” He seized her mattress and flipped it over, then tore out every drawer from her dresser, upending each of them.
Tears sprang to Bella’s eyes. They’d been doing so well together. How could this happen now?
“What are you looking for?” she pleaded.
Dorian spun on her. His golden eyes were nearly black. Veins throbbed in his forehead and neck. His nostrils flared and he walked in a hunched posture, like a great weight was pushing down to the earth. He was more undressed that Bella had ever seen him before. He’d always been in a suit and vest, until now. Now he wore only an undershirt. With his suit pants and bare feet. Deep gouges marked his right arm, livid and pink. He still wore that rusted iron bracelet, but it looked smaller now, tighter against his skin. The flesh under it was red and raw, almost bloody.
“You know,” he said with a sneer. “You know. You know. You know.”
“Dorian, Lord Winterborn, I don’t. I don’t know what you think I stole.”
At the word stole, Winterborn howled with rage and punched his fist right through the wall next to Bella. Drywall and plaster and chips of wood pelted her in a small explosion.
“The coins, thief. Where are my father’s coins? You wrote thirty-seven in the ledger, but you must not have known that I double-checked your work every morning. Did you now, eh? I went and counted them, and this morning there are only twelve. Do you know how old those coins are? How long my father held onto them? A single one of them could pay off your law school debt. But you had to steal more, didn’t you? This isn’t the first time I’ve seen things go missing. I assumed it was my mind, before, or possibly Vincent. But it was you, wasn’t it?”
Bella fought to keep recognition off her face. She knew that if Dorian saw that she knew something it’d be over for her. It must have been Rodney. With his key, he must have lifted them. Had he planned for her to get caught, was that Rodney’s plan? Was that why he’d been so cold to her lately?
Should she tell Dorian? She could, she could say Rodney’s name and let Winterborn do with him whatever he wanted. It wasn’t her fault he’d been stealing, why should she take the blame? But no, if Dorian found out his trusted manservant had betrayedhim, he would be unstoppable. She couldn’t give Rodney up.
“I didn’t steal anything,” Bella said. “Nothing at all.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Dorian roared. He seized a small statuette of a phoenix from a bedside table and hurled it through the window, shattering the glass. “Never lie to me. There’s nothing I detest more than lies.” The depositions of Octavian’s victims flashed through her mind. The way they described him, the rages he exhibited, she was seeing it now in his son.
“I didn’t steal anything,” Bella said, calmly and clearly. She stood absolutely still as Winterborn grew increasingly violent. He shattered the dresser with his fists. He punched another hole in the wall. He broke everything breakable within reach, including her new phone.
“Go,” he growled. “Get out of here.”
“Am I fired?”
“Did I say you were fired? Oh, no. You still have debts to pay off. You still must be useful. No. Go back to the library. You are banished from this home for a week and a day.”
Bella did not hesitate. She grabbed her hoodie and sneakers off the floor and ran out of the room, her silk robe flapping around her legs. She ran all the way across the grounds to the library, to her old room, and hid there until night fell.
Her father came to her later that night. He was bringing back a book, ostensibly. But he paused before he shelved it. “You know, my whole life I’ve been a reader. My mother was, too. But I’ve always been of the opinion that nonfiction was superior to fiction. Novels seemed so frivolous. Such a waste of time. But I saw how you read them, how you fell into them. And I thought I’d give them a try. I thought maybe if I read some, I’d understand—never mind. This Jane Austen, she’s quite the writer.”
“Yeah, Dad. I’ve been trying to get you to read her for like twenty years.”
Franklin Hart nodded. Something was wrong. “But imagine my surprise when I opened the book, and this fell out.” He held up one of the hundred dollar bills Rodney had given her. She’d hidden them in Austen, thinking it was the last place her father would look. “And then I hear from my employer that he’s caught you stealing rare coins.”
“Dad, wait. No, that isn’t what—”
“How could you do this to me? This place, this estate, it’s my life!” He hung his head. “You can stay here as long as you need to, I refuse to be the cause of anyone’s homeless
ness. But please, don’t speak to me for a while.”
CHAPTER 6
T he world was darkness.
Bella didn’t realize how lonely she’d been until she’d had friends again and had them yanked away. Chloe, for all her spookiness, had been a friend, and now Bella was forbidden to see her. Working with Dorian so closely, and without incident, she’d been able to fool herself into thinking they were becoming closer. But the curse ruined that. How could she love a man who turned into a monster so easily? Even Agatha and Rodney, two of the more infuriating people she’d ever met. She had a fondness for them born out of a shared burden.
But now, she had nothing. She was banned from the big house. Her father wouldn’t speak to her and wouldn’t let her explain that she had nothing to do with stealing the gold. Well, almost nothing to do with it. She had technically aided and abetted Rodney.
Bella was too angry to read and too sad to leave. She felt a great rage at all the men in her life who misjudged her, who blamed her for their own faults, or who saw her only as an object to be toyed with. She should have called someone. Reached out to old friends on Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat. She should have done something. Instead she stewed, marinated in her own dark feelings for days on end.
She was in a prison, she realized. There were no bars, but her circumstances held her just as tightly. The only way forward for her, Bella knew, was to leave. She couldn’t place herself in a position where some mercurial, moody man had such great power over her. So she packed up all of her things that she could easily carry into a shopping bag and walked out the front door. She’d hike down the mountain. She’d stick to the main road and hitchhike to Bearfield, and from there to anywhere else.
Chained: Reckless Desires (Dragon's Heart Book 1) Page 8