Authors: Donna Lea Simpson
“Step in,” he whispered. “Step in, and you shall see.”
She did as she was told, and stepped into the room and then gasped again, whirling to face him as he stepped in after her. “This is my own room!”
“It is, indeed,” he chuckled, pulling her to him.
“A secret entrance into my own room,” she said, shaking her head in wonder. “And I never knew it. How many of these passages are there?”
“The castle is threaded with them, some not even along outside walls, but within the walls.
I’m not sure even I know them all.”
She turned in the circle of his arms and gazed at the walls. She shivered and her expression was wonder mingled with trepidation. “Nikolas, how many of the inhabitants know about these passages?”
“I know. Uta and Mina know. Cesare knows. Also Adele.” He thought and then nodded. “That is all, for I have guarded the secret carefully. The rest are in ignorance of the existence of these corridors, and I mean them to stay that way, so do not worry about anyone else finding their way into your room; it will never happen, I guarantee that. You must be careful not to get lost, and you must always be careful you are entering the correct room.”
“This is how you appeared in the library that first night. I thought there must be a secret passage, but I never imagined… many of them? Where were you coming from that night?”
He turned her around, laughed, and said, “That I do not need to divulge,” and then he kissed her.
So, she thought, as he carried her to her bed and undid her robe, he trusted her enough to tell her about the secret passages, but not enough to tell her where he was and why he felt the need to use a secret way into the castle. It was the one thing that still clouded her joy—he was holding back from her, not telling her things about himself. She felt it deeply, but what it was that he still kept secret, she was not sure. In fairness, it was possible the secrets were not his own, and so he felt loath to share them. But there was something… something about himself, too, some element—
Blissful fog began to invade her brain as he touched and caressed her. She ran her hand down his hip and to the ever-present bulge under his robe that spoke of his constant desire for her.
His whole body jolted as she touched him, and he stayed her hand.
“No, my sweet Elizabeth, do not do that.”
She gazed up at him in the dim candlelight. “But I want to,” she whispered. “Please, Nikolas, I want to. You’re so good to me and have taught me how much I love your touch, but I want… I want to give you back all that you give me.”
“Elizabeth,” he said, impatiently, “can you not just take for once in your life? This is for you, not for me.”
And not for them together, she thought sadly. She pulled away from him and he stared at her, a puzzled expression on his face. “Why? Why, Nikolas? Why will you not let me give back to you, when I want to so very badly?”
He shook his head but didn’t answer. He was afraid of something, she could see it in his haunted eyes. There was some deep pain in him and she longed to soothe him. So much about him was noble and good; that she had learned in the past weeks. When he lashed out in anger toward Christoph, it was an expression of his frustration with the boy’s recalcitrance, and he held in much more than he ever expressed.
But still… by not letting her give to him, by holding himself aloof, he was protecting some part of himself. He was afraid of something. Was it that he was afraid that if they made love, he would come to care for her too much?
She melted back into his arms, hating herself for inspiring the wounded look on his face. “Just hold me tonight, Nikolas. Just hold me.”
They wound themselves together in a loving tangle, and warmth penetrated both of them: warmth, a sense of safety and trust that defied all reason, and a melancholy devotion.
They had slept for hours! When Nikolas awoke and felt her there, asleep in his tight embrace, he stroked her hair and lay still, listening to the soft, even puff of her breath. “Oh, that I could tell you all,” he whispered against her hair. “But you would turn from me in revulsion, and I would suffer such torment if you did. Better you stay in blissful ignorance, Liebchen, than that you should know too much.”
He loosed his hold and slipped from her bed, gazing down at her in the weak morning light from the half-open drapes. Her hair splayed across the pillow. She was all curves, he. thought, watching her: her cheek, her shoulder, her breast beneath the muslin of her gown, her hip as it flared, gently mounding the blanket over her. She moved and murmured, touching the warm spot where he had lain just moments before. Her fingers, as they caressed that warmth, sent shivers down his spine, and he knew he feared the hold she had on him. He should have sent her away, but it was too late. He could no more tell her to go now than he could tear out his own still-beating heart and toss it to the hills.
The door latch moved and he could hear Fanny’s soft tread outside the door. Swiftly he crossed the room, exiting by way of the secret passage.
“IT’S almost March,” Elizabeth said, padding over to the window in Frau Liebner’s room and gazing out. Two days of rain had melted much snow, and now she could see the green coniferous blanket over the hills that stretched beyond and above the back of Wolfram Castle.
“You have been here two months, almost. Much has happened in that time, eh?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth answered absently, toying with a tassel on the tie that held back the curtain.
“Elizabeth, attend me please!”
Elizabeth turned to gaze at her friend, who stared at her from her bed; having a cold had kept her there a few days. “What is it?”
“Elizabeth, I have never asked you about your relationship with Nikolas, but—”
“Please don’t,” Elizabeth said hastily. “I wouldn’t know what to tell you.”
Frau Liebner stared at her. “What have you done?” she whispered. “I brought you here to rescue you from that despicable cad, what he and his family did to you, and then you—”
“Please, ma’am,” Elizabeth said, perilously close to tears. “I… I cannot…” Unable to continue, she said, “I must go. Charlotte awaits me.”
Coward
, she said to herself as she fled. Frau Liebner was right; she had only spoken out of concern that Elizabeth had tumbled herself into the same difficulties that had forced her out of England. But Elizabeth was ill-equipped to talk about what she didn’t understand herself.
Swallowing back her tears, she retreated to the yellow parlor. Charlotte awaited her there, staring absently out the window. They were to handle the British peerage today, so that Charlotte might never make the mistake, as hostess, of seating someone in the wrong order, or greeting someone improperly. Elizabeth retrieved from a drawer the book she had used to make some notes, but then sat down at the table and bowed her head.
“Miss Stanwycke? Is… is everything all right?”
She looked up to find Charlotte’s lovely eyes fixed on her and a worried expression on her face. “I don’t know,” she answered. “Is it? Charlotte, I know you don’t wish to follow your uncle’s orders and go to England, but there is much more than that bothering you. If you cannot speak to your aunts about it, nor to me, why do you not try to tell your uncle? He cares about you and Christoph so much and only wants the best for you.”
The girl’s lip trembled, and tears welled into her eyes. “Uncle Nikolas?” She shook her head.
“You do not know him as I do.” She frowned, trying to sniff back the tears. “I do not know what is wrong. Truly, Miss Stanwycke, I do not. There is some trouble for Christoph, but he will not tell me what it is. It has been going on for a couple of years, but has been getting worse and worse. Sometimes he is gone from his room all night, and I do not know where he goes, and… and the next day he is almost wild and tells me he hates himself. I am afraid, so afraid! Oh, Miss Stanwycke, what if…” But she shook her head, unable to voice her worst fears.
“Charlotte!” Elizabeth, alarmed, went to her and stood before her, grasping both shoulders with her hands. “Have you asked him yourself?”
“Of course! All he does is tell me I need to look after myself. He is… is evil, he says, and not f-fit…” She broke off, finally weeping openly.
Elizabeth brought her kerchief out and dabbed at the girl’s tears, but just then the door opened and Countess Gerta drifted in, as she often did. Making an attempt to shield Charlotte from her aunt’s gaze, Elizabeth turned. “What is it, Countess?”
Countess Gerta frowned, a puzzled look on her peaked face. “I… I do not know. I came in here for something, and now I cannot remember…”
“Perhaps if you go out again—”
“No. I will stay, certainly.” She sat down and glanced around the room. “Where are Eva and Jakob?”
A prickle of presentiment crawled up the back of Elizabeth’s neck, making the small hairs stand away from her skin. Gerta’s expression was unfocussed and Wearily puzzled.
Charlotte, having recovered, said, “Aunt, they are away at school, remember?”
“Oh. I thought they would be here.” She got up then and drifted out of the room.
Elizabeth sat down and stared at the door. “Has she always been like this?” Over the past two months she had often seen the countess in an abstracted state, and sometimes she appeared confused, but to ask if her children were there when she knew they were away at school…
Shrugging, Charlotte said, “I suppose not. She cannot have always been like this, but she has been for many years. At times she is quite normal, but then at others… losing her husband…”
She shook her head. “And then she had the twins; Aunt Adele says she was never the same after. She was very ill for a long time, and then she was weak in the head for a time after that.”
“I’ve heard the story,” Elizabeth said, “of how her husband and your mother died in a fire.”
“But why were they together?” Charlotte whispered, her expression twisted with pain. “No one will tell me that.”
The conflicting stories came back to Elizabeth, and her own puzzlement over them.
“I have heard,” Charlotte said, her voice wooden, “that my uncle Nikolas was there… that he could have saved them, but did not even try.”
“Who told you that?” Elizabeth asked sharply.
Looking frightened, Charlotte said, “No one… I just heard it.”
“From whom?” Elizabeth asked again. “Charlotte, to whom do you speak? I have noticed looks between you and Signor Vitali. He hasn’t… you aren’t involved with him, are you?”
“No!” Charlotte said, her blue eyes wide. “Cesare is…” She hung her head. “I… I thought I was in love with him once, but he told me… he very
kindly
told me he could never care for me. I do speak to him sometimes, but he has always just advised me, as you do, to trust my uncle Nikolas.”
“Then why do you not, when all around you…”
Charlotte stood and wrung her hands together. “I am not feeling at all well. I am going to my room.” She raced from the parlor and disappeared and Elizabeth was left alone again with her own troubling thoughts.
That night Nikolas came to Elizabeth, but she could tell he was distracted. Many times he started at some imagined noise, and once he got up, paced to the window, and gazed out at the moon, which waxed fuller, almost a complete disk. She held him close, but when he imagined her asleep, he crept stealthily from her room.
With the full moon the next evening came snow… not as much as before, and in pellets, tiny freezing balls of ice that pattered against the window like gravel. Elizabeth awaited Nikolas in her own room that night, but he did not come. The next morning at the breakfast table he whispered to her that he was exhausted, but she felt his attention drifting.
Was it over? Had she bored him finally? Was there something she should have done differently, or some way she should have seduced him into lovemaking?
That night she resolved to visit him one more time and make him tell her the truth: What secrets tormented him? What did he fear? Why would he not make love to her? All desire to resist had fled from her mind; now she wanted him, and needed him. And was so afraid she had again given her heart to a man who could not return her love.
Late that night she crept down the cold secret passage, but she stopped when she heard a loud sound that reverberated through the corridor. Trembling with fear, she hastened her footsteps, getting lost once, making a wrong turn another time, but finally finding a panel that slid open.
But was it his room?
Shaking with fear as much as cold but not willing to wander all night in the walls like a ghost, she stepped into the room. It was Nikolas’s! She breathed a sigh of relief and padded across the carpet to his bedside, the light from open curtains streaming into the room and turning everything a luminous pewter.
But he wasn’t in his bed, though it was disturbed; he had been there, she could feel it, and in fact the bedclothes were still warm from his body. Where had he gone? Puzzled, she wandered to the window and peered out.
There, in the stream of moonlight that crossed the snowy path, she saw him, and he was heading towards the woods! She knew him so well now that she could see him in the set of his shoulders and the length of his stride. What secret business was he about that could tear him from his warm bed in the middle of the night?
The woman… the blond woman he rescued time and time again!
Furious and perplexed, Elizabeth could not contain her ire nor her curiosity. She fled to her own room, donned her warmest cloak over her nightgown, and pulled on boots over woolen stockings, then speedily descended the stairs. She left the building, grateful that once again she had evaded any servants, though most were long gone to their well-earned beds. She followed his path, clearly delineated in the fresh snow, over the long lawn and across the lane and an expanse of grass to the forest edge.
And there she stopped, her frigid breath coming out in frosty puffs. He had already entered the forest, home of wolves and other predatory beasts… home even of werewolves, if such folklore was to be believed. She shivered and hesitated, wondering if she truly should plunge in and follow him or go back to certain safety. Even now she could go back to the house and forget it.