Page 43 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
‘You’ll never need a mask with me either, Sade.’
I force myself to drop eye contact and look away. The path up to the castle is wide and steep, but I’ve barely noticed the incline that always leaves me out of breath. It’s usually for lack-of-fitness related reasons, but today the blame lies solely at Witt’s feet.
‘Have you always had it?’ I ask, thinking back to something he said the last time we walked through this forest, something about it being new.
‘No. It was a post-traumatic thing when I was younger. Something happened and it developed as a response to that.’ He sighs as though he didn’t intend to say that much, but I can feel his eyes on me as he thinks it over and decides he trusts me enough to tell me the rest. ‘I saw my dad die.’
‘Oh God, Witt, I’m so sorry.’ I’m both surprised by his honesty and stunned by the fact he’schosento be this honest with me, and the need to throw my arms around his neck and hug him to bits is uncontrollable. His arm is still slung around my shoulders and I cover his hand with mine, but it’s not enough. I lift his arm back over my head until I can get both my hands around his and press my lips to his knuckles. ‘I had no idea.’ I whisper the words against his skin. ‘I can’t imagine what that must do to a child.’
We’ve reached the walled walkway to the castle, the point where I left him the other night, where I dropped the stupid shoe, and I’m filled with regret. I knew he was special, I knew I should have stayed, but I prioritised Ebony and my job over him that night, and I’ve been doing the same thing ever since. Using him to prove a point to Ebony and save the shop, and now I don’t know how we’re ever going to overcome this thing between us – this truth Ihaven’ttold.
It’s like when Ariel gets her legs and goes to Eric’s castle, and even though he’s looking forher, he doesn’t believe she’s the one because she can’ttellhim who she is.
He squeezes my hand and doesn’t let go as our entwined arms drop between us. ‘Makes ’em turn out like me, I guess.’
I tug his hand until he meets my eyes again. ‘That’s not a bad thing.’
My heart melts at the involuntary smile that blazes across his face, and my grip gets impossibly tighter. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Thatwasme talking about it. I’ve never told anyone that before, but you… this place…’ He shakes his head as though there isn’t a way to end that sentence. Maybe it’s a sentence that doesn’t need an ending?
He lifts an arm towards the portcullis gate as we head towards the gatehouse. ‘This is where they met, your mum and dad?’
It must’ve been right here. This very spot. Somehow my hand has dropped out of his and he stands aside and lets me look.
It’s like standing in a storybook that I’ve read a hundred times. ‘It was such a huge moment in both their lives. That one accidental meeting changed the course of their lives forever. The Cinderella Shop, me, maybe Ever After Street itself… None of it would exist if it wasn’t for that one moment in this castle.’
‘How come?’ He sits on the wall and stretches his legs out.
I turn back towards Ever After Street. ‘The Cinderella Shop building was a wedding gift to my parents from the viscount and viscountess. You were right, theywereservant cottages once, but times had moved on from the servant days, and they’d been empty for a while. For a young couple to be given a place like that was unreal. It was their home at first; my dad was a freelance accountant and my mum started seeing her dress clients there, and the business was doing well enough that they could afford somewhere bigger when Mum found out she was pregnant with me. So they got a bigger place and turned the house they’d been given into The Cinderella Shop. Lilith already had her tearoom, but The Cinderella Shop was the first retail shop on the street, the others followed from there.’
He’s still sitting on the wall and his head is cocked to one side as though he’s considering the great mysteries of the universe.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ He shakes his head. ‘Like I said, I just didn’t realise how important this place was to the area, that’s all. That’s a pretty special history.’
‘This is a special place.’
I appreciate the way he lets me take my time and just look. This is what I wanted to do the other night when ball guests were herded through so quickly by the party staff that there wasn’t time, but Witt makes me feel like we’ve got all the time in the world.
It’s not dark yet but the mid-May sky is cloudy enough to suggest it soon will be, and I force myself to stop picturing the moment exactly as it happened and go over to where he’s sitting. I hold my hand out to pull him up, and neither of us let go as he unlocks the main door and lets us in. It has been alongtime since anything felt as nice as my hand feels when it’s in his.
The castle feels even more special than it did the other night. Then it was all glitz and glamour and music and lights, but now it’s dark and so quiet that you can almost hear old ghosts shuffling about their business. Witt flicks a light on, like anyone else coming home to a darkened house, and it makes it seem welcoming and homely. The chandelier in the entrance hall lights up, and so does the one with about a thousand crystal bulbs hanging above the main double stairway. Well, maybe not that homely – most people aren’t greeted by two massive chandeliers, although life would probably be better if they were.
He doesn’t let go of my hand as he leads the way up the same set of stairs we came down together the other night, and I can’t help looking at the wall with the missing frames again. ‘Do you know what was up there?’
He glances up uninterestedly. ‘Pictures, at a guess.’
‘Portraits?’ I look at the three rectangular gaps where paintings have obviously been removed. Two large and one small. ‘Do you think the smaller one was the second viscountess? Added as an afterthought in a small frame? Bet she loved that.’
He laughs. ‘It was probably a point of contention.’
We carry on up the stairs, but instead of any of the paths we took the other night, he leads me down a long wide hallway, the way lit by golden Cupid uplighters along the wood-panelled walls, hung with heavy velvet drapes, and so many fine paintings that this would be an art lover’s dream. There are marble columns and statues that probably belong in a garden, but the interior is so huge that they don’t look out of place inside. Mosaic flooring turns to plush carpeting that still smells of the products the cleaning team used before the ball.
Witt’s quiet as we go through an opulent drawing room, and a music room with the grandest of grand pianos and a harp standing in one corner, and I get the impression he’s taking the scenic route and giving me a tour of the castle. We must have crossed to the opposite side of the building by the time we enter yet another bedroom, this one even more luxurious than the other rooms we’ve passed through, but with that air of sadness and standing still in time again. There are a lot of boxes in this one, labelled in neat writing that must be his work. He opens a door on the opposite side of the huge room and we ascend another tower.
‘This was the viscountess’s private dressing room.’ He unlocks the door at the top of the winding stairs, and a crystal pendant light flickers into life.
