The Wicked Redhead. Beatriz Williams

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      I let my arm fall away, so Patsy leans against me, turned toward Anson.

      “But who’s going to keep Ginny safe?” she asks, terribly small.

      “Well, I guess that’s my job, isn’t it? As best I can.” He holds out his arms. “And now I think it’s time you went to bed, sweetheart. You and Ginny, you need your sleep.”

      Patsy goes so willingly into his embrace, I think my heart stops. Lays her head on his shoulder while he lifts her up with one thick, exhausted arm and takes my hand with the other. By the time we reach the stairs, her eyes are already half-closed, and her wet eyelashes stick together at the tips, and I can’t help recollecting the way we entered this house not twenty-four hours before. Just like this, except we have fresh, new bruises and hurts atop the old ones, and though the house is exactly the same, pale and peaceful, and our hosts make identical noises of relief and welcome, I am overcome by this swift, terrible vision that we are stuck on a wheel, the three of us, a nightmare Ferris wheel that turns over and over and never lets us off.

       17

      I STAY WITH Patsy until she falls asleep in her bed in the room she shares with Evelyn. The wee Fitzwilliam sprig doesn’t even stir throughout this disturbance, just lies there under her white counterpane, sweet cheek turned to the moonlight. I stroke Patsy’s hair and count the beats of her breathing. The house around us has gone still; even the slight, worried murmuring of the doctor and his wife has died into silence.

      My own room is the one next door. I slip inside and climb under the covers, which smell drowsily of lavender. The window’s cracked open, releasing all the heat of the day, and for some time I listen to the strange, wild music of the Atlantic Ocean and recollect the night I spent in Southampton, when that same water beat against my shore in exactly the same key. Isn’t this supposed to lull you to sleep? Lavender sheets and the ocean noise? Well, it doesn’t. I turn on one side and the other. Stare at the blank ceiling and see visions of violent death, of lifeless faces, though I tell myself I’m safe and sound, safe and sound, nothing to fear.

      Start to get angry.

      I’m the lucky one, aren’t I? Survived all this trouble to find myself lying in a soft bed by the sea. I ought to be happy. Ought to be sleeping the sleep of the fortunate.

      I sit upright. Stare at the billowing curtains. Throw off the counterpane, slide from the bed, and take my dressing gown from the hook on the door.

       18

      HOWEVER DEEPLY I am attached to Oliver Anson Marshall, I am not bound to him by anything so respectable as marriage. He sleeps virtuously, therefore, on the other side of the villa, in some kind of guest quarters that exist on the other side of the courtyard.

      You might be in Italy as you steal through the French doors from the dining room and across the paving stones of that courtyard, breathing in some exotic scent of citrus and spice while a stone fountain rattles happily in the moonlight. The air is soft and still warm, blowing in from offshore, and I can taste the wholesome salt on the back of my tongue.

      There is just enough glow to guide me to Anson’s door, which opens directly into this enchantment, and—to my vast surprise—the handle turns easily. Wouldn’t a fellow like Anson lock his door as a matter of course? Then he says my name as I enter the room, and I understand the oversight. I shed my dressing gown but not my nightdress and climb into the bed. Lie on my side, facing him, while he gathers me close. His skin is so hot as a fever. I press my forehead into his collar. “I can’t do this anymore,” I say.

      “Do what?”

      “Can’t go out into danger with you. Can’t keep watching people get killed.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “Don’t be sorry. Just stop. Give up.” I bring my good left hand up to cover his jaw and his ear. “Just stay with us, where we’re safe. A nice, quiet life.”

      “Is that what you want? A quiet life? You, Ginger?”

      “I’m done. I’m done.”

      “Shh. It’s all right. You’re shaking.”

      “Of course I’m shaking, you damn fool. Nearly died out there, the two of us, out there on the ocean. What’s my sister going to do, if we’re killed?”

      “It’s over, it’s done. We’re safe. Won’t happen again, I promise.”

      “Won’t it?”

      He is silent for some time, resting his left hand upon my hip, his right hand up around my head, inside my hair. He’s bathed and shaved, I can smell the soap of him, and also the faint reek of antiseptic. I guess the doctor saw to him. Clean and dry and warm, bursting with bone and muscle and adventure. Pitching villains into the ocean one minute, carrying my baby sister tenderly in his arms the next.

      “Just let me clear my name,” he says. “That’s all I want.”

      “Why? Why does it matter?”

      “It just does. So we can live honestly. No shadows behind us.”

      “I’ve got news for you, bub. It’s too late for that. Why do you think I came down here tonight?”

      “I don’t know. Why?”

      I start to answer him, but my throat hurts when I try to make words. So I just breathe, breathe him in, breathe his soap, breathe the faint note of antiseptic and the particular scent of a warm bed and a warm man inside, like no other smell in the world. My heart slows. “I had this dream,” I whisper.

      “What kind of dream?”

      “Last night. Just before I woke. Dreamt I was trying to find you, and you were on a ship. A ghost ship, nobody on board until I went below decks. And then I found you, and you were dead. Everybody was dead.”

      He sighs. “I see. Is that what all this is about? Some dream?”

      “Wasn’t just a dream. Too real for that. Back home, we would have called it a vision.”

      “A vision? You mean like a premonition?”

      “I mean a vision, Anson, a glimpse of some future scene. A prophecy.”

      “You don’t really believe that?”

      “Don’t I?”

      “Ginger, it’s a dream, it’s nothing more. You’ve never believed in that kind of thing. It’s a figment of your imagination, that’s all.”

      “Why, you think I’m neurotic, don’t you?”

      “No, I don’t. I think you’re exhausted, you’re—you’re full of nerves. Look at you, you’re shaking. It’s because of what happened in Maryland. Naturally you’re having nightmares. God knows I am. But it’s not real. There’s no such thing as visions, second sight, СКАЧАТЬ