Page 59 of Once Upon a Midnight Dreary
“Why not?”she asked, determined to get to the bottom of it.“You followed me to the village that day.You—”
“And I shouldn’t have.It took more out of me than I care to admit.”His expression was pinched as he lifted his hand and rubbed his forehead, frustration edging through him.
“What does…that mean?”she asked.Her face drained as she remembered that bright morning in the village.
He expelled a heated breath.“Don’t you see?I cannot go further than the village because I’m bound to Ravenfell.Just as Lenore is.”
Confusion pulled her brows together.“No, I don’t see.Why?Whyare you bound to this place?”
His ire was rising once again, like it had in the kitchen when she questioned him.When she’d tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together.He stepped toward her, took her by the arms, his fingers digging into her flesh.Not cruel.Just firm.
“Please, stop this, Victoria.What happened is a blight upon my soul.I have not spoken of it to anyone and I never will.”
“But if I can help you—”
“You cannot!No one can help me.I am cursed to remain here, in these hallowed halls forever.Just as Lenore and—”
He broke off, as though he were about to say another name.The name of the child.Lily.
“Lenore and Lily,” she said, her voice rough in the silence.
Gabriel released her and stepped away.“Do not speak her name to me.It’s too painful to hear.”
In that moment, she understood him.She heard the grief in his words.He had never fully recovered from the death of the girl—his daughter.And that, along with Lenore, still haunted him.
He spun away from her and fled the room, leaving her alone with the sounds of the crackling fire.
Victoria remained in the sitting room for a long time watching the fire turn to embers and listening to the creaking of the old house as she sat alone.Lord Charles was right about one thing.Houses were not built like this anymore.Even as she sat there, her legs curled under her, she decided she was no longer afraid.Not of the house.Not of Lenore.
When the fire was nothing more than a red-hot glow, and weariness pressed through her, she rose and moved from the sitting room into the drafty foyer.The house was cold and dark.It was late.Gabriel was nowhere about.Perhaps he had retired to his room for the night, seeking solace and solitude.
The way he looked at her when she’d mentioned the girl’s name was like a knife to the gut.It had pained him hearing it.How much time had passed since he’d spoken her name aloud?How long ago had it been since he’d thought of the little girl who was his daughter?
As she started for the stairs, the memory suddenly exploded through her mind.Halting, her hand on the banister, she let it play out.Let it come to her with such clarity it nearly sent her to her knees.
She was eight years old.She’d wandered out to the garden looking for her mother.She wanted to ask her mother if she could let the little girl in the nursery play with her doll.But she didn’t find her mother.
The path to the hidden graves was shrouded in mist, calling to her, pulling her toward it.As a child, she did not understand the significance of that.She merely wanted to go down that gravel path—then it was not so overgrown as it was now.
And then suddenly, there was a hand on her shoulder.When she looked up, she met Gabriel’s panic-laced gaze.She blinked, tilted her head to the side.The sun seemed to blot out the rest of his features behind his head, but she knew who he was.
You’re the man in the west wing, she’d said.
He said nothing as he knelt before her, as though shielding her.Shielding her from what?Lenore?Was her ghostly presence there that day in the garden?She could not shake the certainty he was there to protect her.
She cast a glance upward to his room.Was his reluctance to reveal the truth now his way of protecting her?
Now more than ever, she needed to find out the answers.She recalled the locked cabinet in the study.Gabriel had never offered the key.Nor had he mentioned it.There was something in that cabinet she needed to see, to find.
She headed up the stairs, entered her room, and scanned the dressing table.There—a hair pin.Slim.Sturdy.She snatched it up with trembling fingers and clutched it in her fist like a weapon.Then she turned and crept back down the stairs, every step creaking underfoot.
The study door loomed before her like a sealed vault.
She slipped inside and closed it softly behind her.The latch clicked shut, muffling the sounds of the sleeping house.For a long moment, she stood still in the dark, listening.Her ragged breathing.The soft tick of the grandfather clock down the hall.The ever-present hush of Ravenfell, as though the manor was holding its breath.
She swallowed her own nerves and lit a candle.Its small golden flame flickered and bent as she crossed the room and knelt before the locked cabinet.
With unsteady hands, she bent the pin into a long, narrow shape, flattened one end, and fit it into the lock.The cabinet’s cold metal resisted, as if it sensed her intent.
