His frown worsened.
But she wasn’t his life coach. She cupped a yellow rose and inhaled. Its scent eluded her.
“Try this one.” He pulled out his pocketknife, flicking it open in a practiced, unthinking move and cutting the stem. He presented the red rose to her.
She looked around for outraged gardeners to descend on them. “Will you be in trouble?”
“Glen, the head gardener, doesn’t work weekends.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
He snapped off a piece of lavender, running it through his fingers.
Abruptly, the heady fragrance of the wine-red rose lost its allure as she imagined his fingers running over her. “Gosh, it’s warm.”
The clouds chose that moment to cover the sun.
Nick looked at her, puzzled.
She saw the moment when he recognized her awareness of him. She was flushed with wanting him.
He dropped the lavender stalk and took the rose from her, but he didn’t toss it aside. He touched the satin-soft petals to her cheek, her lips and down her throat to the tender hollow above her collarbones. “I wonder how many seductions this old garden has seen.” He stroked the petals gently, barely moving them.
Thrilling her. “Roses and romance, they go together.”
“Shouldn’t there be moonlight, too?”
The question was whimsical, but it reminded Lanie that they could be seen from the house and from the studios in the converted stable block.
She sighed and took the rose back from him. “For privacy, yes. The night keeps its secrets.”
He grimaced and glanced at the house, catching her meaning. “Waterhill keeps its secrets, too.”
Impulsively, she clasped his hand. “What is it like, living with all this history?” She waved the rose, gesturing to include the house, all it contained, and the estate.
“Weird. Maybe it would be different if I’d grown up here, and not in a flat in Southampton. Maybe I’d take it more for granted.” He paused. “No. Dad doesn’t take it for granted. It’s a responsibility.”
“And a joy?”
He stared out, across the rose garden to the lake. “I’m proud of it,” he said slowly. “I’ve not earned my inheritance or contributed to it, but I like how true Waterhill is to itself. It endures as fashions and wars and fears change.” His gaze returned to her. “The weight of history at Waterhill has a paradoxical effect. It forces you to think of the future, of how to conserve what is here without turning it into a museum—no offence.”
“None taken. I get what you mean.” And she did. She also saw the passion in him, that he kept tightly controlled. He cared. It was the same passion that had driven his mum to environmental protest action and which had found a cord in his dad. He was the child of people who felt responsible for what they passed on. She leaned into his shoulder. “Waterhill needs to be alive, not pickled in time. Mrs. Smith would like that for the museum, but you can’t really fake someone living there. It’s more like a theatre set.”
Across the stable yard, in the old buildings, people could be seen behind the windows moving about. They were new life at Waterhill, new ways of living and supporting the community.
“Gardens teach us how to keep things alive,” he said. “There is life, struggle, death, disease, and beauty, renewal and reward. There are surprises. Secrets. Few people can live as we do at Waterhill. Few will ever even visit such a place.”
“But roof gardens and land reclamation projects are possible for everyone, for city dwellers and the desperately poor.” She was touched, open and vulnerable, because he’d just shared the secret of his heart with her.
He smiled down at her. “In an ideal world.”
“In the one you’re working towards.”
He kissed her quickly, lightly, and released her. “Yes.”
Chapter 10
Nick felt buoyant. He hadn’t expected to. Usually, Waterhill meant a visit heavy with emotion and awkwardness; a reminder that he belonged, and yet, didn’t. But being with Lanie, she’d drawn truth out of him, and the rightness of it settled his soul.
She was a miracle worker. She’d eased a conflict in him, brought out explicitly the tie between his heritage and his career. More than that, he saw how his mum would have approved the effect of Waterhill on him.
He hadn’t withdrawn into wealth and privilege, and raised the drawbridge. He wasn’t a charity worker or a do-gooder, but he was using his gifts to build something for others.
So he kissed Lanie, and her lips were softer than rose petals, warmer and promising passion.
“I should have taken you on a tour of the house. At least in one of the rooms we’d have found some privacy.”
Her smile sparkled, her cheeks creasing into not-quite dimples. “There must be privacy somewhere in the gardens.”
He glanced at her black and white dress. “You’ll show grass stains.”
She laughed.
“Not funny.” But he knew he’d given away the direction of his thoughts, and he grinned. She hadn’t objected to his hopes.
He relaxed in the sunshine. Away, over the open parkland, a lark soared on the air and the faint sound of its bubbling song carried to them.
Lanie sat on the plinth of a marble statue of the Three Graces, inhaling the scent of the roses and closing her eyes in sensual enjoyment.
She was such an astute observer of people and fitted herself so easily and unobtrusively into a scene, that it was easy to overlook how little of herself she shared.
He didn’t resent the secrets she’d learned of him, today. He believed her that Chloe had been unstoppable in her need to share his story. Chloe fretted over long-gone history. But if Lanie had learned him—and she’d shown she had—he deserved to know more of her.
Driving down in the car, she’d been more than surprised or embarrassed that he hadn’t searched out her history online. She’d been shocked.
What had she thought he knew about her?
He could do the search, but that was cowardly and wrong. Cheating, when she sat in front of him. “Lanie, what would I find if I searched your name?”
Her eyes stayed closed a moment, even as her body froze. She didn’t stiffen or show tension; other than that stillness.
Then her eyes opened and their clear light brown color had lost its warmth. They were the eyes of someone who saw ghosts.
It chilled him, as if his question had stolen the sun from the day. “Is it that bad?” he asked involuntarily.
She dropped her hands to her lap, the rose clasped between them. Its crimson color was stark against the black and white stripes of her dress. “Yes, it’s bad.”
If it was scandal or gossip, it was painful. If it was worse…
“We’re expected for afternoon tea, so I’ll give you the short version. You can question me in the car on the way home.”
“Lanie.” He’d have stopped her, but she shook her head. He tried to insist. “Tell me later.”
Instead, stark words jerked out of her. “I was kidnapped by a serial killer.”
“What?” Impossible.
“You must have been out of the country. Busy. It was in all the news. Scott Purvis had killed before. Then he killed his wife. It obsessed him. I was…I told you my family are theatre people, mostly. I had a part in the show where I pretended to be a medium, and then, I’d reveal how the trick was done. People are easy to manipulate.”
He struggled, but could find no response. His outrage and sympathy were locked up in shock.
She shrugged one shoulder. Rather than dismissal, the gesture suggested discomfort. “When people attend our shows, they expect to be entertained, misdirected and shown magic. It puts them in a frame of mind that makes the manipulation easier. Fortunately, Purvis was in a similar state. When he kidnapped me, he wanted to know if his wife was there, watching him. He was desperate to know. Then he’d kill me. I…played on his fears and superstition, and he killed himself. I got free, got out, and it was a
media frenzy.”
If he’d thought he could be distant from people, he had nothing on Lanie. In telling her story, it was as if she’d withdrawn to another galaxy. Her voice was uninflected. She could have been reading a police statement.
He reached out and pulled her up and into his arms, prepared for the way her rigid body bounced off him. He held her tight. “Congratulations on surviving.”
The odd words were the right ones.
Her resistance, her distance, crumpled. She leaned into him.
He adjusted his hold, cradling her, keyed up with the need to protect her and only able to wait until her arms crept up to hug him. Then the tight battle-readiness in him relaxed. She wasn’t shutting him out.
They stood in silence.
A robin alighted on a white hybrid rose, bending a stem so that the white rosebud, tightly furled, dipped and swayed.
Lanie was right. This couldn’t be discussed before afternoon tea. This was a discussion she had to choose the time and place for.
He held her till she wriggled, and even then, he only allowed a fraction of space between them. “We can make our excuses. We don’t need to have afternoon tea?”
Lanie loved the concern in Nick’s eyes.
Ordinarily dark, they were now almost black as he stared at her, assessing her state of mind and wanting the best for her.
A startling sense of peace stole through her. No, not peace. That was too tranquil. She felt triumphant that Purvis hadn’t stolen this from her, as well.
Nick’s arms were strong around her and his body solid, taking her weight. She had told him her truth and he hadn’t flinched, he hadn’t recoiled in horror. He’d reached for her.
He had given her what she needed.
She knew her family and friends loved her, but after she’d escaped from Purvis, their love hadn’t been an unmixed gift. In amongst what they gave her—love, support, being there—they’d also needed things from her. Their love had needed reassurance, their worry had to be endured, expressed as it was in fussing, and always, they had watched her, waiting for her to break down.
But she wouldn’t break. She refused to. She might hang on by a thread, but her grip was solid.
And that was what Nick recognized. Congratulations on surviving.
She smiled lopsidedly. “I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.” And even as she said it, she knew it was the right choice. For her, for him, and for Chloe.
Chloe would take their avoidance of afternoon tea personally.
Nick stared at her a moment longer before nodding. He turned her around, towards the house, and kept an arm around her shoulders.
It was similar to the care Richard had for Chloe.
Lanie’s skirt brushed a rosemary bush. The sun-warmed scent of the low rosemary hedge surrounded them with an herbal aromatic tang, like a cloud of engulfing incense. And then they were past it and walking into the house, and its smell of stone and polish, age and pot pourri closed in.
The house had held its humans through worse than what she’d endured, through wars, plague and treachery.
She smiled at Nick. “I like your home.”
His arm tightened around her and he didn’t repudiate her use of the word home. “Afternoon tea will be in the drawing room.”
They drove back to London in a reflective mood. At least, Lanie was reflective, turning over what she’d learned of Nick today, and her own emotions.
His thoughts were a mystery to her. Always reserved, he seemed focused on the traffic. It could be a ploy to shut her out.
Alternatively, being Nick, he was simply waiting politely for her to expand on her afternoon confessions.
She waited for the feeling of crushing dread that being asked to speak of the ordeal normally brought, but instead, her flinch felt habitual rather than real.
But perhaps her flinch had been noticeable, because Nick broke the silence. “I’ll read the newspaper reports of Purvis. You don’t have to tell me about it.”
“It was a crazy time,” Lanie said, with understatement. “Until I escaped him, Purvis hadn’t been suspected of anything. He was a plumber. Ordinary, everyone called him, later.” She folded her arms, rubbing them as they goose-pimpled. Purvis hadn’t seemed ordinary to her. “If he could have, he would have reached through me to kill his wife all over again. He believed I was a medium, but I don’t think even he knew if he hoped or feared that his victims could still see him.”
She watched the traffic, and sank into the steady speed Nick maintained. “Traffic is almost hypnotic. You focus on it and you let go of your surface thoughts, you sink deeper.”
He followed her off-topic. “Was hypnotism part of your stage act?”
“Not mine. It’s Dad’s trick. Only it’s not a trick. He’s careful who he puts under and what he allows them to do. He has a degree in psychology. Both sides of my family have been theatre people for generations. There are things we’re taught from childhood. How to read people is one of them. Dad then backed it up with study.” Silence for a mile. “It saved me. Not hypnotism, but a magician’s tricks of mind control.”
Nick passed a lorry then swung back into the slow lane. Giving her time.
“I used those tricks to save my life, and then, I couldn’t use them lightly. They’re not entertainment for me, not any more. I couldn’t stand the thought of going on stage. Of being seen. Being…obsessed over.”
“Stalked.” An uncompromising word for what she feared.
But not the totality of her fear. She gripped her hands together. She couldn’t even hint at her real and ongoing fear. Nick might pick up on it. For someone who didn’t see himself as a people person, he could be startlingly acute. No more than with her family could she risk him seeking out, and so, becoming a target for the serial killer’s voyeur.
“Stalked,” she repeated the word. She couldn’t admit, either, her irrational feeling of shame, the sense of defilement and self-reproach that she’d been kidnapped. False guilt. Real guilt at how she’d survived. It was too weird, too outside people’s ordinary experience. She turned the subject.
“Mediumship is a strangely intimate experience, even in a huge theatre with hundreds of people watching. Audiences are an odd phenomenon. It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it. When I went on stage and really connected with the audience, I became open to them. The force of their emotion claimed me.”
She rubbed her hands together, slow, agonized, half back on stage. “It can be addictive. The energy pulses through you. It comes from the audience and you send it back to them. I’d call a few people up on the stage. You’ve probably seen how it works on television shows.”
“Not really.”
“Not interested?” Her smile was a wretched thing that failed.
“I’ve never believed in ghosts.” He sounded careful, almost apologetic.
Cars zoomed past them, huge metal wasps humming with impatience.
“You said that once,” Lanie recalled. “I don’t believe in ghosts, either. But sometimes…some people, they do believe. If you listen too closely to them, you become part of their story, and some people, they have no brakes. It just goes on, deeper, weirder. At times, the power of the audience seemed to push me into the skin of the dead person that was being crafted out of the audience member’s memory.” She shuddered and that broke the spell of her own weaving.
Her voice was calmer when she continued. “I never told anyone that. It’s like a trance, but not really. Every theatre performance has audience feedback. Without it, an act fails. It never comes to life. But with mediumship, if you go Zen—get lost in the flow—you become lost in someone else’s desperation to circumvent the reality of death.” As she’d almost lost herself in Purvis’s extreme desire to speak with the dead. He’d been a curiously suggestible man.
Lanie shuddered and reached randomly for another topic, any topic. “One of Mrs. Smith’s grand-nephews works with my brother Selwyn. The family was worried about me. I refused to go back
on stage. I couldn’t stand it.” In spite of her efforts some of her fear leaked into her voice. On stage, she could be found.
Nick turned his head sharply.
She forced down the echo of her lurking panic that her ordeal hadn’t ended with Purvis’s death; might never end. Marshall, the ex-policeman, advised her to move on with life, and she would. To live trapped in fear was to give evil another victory. But it was so hard.
One strategy was to remind herself of the good things, the power of good people and of being loved.
“Selwyn organized a job that I could do, that meant I could use my theatre skills and still be amongst people, but not out in public. He’s an annoying older brother. I argued that I was unqualified to be a museum curator of even a small museum like Horry’s. But he was right. Theatre skills are part of the storytelling that a museum does, and stage setting, costume design, corralling an audience, all have their place.”
She breathed easier, having talked herself away from her fear of standing on stage, of being visible and found. Instead of panic’s near asthmatic vibration, her voice warmed and deepened. “Mrs. Smith has been brilliant. She remembers an aunt who was on the stage in music halls in the East End, and that makes her feel a tie to the theatre. She semi-adopted me into her clan. The only thing she’s pushed me about is allowing the roof garden.”
“And she was right,” Nick said, his would-be teasing comment offering her a chance to break off her confidences, if she wanted to.
Lanie laughed in relief that she—they—could leave her confession behind. “Yes. The roof garden will add to the museum.”
“And to your life?” For a second he took his eyes off the road.
She was seared by the intensity in them.
He might have made his tone teasing to reassure her, but emotionally…how had she ever thought him reserved?
In asking about the future of the roof garden, he was asking about his future, their future. He was in her life, and he was asking if she wanted him there now that she knew his secrets and he knew (some) of hers.
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