The Splendour Falls (17 page)

‘Come, Gigi.'

Maybe I was connecting with the Davis in me, some piece of the Colonel passed down. I didn't have to
like
my ancestry to draw on it, I suppose. Gigi trotted back to me, and as tempting as it was, I didn't scold her. I just scooped her up for a cuddle of relief.

Then I heard what she was after. The same wailing noise from the night before. Only here it was clear, distinct, and I realized it wasn't a cat in heat. It sounded like a baby's cry.

A
baby
? Seriously? I couldn't chalk this up to the old house and the power of suggestion. What sick part of my psyche could have dreamed
this
up?

The air was clammy against my skin; I didn't know if it was the cold sweat of fear for my sanity, or a sudden damp wind off the river, but a shiver ran through me, and I clutched Gigi closer to my chest.

She squirmed to peer over my shoulder at the house. Her low growl vibrated against my cheek,
spread through me like a second shudder. The hair on my arms rose, my spine tingling with the awareness of someone watching me.

I knew the feeling too well to mistake the sure electricity of an audience. But this was different – the stinging rush of cold horror at being
caught.
The heavy weight of dread sat on my heart like a stone.

Despite my fear, I couldn't make myself turn slowly; I whirled, like jumping in a frigid pool. My gaze went unerringly up, to the first-floor balcony, and the French doors there. Like the shadows before, the figure was a wisp of distinction that fled before my eye could focus on it.

But Gigi had seen it too.

Which meant the watcher was real enough. Only my reaction was nuts. The thought was enough to spur me forward with purpose, leaving my fear behind me, as I headed for the house as quickly as my limping determination would carry me.

The stairwell was cold, and the landing even colder. The hall leading to the French doors was empty and the sheer curtains hung in still folds. To my right, the soft glow of the bedside lamp marked my room. To the left was the brighter yellow strip of light shining from under the door that mirrored mine.

With Gigi still tucked securely against my side, I marched to it and knocked – at the last moment remembering to keep quiet so I didn't alert Paula. I
counted seconds, reaching five-one-thousand before it opened. Rhys stood backlit in the doorway, obviously surprised. ‘Sylvie?'

The prickling jolt of awareness, the way my skin seemed to measure the distance to his, only escalated the tension. Desperation to find just one answer to
something
put a rash edge to my demand. ‘Was it you?'

His surprise turned to confusion. ‘What?'

I wrestled my voice down in volume and pitch. ‘Were you looking out the back window just now?'

‘No,' he said slowly, perhaps cautiously, ‘I've been in here working since after dinner.'

My questions shot out like an interrogation. ‘Is your dad home yet?'

Rhys paused in very deliberate irritation, leaning a hand on the doorframe with a forbidding frown. ‘What are you on about? Dad came home and went to bed.'

‘It's only nine-thirty,' I said.

‘Well, some of us were up at dawn.' He glanced behind me, towards the junction of the hallways, and there was a flicker of concern in his eyes. ‘You said you saw someone at the window?'

I inhaled to answer, then my better sense – what was left of it – and self-preservation trapped the words in my throat. What was I doing? It was logical that Rhys might have looked out the window – I had called to Gigi rather forcefully. But if it
hadn't
been him, it was not smart to lay all my crazy cards on the table. I'd been so frantic for an explanation—

‘Sylvie?' Paula called from the ground floor, softly
so as not to wake any sleepers. ‘Did I hear you come in?'

With Rhys still frowning down at me, I changed gears and tried to salvage the situation. ‘Yeah,' I called back in the same muted tone. ‘I'm back, safe and sound.'

Well, physically sound, anyway.

Gigi wiggled in my grasp, eager to say hi. I grabbed her tags to keep them from jingling.

‘Did you have a good time?' Paula asked, still a disembodied voice from below.

Was she going to insist on a briefing? I couldn't keep shouting down my answers in a stage whisper; that would be weird. And I couldn't carry Gigi to the railing with me, or the jig would be up. If I set her down, there was a good chance she would run to greet Paula herself.

I'd only wrestled with the dilemma for a moment before Rhys took the little dog from my arms and jerked his head towards the landing in silent instruction. Nodding my distracted gratitude, I went to the balustrade, leaning over so Paula could set eyes on me and relieve her mind.

‘Everyone was very nice,' I said, only lying a little bit.

Paula smiled in satisfaction. ‘Didn't I say you'd be glad you went?'

‘Yes you did.' I managed to keep my voice free of sarcasm, letting her interpret my ambivalent agreement as she wished.

‘Well, goodnight then, honey. Don't stay up late reading.'

‘I won't. Goodnight, Cousin Paula.' Returning to Rhys, I reached for Gigi – who was happily chewing on one of his fingers, which was not allowed – but he retreated through his doorway, and I had no choice but to follow if I wanted my dog.

The room was very similar to mine, though the colour scheme was more masculine – dark wood and faded reds and blues. Even the writing desk looked like the twin of mine, except stained dark brown instead of painted white.

Unlike my room, however, his was distinctly livedin. There was a pile of books and papers on the writing desk, along with a laptop computer and assorted electronics, and a few clothes thrown over a chair. Rhys gestured for me to close the door. I did, and he set Gigi on the floor, where she went to investigate a kicked-off jumble of shoes. Rhys's feet were bare.

‘You didn't answer me,' he said, sitting on the bed. ‘What makes you think someone was watching you from the window?'

I shrugged, as casually as I could. ‘Gigi growled up at it. I guess it could have been a shadow on the glass or something.'

He contemplated me seriously for a moment, maybe considering what I'd said versus what I hadn't. Then he shifted, crossing his ankle over his knee. ‘Let me ask it this way instead. What made you think
I
would be watching you?'

‘I don't know,' I said in frustration. It was the only thing that made even a little bit of sense. ‘You were the one being all weird this afternoon. You obviously think I'm up to something.'

Denial rushed to his face, but he caught himself before he'd done more than open his mouth in indignation. He closed it, and seemed to chew on his next words for a long time. ‘I don't know
what
to think about you, Sylvie.'

‘Well, I don't know what to think about you either.' The height of understatement. The energy between us just then was not soothing or comfortable. It was charged, even in the way he said my name. I folded my arms, as if I could block out this push and pull on my emotions, and fired back inanely, ‘For all I know,
you
may be up to something.'

I was only reflecting back the ridiculousness of the argument – a sort of ‘I know you are, but what am I?' – but as soon as I said it, I thought about the way his expression had shuttered when I'd suggested he might be running away from something, like my own immigrant ancestors.

And the way it had closed off now. ‘What would I be up to?' he asked too casually.

His reaction spurred me on. I threw out suggestions, just to see what he would say. ‘I don't know. Maybe there's oil under the land. Maybe buried pirate treasure.'

That seemed to amuse him. ‘I don't know anything about buried pirate treasure. If I did, though, I would definitely be looking for it.'

I narrowed my eyes, irritated but speculative. ‘You admitted this afternoon that you have some secret project.'

He exhaled incredulously, not quite a laugh. ‘I did not. I said I'm helping my father on
his
project and
working on something of my own.
Not
searching for pirate treasure.'

‘Maybe your dad is just a cover story.' I let my imagination expand to include the nonsensical. Not that pirate treasure was exactly reasonable. I put my hands on my hips, copying Paula's take-no-arguments stance. ‘I haven't even seen him yet. Maybe he doesn't really exist.'

Rhys smiled slightly. ‘Get up at a decent hour tomorrow, and you'll meet him.'

‘Seven-thirty
is
decent. It's not like I have anywhere to be.'

‘That's right.' He leaned back on his hands, tone turned mocking. ‘The lady of leisure.'

‘That's not—' And then I stopped, because he was doing it again. Whenever I pried into his business, he started goading me with accusations of divahood.

‘That's not what?' he asked when I snapped my mouth closed and dropped my hands from my hips.

‘Not important.' I waved a hand, made my tone as airy as possible and saw his eyes narrow, just a fraction. Gigi had curled up on the rug, and I stepped around her as I sauntered oh-so-casually to the writing desk, and the bunch of books by the computer. ‘I mean, your dad must exist, since Clara and Paula aren't delusional. And you have all these books.'

He stood up as I ran my finger down the spines of the stack, reading titles aloud in the same offhand tone. ‘
North American Geology
.
Native Americans of the Southeast
– that must be how you knew about the mound builders.'

‘You've become quite the girl detective in the twenty-four hours you've been here,' Rhys remarked, moving to join me at the desk. Pointedly, he reached across me and closed the laptop and the spiral notebook beside it.

Ignoring the comment, I picked up the last book, which showed its age in its tattered fabric cover. ‘
Notable Gardens of the South.
'

‘That last one isn't mine,' he said. ‘I found it here.'

I opened it to a marked page and saw a very old photograph of Bluestone Hill taken from a distance. When I looked up at him pointedly, he shrugged. ‘Naturally I wanted to know more about this place.'

Holding the page with my finger, I flipped to the front to check the copyright date. It was a nineteen-sixties reprint of a turn-of-the-century book. ‘Did you find this in the study?'

‘No, actually. In this room.' He paused, then flipped a few pages, the book still in my hands. His fingers brushed mine, and I chided my heart for its erratic reaction. I was still … not angry, exactly. Perturbed – that was the thing. He perturbed and intrigued me more than a mere acquaintance should.

His words, though, evicted all that from my mind. ‘Someone wrote in the margins,' he said. ‘Maybe one of your relatives.'

My racing heart gave a funny stumble as the book fell open to a page of text, a photo of the knot garden and a woodcut print of the house's landscape. But my eye fixed on the pencilled notes along the side.

I sat down, landing in the chair only by accident, as my knees stopped working. ‘This is my dad's writing.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Yeah.' I traced the faint graphite lines. At first touch, they tickled my fingers, as if the letters were raised. They should have been. Raised or etched … something to denote the impact that script had on me. ‘Maybe he wrote it when he was my age.' My voice sounded oddly fragile. ‘Paula says they spent every summer here.'

‘I wondered about that.' Rhys leaned back against the desk, strikingly casual compared with my awe at this find. ‘When you mentioned that your father was interested in stone circles and monuments, I wondered if the monolith in your family's garden might have inspired him.'

‘Maybe so.' I could see in the illustration that the rock was bare of foliage, just standing in the middle of the garden.

‘You can take that with you, if you like.'

The offer shook me out of my fog. My eyebrows climbed and I shot him a look. ‘You think? Since it's sort of mine, anyway.'

Rhys gave me the same sardonic stare, of the same mild intensity. ‘So … you only get possessive about things here when it's something you want. It's Paula's house, but it's your book.'

‘It
is
Paula's house.' We had come full circle to our last conversation. ‘And I really don't have designs on it.'

‘So you said.' He didn't sound censorious, though maybe a little droll. ‘You have plenty of money.'

‘That came out all wrong this afternoon.' My tone was half confession, half apology. ‘I don't care about money.' I smoothed my hand absently over Dad's book, the picture of the garden and the rock, and the ghost of his thoughts on the page. ‘All I want in the world is to be able to dance again.'

I felt a small shock at the words. I never spoke them aloud. It was too foolish to wish for, too selfish and ungrateful, when I was lucky to be able to walk. But the wish was always there, the seed of all my misery. Blurting it out was like pulling the ugly white roots of my anger and bitchiness into the light for this guy, who should be a stranger but didn't
feel
like one, to see.