Ben pours himself a glass of milk. I didn’t notice his arrival. For all I know, he crawled out of the wall again.
“Thought you were getting your arse to work, Honeybee? Decided to take the day off? Want to come play with me?” The hesitation in his voice tells me he’s not sure if I mind his listening in. Instead, I’m grateful to not be alone.
I ease his conscience and distract myself by playing along a little. “Ben…are you suggesting a playdate or aplaydate?I can’t believe you waited until they were gone to make your move.” His pink-tipped ears are enough to make me laugh.
“I think Dax and Aiden would give me more than a black eye if I even suggested—”
“I think you’d be wrong and rather surprised by what they’d be okay with.” I heave a sigh. “You’re right though, I’m not in the mood to work. What do you have in mind? Distract me!”
“Okay, lazy girl, want to see some cool shit?”
“Lead the way.” I smile even though it feels flat on my face. Fake it ‘til you make it, right? We both know I’m fronting, but I appreciate Ben offering to distract me. I need it. If the last time I was alone taught me anything, it’s that my brain is hell-bent on shredding me to pieces with flashbacks and regrets.What-ifsandwhy-can’tsare not good for a person. Especially not one who has lost everything.
After waiting for me to ditch my cup in the dishwasher, Ben leads me up the stairs and towards my room. I raise a questioning brow when he holds my door open for me to go inside ahead of him. His blush reappears, and he shakes his head. I laugh again, but I’m a little wary of whatever this is when he closes the door behind us.
“Okay, so you know the mirror leads to your closet and bathroom.”
“As you well know, after cornering me in there.”
“Right, yeah, sorry about that.” I nod for him to continue. “Well, your room has two more secrets. Ben grabs my hand and pulls me into the bathroom, pointing to a ceiling-to-floor corner cabinet that I’ve never even used. He pulls at the door. It swings wide with a groan to reveal shelving. I shrug my shoulders in a‘so?’gesture. Ben grins and closes the door. When he next turns the handle, it is in the opposite direction, and this time he pushes. Theshelves swing forward, only half as deep as they look, thanks to a mirrored backing, revealing another door behind.
“What the hell?”
“Cool, right? Two guesses as to what’s behind here…”
I think about the layout of the rooms and realise it’s roughly where Dax’s bathroom is. “You’re kidding!”
“Nope. Straight into the master suite.” He sweeps his arm wide, inviting me to see for myself. I pop my head in, and sure enough there’s Dax’s bathroom. His corner cabinet is the twin of mine.
“Holy hell. Why would anyone need that? Who used to sleep in my room? The mistress?”
Ben laughs. “Probably. Idoknow it was once a nursery and became Celeste’s room.”
“How can you be sure?”
“She once told me she used to sneak into her parents’ room through the bathroom as a child. As soon as I saw Dax’s suite, I knew.”
It brings back the night he appeared in my room. I knew he hadn’t come through the main door. “That fucker! That’s how he got in here without me noticing.”
Ben coughs and takes a couple of steps back into my bathroom. “Well, now you know his secret, you can turn it back on him.” He smiles uncomfortably. “Cool though, right?”
“Very. This house is so intricate, like the maze outside.”
I seem to have said the right thing because Ben’s face lights up. “Exactly! Which leads me to the other secret in your room.” He turns and traipses back out to the main room. I close the mirror door behind us.
“The old man was obsessed with puzzles,” he begins. “There are puzzle boxes everywhere in this house. Half of which you’d never realise were even there. Secrets are like currency with the rich, so I’m not surprised that the richest man of them all was obsessedby them.”
“Celeste’s father?”
Ben shakes his head. “No, her great-great-grandfather,” he corrects. “The right honourable, Ephraim Trevainne. Though honourable is debatable considering he won Harrison in a bet with Lord Ernest Harrison.”
“I always thought that was just a thing the tourism people made up to make us seem more interesting?”
“No, it’s 100 percent true. The original bet is framed and hung at City Hall.”
“So, this is the original Harris House? I thought he sold most of the land?”
“This is mostly the old Harris house; Ephraim did a lot of work to it during his lifetime. It was his son Gulliver Trevainne who lost most of the family fortune. Thanks to a loophole, they were able to keep the house and the Heights. His descendants sold off portions of that later to reclaim some of the fortune he’d squandered. This house was too precious to sell off. Ephraim built secrets into every aspect of it, and I guess they didn’t want to give that up,” Ben explains, walking along the back wall of my room before stopping. “Did you know, he hired seven different teams to build this manse so that no one would know all the plans except himself? They say he hired them from foreign lands and far off cities. No two groups spoke the same language. He wasthatdetermined to keep his secrets.”
