The White House - Book 6, The Porth Kerensa Series

Chapter Twenty

The room was still dark when Elise woke up. She stretched out, feeling muggy and heavy headed from all the wine she had consumed with Val the night before. She turned over and looked at James lying on the far side of the bed with his back to her. Even in sleep he seemed tense and rigid and she hated herself for hurting him so much. She wished she knew how to make him happy again.

‘Let him go,’ said the little voice in her head.

He groaned in his sleep and moved, restlessly; as if he was trying to get away from something. She wondered what was tormenting his dreams and she reached out and stroked his hair, gently.

“James, wake up,” she said, softly.

“Don’t,” he screamed.

Before Elise could react he lashed out behind him and caught her mouth with his clenched fist. Her cry of pain and the feeling of his hand connecting with her lip broke through the confines of his dream and he woke, instantly.

“Oh, my God, Elise, I’m so sorry,” he moaned, panic stricken by the sight of the blood dripping from her cut lip onto her hand. “I was having a nightmare; truly I didn’t mean to hurt you, Elise.”

He reached out to touch her and she flinched away from him. Her voice was muffled when she said, “I know, James. It’s fine, it wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have tried to wake you from your bad dream.”

She got out of bed, shakily, and stumbled to the bathroom downstairs to clean up the damage. James sat up in bed and covered his face with his hands, trying to remember the nightmare he’d been caught up when he struck out and accidently hit his wife. In his dream he’d been fighting for his life, trying to get away from something that was threatening him, but he couldn’t remember what he’d been so frightened of. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and went to find Elise.

She was standing at the bathroom sink, holding a wet cloth to her lip, when he knocked, gently, on the door.

“Elise, I’m sorry…” he murmured, sheepishly.

“Don’t apologise, James,” she replied, brusquely. “It’s not necessary; I know it was an accident and that you were still asleep.” She took the cloth from her lip and peered in the mirror. “Besides, it’s stopped bleeding now. I’ll just have to drink through straws for a few days.”

His voice was meek, like a scolded school boy, when he said, “Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?”

She looked at him, kindly, and shook her head. “No, thank you. I’m going to have a quick shower and wake up Val. We’ve got plans to go out today. You could put a pot of coffee on though, please?”

His shoulders drooped when he slunk out of the room and she lent her head against the mirror, stared into her own eyes and sighed, heavily. Everything was such a mess. She should be concentrating on making things better between her and James, not indulging the ridiculous idea of a haunted house. If James found out they were going to buy a Ouija board in a misguided effort to talk to a ghost he didn’t believe in he would pack his bags and leave his mad wife forever. 

She should tell Val they weren’t going to go ahead with her silly idea. She should tell James she wanted to leave the white house and find a place that was theirs; a house that didn’t fill him with red hot fury and plague him with nightmares.

But what if it wasn’t the house? What if the fury was all down to her? What would she do when she couldn’t blame anything besides herself? What if she had made him the person he was becoming? How would she live with that?

      ******

She could hear James pottering around in the kitchen and Val was sitting at the table, holding a coffee mug and reading the paper, when Elise walked downstairs. She glanced up and her mouth fell open.