The Tutor (13 page)

The boys slipped from the room, and the door closed behind them. I faced Sir

Richard, and all thought of deference or rules about the way one ought to address a superior evaporated.

“What is wrong? Why do they seem to fear you so?” I demanded. “I can’t help

them reconcile with their mother’s death and the problems they have with you if I don’t understand what happened.”

Sir Richard’s face was an impenetrable wall he retreated behind. “Mr. Cowrie, it

is none of your concern. You’re here to teach a few subjects. That is all.”

I’m generally a good-natured fellow, but my temper flared. “You’re wrong, sir.

My duty requires a great deal more than that. Those boys were directionless and

unattended when I arrived. I’ve done much more for them than teach a little arithmetic and spelling. I’ve cared for them and tried to relieve some of their unhappiness. Do you realize Clive doesn’t speak? Not at all! Or if he does, it’s only to his brother.”

My irritation was building up steam. Though my employer’s expression was

thunderous, I kept going. “They’re trying to recover from their mother’s death, but it seems they’ve lost their father too. You never display any affection toward them. Those boys need your love, some gesture to show them you care.”

I knew the burning heat in my cheeks made my face fiery red. As flushed as I felt

was how pale Allinson became. The hollows under his eyes and cheekbones seemed

darker than ever. He would snap now and throw me out of his house once and for all.

“I’ve told you they believe I killed their mother. And I don’t blame them. Her

death
was
my fault.” His admission was a hollow whisper that filled the entire room louder than a shout. “It’s my fault she did it.”

“What did she do?” I prodded relentlessly. “You can tell me. I would never betray

your confidence, I swear.”

He rubbed a hand over his forehead, then let it drop heavily to his side in a gesture of surrender. “I couldn’t make her happy. In fact, I made her miserable.”

My immediate instinct was to comfort. “I’m sure that’s not true.” I took a step

toward him.

Allinson looked at me, not in the distant way an employer views an underling, but

as a man regards a confidante. “God knows, I tried to behave properly.” He gestured in the direction of the door. “Those two boys are proof of how hard I tried, and for a while, they seemed enough to keep her happy, but I couldn’t…”

We both knew what he was talking about. No need to pretend otherwise. “You

couldn’t love her in the way she wanted to be loved. I’ve had friends back in the city, good family men who kept up the pretense. Many men must do so.”

“The first few years, I believe we both tried to put on a good face and accept the match we’d made, but time wears one down.” He trailed a fingertip along the row of book spines,
bump, bump, bump
. “And by the end, her loneliness was too great. She hanged herself.”

I caught my breath, surprised he’d confided it so bluntly and afraid of saying

something that might make him stop. “Those who are prone to deep inner sorrow may

suffer even under good circumstances. I knew a man once, the jolliest fellow one could hope to know. No one could believe it when he leaped into the Thames. You mustn’t blame yourself.”

“I saw her fading by the day and did nothing to help her. Perhaps living in the

city, breaking away from the eternal gloom of this place, might have made some

difference in lifting her spirits.” He bowed his head as if unable to meet my gaze. “And near the end, she learned the truth about me, saw something she never should have seen. I tell you, her death
was
my fault.”

I bit my lip and considered. He was adamant about his guilt. It didn’t seem I could alleviate it, so I’d try a different angle. “What about the boys? Why does Clive particularly cast you as a villain?”

Sir Richard gripped the edge of the bookshelf with both hands, bracing himself.

“He saw. He was the one who found her hanging there.”

I swallowed lead as I imagined the pure horror of such a discovery. “In her

room?” But I already knew the answer.

“Up in the old guard tower, where she used to sit and gaze out the windows for

hours on end.” He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “That alone should’ve alerted me.

Instead, I chose to ignore her odd behavior. If I’d sent her to a sanitarium for treatment, perhaps Lavinia would be alive today.”

“But no more with her boys than she is now,” I pointed out. “Those places are not

pleasant. I knew a man once who was treated for malaise at a sanitarium with cold-water baths and electric-shock therapy. I would not highly recommend it.”

He glanced at me. “It seems you’ve had a number of unusual friends.”

“My checkered past. But let us speak of the matter at hand, Clive’s seeming

inability—or unwillingness—to speak.”

“Also my fault.” Allinson straightened, and his hands gripped in loose fists by his sides. “After he ran to find me, I had to explain to him he must never tell anyone what he’d seen. You know how society treats families of suicides. I couldn’t allow my sons’

lives to be ruined by having the information spread.”

I wanted to point out that the boys’ lives had been fairly ruined by both Lavinia’s death and the secrecy afterward. Certainly Whit must know all this too, since the boys shared everything. They were all locked in silent conspiracy together.

“The only others in the house who know the truth of her passing are Tom, who

helped me cut down and carry her body away, and Smithers. I couldn’t keep the local doctor from seeing the ligature marks on her neck, but he is not the type to break his oath of privacy.” Allinson looked at me. “And now you.”

“I promise I won’t breathe a word, and I’ll do everything I’m able to help your

sons through their grieving.”

His deep-set eyes glistened. “I believe you will. You are a tonic for the soul.”

Heat flared in my cheeks again at the compliment. If he only knew how I’d lied to

land this post, he wouldn’t be so generous. “And anything I can do to help
you
, sir, I will gladly do. You are grieving too.”

I took another couple of steps until I stood before Sir Richard. I rested a hand on his arm, intent only on offering solidarity and loyalty. But the attraction between us was too strong for even an innocent gesture to remain so. Allinson looked at me with those lovely, shiny eyes, and my heart missed several beats. Was this it? Would this be the moment we both finally gave in to desire?

I grasped his other arm so I held him loosely, and we continued to remain lost in

each other’s regard. Did I dare? Yes, I did. I moved another step closer and drew

Allinson toward me, unresisting. I wrapped my arms around his stiff body and held on. A shudder passed through him. The tension suddenly fled from him as he leaned into my embrace.

My own eyes prickled at his capitulation, and I hugged tighter. Sir Richard wasn’t the only one who needed some comforting. My experiences in the tower room were still fresh in my mind, and the emotional upheaval had taken its toll. We remained that way for several moments, leaning into each other like a pair of drunks straggling home from a pub in the wee hours.

Then I made the mistake of talking.

“It’s all right,” I crooned as I rubbed a hand up his broad back. “Things will get better. You simply need to forgive yourself and find your way back to your boys.”

Sir Richard immediately stiffened, and I made the further mistake of cupping my

hand round the nape of his neck and giving a gentle knead.

Now he drew back completely and thrust me away from him.

“Stop! Stop it at once.” His expression was anguished, so full of pain and

confusion I knew immediately I’d gone too far.

“I’m sorry. I was only trying to offer comfort.” I held up my empty hands.

“I know very well what you were offering. I don’t want it or need it. Leave now,”

he thundered, pointing an imperious finger at the door.

Aw, Christ. I’d really put my foot in it. “Do you mean for me to pack my things

and, uh…”

His Adam’s apple bobbed above his crisp shirt collar. “No. The boys’ disposition

has improved since you’ve been here. I wouldn’t deprive them of the only person

apparently capable of making them laugh and play. No, don’t leave. Just get out of my sight—and don’t attempt anything like that with me again. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

I fled from the library nearly as quickly as I’d run away from the tower. This

house was full of scary things of one sort or another. Not the least of which was the growing emotions inside me for the master of the house. If Sir Richard would allow it, I could become quite close to him, and that would be the ultimate danger to my heart.

Days passed after that confession in the library, and I became Sisyphus pushing a

boulder up a hill. Though the boys and I fell back into our routine, I didn’t feel I made much progress in getting them to truly talk to me. As for their moody father, he still made no effort to spend any time with the twins.

It was an exercise in frustration. I couldn’t
force
this family to repair its broken bonds, even while that voice inside continually nagged at me to
Help them
.

Not to mention a deep melancholy possessed me some days, making it difficult to

even get out of bed, let alone move through the day. It was like trying to walk in deep water, a strong current tugging at me while a different inner voice suggested I give in and allow the current to carry me away.

Other days, I was my normal self again, strong, capable, and more liable to see a

glass as half-full rather than nearly empty. But I had to fight hard every day to keep the negative emotions at bay and to maintain a cheerful attitude for the boys’ sake.

During one of Tom’s almost nightly art sessions, he drew a picture that could

have illustrated one of the more lurid pulp novels. A woman bound by her wrists, arms stretched above her head and a man doing…something to her. The angle at which Tom had drawn the man with his back to the viewer, his face obscured, and his body

concealing exactly what he was doing to the lady still left no doubt the act wasn’t pleasurable for her. The woman’s body bowed away from him, and a pool of something darkened the floor around her feet.

“What is this?” I demanded, so shocked by the scene that I didn’t use my usual

soothing tone with Tom.

“Evil man,” he mumbled.

I noted a pair of slitted windows in the background. “In the tower?”

He nodded.

“Did this actually happen? When?”

“Long ago.”

I realized he’d drawn the man in some sort of tunic and leggings, suggesting a bygone era.

“Did you make up this story, Tom? Who is the man supposed to be?”

“A killer, Great-Grandda says. Long ago.”

This was the most Tom had ever spoken all at once. He might have been spewing

vast paragraphs. I died to know more details, but that was all I could draw out of him that night, a suggestion of a crime that might or might not have happened a very long time ago. My continued questioning merely frightened Tom and caused him to scurry off.

It was a beginning, something to prop up the notion I’d developed that there

might be two distinct entities haunting the Hall: Lavinia and some evil being. But this new bit of knowledge moved me no closer to figuring out what I could do about any of it.

Meanwhile, I also agonized over an entirely different issue—the throb of lust that filled me whenever I recalled my embrace with Allinson in the library. I relived it far too often. I tried to chalk up my unreasonably strong reaction to being away from the possibility of random lovers for over a month with no hand but my own to give me sexual relief. But deep down, I knew these feelings were something more than a purely physical reaction.

Wounded, tortured Richard Allinson touched me deeply, awakening every

nurturing instinct I had and making me long to hold him. Feeling him close by

somewhere in this big house made it all the harder to bear the unbridgeable distance between us. I
wanted
, I
needed
with the sort of irresistible force it seemed impossible to deny forever.

One night, after an evening of racing with the boys up and down corridors until

we were all tired enough to sleep deeply, I surfaced from a nightmare of drowning.

No, not drowning, but suffocating from something tightening around my neck, I

realized as I gasped for air. Drenched in sweat, my heart rate as erratic as a butterfly’s wings, I thought I might have actually stopped breathing for a few moments before I woke myself.

I sat up in bed with damp sheets tumbled around me, inhaling and exhaling for the

sheer joy of being able to do so. Just as I’d gotten my panic under control, footsteps in the hallway outside my door sent my heart racing again.

I rose up on my knees and listened to the measured tread of someone approaching

and stopping in front of my door. I peered into the darkness and waited for the door to open. Good God, why hadn’t I locked it? But my next thought was that it didn’t make any difference. If some creature wanted to get to me, it would find its way in, locked door or not. I clutched at my bedcovers as if they would protect me and waited.

A moment later, the footsteps moved on. Not a ghost or two small boys, but a

grown person lingering outside my bedchamber. I had to see who it was, though it wasn’t hard to guess who and why he’d paused by my door. Maybe I wasn’t the only one reliving those moments in the library.

I leaped onto the floor, cold even through the rug. Barefoot and wearing only my

nightshirt, I padded to the door and hesitated only a second or two before opening it. The corridor was empty.

I lit a lamp and made my way to Whit and Clive’s room to check on them—just in