Silence for the Dead(68)

“Not even close,” I admitted. “What is that smell?”

I had swung open the door to the west wing, and we stepped through, pushing the door shut behind us. Over the smoky odor of the lamp I could smell dampness, mold. It was the smell of the black mold from the men’s bathroom.

Jack caught my hesitation. “It’s just rot,” he said. “Wood and plaster. I don’t smell anything dead.”

He’d know what death smelled like, of course. I thought of the Gersbachs and all that was at stake and made myself square my shoulders and lift my chin. “Give me the lamp.”

“No. I’ll lead. If there’s a hole in the floor, I’d rather go through it myself than watch you do it.”

“Is that supposed to be heroic?”

He grinned. “Follow me.”

We crept along the first corridor. Portis House had always seemed decrepit and unwelcoming to me, but as the only door out of the west wing receded, the rest of the house started to seem like a bastion of comfort. There was no other way to put it: The west wing was falling apart. Plaster crunched under our feet on the warped floorboards. The beams were visible in the ceiling above us, stripes of wet black mold rotting through the plaster, which was gone in chunks. The air was still here, but for the faint sound of the wind and the furtive scurrying of something in the walls. The smell of rot was a miasma. I kept my eyes on the back of Jack’s white shirt, reading the lettering over and over, and focused on where I was putting my feet.

We reached a room with only a single abandoned dresser in it. Jack set the lamp atop the dresser and opened the drawers as I went to the window, which was cracked just enough to let in a draft. I looked over the unfamiliar vista to the west of Portis House, along the coast and the marshes to the rocky shore. I spent a long moment breathing in the faint scent of clean night air and watching the few trees winking in the moonlight. How long had this day been? A year? Two?

Jack finished with the dresser, which apparently was empty, and I felt him come up behind me.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Watching you.” His voice came low, close to my ear. “I can’t seem to help it.”

“You shouldn’t,” I said, and I felt a lurch of fear—not of ghosts this time, but of the fact that I was so far beneath him, so unworthy. “You should find someone better.”

“Kitty,” he said. “You have no idea, do you, what my life was like before you came. If you did, you wouldn’t talk like that. In fact,” he said gently, “I never want to hear you talk like that again.”

I blushed. I felt him breathing. And yet, when he touched me, I jumped.

“Kitty,” he said, and sighed. He brushed the backs of his fingers along my bare neck, running them gently up the tender skin beneath my ear. Tension jittered through me and slowly began to seep away.

“You were brave today,” Jack said.

My breath caught in my throat and I closed my eyes, feeling the sensation of his skin on mine. “Was I?”

“Creeton owes you a debt.”

I couldn’t move. I would never move again, not as long as he touched me like that. “He doesn’t owe me anything.” Do you think you can help me? Creeton had shouted at me. Do you think you can help any of us?

“You don’t even like him,” Jack said. He ran the backs of his fingers down and up again, not touching me in any other way, like a man who has found that an animal is willing to sit still for him and he doesn’t want to frighten it. “I don’t think you’re as coldhearted as you pretend.”

I sighed again. This place was strange and sinister, but we were alone—truly alone—in a way we’d never been before. I savored it. “You do not get to choose the patients you treat. Matron told me that.”

“Exactly my point.” His fingers kept rubbing, and I tilted my head, giving him more access. He lowered his head and I felt his breath on my neck, in the spot where his fingers were. “You smell different than you did a few hours ago,” he said softly, the words echoing on my skin. “As if you had a bath.”

I breathed in, taking in the scent of summer air and rot, and wished I could smell him. He would be spicy and warm. He was right; I had bathed.

He knew it. His fingertip moved softly along the edge of my hairline behind my ear. “Your hair is just a little damp along here.” His mouth moved closer. “I think the picture of you in the bath, with your hair down, is the best thought I’ve ever had.”

“You’ve been locked up for six months.” My voice was unsteady.

But he ignored me, and as my breath rasped in my throat, he pressed his lips to the spot on my neck, soft and hot. Just a single kiss. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’d like to know what makes you laugh. And I’d like to know who has made you so afraid.”

My blood was singing and my skin felt raw. That kiss—my first—had erased everything but its own existence, the contact of skin to skin, for a perfect moment. I couldn’t speak. Jack put his hands gently on my shoulders and turned me around to face him. His face, half in shadows, was intent on me.

“Is it a husband?” he asked.

“My father.” The words slipped out, and I listened to them, stunned.

His gaze seemed to darken, became calculating. “I see. And is he still living?”