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I spent ten minutes weeping in the ballroom before running through the house, looking for Archie. He’d know what to say to make me feel better. He always did. But Archie had made himself scarce recently. My only glimpse of him today was as I passed through the kitchen before dinner, and even then I didn’t dare say anything to him. My sister and I were forbidden from socializing with the staff and vice versa, but that had done nothing to stop me and Archie from becoming best friends.
Unable to locate Archie, I found myself outside on the terrace. Even though it was technically spring, winter’s grip remained tight, making the night air bracingly cold. I didn’t mind, though. I was just happy to be anywhere but inside that awful, awful house.
I climbed atop the railing. Another thing I was told not to do but did anyway, mostly because the railing was so low. If my father hadn’t wanted me to climb on it, then he should have made it higher. Sitting there, balanced precariously, I stared down at the water below. Moonlight sparkled on the ocean swells and the whitecaps glowed in the night. It was so beautiful that, just for a moment, I considered leaping off the railing to join them.
It seemed a better alternative than life at Hope’s End.I was young and bursting with yearning. For love. For adventure. For life. Yet none of that awaited me here, in a place where my mother medicated herself into a stupor, my father openly cheated with the maids, and my sister pretended nothing was wrong. Was this how I was going to spend the rest of my life?
If that was the case, I’d rather end it now. And what a fitting end it would be, making the day of my birth also the day of my death.
Before I could entertain the notion further, a voice spoke up from behind me.
“Careful. If you fell to your death, this place would have nothing worth looking at.”
I whirled around, almost losing my balance in the process. I teetered on the railing a moment, suddenly terrified I was about to fall. A second earlier, I’d been thinking of ending it all. Now I wanted nothing more than to live--if only to chastise my unknown companion for spying on me.
After righting myself, I hopped off the railing. At the same time, the source of the voice crept from the shadows along the side of the mansion. I knew who he was because I’d heard Berniece mention him in the kitchen and eavesdropped on the maids talking about how handsome he was.
And indeed he was handsome. Wearing just work pants and a cotton undershirt, he had a primal look to him. Strong and slightly brutish. Rather than slick his hair back with pomade like most men did at the time, he let it grow wild and unruly. He swiped a lock of hair from his eyes and stared at me in a way that can only be described as wolfish. A smile played across his lips, as if he knew every wicked thought I’d had earlier that day.
“You weren’t really going to jump, were you?” he said.
I looked his way, even though I’d been trying not to. I didn’t want to stare, for I knew it would make him think I considered him worthy of staring at, which he very much was. But his remarkforced me to face him head-on. While completely true, it also smacked of impropriety.
“I don’t need to explain myself. Especially to someone like you.”
“You’re right,” he said. “You don’t. But I am curious why someone with your life would even risk death by climbing up on that railing.”
I turned back to the ocean, refusing to look at him a moment longer. “You know nothing about my life.”
“I’m all ears.” He joined me at the railing, focusing his attention solely on me, as if he couldn’t wait to hear what I had to say. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Everything.”
He let out a low whistle. “That sounds quite serious.”
“Do my problems amuse you?” I asked.
“Not at all, Miss Hope. But surely not everything is terrible.”
“This house is,” I said. “It’s downright awful.”
He turned around and gazed up at the glittering mansion behind us. “It looks quite nice to me.”
“It’s not, I can assure you,” I replied. “Honestly, I would kill to leave this place.”
He moved closer until we were mere inches apart. So close I felt the heat coming off his skin, which in turn gave me delicious chills.
“We haven’t been properly introduced,” he said, holding out a hand. “I’m Ricky.”
FIFTEEN
Ricky
Lenora types the name with such force that the letters scar the page as if they’ve been applied with a branding iron. Now she stares up at me, defiant and irritated. Her eyes, narrowed like a cartoon villain’s, seem to ask if I’m satisfied.
I’m not, despite the chapter she just banged out in the middle of the night and the questions she tapped answers to before the typing began. The first one, posed immediately after I burst into her room, was “Did you know him, Lenora?”
She replied with taps in the affirmative against the bedspread.