Page 88 of A Secret In The Garden

I hurriedly backed away from her, needing to separate myself from her haunting presence and another glimpse at the wreckage of the conservatory. I needed to get away from here.

“Elaina,” a familiar voice spoke.

Shaken, I looked up to see Jasper’s father, Darius, looking lost and disheveled in front of me. His shirt was buttoned at an odd angle, and something about him seemed more off than usual.

“Eliza,” I corrected.

“Yes, forgive me. Have you seen Jasper? I lost something.” An odd absence in his eyes as he spoke made me uneasy. Why was he here? Had he managed to get ownership of the manor? All of the furnishings I could see looked to be the same.

Something uneasy prickled me about his presence, telling me he wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Is Jasper home?” I asked, looking around absently and wondering where the cop helping me had gone.

“Help me look for him, will you? I have to tell him something,” he asked earnestly, still looking a little out of it.

I agreed with hesitation and followed as he took the steps up to the second level.

“Does anyone know you’re here?” I asked gently.

“Yes, I think,” he answered absently as he walked down the hall, peeking his head in each door before moving on to the next.

An uneasy feeling pulled at me as I continued to walk farther into the depths of the mansion with him. Something in my chest urged me to not leave him alone. As we turned the corner, taking the stairs to the third floor, something red caught in my vision, moving behind me.

Hester.

I knew it was her. I could feel her presence behind me as I followed her husband up the stairs, the faint, soapy aldehyde scent of Chanel No. 5 following along with us.

I couldn’t take it anymore in the hallway and looked back at her, needing to see which expression she held.

Frozen in fear by her sudden closeness, her sad, apologetic eyes met with mine. She reached out, moving as if she didn’t really want to, gripped my face, and used her fingers to pry my mouth open until it hurt. I tried to turn and run, but my legs didn’t work. Terror gripped me as the ghost roughly pressed her cold, slender fingers into my mouth and down my throat before removing them and fading to nothing before my eyes.

I keeled over, hacking a deep, low intense cough. With my legs suddenly working, I kicked myself away from where she had been, even though she was already gone. What the fuck? Did she just try to choke me?

“That cough,” Darius said as he poked his head out of a door and was suddenly at my side helping me up. “Come sit down.” He ushered me into a seat inside the room he had stepped out from. “I haven’t heard a cough like that since Hester,” he said with faraway eyes as he moved to open the balcony doors, letting in a cool and welcome breeze.

As the cool air hit my clammy forehead, my eyes landed on him with curiosity. My voice rasped painfully as I spoke. “Hester used to cough?”

He nodded, looking off at a spot on the wall. “Before we knew she was sick.”

My breath caught in my chest. “Hester was sick?”

Darius nodded again. “Do you know where my son is? I need to tell him something before it’s too late.”

I glanced at the door, wishing desperately that anyone else would be in this room with me. But I plowed on regardless. “Why did you write fake letters to Jasper from Hester?” My chest rose and fell with shallow breaths as our eyes locked. Concern deepened as I saw things were missing from his eyes that should be there.

“You know about the letters?” he asked, though he didn’t actually sound surprised.

I nodded apprehensively. “Hester hated roses. It was in all her gardening notes. She even went so far as to write little poems about her dislike of them. I thought it was odd that a Gothic garden wouldn’t have a single rose. It was because she hated them, vehemently.”

I waited for him to connect the dots, but instead, he squinted at me.

“The wax seal on every letter from you and Hester was a rose. She never would have used a flower she hated to send her love to Jasper.”

He smiled, though it didn’t hit his eyes, and looked down at his feet. “I should’ve paid more attention to her and Jasper, instead of working as much as I did. I suppose then I would’ve listened enough to know the flowers she hated.”

“Why did you fake the letters?” I asked nervously.

There was movement outside the door, but I didn’t dare look in case Darius turned and saw it too. I needed him to keep talking. Tension crackled across the tops of my arms, causing the hairs to stand tall.