Persian carpet was as thick as velvet, the luxurious décor showing French and Italian influences. Gorgeous artworks decorated the walls, portraits and landscapes of various sizes, and marble busts and statues were positioned along the gallery-wide corridor. Chandeliers hung like crystal fountains above and the wall lights sparkled with the same top-quality glitter.
Holly had never been in such an opulent place. It was like a palace. A showcase of every fine thing a sophisticated and wealthy person could acquire. But there were no personal items scattered about. No family photographs or memorabilia. Not a thing out of place and everything in its place. It looked more like a museum than a home.
‘This is your room,’ Sophia said, opening a door to a suite a third of the way along the corridor. ‘It has its own bathroom and balcony.’
Balcony?
Holly stopped dead. Her heart tripped. Fear sent a shiver through the hairs of her scalp. The silk curtains at the French doors leading onto the balcony billowed with the afternoon breeze like the ball gown of a ghost.
How many times had she been dragged to the rickety balcony of her childhood? Locked out there in all types of weather. Forced to watch helplessly as her mother had been knocked around on the other side of the glass. Holly had learned not to react because when she had it had made her mother suffer all the more. Holly’s distress revved up her stepfather so she taught herself not to show it.
But she felt it.
Oh, dear God, she felt it now.
Her chest was tight, heavy. Every breath she took felt like she was trying to lift a bookcase. She couldn’t speak. Her throat was closed with a stranglehold of panic.
‘It’s breath-taking, isn’t it?’ Sophia said. ‘It’s only been recently renovated. You can probably still smell the fresh paint.’
A shudder passed through Holly’s body like an earthquake. Her legs went cold and then weak as if the ligaments had been severed with the swing of a sword. Beads of perspiration trickled down between her shoulder blades, as warm and as sticky as blood. Her stomach was a crowded fishbowl of nausea. Churning. Rising in a bloated tide to her blocked throat.
‘I—I don’t need such a big room,’ she said. ‘Just put me in one of the downstairs rooms. We passed a nice one on the second floor. That blue one back there. That’ll do me. I don’t need my own balcony.’
‘But there are nice views all over the estate and you’ll have much more privacy. It’s one of the nicest rooms in the—’
‘I don’t care about the view,’ Holly said, stepping back from the door to stand near a marble statue that felt as cold as her body. ‘It’s not as if I’m an honoured guest, is it? I’m here under sufferance. Your employer’s and mine. I just need a bed and a blanket.’ Which was far more than she’d had in the not-so-distant past.
‘But Señor Ravensdale insisted you—’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know—be put as far away from his room as possible,’ Holly said, hugging her arms across her body. ‘Why? Doesn’t he trust himself?’
The housekeeper’s mouth pulled tight like the strings of an old-fashioned evening purse. ‘Señor Ravensdale is a gentleman.’
‘Yeah, well, even gentlemen have hormones.’
Sophia let out a frustrated breath. ‘Will you at least look at the suite? You might change your mind once you see how—’
‘No.’ Holly swung away and went back down the stairs, one flight after another, her feet barely landing long enough on each step before it clipped the next one. She didn’t draw breath until she got to the nearest exit. She stopped once out in the sunshine, bending forward, hands on her knees, her lungs all but exploding as she gasped in the warm summer air.
There was no way she was going to sleep in a room with a balcony.
No way.
* * *
Julius was standing at his office window when he saw Holly striding off towards the lake past the formal part of the gardens. Was she running away already? Absconding as soon as she saw an opportunity? He was supposed to call her caseworker if there was an issue. He glanced at his phone and then back at Holly’s slight figure as she stopped in front of the lake. If she’d wanted to escape she surely would have gone in the other direction. The wide, deep lake and the thick forest fringing it behind were as good a barrier as any. He watched as she bent down and picked up a pebble and skimmed it across the surface of the water. It skipped several times before sinking, leaving a ring of concentric circles in its wake. There was something poignant and sad about her slim figure standing there alone.
There was a tap on his door. ‘Señor? Can I have a word?’
Julius opened the door to Sophia. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Holly won’t have the room I prepared for her,’ Sophia said.
He tilted his mouth in a sardonic arc. ‘Not good enough for her?’
‘Too big for her.’
He frowned. ‘Is that what she said?’
Sophia nodded. ‘I made it all nice for her and she won’t have it. She stalked off as if I’d told her she’d be sleeping in the stables.’
‘Whose idea was it to bring her here again?’ he said with mock rancour.
‘I’m sure she’ll grow on you,’ Sophia said. ‘She’s a spirited little thing, isn’t she?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Will you talk to her?’
‘I just spent the last half hour with her.’
‘Please?’ Sophia, for all that she was close to retirement, had a tendency to look like a pleading three-year-old child when she wanted him to do things her way.
‘What do you want me to say to her?’
‘Insist she take the room I prepared for her,’ Sophia said. ‘Otherwise where will I put her? You told me you didn’t want her on your floor.’
‘All right.’ Julius let out a long breath of resignation. ‘I’ll talk to her. But you’d better get the first aid kit out.’
‘Come, now. You wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
He gave her a wry look as he shouldered open the door. ‘No, but our little guest looks as if she could stick a knife in you and laugh while she’s doing it.’
* * *
Julius found her still skimming rocks across the surface of the lake. She was damn good at it, too. The most he could get was thirteen skips. Her last one had been fourteen. She must have heard him approach as his feet made plenty of noise on the pebbles at the edge of the lake but she didn’t turn around. She kept skimming pebble after pebble with a focussed, almost fierce concentration.
‘I believe you have an issue with the accommodation I’ve provided,’ he said.
She
