Page 9 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
‘Castles? I’ve never seenonebefore. Do you go to a lot of castles?’
‘I go to a lot of old buildings that used to matter to people and now don’t. They’re all the same after a while. There is no magic in the walls. No spells to be broken or cheerful fairy godmothers or enchantresses in disguise. They’re just hollow old shells that look impressive from the outside, but hide a myriad of sadness on the inside. People who live in castles are rarely happy, did you know that?’
I try to appear unaffected, but it makes me abnormally sad because it’s the sense I’ve felt from the castle tonight too. Instead of fairy dust and magic, there seems to be sorrow at every turn. ‘Most people hide behind a façade. A mask. I don’t think owning a castle makes much difference to that.’
‘The truest thing I’ve ever heard.’ His eyes linger on mine for too long again, and I get the feeling there’s more to be said, but it doesn’t seem like the time. I don’t know who he is or how he knew about the secret room, but I get the feeling he’s regretting coming up here, and not just because of the spiders.
And I get what he’s saying. Towers are rarely good places in fairy tales, from Sleeping Beauty’s slumber chamber to Cinderella’s attic room to the Beast’s spell-ridden fortress… ‘This is a special castle though. Like a sentinel up in the hills, a guardian, watching over Ever After Street. All those shops down there wouldn’t exist without it. It feels like a mutually respectful relationship.Theylook after the castle and it looks after them. It will be devastating to see a supermarket here.’
‘Change is good, so people tell me,’ he says with a shrug.
Talk of the supermarket is enough to ruin any evening, so I change the topic. ‘Have you been here before?’
‘No.’
‘Then how did you…’ I trail off before I finish the question. I’m desperate to ask, but this is supposed to be an anonymous ball, and he doesn’t exactly seem open and easy-going. If I make him answer too many questions, he’s going to expect the same from me, and I can’t letanyoneknow I’m here, not even him.
He must sense what I want to ask because he pushes himself up off his elbows and pulls his suit sleeves down, which does nothing to make them long enough for his arms. He strides across the room in the dull light and traces a finger along the stone wall until he comes to a cord and pulls it with both hands as though he’s lifting a blind, making his sleeves rise even further up his arms. There’s a creaking above him, and a part of the ceiling moves, taking cobwebs and their disgruntled inhabitants with it, and revealing a wide skylight right above the sofa.
‘Wow,’ I murmur, wondering how many times I’ve said that so far tonight. In years gone by, when the sofa was clean enough to sit on, it must’ve felt like you were looking up at the whole sky. ‘We’re so far up that I feel like I could reach out and touch the stars.’
‘I always—’ He goes to speak and then stops himself. ‘It’s a clear night. Let me turn the light off.’
He crosses the room to the switch he found earlier, and my eyes adjust to the darkness. There’s a clonk as he walks back across the room, and he murmurs an apology to the trunk he walked into. Apologising to inanimate objects again. It makes me feel even more of an affinity for him.
He comes to stand near me, intentionally keeping a distance. He seems to know that his height could be intimidating, and I like that self-awareness. Heiskind of intimidating, but he’s intriguing too.
The skylight is perfect. Just big enough to fill your vision and block out everything else around it, making it feel like you’re in the middle of the sky. ‘How can anyone look at the night sky and not believe there’s magic in the universe?’
He doesn’t reply, but we stand there, side by side, looking up. The stars twinkle back at us and a tingle runs down my spine. This is the last thing I expected tonight. And it feels like that ‘something magical’ Scarlett predicted is happening right now.
Eventually the band downstairs strikes up with ‘A Whole New World’, the sound filtering through the open window, and we shake ourselves out of our reverie. He clutches the back of his neck as though it’s cricked from looking upwards and I twist my head around, trying to stop the ache.
‘The bolts holding my neck on are about to pop out,’ I say, and warmth spreads through me when he lets out a completely unguarded, big laugh, the kind of laugh that would make even the coldest winter day feel like summer.
I make my way to the stairs as he closes the skylight and shuts the window.
‘Thank you.’
I turn around and look back at him. ‘What for?’
He goes to speak and then shakes his head. ‘Something I can’t explain.’
His eyes linger on mine, and another little tingle travels down my back, and I tell myself to ignore it.
I hold up my dress and make my way down the narrow stairs rather than pushing him for an explanation. There are a lot of things neither of us can explain tonight, and that makes it better somehow. I’m not afraid to be myself. I’m not constantly on edge about doing something embarrassing. It doesn’t matter tonight. I’m never going to see him again. Actually, I’m never going to see him at all, am I? Our masks aren’t coming off, no matter what.
I blink as we emerge into the full light of the study. It feels like hours have passed, but it’s only been about twenty minutes. He clicks the door to the secret stairway closed, and then leans against the bookshelf to brush his suit down, and I do the same, sitting against the desk and leaning over to brush the bottom of my dress clear of the dust it picked up along the way. ‘That was amazing. Thank you.’
‘What for?’
I think about it for moment. ‘Something I can’t explain.’
He laughs as I deliberately repeat his words, but it peters out until we’re just looking at each other, and there’s that tingle again, stronger this time, harder to ignore.
It’s time to go. There’s no feasible way of dragging this out any longer. One of us is going to have to make a move towards the door, and then what? Maybe I could be brave enough to ask if he’d like to dance when we get back downstairs, and at least if he says no, my embarrassment will be hidden behind the mask. Could I ask him if he knows of any more secret passages we could explore? Whoever he is, he knows more about this castle than most of the other guests, but I don’t want it to seem like I’m being nosy and obtrusive when he wasn’t exactly forthcoming about showing me that one at first.
‘We should…’ He inclines his head towards the door, but makes no move to push himself off the bookshelf.
