Society Girl (Animos Society)

by Alys Murray

  The leader held her at arm’s length, inspecting every inch of her. Daniel didn’t like the predatory, hungry look of him. He wasn’t a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He was a lion in wolf’s clothing.

  “Let’s see what we got here. Lots of cunts.” The man’s hand traced some words on her upper thigh. Sam didn’t flinch. Daniel watched as she composed herself in the same mask of quiet detachment she was in when he met her last night. “Very nice. A few dick drawings, impressive. Not as much as I was expecting, I have to say.”

  Finding a place on a nearby bench, Daniel followed them with a judgmental stare. He couldn’t help it. The way they looked at her, the way they ruffled her hair and handed her a flask. They made their move to leave, but he caught Sam pointing at him.

  “I’ve seen a friend. I’ll catch up to you.”

  She walked over to him, her arms crossed against her from the chill. Apparently, no one thought to bring her clothes. He hated them for it, almost as much as he hated himself for wanting to take in every inch, memorizing the arcs of her rolling curves.

  “Hi.”

  “Hey,” he replied.

  Gone was the woman he had spoken to all night, the hesitant woman with the hidden smile. In her place was a parliamentarian, a stiff-backed, guarded-eye statue who somehow managed to look down her nose at him even as she had to tip her head to look him in the face.

  Daniel glanced over her bare shoulder. The Animos guys hadn’t left. They surveyed their interaction with careful consideration. He hoped the aristocratic airs were for them. He didn’t want her to be the snob she was supposed to be.

  “I wanted to thank you. And if you need any financial compensation for last night, come to the house and Mrs. Long will take care of it.”

  “I don’t want your money.” He swatted her words away. Her suggestion was nothing more than a flight of gnats to be broken up in the face of the swarm of locusts walking behind her. “What are you doing with those guys anyway?”

  “Trying to fit in.” Before he could ask why the hell she wanted to fit in with them, she moved to leave. “Look, I have to go—”

  “Here.”

  Without thinking, his coat came off of his shoulders again.

  “What are you doing—”

  He offered it to her, a test. “You need it more than I do.”

  “I can’t take your coat.”

  “Well… Could I give you my number? You can ring me and give it over whenever you’ve got your own stuff back.”

  “Yeah! That sounds—” Daniel lit up at the flicker of thrill she packed into the exclamation, but it was gone faster than it appeared. It was only a flicker. She pulled the invisible mask of decorum over herself. “It sounds agreeable. Here.”

  Agreeable. Have we walked into a Jane Austen novel? He held the quip at bay, flipping open his guitar case and digging until he found an old Tesco receipt and a pen. He rushed. He didn’t want her to disappear before he could deliver.

  “Here”—he smiled as their fingertips brushed—“I hope I’ll see you again.”

  “I’ll have the coat dry-cleaned,” was her only response.

  Without another word or glance in his direction, she slipped into the dense material, slipped into the crowd of men, and slipped out of his sight.

  Had he imagined the way she clutched the coat to her chest? The way her eyes fluttered closed for the briefest of seconds as his collar brushed her nose?

  He didn’t know if she’d call him or if he’d ever see that coat again. Maybe she’d talk to her father and get him fired. Maybe she’d go back to her Animos pals and tell them a horror story about the poor man who dared to speak to her.

  All he knew was this: a fresh tune was in his mind, and his fingers were itching. She’d put a song in his heart, and he had to write it.

  Chapter Seven

  Since her first initiation ceremony, where she was forced to take shots from between the regents’ legs, Sam always assumed they used alcohol as a tool of humiliation. Forcing alcohol down an initiate’s throat was another leash by which to control them and lead them to their own inevitable doom.

  Alcohol, she always figured, was one of the countless ways they thought they could run her off. If they made her miserable enough, they thought, maybe they could get her to quit, rather than having to put her through the paces of membership.

  No one wanted to be the guy who forced out the future Lord Speaker’s kid. But if she were to quit… Not only would their hands be clean, but they’d have effectively kept Sam from rubbing her grimy girl hands all over their precious boys’ club.

  Waking up on the final morning of her Rage, however, she realized she was wrong. In spite of her throbbing headache and spinning world, she saw the truth as clearly as if she had put on glasses for the first time. The alcohol wasn’t for them. Well, not entirely. It was also for her. Because she couldn’t remember a damn thing since her brother left.

  It was a small mercy. Especially considering how close to vomiting she was. But it was mercy, all the same.

  When she came to on Sunday morning, she didn’t open her eyes right away. First, she took stock of herself. Bent at a weird angle, her arms curled around her body… Had she slept on the stairs? Her tongue made circles in her mouth. Yes. She’d definitely drunk through more than a few pieces of her father’s coveted wine stock. A piece of lettuce was wedged between her teeth, but she couldn’t, for the life of her, remember how it’d gotten there. She scraped her memory for some recollection of food, but none came, and the harder she thought about it, the closer her stomach came to revolting. Her eyes threatened to open, but she kept them closed.

  Go back to sleep. Rest your eyes for a minute and then you’ll be…good…as…

  The thought never resolved. Sleep claimed her, though it only lasted a moment before the singsong, I-told-you-so voice of her brother cut through her blissful, dreamless sleep. “Good morning, your majesty.”

  “Back so soon?” she groaned, not bothering to open her eyes.

  “Rushed back to make sure you were still alive. It was touch and go there for a while.”

  Okay. You can do this. Move one eye at a time. With great difficulty, she worked the left open. And now the other one. The right followed suit. Sunlight bled through the house’s grand windows, piercing her bubble of darkness. God, her head ached. This was why no one stopped drinking. As soon as you stop drinking, bad things happen.

  “What time is it?”

  Thomas checked his watch.

  “Three thirty,” he said.

  For the first time since she’d arrived at the house in the back seat of Captain’s convertible on Friday, the house was quiet. Totally still. There was no music, no breaking of glass, no male laughter.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Gone. Left you some instructions about the ball and some money for repairs to your room.”

  Collecting her strength, Sam pushed herself up. Nope. Big mistake. Her body slumped against the staircase’s supportive wall.

  “How was the reunion?” she managed. God, she was thirsty. How was she even capable of speaking with a throat as dry as the Sahara?

  Black spots appeared on the wall around Thomas’s head. His posture dipped. It was his turn to slump.

  “Don’t want to talk about it.” He spun the conversation back on her with the skill of a Russian ballerina. “How was your Christ Church Stand?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “Don’t remember or don’t want to tell me?”

  “That is the Animos way, right?” Sam kept her cards close to her chest now. “Silence or death.”

  Thomas’s retort died as he pointed to a crumpled-up ball of paper crushed on the staircase where only moments ago Sam’s head rested in fitful sleep.

  “What’ve you got there?”

  “Huh?” Sam asked, unmoving. The less she moved, the less it felt like her skull was the inside of a particularly productive salt mine.

  “What are you holding?” He
pointed now, his annoyance at the repetition clear. Sam knew him to be a patient man. Lately, with her single-minded dedication to the Animos and their cause, she’d basically been tap dancing on the floor of his patience reserve.

  “It’s, uh, I don’t…” She reached and uncrumpled the paper. The black pen marks sent her stomach careening to the bottom of her feet and her hazy, drunken memories flooding back to her. “Oh, shit.”

  “What?” Thomas prodded, his eyes widening slightly.

  Sam wanted to vomit. Sam wanted to scream. Sam wanted to rip the piece of paper into a million tiny pieces. More than anything, she wanted to dissolve into the very wood of the staircase, to become nothing more than a grain of timber. Timbers couldn’t feel overwhelming shame. Floorboards never revealed themselves to or depended on the one person in the world they shouldn’t have. Staircases were only there to be trampled on, not defended by too-handsome staff members with impossibly kind eyes. Her head fell back against the wall with a painful thump. It reverberated through her entire head. Even her teeth ached with the force of it.

  “What?” Thomas questioned again.

  “I do remember,” she corrected herself. “Kind of.”

  If she hadn’t been as hungover as a sailor waking up in a jail cell, maybe she wouldn’t have spilled her entire guts to her disapproving brother. But, as it was, she was starved for real friendship, and he was her only option. In a cold, detached voice, she laid out the details of the night: how she’d taken her stand in the frosty darkness only to have the hired help take pity on her and hide her body with his own.

  She left out how vulnerable Daniel made her feel, and not because she was naked. Nor did she mention how his smoky, roughened voice made love songs almost bearable.

  God, she’d been so nice to him, so doe eyed and swayed by his sweet refusal to outright say he was protecting her. Not only did she talk to him through the night, but she actually abandoned the Animos and thanked him when it was all over. Sure, she’d tried to save her reputation with an emotionless dismissal at the end of it, but his lopsided grin might as well have been an itemized list of her failures.

  He saw through her act.

  “Well, at least you made it out alive,” Thomas said, when it was all over.

  The words tugged uncomfortably at Sam’s skin, but not nearly as much as the uncertainty in them.

  “Why do you keep saying that? About making sure I’m still alive?”

  “Just a joke.”

  “But you’ve said it a lot.”

  As Thomas debated whether to speak, Sam realized perhaps she didn’t want to know the answer. Maybe Thomas didn’t want her to know, either.

  “This club kills people all the time.”

  She scoffed. “You can’t scare me off.” The word kill was a rush of cold air. It threatened to blow over her carefully constructed house of indifference cards. “You really should stop trying.”

  “It happens. The year before I became regent, they killed a girl. Died over the arm of a couch in the smoking room of some London night club with a mixture of cocaine and alcohol in her stomach.” Thomas grew from a concerned brother to an impassioned preacher, spitting a prepared sermon from behind his pulpit. “They are so careless with people. When you try to rip someone until you’re all cut from the same cloth…you’re going to eventually rip someone completely in half. I worry about you, and believe it or not, you already are a member of this family. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  The pull of her heart was tempting. He had secrets Animos had forced him to keep, secrets that had clearly been torturing him, but vulnerability wasn’t the Animos way. Worse still, it wasn’t the Dubarry way. Her father never showed vulnerability, nor did he encourage it.

  “I’m not the one who doesn’t believe I’m a Dubarry, Thomas,” she retorted, still unmoving from her place against the staircase wall. “It’s Father.”

  “And you really think—”

  “I don’t think. I know,” she snapped. “I need you to trust me. Help me, if you can.”

  Thomas couldn’t have looked less sure of anything. As far as Sam could tell, she’d shoved him into a corner. He could either help the sister he claimed to love, or he could deny her help and lose her forever. “Please.”

  A tense pause ensued—her entire future hung on the edge of a cliff of silence.

  He sighed. “What do you need?”

  “I need the records of everyone who works in this house. And any of father’s other properties.” A plan began to spin itself out in her head. “Anyone who could possibly go as my date to the ball.”

  “I think Daniel’s probably your only—”

  “I don’t—” Holding onto the nearby railing for support, Sam heaved her body up until she was technically standing. Technically because while she was, indeed upright, all of her weight rested on the bannister. “I won’t let it be him.”

  “Why not? He’s clearly into you. If you’re going to win, you’re going to need someone like him.”

  Thomas’s thoughts were sensible, reasonable. If she was serious about winning—and she was serious about winning—Daniel was the most logical choice. She already knew him, he worked for the estate and clearly cared about her, at least enough to offer his coat and stand outside with her in the cold all night. Usually such calculation appealed to her. Reason above feeling. Still, every time Daniel’s songs floated through her head or the memory of his smile twisted the already tight knots in her guts, reason vanished.

  She hadn’t consciously decided why she was so quick to dismiss him as a candidate, but the answer was obvious. It was written all over his dopey, smiling face. It was in the lines of his stupid love songs. He’s too good for Animos. Too sweet for all of this. Even at my worst, I can’t pick a guy like that.

  “See if there’s anyone else.” Then, seeing as it worked so well the first time, she added it again here, “Please.”

  With a quick nod of farewell, Thomas absconded to his room, leaving Sam alone on the staircase to think. The hangover clouded her mind with pain and dizzy spells, but her gut was as certain as it could be. She wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t take Daniel Best to the Mud Duck Ball and rip the starlight glint from his eyes.

  At least…not if she could possibly help it.

  The next day, with her hangover dulled and a full day of lectures mercifully completed, Sam returned to Ashbrooke Manor with only one goal in mind: avoid Daniel Best at all costs. Until she had the Mud Duck situation firmly in hand, it wouldn’t do to go around flirting with the dangers he presented.

  Ashbrooke was a massive estate, with hundreds of acres and scores of rooms in which to get lost. Losing him wouldn’t be a challenge. On the long car ride from the crooked streets of Oxford back to her home, she blared some BBC talk show and rolled the windows down, repeating it to herself over and over again: Avoid him, and everything will be fine.

  The interior of her bedroom had been restored by the quick work of the Ashbrooke staff, but the night before, when she tried to sleep, it was a room of disruptions, of oddities. His note—phone number and all—was still crumpled on her bedside. Wind from her nearby window crinkled the paper, the sound tickling her ears with every gust. Then there was his coat. His damn coat he’d given over to keep her from freezing to death and covered her with once the sun came up and the regents shuffled her home for more drinking. It hung now, inoffensively enough, on her coatrack and smelled up the whole room of him. A mix of grass, old books, and soft whisky threw her careening back to their night with every breath. When she eventually managed to scrape a few hours’ sleep, soft guitar music and warm eyes always played a leading role in her dreams.

  That’s why the distance was so important. Not only for his safety, but for hers. She needed to keep a watchful eye on her heart. It was restless. It wanted to claw out of the cage she’d put it in and run into the embrace of the first man who’d so much as smiled at her. Her head knew better. The heart, the head reasoned, would be even hap
pier to have a father than a love affair, so locked up the heart would remain until the day Lord Dubarry opened his eyes and saw her as a daughter and not a stranger.

  Careful to park in a field around the corner so Daniel would not come out to retrieve and service her car, Sam took the long way back to Ashbrooke Manor. When she’d first moved there, her own resentment surprised her. The heat licked up her neck with white-hot flames, singeing her cheeks red. Her mother raised her in an apartment roughly the size of a ring box, then she’d been sent to a foster home where the only things she owned could fit in a backpack. All the while, her father maintained a perfectly manicured estate, with rolling lawns of perfect green grass even in the harsh British autumns and rooms enough for fifty bastard children.

  Back then, she thought his selfishness was as boundless as the acres of dense hunting ground behind his house. Now, she only saw beauty, a world as it should be, no matter the cost. She figured the fastest way to be accepted by her father was to start thinking like him, so she did. She watched him across the table at dinner and across the room at parties, his mannerisms, inflection, vocabulary, opinions. For hours, she would sit in the mirror and practice, repeating turns of phrase and talking points she’d scribbled down in one of her notebooks until the lines between her own opinions and the ones she’d adopted were too blurry for even her to recognize.

  Sam marched up from the rear garden, emerging between two rose bushes to take in the view of the house. She hopped the handful of stone steps up to the veranda and through the French doors into the back wing of the house, fully intending to sneak up the servants’ staircase to her room undetected. Five steps up, though, something caught her ear.

  Music.

  This wasn’t the Victrola playing tinny Beatles’ voices or one of the radio stations her brother often insisted on playing through the house’s wireless speakers as he cooked. It was real. Live. Familiar? No, it couldn’t have been familiar. Sam didn’t listen to music. The last time she’d heard music was…