He felt tears on his fingers. “I cannot.”
“The kiss?”
“No.”
“Me then.”
“No, Felton, please—”
“Please nothing. I shall not let you go until you tell me.” His breathing came faster. “The nightmare. You have remembered something, haven’t you?”
“I wish there were no nightmare.”
“Eliza—”
“I wish I remembered nothing. I wish I had seen nothing. I wish he had killed me too so I would not have to…have to …”
“Have to what?”
“Something wrong, Master Northwood?” From the top of the stairs, Dodie appeared with a candlestick. The yellow light invaded the darkness and exposed the terror on Eliza’s face.
He released her. “No, nothing is wrong.”
Eliza scampered up the stairs and flew past Dodie. Seconds later, her chamber door slammed shut.
“My, but she be terrible upset tonight, Master Northwood. What be wrong with her?”
“I do not know.” He shook his head, but a cold fear raced through him. “I do not know.”
Over the following days, Eliza seldom left her chamber. Once or twice she took her meals downstairs, and sometimes throughout the day she went out of doors to visit Merrylad.
But she had succeeded, for the most part, in avoiding both Felton Northwood and his father.
Until today.
Felton had already knocked three times. One to remind her of the ball tonight. Another to tell her what time their carriage would depart. And yet another to deliver the dress, which he’d instructed Dodie to take from his mother’s wardrobe and alter to Eliza’s size.
Now, four hours before the ball, she held that same dress against her. The fabric was smooth, silky, a shade of green more like the pine trees in the forest than anything else. A metallic trim decorated the neckline, hem, and sleeves—and if she’d seen this gown in a magazine, while nestled at the edge of the cottage hearth, she would have smiled and said it was lovely.
It didn’t seem lovely now.
She didn’t want to attend the ball, and she didn’t want to see Felton. She didn’t want to spend the evening close to him, dancing with him, accepting the graciousness of his smiles and kisses, all the while knowing she was about to upend his world.
She couldn’t tell him.
She wouldn’t.
In the dream, she had. She’d written another note and placed it in his hands, then watched as he’d unfolded it and scanned the words.
Then the dream had turned into a nightmare. A new nightmare. Not of the beast clawing her or shoving her out of the window with the red curtains.
But of Felton. He’d raced to the very same window, with the red billowing around him, and plunged through the panes. The shattered glass had pierced and cut her, made her bleed again, but it didn’t matter because he had jumped. He was dead. Two bodies lay broken and mangled and bloody outside the window she hated—
“Oh, Miss Gillingham, look what else I found.” Dodie entered and grinned with pride as she held up two white, elbow-length gloves. “I says to Mrs. Northwood, I says, ‘Miss Gillingham will be lookin’ ne’er so pretty as tonight.’ And she says to me, ‘Dodie, does she have gloves?’ And I says to her, I says—”
“It is all so very kind of her.” Eliza smiled and draped the dress across the bed. “The dress, the necklace, everything.”
“She says she be wantin’ you to look just perfect, Miss Gillingham.”
