Lover Avenged (72 page)

Every night it was a different flower. This evening it was a sprig of holly.

“Oh, Sashla, you really don’t have to do this.” Ehlena sat up, pushing back sheets that were so fine and well made they were smoother than summer air against the skin. “It’s lovely of you, but honestly…”

The maid bowed and offered a shy smile. “Madam should wake up to a proper repast.”

Ehlena lifted her arms as a stand was put over her legs and the tray set on top of it. As she stared down at the lovingly polished silver and the carefully prepared food, her overriding thought was that her father had just gotten the same, served to him by a butler doggen by the name of Eran.

She stroked the fine curling base of the knife. “You are good to us. All of you. You’ve made us so welcome in this grand house, and we thank you very much.”

When she looked up, there were tears in the doggen’s eyes, and the maid hastily patted them away with a handkerchief. “Madam…you and your father have transformed this house. We are of great joy that you are our masters. Everything…is different now that you are here.”

It was as far as the maid would go, but given how she and all the other staff had flinched for the first two weeks, Ehlena gathered that Montrag had not been the easiest head of household.

Ehlena reached over and gave the female’s hand a squeeze. “I’m glad it’s worked out for all of us.”

As the maid turned away to resume her duties, she seemed flustered, but happy. At the door, she paused. “Oh, and Madam Lusie’s things arrived. We’ve settled her in the guest suite next to your father. Also, the locksmith is coming in a half hour, as you requested.”

“Perfect on both accounts, thank you.”

While the door was shut quietly and the doggen went off humming a tune from the Old Country, Ehlena took the dome off her plate and knifed up some cream cheese. Lusie had agreed to move in with them and function as a nurse and personal assistant to Ehlena’s father-which was fantastic. Overall, he’d taken to the new estate with relative ease, his demeanor and mental stability better than they had been for years, but the close supervision did much to ease Ehlena’s lingering worry.

Being careful with him remained a priority.

Here in the mansion, for example, he didn’t require tinfoil over the windows. Instead, he preferred to look out at the gardens that were beautiful even after having been put to bed for the winter, and in retrospect, she wondered if part of shutting out the world hadn’t been because of where they’d been living. He was also much more relaxed and at peace, working steadily in the other guest bedroom next to his. He still heard the voices, though, and preferred order to mess of any kind, and he needed the medication. But this was heaven compared to what the last couple years had been like.

As Ehlena ate, she looked around the bedroom she’d chosen and was reminded of her parents’ former manse. The curtains were the same kind that had hung back in her family’s house, huge swathes of peach and cream and red falling from ruched headers with fringe. The walls were likewise done in luxury, the silk paper showing a pattern of roses that matched perfectly with the curtains, as well as coordinating with the needlepoint rug on the floor.

Ehlena, too, was at home in the surroundings, and yet utterly ungrounded-and not just because her life seemed like a sailboat that had capsized in cold water, only to abruptly right itself in the tropics.

Rehvenge was with her. Relentlessly.

Her last thought before she slept and her first upon waking was that he was alive. And she dreamed about him, seeing him with his arms at his sides and his head hanging down, silhouetted against a shimmering black background. It was a total contradiction, in a way, the belief that he was alive measured against that image of him-which seemed to suggest he was dead.

It was like being haunted by a ghost.

Make that tortured.

With frustration, she put the tray aside, got up, and showered. The clothes she changed into were nothing fancy, just the same ones she’d gotten from Target and on sale from Macy’s online before everything had changed. The shoes…were the Keds Rehv had held in his hand.

But she refused to think about that.

The thing was, it didn’t seem right to run out and spend a lot of money on anything. None of this felt like hers, not the house or the staff or the cars or all the zeroes in her checking account. She was still convinced Saxton was going to show up at nightfall with an oh-my-bad-all-this-should-have-gone-to-someone-else.

What a whoopsie that would be.

Ehlena took the silver tray and headed out to check on her father, who was down at the end of the wing. When she got to his door, she knocked with the tip of her sneaker.

“Father?”

“Do come in, daughter mine!”

She put the tray down on a mahogany table and opened the way into the room he used as his study. His old desk had been brought over from the rental bed, which had been placed next door, and her father was sitting down to his work as he always had, papers everywhere.

“How fare thee?” she asked, going over to kiss his cheek.

“I am well, very well indeed. The doggen has just brought my juice and my repast.” His elegant, bony hand swept over a silver tray that matched the one she’d been brought. “I adore the new doggen, don’t you?”

“Yes, Father, I-”

“Ah, Lusie, dearest!”

As her father rose to his feet and smoothed his velvet smoking jacket, Ehlena glanced over her shoulder. Lusie came in dressed in a dove gray sheath and a knobby hand-knitted sweater. She had Birkenstocks on her feet and thick, bunched-up socks that had likely been homemade as well. Her long, wavy hair was back from her face, pinned in a sensible clip at the base of her neck.

Unlike everything that had changed around them, she was still the same. Lovely and…cozy.

“I’ve brought the crossword.” She held up a New York Times that was folded in quarters, as well as a pencil. “I need help.”

“And, indeed, I am at your disposal, as always.” Ehlena’s father came around and gallantly angled a chair for Lusie. “Ease yourself herein and we shall see how many boxes we may fill.”

Lusie smiled at Ehlena as she sat down. “I couldn’t do them without him.”

Ehlena’s eyes narrowed on the female’s faint blush and then shifted over to her father’s face. Which was showing a distinct glow.

“I’ll leave you two to your puzzle,” she said with a smile.

As she left, two good-byes were given to her, and she couldn’t help but think the stereo effect sounded very nice to the ear.

Downstairs in the grand foyer, she went left into the formal dining room, and paused to admire all the crystal and china that were set out on display-as well as the gleaming candelabra.

There were no candles topping those graceful silver arms, though.

No candles in the house. No matches or lighters either. And before they had moved in, Ehlena had had the doggen replace the gas-powered restaurant range with one that ran on electricity. Likewise, the two televisions in the family part of the house had been given to the staff, and the security monitors had been moved from an open desk in the butler’s pantry to a closed room with a locked door.

There was no reason to tempt fate. Especially given that any kind of electronic screen, including those on cell phones and calculators, still made her father nervous.

The first night that they had come to stay at the mansion, she had taken pains to walk her father all around and show him the security cameras and the sensors and the beams not just in the house, but on the grounds. As she wasn’t sure how he would handle the change in address or all the safety measures, she’d given him the tour right after he’d had his medications. Fortunately, he’d viewed the better accommodations as a return to normalcy, and had loved the idea that there was a system looking out all over the estate.

Maybe that was another reason he didn’t feel the need to have the windows covered up. He felt as if he were being watched over in a good way now.

Pushing through the flap door, Ehlena went into the pantry and out to the kitchen. After chatting with the butler who had started cooking Last Meal, and complimenting one of the maids on how beautifully she’d polished the handrail of the big staircase, Ehlena headed for the study that was on the other side of the house.

The trip was a long one, through many lovely rooms, and as she went she trailed a gentle hand over the antiques and the hand-carved jambs and the silk-covered furniture. This lovely house was going to make her father’s life so much easier, and as a result, she was going to have a lot more time and mental energy to focus on herself.

She didn’t want it. The last thing she needed was empty hours with nothing but the crap in her head to keep her company. And even if she were in the running to win Miss Well-Adjusted, she wanted to be productive. She might not need the money to keep a roof over what was left of her family, but she’d always worked, and she’d loved the purpose and heart of what she’d been doing at the clinic.

Except she’d burned that bridge and then some.

Like the other thirty or so rooms in the mansion, the study was decorated in the manner of European royalty, with subtle damask patterns on the walls and sofas, plenty of tassels on the drapes, and lots of deep, glowing paintings that were like windows open to other, even more perfect worlds. There was one thing off the mark though. The floor was bare, the couches and the antique desk and every table and chair sitting directly on the polished wooden floor, the center of which was slightly darker than the edges, as if it had once been covered up.

When she’d asked the doggen, they had explained that the carpet had suffered a stain that was not removable, and thus a new rug had been ordered from the household’s antiques dealer in Manhattan. They didn’t go into any further detail about whatever had happened, but given how worried they all had been about their jobs, she could just imagine what Montrag would have done if there had been any kind of deficiency in performance, no matter how reasonable. One spilled tea tray? No doubt they’d had a big problem.

Ehlena went around and sat behind the desk. On the leather blotter, there was the day’s Caldwell Courier Journal, a phone and a nice-looking French lamp as well as a lovely crystal statue of a bird in flight. Her old computer, which she’d tried to give back to the clinic before she and her father had come to the house, fit perfectly in the big flat drawer under the top-kept there always just in case he came in.

She supposed she could afford a new laptop, but again, she wasn’t going to buy another one. As with her clothes, what she had worked just fine, and she was used to it.

Plus, maybe she was grounded a little by the familiar. And, man, she needed that.

Putting her elbows on the desk, she looked across the room at the spot on the wall where a spectacular seascape should have lain flat. The painting was angled out into the room, however, and the face of the safe that was exposed was like a plain female who’d been hiding behind a glamorous ball mask.

“Madam, the locksmith is here?”

“Please send him in.”

Ehlena got to her feet, and went over to the safe to touch its smooth, matte panel and its black-and-silver dial. She’d found the thing only because she’d been so taken by the depiction of the sun setting over the ocean that she’d put her hand on the frame on impulse. When the whole picture popped forward, she’d been horrified that she’d hurt the mounting in some way, except then she’d looked behind the frame…and what do you know.

“Madam? This is Roff, son of Rossf.”

Ehlena smiled and walked over to a male who was dressed in black coveralls and carrying a black tool case. As she went to put her hand out, he took off his cap and bowed low, as if she were someone special. Which was beyond strange. After years of being just a civilian, the formality made her uncomfortable, but she was learning that she had to let others honor the social etiquette. Asking them not to, whether they were doggen or workmen or advisers, just made things worse.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

“It is a pleasure to be of service.” He looked over at the safe. “This is the one?”

“Yes, I don’t have the combination to it.” They headed for the thing. “I was hoping there was some way you could get into it?”

The wince he tried to hide was not encouraging. “Well, madam, I know this kind of safe, and it’s not going to be easy. I’d have to bring in an industrial drill to get through the pins and release the door, and it would be noisy. Also, when I’ve finished the safe would be ruined. I mean no disrespect, but is there no way of retrieving the combination?”

“I wouldn’t know where to look for it.” She glanced around at the shelves of books and then over to the desk. “We just moved in, and there were no instructions.”

The male followed her lead and ran his eyes around the room. “Usually owners leave such a thing in a hidden place. If you could only find it, I could show you how to reset the combination so that you could reuse the safe. As I said, if I have to drill in, it will have to be replaced.”

“Well, I’ve been through the desk when I was exploring after we first came here.”

“Did you find any hidden compartments in it?”

“Er…no. But I was just going through random papers and trying to make some space for my things.”

The male nodded across at the piece of furniture. “In a lot of desks like that, you’ll find at least one drawer with a false bottom or back that hides a small place. I wouldn’t want to presume, but I could try to help you find one? Also, the moldings in a room like this might conceal spaces as well.”

“I’d love another set of eyes on this, thanks.” Ehlena went over and, one by one, removed the drawers of the desk, laying them side by side on the floor. As she went along, the male took out a penlight and looked into the holes that were revealed.