slipped to the floor in the night and her robe had fallen off the hook on the door, as well. There was a chill in the air so she picked the robe up and shrugged it on. As she turned in the room she was caught again by the lithograph of the crow on the wall above the desk. Or is that a raven? she wondered. Is there a difference? In any case, it was a singularly odd bit of decorating.
And then suddenly it hit her, like someone speaking aloud in her head:
“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”
It’s a joke, isn’t it? From Alice in Wonderland. The Mad Hatter poses the riddle to Alice when they meet.
She looked at the desk, the raven.
But whose joke was it, I wonder?
She felt suddenly as if someone were playing with her, and she had a strong urge to leave the room. But she looked across the door to the balcony.
She crossed the room and opened the outside door to step out onto the iron balcony outside her room. The chill of the morning enveloped her. A fine trailing mist snaked through the gardens. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the strange white gazebo rising from the tangled growth, with its picture-window view of something she couldn’t quite see. The view from where she stood was gothically picturesque but the iron railing of the balcony was unnervingly low—knee-height at best, certainly not designed to any modern safety code. And the fall would be a sheer drop to the brick porch below. Brain damage, paralysis, death. Laurel took a step back and pressed her back against the wall of the building, with a sudden feeling of nausea.
From this height she was startled to see that the part of the gardens she overlooked was actually a formal labyrinth, a square one of boxwood hedges and taller camellias and brick walls, with worn gray statuary hidden coyly in its corners and angles. All through the gardens there were pale sprays of white flowers, almost glowing in their whiteness. She felt again the sense of a life she would never experience: a richer, decadent, opulent life. But there was the ghost of it here, a shadow of the sensation … to wake up and look out over acres of land, to feel the weight of the mansion around her.
A flicker of movement out toward the white gazebo suddenly caught her eye. She turned to look—and was stunned to see a figure dressed entirely in black: black coat, black pants, black hat, standing beside a white pillar, staring straight up at her. She swayed in shock.
Then something loomed in her peripheral vision and she whirled, losing her balance …
Hands grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back from the railing, against the brick wall.
“Okay? You okay?” Tyler demanded. “Jesus.” He held her firmly. Laurel stood for a moment, steadying herself in his grasp, her heart pounding as she realized how close she had just come to falling. She looked out toward the gazebo—but the black figure was gone. Was it ever there?
Tyler pushed open the door behind them and pulled her through. Inside her room he sat her on the bed and crouched on his haunches before her.
“Jesus,” he said again. “Are you okay?”
“I … thank you,” she said inadequately.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said sharply. He stood, stepped to the door and stared out the door at the balcony. “That’s fucking lethal. Can you imagine being out there after a couple of cocktails? They must have had people falling off that thing left and right. No wonder the house is haunted.”
She felt oddly like laughing—he was so right.
He looked back at her. “What happened out there? You looked like you’d seen—whatever it is we’re supposed to be seeing here.”
She glanced toward the open door. Had there been someone? But the clothing was so—not modern: the hat, the frocklike coat …
Which was one of the reasons the sight was so shocking to begin with. It had felt …
Impossible.
“I think coffee would help,” she said, and stood from the bed.
“Are you mad at me?” Tyler asked bluntly as the coffee dripped its way down into the pot and they stood in the small servants’ kitchen with the burnt-bean fragrance filling the air around them
“Of course not. Why?” she answered, though she knew very well.
“That story about the lab,” he said, looking straight at her. “It was a lame thing to do.”