Chapter Eleven
Remember
Hinton was surprised that the lights were
still on in the drawing room as he entered the house. The dog had slept by the
fire until everyone else had gone to sleep. Then, he’d done as usual and
wandered upstairs to lie at the foot of his master’s bed.
The boy had removed his coat; he wore the
latest sneakers and low rise jeans. Hinton wandered into the kitchen to see if
there was anything to eat. He hoped Greta had left something since. He was very
hungry after hours of clubbing in Soho. He was often photographed there with
various girlfriends, but lately, his shallow existence had begun to bother him.
Perhaps he was more like his adopted father than he thought. The family
photographs that filled the drawing room told barely half the story of its
dysfunction.
Hinton shook his head at the pictures on
the wall as he climbed the stairs. It was funny to him that Heath could give
himself airs and graces but no one knew where he came from either. Heath could
use the title bestowed upon him for “services to the economy” but that didn’t
make him a Lord, not in Hinton’s eyes. He couldn’t have cared less about titles
but he thought it almost funny that he had to practically ask permission to
live in his own house when his sister had more rights to it than Heath (who
only owned the house because of a swindle…) but that was another story.
The boy was aware there were two sides to
the family history. In the first version, Heath had “saved” him as a child from
a vicious beating by his drunkard brother-in-law, Harrison. The other was
contained in an apologetic note from Harrison years later. Truth lay somewhere
in between. One thing Hinton knew for sure; Heath cheated Harrison out of his
own home during a game of high-stakes poker.
There are always more sides to a story but
this was the particular side that Hinton chose to believe. Before the bet,
papers had been signed. Heath, the foundling child, had risen to become the
rightful owner of Hareton Hall. Hinton grimaced in the mirror as he cleaned his
teeth and splashed his face. His image was hazy with condensation. He rubbed
the mirror with a towel and wiped his face dry. Hinton turned off the light and
walked quietly to his room. Heath’s light was on. As usual Hinton didn’t bother
to say goodnight. Instead, he flopped on his own bed fully clothed.
Heath wasn’t so bad. He’d been more of a
father than Harrison and treated him more like a biological son than the father
he’d never met. Besides, unless he won the annual Art Prize at his college, he
had nowhere else to go.
Hinton had flicked on the television news in
his bedroom and was chugging orange juice and eating what was left of some
roasted chicken, when he heard a piercing screech that made him walk into the
hallway.
Doors flung open and Heath’s dog bounded
out of the main bedroom towards a room with blazing light under the door; a
room that had never been used since his teenage aunt had inhabited it more than
twenty years ago.
A dark-haired girl flung open the door and
stood on the landing, looking pale and frightened in the half light. Hinton
Spencer froze on the spot.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m… I’m Katarina Hunt. You must be…’
‘Hinton, your…cousin by marriage, for all
intents and purposes. I…I was adopted.
Are you okay?’
‘I don’t know… I think I will be. Someone
tried to get into my room…’
The boy, mesmerized by her white skin and
red lips, stared at her longer than was necessary, then apologized, adding,
‘sorry…it’s just that you are identical to my…adopted Aunt…’ He gestured to
Kate’s picture on the wall.
‘May I?’ Hinton said.
‘Yes…come in, please…’ Kate said with
desperation in her voice. Hinton checked the cupboards and behind the curtains,
even under the bed.
‘There’s nothing in here…’
A slight breeze wafted through the room,
seemingly from nowhere.
‘I…I
met…your Uncle, um Heath and I wanted to come back to see some old
photos and the house my mother grew up in. Then the storm set in so I asked if
I could stay the night and…I don’t think Heath wanted me to stay and… someone
tried to get into my room.”
Hinton looked around.
‘The door was shut when I came up.’
Almost speechless, Katarina whispered, ‘not
through the door, through the window.’
Hinton wandered past the bed and towards
the upstairs bay window. It was unlocked and unopened. He pulled it up. They
were on the upper floor. Below, lay a stone pathway. The flower beds were a metre away from the
walls and the trees even farther. It would not have been possible for anyone to
climb up.
‘There is no one there now,’ Hinton said.
‘Are you sure you didn’t have too much to drink?’
‘Are you serious? I know what I saw.’
Outside, the wind started to pelt down
onto the trees. In the distance, an icy storm began to howl again.
‘Tell you what,’ Hinton said, smiling, ‘why
don’t you come into my room… I’ll take the floor, of course, and you’ll be safe
until morning when I drive you home.’
Katarina looked at him hesitantly. This
wasn’t the cousin she was supposed to meet, though she’d heard about him often
enough at Art College. Hinton was known as a real ladies’ man, a guy who failed
his A-levels and only got into college because of the brilliance of his
drawings and a scholarship. Everyone knew his family were loaded. Hinton was a
year ahead of her, so they’d seen each other in the halls but never spoken.
He’d dated more than his share of girls at the college, and dumped them just as
quickly.
Katarina reluctantly dragged her checked
blanket off the bed and pulled on her jeans over her underwear as Hinton
pretended to look away.
‘C’mon, then,’ Katarina said, as the storm
raged outside.
Hinton couldn’t believe his luck. He
started walking towards his room when he realised the girl had taken a wrong
turn.
‘I’m going to sleep in the drawing room,’
Katarina said. ‘Perhaps, you could come with me?’ She was still pretty scared
after the earlier incident, though she’d never admit it and Hinton had all but
convinced her she was dreaming.
“Mmm… give up my bed for a hard couch?” For
a minute she thought he was going to refuse.
‘Why not?’ he said with his most affable
smile. ‘We can pretend we’re on a camping holiday.’ Although her likeness to her mother threw him
momentarily, Hinton was beginning to like this new cousin.
Heath was able to sleep through practically
anything but lately he’d been woken up at all hours. He’d drunk three glasses
of brandy before bed and fallen into an almost trancelike state reading the
stock reports and going through some important files in relation to an upcoming
merger. He’d been out hunting squirrels and rabbits again. He’d swiftly scaled
the outside wall so no one would notice him coming back or leaving. Disgusted,
he wiped the blood from his mouth, rinsed and brushed his teeth before
bed.
Though he dimly heard the sound of a woman’s
scream it faded just as quickly and the only change in his vast, kingly bedroom
was the blurry sight of his dog’s ears standing up. He crawled under his duvet.
Heath slept a few hours every night. After his maturity, at twenty-one, he
hadn’t slept at all. But recently, he’d started falling into a deep slumber in
the early hours of the morning. He reached over for his newly prescribed
elixir. There were many underground markets now and different products for both
vampires and hybrids that hadn’t been available to Heath in his youth. After he
chugged some Magenta (a new elixir), he fell back into a deep sleep. The dog
whimpered and snuggled at his feet like she always did when he woke.
In the dark he heard a woman’s voice,
clear as glass.
“Heath… Heath…” the girl whispered to him.
Then, her hand reached over and shook him awake.
Dark hair fanned across his ear,
irritating him and interrupting his dream, which was more than a dream. Heath
opened his eyes and saw the perfect brown eyes of another and heard Kate’s
pleading voice as he reached out to touch her cheek.
‘Heath,’ the girl said. ‘Forgive me for
what I did. I’ve been away for eighteen years. Please come back to me, I have
missed you. It’s so cold out here…come back to me…come back…Let me in. I’ve
been in the in-between for so long…’
