Confront yourself and you conquer your fears, Dorian had told her, the dick.
“Jenny,” Erika said softly now, with more self-possession than she’d ever thought she had. “Tell me how this happened.”
She’d wanted to say this tragedy, which she certainly would have before. But something stopped her tonight—possibly the fact that Jenny certainly didn’t look tragic. And more to the point, hadn’t asked Erika’s opinion.
It was another little prick of shame that the pre-Berlin version of Erika would have steamrolled right in and bludgeoned half of London with her opinion without caring if anyone had solicited it. How charming.
“As I’ve mentioned before, I’m sure, my father has never appreciated my passion for charity work,” Jenny said, smiling wryly over her glass of wine.
“I would be astonished if your father appreciated passion in any form.”
Jenny’s smile deepened. “He’s quite fond of his dogs.”
Erika drank from her own glass. “I’m not sure I can figure out how we get from passionate charity work that benefits children in war zones to...Conrad.”
Jenny’s smile faded. She frowned down at her wine, but didn’t take a sip.
“We were at an event in Stockholm. My father likes me to play his hostess even when it’s not his party, so I was with him when he met Conrad. They started talking business, my father liked him, and a few days later he announced that he’d taken it upon himself to set us up on a date.” She lifted her gaze. “Which isn’t unusual. I’ve complained about this before. Any day now I expect him to simply announce that he’s sold me off.”
Erika smiled. Then returned to the subject at hand. “And you went on the date, clearly.”
“I didn’t dare say no,” Jenny said. “I assumed Conrad had either been pushed into it, or thought he could go on a single pity date and then carry on with whatever business dealings he had with my father. But instead, he asked me out on a second date.”
“And again, you went?”
“I couldn’t say no.”
“It’s simple, Jen. No. See? I did it.”
“Erika.” And her friend leveled a frank, sad sort of look at her. “Please stop pretending you don’t know what my father’s like. I’ve been playing this game for years. He sets me up on a date, and yes, I go on the dates, because that’s the price I have to pay for my independence.”
“You shouldn’t have to pay a price for your independence.”
Jenny’s smile was sad. “Should doesn’t have much to do with it, I’m afraid. It never has done.”
Erika remembered this from their university days. Jenny’s sense of unwavering duty to her stuffy, unsupportive father—or maybe, more realistically, to the nostalgia she’d been raised on. The grand stories about what had made the Markham family great. And wealthy.
Not so long ago, she would have railed at her friend about this. Tonight, she kept her mouth shut instead.
“I know that I could rebel,” Jenny said quietly when Erika didn’t speak. “Sometimes I dream of it. But that’s not who I am. So yes, I went on that second date, because my father expected me to. And I went on the third, and when Conrad brought me back home to my father’s house, he stayed for a drink. And proposed marriage, there and then, with this honking great ring and all that... Well. You know what your brother is like. So sure of everything.”
“I do indeed.”
Jenny sent her a reproving look. “And it’s all snowballed since. My father was the happiest I’ve seen him in years. Certainly since my mother died. Later that night, after Conrad left, he fairly waxed rhapsodic about putting me in safe hands at last.”
“But, Jen.” Erika’s voice was soft. Not quite imploring, but close. “You don’t love him.”
Jenny took a breath, but her gaze was steady when it met Erika’s.
“He’s kind to me,” she said simply. “We want the same things, more or less. He’s perfectly happy if I continue working, which isn’t something I could say for all the cavemen my father’s sent me on dates with. I’m going to have to marry one of them. Conrad is by far the best option.”
“Jenny...”
“And besides,” she said hurriedly, “sex is not a motivating factor for me the way it is for you.”
“That’s because you’ve never been fucked properly.” Erika laughed at Jenny’s expression. “You know it’s true. Or maybe you don’t, which is sad, but I know it’s true. Wait a minute.” She narrowed her eyes at her friend. “Are you saying that Conrad’s bad in bed? Or are you saying you haven’t sampled the wares yet?”
“I can’t imagine that you would want me to answer that question either way. About your brother.”
Erika made a face. “I really don’t. But as your friend, it’s my duty to ask.”
“I haven’t slept with him, no,” Jenny said, her cheeks red in the dark of the bar. It made Erika wonder how her friend would react if she found herself standing in the Walfreiheit Club one fine night. Or what she’d do if faced with a man like Dorian.
But she couldn’t let herself think about Dorian. Not now.
“There’s hardly been time,” Jenny was saying. “It’s all been a whirlwind and my father insisted on throwing this party—”
“You can’t marry a man if you don’t know what he’s like in bed,” Erika said. “Really, you can’t.”
“People have been doing exactly that for centuries.”
“And they’ve been wildly unhappy.”
“Not always.” Jenny shook her head, and her grip on her wineglass tightened. Visibly. “I don’t expect you to understand this decision, Erika. It’s a bit like being on a runaway train, if I’m honest. But what’s the harm in it? He’s not pretending to love me. I’m not pretending to love him. And, you know, there’s lots of research to prove that arranged marriages are happier, on balance, than marriages based on romantic love.”
“I’ll be sure to make that toast at the wedding. Here’s to a sexless union of people who don’t love each other, but whose financial portfolios match well enough to plod along. Three cheers.”
“Just as long as you come to the wedding.” Jenny reached over and grabbed Erika’s wrist in a fully out-of-character move that made Erika both love her more and worry for her at the same time. “We might not be love’s young dream, but we’re going to be all right. And I would very much like your blessing.”
And a few weeks ago, Erika would have lost her shit. She knew it. She would have said terrible things to Jenny that she’d never be able to take back. She would have called up her brother and shouted a whole lot more things, likely uglier by far. And she certainly wouldn’t have been able to sit here and listen to this breakdown of what had to be one of the stupidest reasons to marry another person she’d ever heard in her life. Especially coming from Jenny, who had always been a romantic.
But then, romantic or not, Jenny thought she didn’t like sex. Erika had always thought that wasn’t quite the truth, and that, really, Jenny had a thing about the man she called her best friend and had therefore never touched that way. Dylan Kilburn had been a first year with them at Oxford, had been brooding in Jenny’s direction since day one, and yet Jenny had resolutely refused to see him as anything but a friend. For years now. Erika was chock-full of theories as to why.
A couple of weeks ago, she would have hammered her friend with each and every one of those theories, but she was different now. And Erika wasn’t sure she liked that strange awareness deep inside her. She wasn’t sure she approved of it. But that didn’t matter, because either way, she wasn’t the same.
She had always wished that she could choose not to make a mess rather than always and forever trying to figure out how to clean it up. And tonight she found she could put it into practice. She put her hand on top of Jenny’s and kept her gaze steady. And she set aside her own feelings on the topic, becaus
e it didn’t matter what she felt or thought. Jenny hadn’t asked her for her theories, she’d asked for Erika’s blessing.
“You couldn’t keep me away from your wedding,” Erika said very distinctly. And found as she spoke that she meant it. “It doesn’t matter who you’re marrying or why. I will be there, with bells on. You can count on it.”
Later, as she was lying in the hotel room she’d taken for the night—curled up on her side with that ravenous hunger between her legs that still she didn’t take care of because Dorian had told her not to—she remembered Jenny’s face. And how stunned she’d looked that Erika had given her blessing.
And hadn’t made the whole damn thing about herself, more likely.
Erika wrapped herself up in her coverlet and pretended it was Dorian’s arms around her.
What if this was the strength you brought to every part of your life? he had asked her after another one of his wicked, ingenious scenes. He’d turned her inside out, left her gasping and half-mad, and yet convinced on a deep level that she could take anything he dished out. What if you controlled yourself out there, and only let outside forces control you when those forces were me?
And she felt too full there, in another anonymous hotel bed. Alone. Close to bursting and too thick with it for it to be anger. Or anything as straightforward as a sob.
Dorian had held up a mirror to her life and she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t looked into it. And seen. Somehow, in surrendering herself to him, he had given her the control now. Out here, in the world. Because she knew what true surrender was like, so there was no reason to submit herself to every passing whim.
Erika had chosen to give herself completely to Dorian because he was powerful enough to keep her safe while she did it, and having done that, why would she bother with these lesser surrenders that never made her feel anything but alone?
She could have a host of emotions about her friend and her brother, but she didn’t have to succumb to them.
She could choose.
She felt as if she’d been struck by lightning, so bright and hot was the jolt of awareness that hit her then.
Dorian had taught her how to choose.
Erika ran with that over the course of the next few days. She stayed in London, searching for the appropriate outfit. And this time, she didn’t want attention in a general sense. She wanted his attention. Only his.
Not just his attention, if she was honest. His approval.
And when she tried on the perfect dress, cut to enhance rather than expose, it felt like his hands on her body. As if he lounged there in the corner of her dressing room, his eyes ablaze and his mouth that unsmiling line that made her heart flip over.
The night of the engagement party, she was dressed, her hair pulled back into a neat chignon at her nape, and ready to go long before it was time to leave Devon and make the drive to the Markham family’s stately home in Wiltshire.
Possibly, she thought wryly, you are a little overexcited.
She waited in the ancient gallery in her mother’s lover’s sprawling house. She stared at the dark portraits that lined the walls, each featuring some ancestor or another of his with the same red jowls he sported himself, and found herself very thankful indeed that her mother’s taste in men had been much better when she was younger.
“My goodness, Erika,” came her mother’s stilted, affected voice from the stairs—as if she’d sensed Erika was entertaining uncharitable thoughts about her and had rushed to remind her why each and every one was true. “Are you ill?”
Erika turned to watch her mother come toward her. As ever, Chriszette was resplendent. An ice sculpture best enjoyed from a safe distance. Her blond hair was swept back from her smooth face and secured with combs. She wore a sweeping, elegant gown that made the most of her trim figure. She was a striking woman with a regal bearing and flashing blue eyes that made everyone around her feel as if really, they ought to curtsy.
And she certainly liked it when they did.
“Do I look ill?” Erika asked lightly. Because there was no telling how her mother would strike. Chriszette was like a snake. She was quite happy coiled up in the sun, until she wasn’t. And sometimes she moved so fast you never even saw the strike coming until you bled.
“I have never seen you look so...appropriate,” Chriszette said, her accent making her sound sharper than she perhaps meant. Then again, perhaps not.
“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Erika said with perhaps more determination than enthusiasm. “Thank you, Mother.”
Chriszette did not like to be called Mother. Her blue eyes cooled considerably, which was always hard to imagine as she started out so devoutly frigid. She glanced toward the stairs, and Erika knew that she was looking to see if her lover had heard Erika admit to their relationship. A fate worse than death.
“Darling,” Chriszette said with a smile that heralded the coming venom, “only very beautiful and very clever girls can afford to hide their assets. I assumed you knew that.” She swept her eyes up and down, taking in every inch of Erika’s body. “If you don’t put on a little show and make sure they’re looking at all that bare skin, they might remember that you’re a university dropout who shuffles aimlessly from one place to another, effectively homeless. What is cute in one’s twenties is a character flaw in later years. You’d do well to remember that.”
The old Erika would have screamed back at her, which was what Chriszette wanted. The more of a mess her daughter was, the more she could make herself the maternal victim. The old Erika had known this as well as the current Erika did, but this was the first time that Erika did nothing but smile back at Chriszette. And fail to otherwise react.
A faint frown creased her mother’s brow. “No one likes a born loser, Erika,” she said. “But as you know, they are often dazzled by a whore.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Erika said, and she was shaking a little, but she didn’t let it own her. The choice was hers, and she chose to let far more powerful things make her cry. Because he always sweetened that pot with a few orgasms. She nodded her mother. “I bow to your example, as always.”
And her mother’s lover appeared then, cutting off whatever vicious reply Chriszette might have planned to make.
The car swept them off for the long drive to Jenny’s father’s estate, where the party was being held in as much ancient, feudal splendor as possible. Right down to the selling of the bride, if Erika wanted to get technical.
And it wasn’t until she’d followed her mother up the grand stairs that led into the soaring hall, then waited her turn while Chriszette left her coat and fluttered all over her lover, that Erika found herself attacked by her own nerves.
She told herself not to be silly.
Which...didn’t really work.
After handing off her own coat, she drifted toward the grand ballroom. Chriszette liked to make an entrance, so the party was already in full swing as she swept inside.
Erika, for perhaps the first time in her life, didn’t particularly want to make a scene. So instead, she headed farther into the house, toward one of the less trafficked entrances to the ballroom. Then she stood there for a moment. Jenny was moving through the crowd, looking beautiful and bright and elegant, as always. Jenny’s father trailed along with her, looking puffed up and proud—an upgrade from his usual puffed up and pompous.
And then Erika saw her brother, looking as grim and determined as always.
It had been one thing to find a lovely dress. To take on faith that her mother was wrong and Dorian was right. That she had more to offer than too much skin on display at an otherwise excruciatingly proper party like this one, teeming as it was with the sorts of people who appeared regularly in Tatler, yet found their presence in its pages appalling.
She found it was one thing to do the things she’d done with Dorian, and admit the truths he’d wrung out of her.
/> But it would be something else again to look her brother in the eye. Then apologize for not only disappointing him, but for going out of her way to disappoint herself, too. And then taking it out on him. For years.
Her stomach twisted, then plummeted to the marble floor at her feet.
She must have been kidding herself. Or so hopped-up on endorphins that she’d forgotten that Conrad was hardly anybody’s idea of the sweet, genial older brother. He wasn’t the sort to kick a football about or help his younger sister with her maths. On the contrary, Conrad was a dark cloud of a man. He was so severe. So exacting. And he had a way of looking at a person that reminded Erika of their mother when she was poised to strike. Only worse, because Chriszette prized meanness.
Conrad valued accuracy.
And either way, Erika would end up with a hole punched straight through her.
There was absolutely no way that she could march up to him, make herself vulnerable and expose herself before that piercing blue stare of his.
The very idea made her want to curl up and die. Here and now.
She whirled around, thinking she would just grab her coat, call a car and leave all of this behind her—
But she slammed into a wall.
Except it wasn’t a wall, she realized as two hands caught her shoulders, and she tipped her head back to look up acres of broad chest packed into black tie.
It was Dorian.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“ARE YOU GOING SOMEWHERE, Erika?” he asked, his voice a dark, amused rumble, and with that dangerous gleam in his eyes. “Surely not.”
And Erika...burst into flames.
She hadn’t seen him since Berlin, and she’d thought his voice on the phone was too much. But this...
Teach Me Page 13
