CHAPTER SEVEN

Nathaniel's POV

I tightened my grip.

Adrian Cole held on for two more seconds. Then his fingers opened, one by one, and my wife's wrist slid free.

Isabella did not move. She stood with her arm still half raised, staring at nothing.

Adrian laughed. He rubbed his wrist and laughed, loud and easy, for anyone listening.

“Relax, Nathaniel.” He spread his hands. “This is a family misunderstanding. We're brothers-in-law now. Brothers argue.”

“We are not brothers.”

I said the words quietly. He stopped laughing.

Behind him, Vanessa Whitmore stood in the dining room doorway. She watched me with an odd, fixed attention, as though she knew me well.

She did not.

I turned my back on both of them and took my wife's hand.

Her fingers were cold. They did not close around mine.

But I did not let go.

Outside, the air smelled of rain. Harrison stood beside the Rolls-Royce with the rear door open. He took one look at Isabella's face and said nothing. Harrison always knew when to stay quiet.

I kept her hand in mine until she was seated. Then I walked around the car and climbed in beside her.

Harrison pulled out of the drive.

I had agreed to this marriage for two reasons.

My mother asked me to. And the last woman who chose me had chosen my bank balance. 

So this time, I wanted terms. Two families. One contract. A polite stranger across the breakfast table, who would smile at my mother's lunches and leave me in peace.

The polite stranger did not last at all.

First came the cuffs. One morning she came downstairs in a cream blouse with the cuffs washed thin, and she pulled her sleeves down the moment she caught me looking. Her father wore a gold watch. His younger daughter wore frayed cuffs.

Then came tonight.

I stood in the Whitmores' front hall for two minutes with their housekeeper frozen beside me. I wanted to hear what the Whitmores said when they believed I was not coming.

I heard Richard Whitmore roar at his daughter for calling him a bad investment.

Over roast lamb.

I almost laughed out loud.

Her mother threatened to call mine. Isabella told her to go ahead, because my mother would only ask whether she had eaten.

She was right. My mother would ask, and then she would send up a tray.

Then Adrian Cole touched her, and I saw her face.

Her eyes lost their focus. Her breath stopped. Her body seemed to remember something I knew nothing about.

Fear.

Old fear, far older than tonight.

I wanted to break every finger on his hand. I settled for opening them one by one.

Beside me now, Isabella sat rigid, her hands locked together in her lap, her eyes on the back of Harrison's seat. Small tremors ran through her shoulders.

The night was mild. She was shaking anyway.

“Heat, Harrison.”

He turned the dial without a word.

I shrugged off my overcoat and laid the coat across her knees. The wool still smelled of smoke from the warehouse. After a moment, her fingers found the edge of the coat and held on.

I wanted to ask a dozen questions. Who is he to you? What did he do? Why did you go white when he touched you?

I asked none of them.

Words cost me once, as a boy. Spoken ones, at least. I learned to choose each one with care, and I stopped wasting them on things I did not mean.

I did not let myself think about why. Not tonight.

We crossed half of Westbridge in silence. At a red light, she spoke.

“You heard what I said to my father.”

“Your father repeated the line for me.” I paused. “Loudly.”

She closed her eyes. “And?”

“And you're right. He's a bad investment.”

Her mouth moved just then. It was not quite a smile but it was the closest thing to one I had seen on her face all night.

I looked out of my own window and gave her the moment to herself.

The house was dark when we arrived, apart from the lamp my mother left on in the front hall every night.

Isabella walked in ahead of me. At the foot of the staircase, she stopped.

The staircase in my family's house rose from the hall in one long curve of dark oak. It had twenty-four steps. A carved rail ran along the open side, and beyond the rail, the drop fell away to the stone floor below.

She had climbed these stairs every day since she moved in. Tonight, though, she simply stared at the first step. Her hand closed hard around the end of the rail while her breathing changed. It became short. Shallow. The same as in the Whitmores' hall.

She did not move.

And I did not ask.

Instead, I eased her fingers off the rail and took her hand in mine. Then I stepped in on the open side, so the wall was on her side and the drop was on mine.

“One step,” I said.

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she climbed one step.

“Good. Another.”

We climbed together, slowly. Her hand stayed locked around mine while she kept her eyes on the wall and never once looked down at the hall.

Twenty-four steps. I had climbed them all my life without counting.

Tonight I counted every one.

At the top, her shoulders dropped. She breathed out, long and slow.

I walked her down the corridor to her room. At her door, she turned and held out my coat.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For coming tonight.”

I took the coat. Her fingers brushed mine on the wool, and she did not pull away at once.

A strand of dark hair had slipped loose against her neck. I wanted to tuck the strand behind her ear. Instead, I kept both hands on the coat.

“Thank you for waiting,” I said.

She frowned. “Waiting?”

“I heard you from the hallway. You told your father you were waiting for your husband.”

Her cheeks turned pink. For a second, she seemed ready to deny the words. Then she lifted her chin.

“I was.”

For a moment, I forgot what I meant to say next.

“Goodnight, Isabella.”

“Goodnight, Nathaniel.”

I turned and walked back along the corridor, towards the top of the stairs and my own room beyond.

Behind me, her door did not close.

Then I heard her whisper. It was so low I almost missed the words. She was not speaking to me. She was not speaking to anyone.

“Not the stairs. Not again.”

Then her door clicked shut.

I stopped in the dark corridor with my coat over my arm.

Again?

I had read a report on Isabella Whitmore before I signed our marriage contract. Two pages. A finance degree with honours. No debts. No scandals. No accidents. No hospital stays.

Nothing about a staircase.

I did not sleep that night. 

At midnight, I sat on the edge of my bed and texted Julian Cross, my chief operating officer and my closest friend since university.

Everything on Adrian Cole. Every debt. Every lie.

Julian answered in under a minute.

Midnight, and you never text after ten. Who is Adrian Cole?

Vanessa Whitmore's husband. He put his hands on my wife tonight.

The dots on the screen appeared, vanished, and appeared again.

Starting now.

I set the phone face down on the nightstand and moved to the chair by the window.

I sat there until the sky turned grey over the garden, with one question and no answer.

What happened to my wife on a staircase?