King Among the Dead - Lauren Gilley Page 0,21
to keep living with someone, wallowing in their seemingly-unlimited hospitality. “No, I want to stay here. With you. If that’s alright.”
He smiled. “More than alright.”
“But I don’t want to be a burden. You have to let me be useful.”
“You already are. You listen to all of Kay’s bitching so I don’t have to.”
She chuckled, and his smile widened. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He reached across the table and covered her hand with one of his. His slender fingers warm, his palm still with its particular pattern of calluses. “I’m glad you’re here, Rose. Kay is, too. We don’t want you to go anywhere, not unless you want to.” Earnest and kind and honest, eyes gleaming in the weak sunlight.
It choked her, that look. She managed a nod, but didn’t trust herself to speak.
He patted her hand and drew back. “Now, where were we? Ah, yes, Pythagoras.”
SEVEN
Beck still went out most nights. The next morning, the scent of spilled whiskey and cigarette smoke lingered in the library, over the by the fireplace where the coals still glowed faintly beneath piles of white ash. Rose hadn’t had another late-night run-in with the Beck Who Wore Black again, and she refused to ask about it. People had their secrets; they needed them. It had been weeks and weeks at this point, and she never questioned him; had no desire to. Beck was home, now; was warmth, and food, and comfort, and knowledge, and her loyalty had grown so great sometimes she feared it might choke her. A fear that wasn’t a fear at all.
She never asked – but Kay asked her.
It was a Tuesday, and not a sunny day, but the clouds seemed lighter, and higher, and it wasn’t actively raining. Pedestrians bustled back and forth on the sidewalks out front, Beck was in his study, and Rose and Kay shared a particular bustling energy about the housework, an infectious busyness that they traded back and forth with each announcement to one another that a task had been completed.
As they passed one another in the hall, Kay hefted her basket of clean linens and said, “Come help me in Beck’s room for a bit.”
Rose pulled up short. She’d never been in Beck’s room. Never even cracked the door. It lay at the very end of the hall on the second floor, and she’d never been brave enough to come within five feet of it. Not because he’d forbidden her – he’d never forbidden anything – but because it had felt like an intrusion. She’d never had her own personal space before now, and she treasured it for the gift it was; never wanted to overstep into anyone else’s private domain.
Kay gave her a little elbow and started up the stairs. “Come on, it’s not that scary. He just never dusts, or picks up after himself, and if I didn’t go in occasionally he’d be swimming in empty mugs and candy wrappers.”
Candy wrappers? That didn’t sound like Beck at all. Too curious to refuse, she hustled up the steps behind her; Kay was surprisingly quick when she wanted to be.
“He won’t be mad?” she asked, though, as they turned the corner at the landing.
Kay made a dismissive sound in her throat. “Beck doesn’t get mad. Not about this sort of thing.”
But he’d been something that night in the library. Black-streaked hands lighting a cigarette.
Doubtless it was only her imagination, and the lack of windows in the hall, but the hall seemed to grow colder the closer they got to their destination. The air denser; she swore she felt it swirling around her legs.
Which was stupid, because Beck had bowed to them in the kitchen a few hours ago, dressed in a threadbare fair isle cardigan, as golden and lovely and sweet as ever. He wasn’t the sort of person who had a lair, that was cold, that would frighten anyone.
She squared her shoulders, and Kay opened the door, basket balanced on her hip, and Rose walked straight in behind her and wouldn’t allow herself to hesitate.
The room wasn’t a lair, but it was cold, and it did frighten her, but not in an exaggerated horror-movie sort of way.
It was dim, and at first full of nothing but the indistinct shapes of furniture corners, until Kay set the basket down with a tsk and went to push the drapes wide, flooding the room with the brightest light they’d had in weeks.
It was a grand room, a proper master suite, and it dwarfed Rose’s room. A