We begin our own ascent. The six-feet-tall windows on the first landing show the sea. The thunderhead still crouches possessively over the mainland. In the distance, I see a bright fork of lightning. The labyrinth path leads away beneath us, and further still are the cottages.
I catch something out of the corner of my eye. A flash of white. The scarf I saw earlier? Is the mysterious cliff greeter now in the cottages?
“Jack?”
But it’s gone before he can say, “What, darling?”
“I thought I saw something—someone—in the cottages. The same white scarf from the cliff.”
He stares out the window, but there is nothing more to see. The scarf, and its wearer, are gone.
I laugh lightly.
“It must have been my imagination. I think the jet lag is setting in. Or my head is playing tricks on me. I thought I’d done so well resetting my body clock by getting up at 4:00 a.m. for the past week, but maybe I was wrong.”
“Oh, my poor girl. I’ve tired you out.” He kisses my forehead, and I try to shake off the eerie sense of lingering otherness that hangs about the landing.
“I’m sorry, Jack. The break-in—”
“Shh. It’s okay. I promise we’ll get everything sorted out.” He grins, trying to set me at ease, as always. “Come on. The sooner we get this meeting out of the way, the sooner you can crash.”
I’m not sure how he can just forget everything that happened. He’s a good compartmentalizer; I’m the opposite, I worry things to death, running them through my mind over and over.
“Stop. Please. I want to know who broke into our house. I want to know why.”
Jack tugs me up the staircase to the right. The hallway is tastefully lit, slate floors covered with a silk geometrical-patterned runner, marble tables that house a few elegant pieces, a few wooden armoires, and more art.
“We’ll know more soon. Karmen is handling things. She’ll be in touch as soon as she has answers. Trust me, darling. You’re safe. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
Karmen Harris is the head of Compton Security. Wherever Brice is, she is close by. And technically, the Crows work for her. That’s why she’s looking into the shooting, dealing with the police. It is her charge who shot the intruder.
I haven’t met her yet, but I know Jack thinks she’s smart and tough. I suppose this makes me feel better, but still, Karmen wasn’t the one staring down at the masked face of an intruder in her house.
“Okay?” he asks, smoothing my curls back from my face.
Be patient. Listen. Follow Jack’s lead.
I nod.
“Good. This takes us to the west wing, where our rooms are. Many of the pieces here are ancestral, from the Comptons who lived in England. I know you’ll enjoy familiarizing yourself with everything. There’s a catalog in the library, too, if you want to check it out.”
An austere white-haired man with a dark Mona Lisa smile and Jack’s eyes hangs in a lit niche of honor. Jack stops in front of it. “That’s my great-grandfather William. Lucian Freud painted that of him.”
Normally I would be examining every brushstroke—Freud is a favorite of mine—but I’m too tired. Everything feels so wrong. Strange. I am uncomfortable, and feel a wellspring of anxiety hovering, ready to pounce.
Maybe it’s the concussion. Or the scopolamine patch. They said that might make me dizzy. That must be it.
We wind down another hall, and Jack finally stops in front of a tall wooden door. It would look like any sixteenth-century castle door except for the biometric keypad to the right of the heavy iron handle.
Jack puts his fingers on the black screen, and there is an almost instantaneous click. He flings open the door to our bridal suite with a grin. “Welcome to our rooms, my darling.”
Staggeringly lovely, spacious, and decorated to perfection, “our rooms” is more of an apartment, consisting of three connected spaces—an expansive sitting area with couches, an office with a huge, battered wooden desk, and a master bedroom the size of our living room back home. We wander through and I see there is a half-naked statue in front of a long tapestry opposite the sumptuous bed. When will I ever stop being surprised by the Comptons’ earthiness?
He interrupts my thoughts with a gentle squeeze of my hand. “Darling? Do you like it?”
“I do, Jack. It’s perfect.”
“Legend has it one of the emperors had his lovers brought to this chamber. There used to be some sort of passageway down to the grotto. They would bring in the women by boat, then into the Villa through the tunnels. But the passageways have been walled off for centuries, now.”
I stop in front of the sculpture, similar in nature to Venus de Milo.
“Is this Venus?”
“It is. Venus Genetrix. Goddess of love, sex, beauty, and fertility.” He grins at that last, pats the sculpture on her truncated shoulder. “Isn’t she a beauty?”
The statue is missing a head, and arms, but yes, she is quite beautiful. The carving is impressive, you can tell how diaphanous her robes are, how they cling to her curves. Seduction. She is seduction personified.
“A replica, I hope?”
Jack glances at me oddly. “Goodness, no. My great-grandfather was friends with Paul Getty, he gave this to him in appreciation of some good deed. I would assume the Getty Museum has the replica, or whatever museum she’s currently been loaned to. Come see the view.”
Oh, great. Just what we need, a centuries-old sculpture in our bedroom. I’ll probably knock her over in the middle of the night on my way to the bathroom and shatter her into a million pieces.
I step around the statue cautiously and obediently follow him to the French doors leading to the terrace, which stretches around the corner to the living room access.
The terrace is remarkable; slate and wrought iron, it stretches across the width of the suite and curves around to the living room. A pergola provides shade and shelter to one quarter of the space. It even has a dining table and a stone fireplace on the western edge. The chairs and longues have deep cushions with gaily striped pillows. It’s meant for sunning, for reading, for loving. For us.
The vista is impressive. The steeple of the church rises to my left, and to my right...water, water everywhere. The sun peeking over the edge of the cliff casts gloriously long shadows across the beach, as if someone’s hand is perched above the island, open-fisted, fingers outstretched. The storm still lingers over the mainland as if it hasn’t made up its mind to advance across the water to the island yet.
I feel suddenly claustrophobic, isolated. All this water, the land too far away to reach.