Page 13 of Savage Blooms
Adam opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Eileen’s eyes flickered unselfconsciously across his bare chest, as though she were examining a horse before a pageant.
“You slept through breakfast,” she said. “I came to make sure you hadn’t died in your sleep.”
“Nope,” Adam said, voice too bright. “Here I am. Still alive.”
“Happy to hear it. Sleep well, I hope? No trouble with the bed?”
She was speaking at a brisk clip, as though she were impatient with him already. Adam glanced at the clock on his bedside table. It wasn’t even eight yet. Had he made some social faux pas by sleeping in, or were aristocratic country families the type to get up at the crack of dawn?
“I slept great,” he lied.
“No bad dreams?” she asked, in the light-as-air lilt that left everything open to interpretation.
Adam began to feel, for the first time since arriving, that perhaps Eileen was fucking with him.
“No nightmares,” he said, forcing a smile.
“Grand. There are leftovers in the pantry if you’re hungry. Join me in the library once you’re fed.”
“Is Nicola up yet?” Adam asked, feeling a bit disoriented and more than a bit naked, but absolutely powerless to close the door. Eileen’s eyes pinned him in place like an insect specimen under glass. “I’d like to say good morning to her first, make sure she had an okay night.”
“You can, just as soon as she’s back indoors. I saw her and Finley through the window touring the grounds. They’ll be out there a while, if he has his way. I’ll expect you in the library at the top of the hour.”
A lick of anger flared up in Adam’s chest. Who did this woman think she was, ordering him around? And who did Finley think he was, absconding with Nicola without so much as telling him? And what wasNicolathinking, wandering off with a man she had met hours before? It wasn’t that reckless connections were out of character for her; quite the opposite, in fact. Adam’s night had been ruined more than once by Nicola running off to the bathroom with some girl she had just met at the bar for seven minutes in sapphic heaven, or by her bringing a new beau who hadn’t yet been vetted to a group game night. Nicola was good-hearted and generally a decent judge of people, but she was impulsive, and borderline reckless when sex was involved. Adam had tried to talkto her about it once, but she had snapped back at him that he couldn’t get through a single trip abroad without getting into at least one situationship, and that had shut him up.
They were both bad at saying no to the greedy little fires within them that burned every hour of the day, begging to be fed with adventure or kisses or the heady rush of a whirlwind twenty-four-hour romance. They had agreed to stick together on this trip, but it looked like that promise went out the window at the first pair of pretty eyes.
Eileen thrust the bundle of clean clothes into Adam’s arms.
“No need to stand on ceremony, but I would recommend putting on some clothes. Do you take tea or coffee in the morning?”
Eileen was still pretty in the morning light, but now Adam could see her human imperfections as well: the flyaway hairs sticking out of her chignon, the way her lipstick feathered at the corners of her mouth, the sickly pallor beneath her makeup. Her under-eyes looked bruised, as though from crying or sleeplessness. As a matter of fact, in the unforgiving sunlight streaming in through Adam’s window, Eileen looked like a lovely wraith, a thin-skinned blue-veined ghost doomed to haunt her own home.
“Coffee,” Adam said, filing all this away. “Thanks for the laundry.”
“Certainly,” Eileen said stiffly, giving a jerky nod as though she had forgotten an appropriate response to the niceties of conversation. Adam was once again struck by her antiquated speech, like a child who had only learned how to talk to others by reading Frances Hodgson Burnett novels. It seemed a bit pretentious but mostly earnest, and that was the strangest part.
And with that, she was gone, disappeared down the hallway in a gust of iris perfume. Adam was left reeling, feeling half like taking his chances hiking out to find Nicola and half like pursuing Eileen down the hallway towards whatever designs she had for him.
In the end, he realized that he didn’t really have a choice.
Swearing under his breath, he kicked off his pajama pants and changed into clean clothes.
The house was easier to traverse in the daytime, and the pathway to the library had been seared into his memory by last night’s excursion. That scene hadn’t been a dream, of that he was more and more sure. He had really witnessed something unspeakable transpiring between Eileen and Finley, which meant that Eileen had seen him spying with her own eyes. And now, Eileen was either keeping a stiff upper lip about the whole thing and ignoring it entirely for the sake of courtesy, or she was pretending she didn’t know to toy with him, batting him around like a cat with a mouse. Either way, Adam hated it.
At least, hatred was the easiest explanation for the way his heart raced as he turned the corner and stepped into the library.
Eileen had, apparently bright and early that morning, brought a number of cardboard boxes out of storage and piled them on the desk. They were the sturdy kind with lids, the kind Adam recognized from the years his mother worked as a legal assistant. The gallery wall overlooked the strange workstation, faces from antiquity peering out at him from gilt frames.
“This is everything I could find in the attic from the years I figure it was most likely your grandfather was here,” she said, putting her hands on her hips as she surveyed the mess with bright eyes. She seemed even more excited than Adam was. “And a few boxes extra.”
“That’s very thorough,” Adam replied, not entirely sure what to say. On the surface, nothing about this situation seemed wrong, exactly. Strange, certainly, but strange in a good way, like an unexpected windfall of fortune. Still, that bell of survival instinct that had saved Adam from being mugged, roofied or swindled on countless trips was ringing in the back of his mind. It was very faint, but he still noticed it.
Something was off.
“Going through all this could take days,” Eileen said. “Or hours, if we’re lucky. Where would you like to start?”
