by Alys Murray
Remember why you’re doing this. Remember why you’re doing this.
“You should have seen Dad’s face when I told him it was my Rage. It was like I’d stopped being invisible. Like he saw me for the first time.”
Her chest actually ached at the memory. This was a feeling she could allow herself to have. It only propelled her forward; it didn’t try to pin her back. Ever since arriving here, she’d fought for her father’s attention. She’d gotten distinctions and high marks at university. She’d stayed out all night and not come home for days. Bad or good, nothing ever worked at winning his attention. But when she so much as mentioned herself and Animos in the same sentence, she didn’t have to fight. For the first time, it was like he mildly enjoyed having her around. She wasn’t just a stain on his family lineage, but a contributing member of it.
“You’re putting way too much faith in Animos.” Thomas returned to packing his backpack, daintily placing his computer in its case before stowing it away.
“Only someone who always had a family would say that.”
“You’re not being fair.”
“But it’s true.” She stared at the family crest, enshrined in gold leaf on the wallpaper above his bed. Another ache. How could she finally have found a family, found a community, and still feel like an outsider? She was an outsider in the club and an outsider in her own house. But one little blue suit and a membership pin could change everything. The ache she’d been suffering could finally disappear. “I’ve never had this, Thomas. I have to try. I’d do anything to have a real family.”
“You do have a real family. You’ve got me.”
His hands were busy with packing his things, and he didn’t pick up his head to look at her. It didn’t matter. Sam heard his hurt all the same.
“But you’re not my dad,” she said, not unkindly, just trying to make him see. And it was more than wanting a father. More than family. Unfathomable though it was, considering how much they seemed to hate her, part of Sam firmly believed the club would accept her. If she could make it through to the end, she would earn their respect and their friendship. Animos friendships lasted to the grave. What wouldn’t she give for a friend? A real, true friend? Not just a brother who felt he needed to be around out of some sense of obligation?
“You’re right.” He sighed, rifling in his bedside drawers for something. “Now, I would caution you about the ball.”
“Yeah?”
“Mud Ducks are the kind of people you fall in love with.”
There it was again. A singe of cruelty, quickly replaced by guilt. It all played out on the stage of one sentence. Since Thomas wasn’t exactly candid with his memories of Animos, she couldn’t help the rush of surprise gripping her.
“Did you?”
Clothes flew into his bag with uncharacteristic carelessness. His spine stiffened. “Listen.” His bag zipped shut. He slung it over his shoulder. Something told Sam this wasn’t something she had the right to ask about. “Be careful, little sister.”
The clock above the fireplace rang out the hour. Nine a.m. Sam expected her brother to leave, to sweep her into a warm hug and dash off to London while warning her about the perils of her decisions, but he didn’t. Instead, his hands found their home in his pockets, and he planted himself in the middle of his room with a troubled look on his face.
“Hey,” he said, furrowing his brow. “Did they do anything to your pictures last night?”
A fresh wave of shame fell over her, like walking through a carwash filled with thick, hot pond scum.
She shrugged, not daring to show him how she felt inside. “Yes.”
“Here.”
She blinked. A stack of thin photographs appeared in the center of her vision. She snatched them, scanning through the pile, feeling their weight in her hands. They were her pictures. All there, in shitty, oranging, disposable camera colors. Her mom. She and her mom. Her mom and Lord Dubarry kissing.
“How did you—?”
“When you told me they were coming over, I got them from under your bed and made copies. Replaced these with the fakes.” She looked up from the pictures in time to see the wide sadness swimming in Thomas’s eyes. He made no effort to conceal it. “They burned the ones of my mom, too. Never had a chance to save them.”
“I,” she choked out, “don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll quit?”
“Not a chance.”
As easy as tying her hair up in a ponytail, Sam tied away the swell of gratitude she felt.
“I had to try. C’mon. Walk me downstairs?”
Soon, they were in the entryway, waiting for their father to join them. The Animos Reunion in London was not to be missed, not for anyone with any consequential position in Great Britain, so her father had to be in attendance. Everyone would want an audience with the future leader of the House of Lords.
“Lads, I’m off. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Thomas was struggling, and failing greatly, to hide his disdain for the men crowded around the open French doors of the sitting room. The tension only got incrementally less awkward when he exchanged his too-expensive-to-look-so-cheap reading glasses for a pair of dark-tinted Ray-Bans. Once his eyes were hidden, his tight smile was the only indicator of his displeasure.
“Right.” Captain grabbed Sam by her thick waist and dragged her back toward him. She threw out a game laugh, shooting her brother a million please don’t fuck this up for me looks as she did. She wasn’t afraid of Captain. He liked to lord the possibility of danger over her. It was the power, not the submission, he held onto for dear life. “We’ll take care of your little girl, don’t you worry.”
Thomas couldn’t even maintain the thinnest, most obligatory of smiles. He shouted up the stairs. “Father, are you ready?”
“I’m coming. I’m coming.”
Her dignified father trudged down the stairs, nothing but a suit bag slung over his shoulder. He traveled much lighter than Thomas, who was three bags heavy. He lit up when he saw the glistening blue tails of their houseguests. The old man didn’t exactly smile, but he certainly was more pleasant than he’d ever been with her. Less guarded. She would wear their uniform every day for the rest of her life if he looked at her the way he was looking at them.
“Ah, gentlemen! Come to see us off, have you? We’re very pleased to see you’re folding Sam into the ranks.” She would have lied if she said such a simple acknowledgment didn’t make her heart swell. “The cellar is open. The staff’s here for your needs. You—”
He pointed at Captain, who stepped forward, crinkled uniform, baggy eyes, and all. Somehow, the bastard still managed to look like the pride of Great Britain, everything fathers wanted from their sons. He introduced himself with a slight bow.
“Reginald Wavell. Future Earl of Hillsborough, sir. At your service.”
“You’re in charge.”
Sure. Give control over to the guy who doesn’t live here. I don’t exist. I’m nothing more than a shy and retiring woman.
“Take care of the place.” Her father reached for a sweater, tugging it haphazardly off of a coatrack near the door. Ideas flew from his lips before he had time to consider how they struck the assembled parties in the room. At least, Sam hoped her father was excitable and thoughtless. Because if it was a real suggestion, she might have considered poisoning Captain in his sleep. “Who knows? Maybe it’ll be yours someday. The first Animos Society wedding.”
If the suggestion disturbed anyone else, they didn’t dare show it in front of the future Lord Speaker of the House of Lords.
“Wavell. Your father sits next to me in Chambers. How’s the old man?”
Their voices dissolved into the background as Sam turned her attention to the glass panes decorating the front door, giving a wide view of the grand circular drive and the lands beyond.
It was really beautiful, Ashbrooke. Like stepping into another time. Some days, when she was walking along the paths outside, she’d carry a book and pretend she was
Elizabeth Bennet, rushing home to meet her large, welcoming family at Longbourn. It wasn’t hard to imagine Ashbrooke as one of those grand Regency houses. Mostly because it had been around since the eleventh century, so… During the Regency, it had been one of those Regency houses.
It was less easy to imagine it covered in curricles and flushed maidens when a vintage Rolls-Royce—her father’s car of choice—curved around the gravel drive, stopping dead in front of the house to give Sam a full view of the decidedly unhistorical man driving it.
Her heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t seen him before. Rising from the car, but keeping the engine running, he stood to his full height. Standing well over six feet, he glistened in the rare British sun, his tan skin broken up by blocks of car oil and grease. A tight, holey T-shirt and a pair of work coveralls tied at the waist revealed the strength in his smooth, surprisingly languid form. This was not a man who’d ever lost a fight. He was a man chiseled from stone, with high cheekbones and floppy, golden hair. His eyes were…green? No, she couldn’t tell, but she could tell how they would crinkle at the edges if he smiled too wide.
Behind her, someone cleared their throat. She didn’t pay attention. She couldn’t look away. A busy mind made quick work of memorizing him. She’d… She’d never seen a man like him. Certainly not one so handsome, not in person.
There was something else, though. Something not entirely physical about him. He seemed…good. Not a breath of pretension or falsehood hung around his broad shoulders.
He was real.
She’d been surrounded by the elite of Great Britain for weeks now, but none of them caught her heart and held it by the wings like a hunted butterfly like this man did without even realizing it.
Not that she was interested in that kind of thing. She wasn’t. She definitely wasn’t.
“Well, we’re off, Samantha.” The voice of her brother lowered, cautious not to let anyone hear him as the regents all fawned over their father. “Take care of yourself.”
“Who—” Get ahold of yourself, dammit. He’s just good looking. Nothing special about him. You’ve seen good-looking guys before. She cleared her throat, leveling her voice until she was sure no one could hear the way lust squeezed her. “Who is he?”
“He’s our new man. Looking after the cars. Daniel’s his name,” Thomas said, reaching for the door. Sam barely caught him waving in the window’s reflection. “We’ll see you when we get back.”
Daniel. As that name played over and over again in her mind, her father and brother got into the car and drove off into a cloud of dust and rocks, leaving the already grease-smudged Daniel freshly dusty in their wake. Moving back toward the garage, he busied himself with a rag from his pocket, completely unaware of the eyes watching him rub away the grit from his cheeks.
Was he… Was he whistling? Yes, Sam could swear he was, but she couldn’t place the tune. It had something to do with moonlight. At least, she thought it did.
Then, the dam broke around her. Without her father to distract the houseguests, they stormed the door, elbowing each other and jockeying for a place at the glass through which to view the wandering mechanic. A breath closer and her nose would have pressed against the doorframe. The rustling and pushing of bodies against her didn’t matter, not when her curious eyes followed his every step. How did a man like him become a car curator? What was he doing here? He couldn’t have been much older than her. What was his story?
“Let me see him!”
“What a scrappy little guttersnipe he is.”
“Doesn’t matter. I hear Sam likes them dirty.”
“And poor.”
“Oh.” She didn’t miss the way Captain’s hand brushed past her ass. She knew she wasn’t meant to. Another power move. “So that’s why you never went for me. You like them poor and dirty.”
As she stood there in the light from the window, watching the stranger—Daniel—walk across the great lawn, Captain’s goading shoved under her fingernails like splinters. He continued, making his way toward the back of the house, probably toward the now free-for-all wine cellar. “On the bright side, I think you found yourself a Mud Duck.”
“What?”
“The driver. Make him your Mud Duck.”
The blood rushed from her face. They noticed.
“Hey,” PJ said, giving her a slap on the shoulder that was too hard to be friendly. “Consider yourself lucky. I have to bring one of my maids and she’s even fatter than you are, Piggy.”
One by one, they lost interest in the stranger until only Sam remained. She couldn’t put a finger on what fascinated her. He might have been handsome, but she wasn’t ogling him. On the contrary, she was following him like one might lazily watch the serene shots of a nature documentary, with vague fascination and endless curiosity.
And then, he looked up. As if he had been waiting for her to be alone, as if he had wanted to see her in private. It was ridiculous, of course. How could this Daniel have known he was being surveyed?
It happened almost like a dance. Their eyes met. Green, yes. Definitely green. He stopped moving. Her pulse froze in her neck. His lips—pale, with one side smudged from the grease—turned up in a kind of half smile. He raised a hand in greeting. Her fingers itched to return the gesture.
“Piggy!”
Two syllables. The spell broke. And she rushed away from the window—and from Daniel—before she did something really stupid.
Like wave back at him.
Or invite him in.
And kiss him.
Chapter Four
The woman at the window vanished without returning his wave, but she couldn’t vanish from Daniel’s thoughts. Not when he was elbow deep in the engine of a 1927 Packard. Not when he almost started a fire toying with some ancient spark plugs. And certainly not when he left the manor at the end of the day, stealing a cautious glance at the front windows, hoping (maybe… No, stupidly) he would find her looking back at him.
He replayed the memory of her over and over again, trying to figure out why he couldn’t get her out of his mind. And finally, he landed on it: she was captivating. Something pulled them together. As he’d been walking that morning, the wind had blown across his neck, as if turning him to look in her direction, to catch her staring.
And once he started looking, he didn’t want to stop. The light hit her perfectly, framing her like a trapped damsel in a fairy tale. Curves filling out the dark, tight clothes she was wearing. Her severe dark hair pulled away from her round face. Lips perfect for kissing. Those brown eyes piercing him, the sharp fishhooks of her irises threatening to pull him straight to her.
Sure, it was lust. He could recognize the emotion. But he’d lusted before. And it didn’t feel exactly like this. For him, lust usually came and went. But the woman in the window at Ashbrooke? He remembered her. He turned her over in his mind like the blank squares in a crossword puzzle. Ten down. Who is she? Twenty-two across. What is she doing here?
He was still filling in the squares of her when he walked into his second job. Working behind the counter at his nan’s tiny bookstore wasn’t glamorous, but neither was fixing cars. And neither of them paid the bills, so he stitched them together until they formed one pocket-padding paycheck.
Crowdwell’s Bookshop stood at one of the quieter ends of Oxford, at the end of a cobblestoned side street. Ever since he was a kid, he’d fancied Nan’s shop like something out of Harry Potter. The shop was magical, with its leaning shelves and weathered paneling, mystical-smelling tea brews and aging, perpetually hazy windows. They frosted over even in the summer. He loved it almost as much as he loved the woman who ran it.
“You’re late, Danny Boy. You’re never late.”
Nan’s thick brogue cut the quiet atmosphere, disturbing the accumulated dust on a stack of Robert Ludlum novels on the counter. He rushed to put on his apron, whistling as he went. If there was one person he didn’t want to fail, it was the frail woman with the purple cat eyeglasses who birthed his mum and signe
d his paychecks every week.
“Young man! You’d better answer me!”
Thank God there was no one in the shop to hear her squawk. Bending across the counter, he cozied up to her, kissing her forehead for good measure before returning to his melody.
“Sorry! Started my new job at the Ashbrooke place today.”
“All the way out of town?”
“The uni’s back in session, Nan.” He shook her shock off with a self-deprecating shrug of his shoulders. Collecting a box of titles that needed shelving, he got to work. “Not a whole lot of work for a know-nothing like me.”
“Maybe if you’d gone to uni—”
“And miss all this? Not a chance,” he teased.
He shouldn’t have brought up university at all. He’d gotten the questions from Thomas Dubarry, Mr. Privileged Future Duke, and now he was getting it from Nan. His education, or lack thereof, was a sore subject with Nan, and whenever it came up in a fight he always left feeling like a loser.
He understood the way it made people look at him. But the way he saw it, he had two options: he could go to university, bury himself in debt and hope he someday got a soul-crushing job that would earn him a living, or he could work hard, keep his head down, and spend every spare second pursuing his dream. He couldn’t have both. It might have taken him down in everyone’s estimation, but he’d rather have his dream and a life he was proud of than a degree and debt.
The bell above the door rang, signaling a new customer. From the corner of his eye, Daniel caught his nan perk up. She was the queen of customer service. After almost one hundred and fifty years of operation, Daniel thought she was the only thing to keep their little bookshop alive during the digital age. But she soon shrank back down to her usual perch on a tall wooden stool behind the counter when she realized the door hadn’t opened for a customer. It had opened for Angie.
