“Well, who was it? Give it up.”
“Not until you get your hot bod in here with me. Come on, move your pink butt. Your girlfriend needs warming up.”
Mitch needed no more in the way of encouragement. Quickly, he brushed his teeth, tore off his own clothes and joined her. Des’s teeth were chattering, her hands and feet like ice. She snuggled close, one incredibly long, smooth leg thrown over him, her head on his chest. As Mitch held her there under the mountain of covers, warming her, he watched the reflection of the flames dance across the ceiling and walls. He listened to the storm rage outside. And he remembered to be happy. Happy he was sharing this moment with her. Happy that she was such a big part of his life.
And here is what Mitch was thinking: If only we could stay like this forever. If only things didn’t have to change. If only WE didn’t have to change. But we do, we do…
“So talk,” he said to her. “Give it up.”
“It was Norma and Teddy.”
“No way.”
“Yes way. Norma’s stocking toes were in Teddy’s lap.”
“So the two of them are…?”
“You now know as much as I do.”
“Des, can I tell you something I’m not very proud of?”
Her eyes met his slowly in the firelight. “Mitch, you can tell me anything.”
“I have trouble picturing two people that age having sex together. I mean, they’re as old as my parents.”
“Well, you’d better start picturing it,” she chided him. “Because you’re going to be that age yourself one day, and I expect you to be having sex with me regularly and with great…” She drew back from him suddenly. “God, shoot me right now. I can’t believe what just came out of my girl hole.”
“Which was…?”
“That what we have going is… that we might still be together in thirty years. Or thirty days. Make that thirty minutes. I had no business going there. Forget you ever heard it. Erase it from your hard drive, will you?”
“It’s a duh-deal…” Suddenly, Mitch had great difficulty swallowing. That same damned melon-sized lump had formed in his throat. “You’re awfully funny sometimes, know that?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m a regular Henry Youngman.”
“It’s Henny Yuh-youngman,” he gulped.
Now she was glaring at him in the firelight. Here it was-Her Wary, Scary Look. “Mitch, have you got something you want to say to me?” she demanded stiffly.
“Absolutely not. Why would you suh-say that?”
“No… reason.” Her eyes widened with alarm. She’d started breathing in ragged, uneven gasps. Plus her entire body was clenched tight.
“Des, is something wrong?”
“Absolutely… not. Why would… you… ask me that?”
“No reason.”
“It’s just… I’m still cold, that’s all.” She raised her nightshirt over her head and flung it aside. “Why don’t you see what you can do about it?”
“You sure you’re…?”
“I’m fine,” she purred, her naked body taut and elastic against his, her flesh satiny.
He closed his eyes and buried his nose in the long, sweet hollow of her throat, inhaling the spicy fragrance that made him dizzy with longing.
“Ada likes my work,” she whispered after a moment, her breath warm on his face. “She thinks I’m gifted.”
“She’s right, you are.”
“But she wants me to get out of the academy. She thinks they’ll try to control me.”
“She’s right again.”
“How will I know when it’s time to go?”
“You just will. It’s an instinct, kind of like this…” He kissed her gently on the mouth, feeling her lips soften and flower under his.
And so they made love together like a couple of eskimos, burrowed deep under all of those covers as the fire warmed their room and the wind howled and the ice pellets smacked against the windows. It was a different kind of lovemaking from what Mitch had ever experienced with Des Mitry. She clung to him with a passion that very nearly overwhelmed him with its urgency. He wasn’t sure whether it was to do with the storm, being trapped here. Or if it was about him and that damned lump that kept clogging up his voice box every time he tried to tell her the thing he needed to tell her. They didn’t discuss it. Didn’t talk at all after that. Just drifted off to sleep, safe and snug together.
The sound of another big tree coming down woke Mitch sometime during the night. He didn’t know what time it was, but the fire had burned down to glowing coals by then, and the room was frigid. As he lay there, Des fast asleep next to him, Mitch thought he heard footsteps up above them on the third floor. The floorboards creaked. But it must have been the castle itself creaking in the wind. Because who would be walking around up there in the middle of the night in the dark?
He slid out of bed and piled more logs on the fire and made sure they caught. Then he dived back in, shivering.
Des stirred, semi-awake. “Wha…?”
“Just feeding the fire. Go back to sleep. I’m sure the power will be back on by morning.”
But he was wrong. When they woke up in the morning, the power wasn’t back on.
And there was one other development that was even more troubling:
Not everyone in the place woke up.
CHAPTER 6
Norma lay in bed with her hands clasped on top of the covers.
Her nightgown was buttoned to her throat, her hair neatly combed, skin and lips slightly blue. Her hand, when Des felt it, was cold to the touch, the fingers beginning to stiffen. Rigor was setting in, which meant that Norma had likely been dead for several hours. Although it was hard to be certain since the room was so chilly.
Des had her shearling coat on, hands stuffed in her pockets as she stood there studying Norma. More than anything else, there was an incredible stillness about death. A stillness that she was never quite prepared for even though she’d seen it many times. Too many times. “This is how you found her?”
“Yes, it is,” Les said hoarsely, standing there next to her. It was Les’s anguished cries that had roused her shortly after dawn. Roused them all. “It was her heart, Des. She’d had a lot of trouble. A serious attack three years ago. It was just a matter of time, really.”
Les and Norma were in the first room at the top of the stairs on the left, room one. It was practically identical to the room Des and Mitch had shared, just slightly smaller. Outside, the morning sky was clear and blue. The sunlight that streamed through the tall, granite-ledged windows seemed impossibly bright after the darkness of the night. The thermometer that was mounted out on the sill said it was three degrees below zero. And that didn’t factor in the wind that was still howling. Des could hear the angry whine of a chain saw outside. Jase was trying to do something about those two big sycamores that had come down at the head of the drive. Mitch and Spence were helping him. The others had retreated to the relative warmth of the taproom in stunned silence.
Except for Ada, who lingered there beside Les, staring down at her daughter with a shocked, hurt look on her ancient face. The old director had on cream-colored silk pajamas under a belted robe of heavy navy-blue wool. Her beautiful white hair needed brushing.
“My poor, sweet Norma,” she lamented, bending down to kiss her daughter’s cold forehead. “I nursed you at my breast while you gazed at me in innocent, trusting wonder. Now look at you, you sad thing. Ran out of time,
