Eternal

32 ~ Prodigal Son

I glanced up at the portrait on the wall and then back to Aidan, who was standing beside me. The boy in the portrait was wearing tight beige pants with a ruffly shirt and a cravat, a striped vest, and a dark blue coat. Tall, shiny boots came up to his knees. The boy beside me wore only faded jeans and a simple white T-shirt, his feet bare.

Their wildly different attire hinted at the centuries that separated them. And yet somehow, inexplicably, they were one and the same.

“This is so surreal,” I said, shaking my head. “You know that, right?”

He shrugged. “Imagine how it feels for me. I still can’t believe you’re here. It’s like . . . my two existences have merged or something.”

“In a good way?” I asked hopefully.

“Of course. Though I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t have liked me very much if you’d known me then. I was an arrogant ass.”

I took a step toward the portrait, studying his likeness more closely now. “You look pretty cocky, don’t you? Like you owned the world. Like you were too good for everything and everyone.”

“I think you pretty much nailed it. I sat for this one on my seventeenth birthday. I vaguely remember being annoyed.”

“I like the outfit, though. What are those, breeches?”

“God, no,” he said, sniffing derisively. “They’re pantaloons. Far more fashionable than breeches.”

“Well, maybe you could put on your pantaloons later and parade around a bit.” I waggled my brows suggestively. “Who knows? You might get lucky. Dressed like that, who could resist you?”

“I do miss having a valet,” he said, sounding wistful.

“Really?” I asked, surprised.

“No,” he answered with a laugh. “I’m kidding. But you should feel free to help me dress for bed, if you’d like. You know, to make your visit to Brompton Park more authentic.”

“Yeah, because a girl valet is so authentic. Nice try, though.”

“Hey,” Tyler called out from the bottom of the stairs. “Will you two stop gawking at the pictures of his lordship and get your asses down here? Max and Joshua are back with the beer and chips!”

“Beer and chips in the dining room at Brompton Park?” Aidan asked, shaking his head. “What has this world come to? Old Chiffers must be rolling over in his grave.”

“Chiffers?”

“He was our butler, a fine old chap. Come. Let’s go raise a glass of ale with our peers.”

Laughing, I grabbed his hand and pulled him along beside me, down the wide, marble staircase and across the enormous great hall.

“I’ll go see if they need any help in the kitchen,” Aidan said, releasing my hand. “I don’t want them breaking anything.”

Cece looked up when I walked into the dining room. “Hey, where were you and Aidan?”

“Up in the minstrels’ gallery,” I said, pulling out a heavy chair and taking a seat. “There’re some portraits of Aidan up there. You should go see them.”

“You mean besides the one we saw online? The one with his sisters?”

“Yeah, a few more. There’s one from his seventeenth birthday where he looks exactly the same as now. You know that mark on his face, just below his right eye?”

Cece nodded. “Yeah, that little scar.”

“It’s there in the portrait. He says he got it the day before his birthday, fencing with his sister. Without a helmet,” I added. “Isn’t that creepy?”

“Well, only because it was, like, a hundred years ago.”

“Yeah, and he still has it now.”

“Hey, guys,” Marissa said, striding in. “Where’s everybody else? I thought I heard Tyler squawking that Max and Joshua were back with the food.”

“They are; they’re about to bring it in.” Cece hurried over to the door that opened out onto the great hall. “Sophie!” she called out, then turned back toward us. “She said she was going to the morning room. Isn’t that just across the hall?”

“You’re asking me?” Marissa answered. “I’m going to need a map to find my way around.”

“Food!” Joshua bellowed, bursting into the room with Tyler and Max trailing behind him. “Get it while it’s hot.”

“And even better, beer!” Tyler added. “We’re actually legal here in jolly old England. Can you believe that shit?”

“Kind of takes the fun out of it,” Sophie said, wandering in just in time. “It’s going to make our twenty-first birthdays so anticlimactic.”

“Oh, I’ll make sure it’s climactic for you, baby,” Tyler said, wrapping his arms around Sophie from behind.

Marissa wrinkled her nose. “Eww, you did not just say that.”

Aidan came through the door carrying a stack of plates and silverware. “Careful with this stuff,” he warned. “It’s my grandmother’s china.”

“Your grandma’s china?” Cece shrieked. “Are you crazy—it’s got to be ancient! We can’t eat on that. How’d you get it, anyway? You’d think it’d be locked up or something.”

“Oh, it was.” Aidan nodded gravely. “But I know the china safe’s combination. Anyway, who better to use it than us? And besides, this is a special occasion.”

“Hear, hear,” Max said, raising a bottle of beer.

“Everyone gather ’round,” Tyler ordered while Joshua handed out the beers. “A toast,” he continued. “And then we eat, because I’m fucking starving here.”

Max nodded his agreement, an arm wrapped possessively around Marissa’s waist. “Nicely said, Ty. Nicely said.”

“To us,” I said, raising my bottle.

“To us,” Cece echoed. “The Winterhaven Warriors.”

Marissa raised her bottle. “To Sophie, our valedictorian.”

“Smartest chick I ever met,” Tyler added enthusiastically. “To my roomdog Max and his band—what is it you call yourselves?—who finally got themselves a real gig.”

“The Screamers,” Max answered with a grin. “Next month at the Mercury Lounge.”

“To our elegant host, the Viscount Brompton,” Sophie called out. “And his grandma’s china.”

Laughing, I glanced over at Aidan—who looked marvelously inelegant in his rumpled jeans and T-shirt. “To Matthew Byrne,” he joined in, catching me by surprise. My heart twisted a little bit with regret. “Otherwise known as Dr. Hottie,” he continued, “who wishes he could be here with us tonight.”

Beside me, Sophie elbowed me in the ribs. “Hey, you told Aidan that we call him that?”

My cheeks burned guiltily. “What can I say? Occasionally I slip up.”

“To Kate,” Cece said, sounding solemn now.

“And Jack,” Sophie added.

“And . . . I think that’s everyone, right?” Cece raised her bottle high in the air. “Cheers!”

“Cheers!” we echoed in unison, clinking our bottles with gusto.

I glanced around the room at my friends as they scrambled for seats, thinking that I was perhaps the luckiest person alive. I took a mental picture of the moment, a still life of friendship captured on the canvas of my mind.

Tyler sat at the head of the table and reached for a plate. “Now rub-a-dub-dub, pass me some grub!”

Aidan shot him a deadly glare. “Violet, would you mind telling your little friend that he’s sitting in my seat?”

At once, everyone turned to stare at him. We seemed to be holding our collective breaths, waiting.

And then Aidan smiled. “Come now, you didn’t think I was serious, did you?” he asked with a laugh. “My seat is right here beside you, of course.”

Smiling broadly, I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“What time is it?” I asked Aidan while I perched on the edge of the bed, admiring the room. “My body is so confused.” All this back-and-forth to Europe was wreaking havoc on my sleeping schedule.

“It’s about two in the morning, local time. Are you tired?”

I shook my head. “Not really. So . . . this was really your room?”

“It was.” He stood at the foot of the bed, looking around. “They’ve changed it around some, of course. That portrait wasn’t there, for one.” He indicated a painting above the fireplace. “The bed, though . . . it’s the same. I assume the duvet is a reproduction, but it’s an exact one.”

The bed. This was the bed, I realized. The one from my vision—antique mahogany with four spindly posts. I’d seen it on the website, too—with the blue damask duvet trimmed in gold that I was sitting on now.

I tried to remember the vision, to remember what had seemed so ominous about it, but my memories were mostly hazy. It had been a long time since I’d replayed it. All I remembered was that Aidan and I were in the bed and that my hair was short. Like it was now. I hadn’t even considered that when I’d gotten it cut. It wasn’t like I’d had a choice, not with a big chunk of it burned off, anyway.

What, exactly, was going to happen if I got in this bed with Aidan? “Maybe we should sleep somewhere else,” I said tentatively.

Aidan gave me a puzzled look. “I thought for sure you’d want to stay here. We could move you to the master suite, if you’d like. You can take my mother’s bed.”

Out of respect, no one had claimed his mother’s rooms. His sisters’ suites had been fair game, though. They were among the prettiest, with elaborate dressing tables and huge windows that opened out to the gardens below. Sophie and Marissa had immediately laid claim to those, leaving Cece to battle it out over the remaining rooms with Tyler, Joshua, and Max. Of course, the choices seemed endless—Brompton Park boasted an entire wing of guest suites.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Wouldn’t that be a little weird for you, me sleeping in your mother’s bed?”

“Not particularly,” he answered with a shrug. “Anyway, it’s up to you.”

I gave the bed a sidelong stare, still unsure.

“Are you worried that I’ve . . . in this bed?” A faint flush stained his cheeks. “Never, not in this room, if that’s what’s on your mind, Violet.”

“I wasn’t thinking that. Of course, now I’m curious. If not here, then where?”

He leaned against the bedpost, watching me curiously. “Are you asking me where I lost my virginity?”

I closed my eyes, trying to banish the images. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

“Because back in those days, you—”

“Stop! Don’t tell me. Just . . . forget that I said anything about it, okay? We’re fine here. I don’t want to have to move all my stuff.”

“You know what I just remembered?” he said abruptly, pushing off the bed and walking over to the adjoining dressing room. “I wonder if it’s still here.”

I rose, following him. “If what’s still where?”

He pushed the dressing table away from the wall and knelt down behind it.

“What are you looking for?”

“Can you hand me a pen or something? From the desk?”

“Sure,” I said, walking back to the bedroom. But when I saw the pen—more like a quill, really—there on the desk, well . . . I wasn’t going to give him that one. Instead, I went over to my purse and dug around, finding an old ballpoint on the bottom that probably didn’t even work. “Here,” I said, hurrying back and handing it to him.

I bent over him, watching in amazement as he pried loose a floorboard, then two more. When he’d exposed a hole in the floor about ten inches long by four inches wide, he reached inside and retrieved a rectangular wooden box.

“It’s still here,” he said, rising. “I can’t bloody well believe it.”

“Have you noticed that you slipped into full Viscount Brompton speech the moment we got here?” I asked. “I mean, I love your accent and all, but it’s kind of freaking me out.”

He ignored me, carefully lifting the lid and peering inside.

“Are you going to tell me what’s inside your little box?” I prodded.

He looked up at me and smiled. “My secrets.”

“Your secrets? Um, okay.”

He took out a folded piece of paper, yellowed with age. “It’s poetry, mostly, and dreadful, at that—chock-full of adolescent rage. I must have been fourteen, fifteen or so.”

“Oh my God! You wrote poetry? You’re going to let me read it, right?” I held out my hand. “C’mon, I’ll be really careful.”

“I’ve never shown them to anyone before. Not in all these years—more than a century.”

“Please?” I wheedled, dying of curiosity now. “Just one?”

“You’ve been warned,” he said after a pause. “It’s painfully bad.”

Gingerly, I took the fragile page from him. The first thing I noticed was that his handwriting was completely different—unrecognizable, really. Maybe it was his youth; maybe it was the old-fashioned pen he’d used, one that had to be dipped in ink. Whatever it was, it threw me for a loop. But not as much as the words I managed to decipher did.

We move as one

Together in union

Your breath cools my soul

Tenderness once forgotten

Leads to my explosive rebirth

Helpless, powerless

I give my heart to you

It lies crushed

Beneath the weight of your hatred

That was all I could make out, but it was enough for me to realize that it was about a girl.

“Wow,” I said at last. “That’s really beautiful. Here, let me see another one.”

One by one, he unfolded the slips of yellowed vellum. I couldn’t make out most of it, just a few lines here and there. Most were angry, I realized. Really angry.

“Whoever she was, I’d say it didn’t go very well,” I muttered.

He shook his head. “No, it didn’t. I was very young.”

“I just can’t believe you wrote these,” I said, carefully folding the last slip and handing it back to him. “You seem like a totally different person than you are now.”

“I was spoiled, careless. I got angry if I didn’t get exactly what I wanted.”

“Meaning her,” I suggested, and he just nodded. I didn’t want to know who she was, hoped he wasn’t going to tell me. I’d been impressed by his poems, but I was jealous, too. “Have you ever . . . you know . . . written a poem about me?”

“No. I haven’t written anything in a very long time. These poems . . . they were a way to work through my anger. Writing about my feelings was cathartic, a way to exorcise my demons. I have no need for poetry now.”

“Huh,” I said, a little hurt. Which was silly, of course, but whatever. “Well, it’s too bad you don’t play guitar or piano. You’d make a good lyricist.”

“Yeah, I could have pioneered the hard-core punk movement. You know, back in the 1890s. Given that Rachmaninoff a little competition.”

“What else have you got in there?” I asked, peering inside.

He pulled out the remaining treasures. A yellow velvet ribbon. A button. A small golden thimble. Something that looked vaguely like a wooden acorn.

“Okay, a thimble and an acorn?” I asked. “What, are you Peter Pan?”

“It’s funny,” he said, shaking his head. “I know that each of these had some special meaning to me, but I can’t quite remember what, not anymore. It’s like . . . the memories are inaccessible. Just out of reach.”

“I don’t even know what this is,” I said, holding up the acorn.

He rolled it around in his palm. “Just a trinket of some sort.”

“So, what are you going to do with it all? Keep it, or put it back?”

“I think it should stay with the house, don’t you?” He reached down to stroke my hair. “I’ll put it back tomorrow. You look exhausted.”

I nodded, leaning in to him. “I am pretty tired.”

He set the wooden box on the dressing table and then led me back to the bedroom. I went over to my suitcase and pulled out my pajamas, my heart racing now. I had no idea why I was so nervous—we’d shared a bed in Paris without incident.

But this bed . . . I eyed it once more, my heart racing now.

When I glanced back at Aidan, he’d already stripped off his shirt. Which, of course, only made my heart beat faster.

Crap. That stupid vision. Unlike my usual glimpses of the future, this particular one hadn’t shown anything terrible happening—nothing life-threatening, no maiming, no blood or broken bones. Still, I’d taken it as a warning, because they always were. But maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe there really was nothing more to it than what I’d seen.

And what, exactly, had I seen? The two of us in bed together. Been there, done that. We were making out, but what else was new? And yes, sometimes when we did, his eyes turned red and his canines came out. But if he were going to actually bite me—pierce the skin and suck my blood—then wouldn’t my vision have shown that, too?

I had to make a decision now, based on instinct alone. And my instinct was telling me that I was safe in this particular bed with Aidan.

That was good enough for me.