The Kiss (15 page)

Eva rubbed her head, trying to understand, to wrap her head
around the weirdness of it all. “Strange how?”

He shook slightly, the memory obviously still potent. “The house
was full of pots and pans all smoking and sending off sparks, and the air had a
quality to it I had never experienced. I know now that it must have been
magic.”

Eva laughed nervously. “Magic isn’t real. It’s a myth, a
fairytale.”

“Men made into stone aren’t real either, Eva, but here you sit
holding the hand of one.”

“She did this?”
I’m actually believing this? I’m actually
thinking this might be real?

He nodded.  “It had been reputed for years that she was some sort
of witch but I never really thought about it, at least not in detail, not until
that day.”

Eva looked down at his hands. The skin was so real, the heat so
apparent. The idea that he turned into stone was frankly preposterous. So
preposterous that again Eva questioned her own sanity.

 “She told me that I would pay his price,” Adam continued. “That
it was my fault he had been on the Estate, that I would take responsibility.
That I would wish I had never been so foolish, so arrogant, so consumed in my
own desires.” He sighed and squeezed her hand. “Everything she said was true, I
deserved it all.”

He paused and Eva waited, when it looked as though he wouldn’t
continue she squeezed him back. “And then?”

“And then everything changed.”

Chapter
Twenty-Two

The days passed and the ice did not thaw. Winter had taken over
the Estate and would not release her hold. Inside the cavernous halls life went
on as it always had. The servants went about their business, the villagers
their daily routine. For them nothing had changed.

For Adam everything had.

Slowly though, so slowly it was agony, he began to feel as though
his vision was returning. The fog in his mind was clearing and he began to
perceive the world around him. It was almost like waking from a deep dream, or
an alcohol induced blackout. Bit by bit things began to make sense, bit by bit
he comprehended.

At first he thought that finally, after so many years of drinking
and whoring, he’d lost his mind. What he could see did not seem real, but as
the days passed, one after the other with no change, he knew the truth.

It was as real as it could be, inescapably real.

The endless blue became sky, the constant blackness the night,
and the pinpricks of light crystallized into the stars. All of God’s creation
hovered above him, all seeming just a touch away.

He couldn’t see beyond that, nothing below or around, only above,
but he knew now that the sobbing belonged to Grace, the murmurs of comfort to
Finn. They knew where he was but he could do nothing to reassure them, nothing
to make anything better—as should be his job as lord.

Sometimes other voices unfamiliar to him penetrated the fog,
voices that didn’t know where or what he had become. He called out to those
voices but they did not answer. 

No one will answer me.
Because no one could hear him,
because the words were only in his mind.

The days ticked by, the cold did not touch him, the rain did not
soak him, but slowly he began to feel himself

The body he resided in was not his, he was no longer
him
. 

In the still of the night, when everything was a perfect canopy
of darkness around him, Adam knew the truth. He had been cursed somehow, frozen
forever, never able to escape.

Then one day another voice reached him, a voice that wasn’t Grace
or Finn but one he’d last heard whilst writhing in pain, bathed in scalding
liquid.

“Ah me young lord,” Granny Hildegarde said. “So thoughtless, so
selfish. Ye suffer now as Evie did, do ye not? Ye and all of your guests, all
but Felton. He suffers elsewhere.”

 “What have you done to me?” Adam asked, through frozen,
motionless lips.

She did not answer at first and Adam, unseeing, feared that she
hadn’t heard him or had disappeared, but eventually she spoke. “Did ye ever
hear the legends of old?” she asked.

He made to shake his head, but the action was in his mind only.

“Probably not,” Granny continued. “They be old tales, long since
forgotten to but a few.”

She trailed off, somewhere in the distance a bird called and the
wind whipped around them both. Adam felt nothing, nothing but the helplessness
as he waited.

He could, and would, do nothing but wait.

“In the old legends when a man committed a crime against someone
a woman loved she would curse him,” Granny continued. “The curse was a simple
one and the woman did not get to choose how it would happen. That was left to a
higher power than her.”

“A curse?” Again the words were soundless but she heard.

“Yes me boy, a curse. The potion I threw on ye sealed it, the
mark ye felt on yer back branded ye with it, and now it’s real.”

“I’m frozen,” Adam said. “And not me.” It was strange how easy it
was for him to accept that.

“You’re different. You’ll be different for some time.”

“How long?”

“Until you know what you should have known some time ago.”

“How long, Granny, please?” Adam begged.

“More time than ye’ve known, Adam,” she said, using his name at
last. “Everything will be different for ye, but ye’ll realize then why I had to
do this, and as odd as it sounds ye will thank me for it.”

If he could have Adam would have gritted his teeth.

“Each year ye’ll be given seven days of freedom, a handful of
time to try and learn the truth. Ye all will.”

“The others?”

“They, like ye, are frozen.”

“But—”

The wind whipped harder and Adam tried to imagine what it would
feel like against his skin.
Will I ever feel it again?
Will I ever be
me again?

“You won’t all survive to the end,” Granny whispered.

Will I?

“I do not know,” she said. “It’s in yer hands now.”

Chapter
Twenty-Three

“Adam…”

He shook his head and moved away from her, drawing the curtains
back from the window, his eyes on the empty fountain. “She told me that I would
stay frozen until the winter solstice next year. That I would spend all my days
frozen, looking out around me but unable to do anything. We would, she said,
all stay frozen, watching the sky until the solstice returned.”

“It’s impossible,” Eva said. “Impossible.”
Maybe if I say it
enough times?

Adam grimaced. “I’ve had a lot of time to think on it, we all
have. Impossible it might be but undeniable. I stayed there, trapped, frozen
watching the blasted expanse above me. The days passed and the winter gave way
to spring and then to summer and then finally winter arrived again. I waited
for the days to pass, I waited for the nights to grow longer and eventually one
midnight came, the pain returned and I was back in my bed like nothing had
happened. A man again.”

“Didn’t people wonder where you had been? Didn’t everyone notice
a bunch of new statues? Didn’t someone think something was odd?” The questions
tumbled from her lips, desperate for answers.  

Adam shook his head. “No, she’d told Finn, my manager, and Grace,
my maid, what she’d done and that they would see me again, if that was what
they wanted.” He sighed and shook his head. “They did, and by making that
choice they wrapped themselves in the curse as well. Bound forever to wait for
me, trapped to watch the years tick by as I have been, only held by loyalty not
by stone. I didn’t deserve that from them Eva, not at all, but they gave it all
the same.”

‘Grace… Finn…” Eva breathed.

“Yep one and the same.”

“Impossible.”

“But true,” he replied.

“That would make them, like, two hundred years old!”

“Grace looks good for it, huh?”

Jesus Christ.

“We were overjoyed to be free again,” Adam continued, “all of us.
I went straight to the forest cottage to thank her, to tell her again how sorry
I was, but she was nowhere to be seen. The others they went immediately back to
their families. I bathed, I ate, I did all the things I had thought of whilst
trapped and I promised myself that I would never be so foolish again. I
remembered what she said about the seven days but I ignored it, pretended she
hadn’t said it.”

“There’s more isn’t there?” Eva whispered and Adam nodded.

“Seven days passes so quickly, Eva, it is unbelievable really how
soon it goes out here, and how slowly it passes in there.” He jerked a hand in
the direction of the fountain. “I was in the library, reading by the fire when
midnight hit and the familiar pain stabbed me again. I tried to ignore it,
tried telling myself it wasn’t happening, but it was, and within moments I
found myself back in the fountain.”

“No…”

He sighed. “And that
is
how it has been Eva, for nearly
two hundred years.”

“Impossible,” she breathed.

‘Finn and Grace are trapped too, in a different way of course but
trapped all the same,’ he added, ignoring her millionth impossible. “They’ve
kept the Estate going for me all these years. With a little bit of
inventiveness we’ve left everyone believing the Earl of Winterwood packed up
and left for the Americas two hundred years ago. He has a son every thirty
years or so, and that son inherits. No one around here knows who I am. Grace
and Finn see to that, without them I’m not sure what I’d have done. How I could
possibly have survived the darkness.”

Everything fell into place with a kind of horrible clarity an Eva
inhaled sharply. “They provide women for you.” It was not a question.

“Eva—”

“People to keep you amused right?” she added, suddenly angry. “To
make sure your seven days are fun?”

She wasn’t angry because she was imagining two hundred years
worth of women and feeling sick about it, of course not! Eva was angry because
everything had been a lie. Grace, Finn, Adam, they’d all lied.
Not to
mention the fucking freaky heebie-jebbies.
Sure, if what Adam was saying
was true the torment would be unimaginable, but she had herself to think about
as well and now everything made a nasty sort of sense. The sort of sense that
had another scream building and a desperate adrenaline rush dancing through her
veins.

“It’s not like that.”

“Just cut to it already, Adam, I’m not fucking stupid,” she
gritted. “We’re here to provide your entertainment when you’re... alive, aren’t
we? I was right all along.”

Adam shook his head. “No, Eva, that’s not why you’re here. Not
for that.”

Why does the image of all those women over all those years
have the power to stab me through the heart. What the fuck is happening to me?
What has Adam done to me?
“Of course it is.” Eva whispered, still appalled
at the revelations. ‘Were you planning to use me until your seven days were up?
Planning to bed me until it was time to go back?”

“No, Eva.”

“Just tell me the truth, Adam,” Eva cried. “Be fucking honest
with me.”

“I’m trying.”

Her heart squeezed and she gripped the bedpost to steady herself.
“How could you make me get involved with you when you knew that in a few days
you’d be gone again?” she asked, jumping off the bed. “How could you? Did you
not even think about my feelings?”

“I had to,” he said. “Or I thought I did but everything is
different now.” He gestured across to her, his hand shaking. “You’ve changed
the entire game. Flipped it on its head and left me reeling. I know what I’m
supposed to do now, and it isn’t what I thought.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Eva cried, both her head and
her heart racing. “Explain yourself to me Adam. Tell me you haven’t used me.
Give me something about this whole shitty situation that’s real.”

He closed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. The gesture
pulled something in Eva and tears pricked her eyes. She clenched her fists,
wanting to cry and scream at the same time. More than anything in that moment
she wanted the last couple of hours to disappear, for everything she had just
learnt to be no more than a dream—a horrible nightmare.

It had been just two days, such a small amount of time, but
already Eva could feel the beginning of the pain she knew was to come. Adam was
going to fuck up her head and mangle her heart.

She knew right then that it was as nastily simple as that.

Chapter
Twenty-Four

Adam stepped forward and laid his hands on Eva’s shoulders,
shaking her ever so slightly. Even now as she looked up at him, her eyes full
of bewilderment, her perfect curls brushing against her face, Adam was
captivated.

The moment he’d heard her voice below him he’d known. It was like
someone had switched on a light. She was the one, the one he’d been waiting
for.

The one to set him free.

And then when he’d seen her in the foyer—even now he smiled at
the thought—he’d picked her out of the line immediately. Knew from the color
flooding her face, and the squaring of her shoulders that it was her. The
woman, who had alternately charmed and delighted him, while he waited, trapped
in the stone.

She was the one, and he was already lost.

“Eva,” he whispered and she cast him a hurt filled glare, before
pushing his hands away from her, a shiver racing through her perfect frame.

Adam sucked in a deep breath, and tried to steel himself against
the pain of her look. He disgusted her. If course he did, the whole fucking
situation disgusted him. A man made of stone? A man cursed? It was enough to
make even the bravest of women shudder, and Eva, though braver than most,
couldn’t be expected to be okay with the situation, he knew that.