by Louise Rose
Because I did. Looking back, I realised that when he walked in on me and Romy; it wasn’t embarrassment I was feeling. It was shame. I don’t want Archer seeing me like that. For some stupid reason, his opinion matters to me. I really wish it didn’t. I want to hate him for always being there like some mad stalker, but the truth is, I like the fact someone cares what happens to me, even if it is only because my father is making him do it for some kind of debt he owed.
Something tells me Archer would still be there for me even if he wasn’t in my father’s employ. Milly adores him, which says a lot. Sure, he is her brother, but they don’t seem to suffer from the kind of sibling rivalry you’d expect from families brought up to be cutthroat.
There is definitely a lot more to Archer Knight than I have learned so far.
One thing is for sure. I had a lot more options than Declan Dauphin.
“See, that’s the thing,” Declan says. “You’re more than a distraction for me. You-”
“Settle down, everyone. Settle down.” Declan is interrupted by the arrival of Mr Metcalf. “We’ve got a lot to get through today, so I don’t want any distractions. We’re going to be focusing on one of the set pieces you need to analyse. This is worth a lot of marks in the exam, so pay attention. I’ve got a 100% pass rate in my class and I won’t hesitate to get rid of anyone I think will risk breaking my record.” He sent a pointed glance in my direction before going over and putting on some classical music.
Declan nudges me with his foot, but I ignore him, closing my eyes to focus on the music. He nudges me again, harder this time. Opening my eyes, I scowl at him. He tosses a piece of paper on my desk.
I open it up and read it.
Sorry I didn’t tell you about Ally.
I roll my eyes and scribble a reply.
What makes you think I care?
He wrote back.
We have a connection, Ivy. Don’t pretend you can’t feel it.
You’re deluded. We wrote a song together and got carried away. It was a mistake.
Not for me.
So you’re breaking up with Ally?
Declan takes his time thinking of what to write, which tells me everything I need to know. I stifle a bitter laugh, but I’m not quiet enough for Mr Metcalf.
He switches off Vivaldi’s Concerto in D Minor. “Is there something you’d like to share with the class, Miss Archaic? I mean, it must be more important than your studies for you to be so distracted. Is that a note I see in front of you?”
“N-no.”
“Bring it here.” He snaps his fingers impatiently, beckoning me to go to the front of the class.
I don’t have a choice unless I walk out of this class and never come back. I go to the front of the class, my heart pounding in my chest. I hand Mr Metcalf the note, who reads it.
“It’s complicated, is it?”
I glanced over at Declan, who looks as though he wants the ground to open and swallow him up.
“I think it’s really very straightforward,” Mr Metcalf states. “Mr Dauphin. Miss Archaic. This is very disappointing behaviour from two Heads of House. The pair of you are in detention with me tomorrow evening. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be sick of Vivaldi, but you will be getting an A in your exam. Now sit back down and start focusing on your studies. If I catch the pair of you distracting each other with notes again, I’ll be reassigning you to another partner. Go back to your seat, Ivy.”
I ignore the whispers and giggles coming from some of the other girls as I go back to my place.
Sorry, Declan mouths. I shrug and turn in my chair so my back is towards him as much as possible.
I am done with cheating asshole boys with pretty faces.
Chapter Seventeen
Ivy Archaic
Somehow, I survived another week at the Academy and before I know it, it’s Saturday and I am happy I didn’t have to wear the stupid uniform this weekend.
I’m not so happy about what day it is.
My eighteenth birthday.
As I wake up, I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling for a long time like the plain white paint can tell me the answers I’ve been searching for. If someone had told me I would spend my eighteenth birthday living in a mansion, the prisoner of my father who is a gangster of some kind, I would have wondered what they’d been smoking. But here I am, in a bed that probably cost more than Katy earned in a year. I have so many questions that all lie in the mind of my mother.
Oh, how I wish she was here.
There is a knock at the door that snaps me out of my thoughts.
“Come in!”
The door opens and Isabella walks in, followed by a servant pushing a food trolley. I pull myself up to a seated position, as the servant picks up a tray from the trolley and places it across my lap. There is a vase with brightly coloured gerberas to one side and a large cloche in the middle of the tray.
The servant picks up the cloche to reveal a large plate beautifully laid out with a variety of exotic fruits cut into delicate little flowers as well as a selection of Danish pastries. In addition, there are three glasses, each with a different type of juice – orange, cranberry, and apple.
“Tea or coffee, miss?” the servant asks, holding up a pot in each hand.
“Er… coffee, I guess.”
The servant pours out a cup of coffee, placing it on the tray along with a little jug of cream and a dish with sugar lumps. Then they take the trolley and push it out of the room, leaving me alone with Isabella who I still don’t trust.
“Do you want some of this?” I offer, trying to build a bridge between us. If I am going to see her every day until my dear dad dies and I can escape here, I might as well get to know her. “There’s no way I’ll be able to eat it all by myself.”
“No, thank you,” Isabella replies. “It would not be appropriate for me to share your food.”
Better than letting it all go to waste, I mutter under my breath, but I knew not to push the aide by now. She is surprisingly strong willed, for all her calm demeanour.
“Now your father has asked me to tell you to take your time with breakfast,” she tells me. “He says everyone should enjoy a lie-in on their birthday.”
“How generous.”
Isabella ignores my sarcasm. “But when you’re ready, he asks that you join him in his study. He’s got a surprise for you that I think you’ll love.”
“What is it?”
“Now if I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?”
Isabella smiles enigmatically and leaves me to eat my breakfast alone.
I take my time, happy to make my father wait for once. The pastries are amazing, no doubt home made in our kitchen. Just as I suspected, there is way too much food for me to eat on my own, so I placed the cloche back over the plate to keep the pastries fresh so I can snack on them later.
Eventually, I decide to go and see what this surprise is my father has lined up for me. No doubt it is some dumb present, another attempt to buy my affections.
I knock on his study door and wait to be summoned before going in to find my father and Isabella deep in conversation.
“Ah. Ivy. You live!” My father seems to be in a jovial mood, so I don’t risk ruining it by responding to it with sarcasm. I have seen enough of him to know how mercurial he can be.
“Isabella says you had something for me?”
“First, let me take a good look at you.”
My father gets up to stand in front of me, holding my shoulders to straighten me out.
“You’re the spitting image of your mother.” He smiles, a hint of a tear in the corner of his eye. The cynic in me wonders whether he has put in eye drops when he heard my knock to create the effect. “She would be so proud of the woman you’re becoming.” He looks into my eyes for a moment longer, his eyes glazing for the briefest of moments as if he is lost in a memory.
Starting to feel awkward, I clear my throat the tiniest bit. That seems to break him of whatever moment he
was having in his mind.
“Isabella and I are just finalising the details for your mask ball tonight. I think you’ll be very happy with what she’s planned. She tells me you don’t want to be involved in any of the decisions so she chose things she thought you’d like and I have to say, I think she’s surpassed herself. It’s not every day a girl turns eighteen, so you’ll have to indulge a father for wanting to make a fuss over his little girl.”
I was never your little girl. I bit my tongue, knowing it is best to play along with his delusion until I can escape back to my room.
“You never did tell me what you wanted for your birthday,” my father says. “So I took the liberty of arranging a couple of little surprises for you. Here’s the first.”
He nods to Isabella, who brings over a top of the line iPad.
“Thanks, Dad,” I say dutifully. “This will be really useful for my schoolwork.”
“Oh, that’s not the gift.” He looks smug, as Isabella swiped the iPad to access the home screen then tapped on the Zoom icon.
“Katy!” I could cry with happiness when I see my foster mother’s face appear on the screen.
“Ivy! At last! I’ve been waiting for you for ages!” I glance over at Isabella, who shrugs apologetically. Now I feel awful. I kept Katy waiting because I wanted to show my father he can’t control me.
“You know how teenagers are, Katy,” my father says, taking the iPad from Isabella so he can address my foster mother. “You can barely drag them out of bed for school at the best of times. Now I’ll have to ask you to keep this relatively brief–I have some other things planned for Ivy today, but I knew she wouldn’t want her birthday to pass without speaking to you.”
He hand the iPad over to me. “You’ve got ten minutes,” he tells me, before mouthing ‘behave’.
I don’t need to be told by this point. Now isn’t the time to make my move.
“Hey, Katy,” I say.
“Ivy,” Katy sighs, her bright eyes watching me. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d found your father?”
I shrug, trying to think of an explanation which might make sense of everything that has happened without giving away the truth.
Luckily, Katy saved me the trouble. “Your dad’s been telling me all about how you’d been searching for him online and when you found him you didn’t want to tell me because you were afraid of hurting me. You silly thing. You should have known you can trust me. If I have known you were looking for your dad, I’d have helped you.”
“Yeah, well, I have been disappointed before,” I shrug. “I suppose I didn’t want to get my hopes up. If I told you what was really going on and then failed to find him, I didn’t want to have to deal with your sympathy as well as being disappointed.”
“I understand,” Katy nods. “But you should know you can always come to me for help, no matter what. You’re eighteen now, but just because you’re no longer officially in my care doesn’t mean you’re not my daughter. You’ll always be special to me.”
“Thanks, Katy.” My voice catches in my throat, tears threatening to spill out. “You’ve no idea how much that means to me. You’ve been the best foster parent ever.”
“I try,” she says. “I’ve got another child coming to stay with me in a couple weeks. They’ve had a really rough upbringing so I’m hoping I can give them some stability.”
As Katy tells me about everything going on in her life, I wonder whether I would ever see her again. She has been amazing, but part of what makes a good foster parent is the ability not to become too emotionally engaged because the children you are looking after can be taken back to their parents at any time. Much as I knew she meant what she said, I was under no illusion. Now I was too old for the care system, her focus is going to shift to the next child who came to her and the next and the next. Soon, I would just be another one in a long line of children she has looked after for a while.
As if she can read my thoughts, Katy suddenly says, “You should come and visit. I think it would be good for Clara to meet you, see that it’s not all bad being fostered. Perhaps in a few weeks after she’s had a chance to settle in?”
“Maybe.” Out of the corner of my eye, I catch my dad frowning. “But I’ll have to see. Things are pretty busy here with my A levels and everything.”
“Oh yes. You’ve gone to school. How is it?”
“It’s okay,” I shrug. “I mean, it’s a school. They’re all pretty much the same, aren’t they?”
“And your dad tells me you’re Head Girl. That’s amazing!”
“It’s not as impressive as it sounds,” I say.
“Don’t put yourself down like that, Ivy,” Katy tells me. “You always did have a low opinion of yourself. I’m glad you’re in an environment where you can thrive now. From what your dad tells me, he’s really supportive of you. I’m so glad you’ve found him.”
“Me too,” I lie, more because I know it’s what Katy needs to hear than because I mean it.
“I’m sorry to break up the reunion, but I’ve got some more surprises for Ivy,” says my dad. Maybe my less than enthusiastic lie annoyed him. “Say your goodbyes.”
“Have a wonderful birthday,” says Katy. “Let me have your address so I can send over the present I bought for you.”
My father reaches over and taps the button to end the call.
“It looks like the internet dropped out,” he shrugs. “That is very good, Ivy. I am most impressed by how you dealt with that call. Continue to behave and we can make them a regular event if you like. Would you like that?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Excellent. Now in the absence of a list of things you wanted for your birthday, I’ve decided to let you go shopping with Isabella. She assures me that teenage girls enjoy the shopping experience and since you have a ball to go to tonight, she’ll also take you for a manicure and pedicure while you’re out so you look your very best. Choose an outfit which will make the other houses sit up and take notice.”
“Yes, Dad.”
His lips tighten at my reply, but he doesn’t push on it. I will never be the obedient daughter he is looking for.
I will always be waiting for a single chance to run. This is not my home and he will never be my family.
Shopping with Isabella is more fun than I thought it would be. She knows a lot of cool shops. Although I have promised myself I wasn’t going to take anything more from my father than the bare minimum, we somehow end up going home laden down with more bags than we can carry ourselves. We constantly call the driver to come and take them back to the car so we can buy more.
And I find the perfect outfit for my masked ball.
As I put it on, I finally find myself getting excited about my party. After everything that happened the past couple of weeks, it’s going to be good to let my hair down and just have fun. My father’s mansion has its own ballroom–of course it flipping does–and he has hired a party planner who’d spent the day decorating it in a moon and stars theme.
The theme is what inspired me to buy my dress. Isabella had taken me to a number of vintage clothing shops she knew and I found a designer dress which could have been made for me. A deep midnight blue, so dark it is almost black, the sleeveless bodice is incredibly figure hugging, pushing my breasts up to enhance my cleavage. Discrete sequins were added at carefully chosen intervals, so I sparkled when I moved. It enhanced my figure without being trashy or over the top. The skirt flared out at the waist, making me look like I had an hourglass figure, but without being stiff. I worried I wouldn’t be able to sit in the dress, but it is deceptively free flowing.
Isabella had made an appointment for me at a hairdresser’s at some point earlier in the week. Having already bought my dress, they are able to match the colour with streaks in my hair, which creates a subtle effect I absolutely love. Then they pile my hair on top of my head in curls upon curls upon curls which, combined with my dress, makes me look like an aristocrat from the French revolution. I love it.
My mask is white with tall feathers on one side. When I put it on, I barely recognise myself in the mirror. Maybe this party is going to be fun after all.
A loud noise comes from downstairs. The live band my dad hired are going through a last soundcheck. They start playing a song I recognise and my stomach tighten when I realise my dad hired Lost in Oblivion, my favourite band!
I wasn’t going to forgive him for kidnapping me–ever–but this is pretty cool. I have wanted to see Lost in Oblivion play live again ever since the time I snuck out from Katy’s and pretended I was 16 so I could get into a one-off gig they were playing in town. I was grounded for a month afterwards, but it was so worth it.
There is a knock on the door and Isabella comes in a moment later.
“By the look on your face, I take it you’ve guessed another one of your dad’s surprises?” she asks with a big smile.
“Lost in Oblivion!” I practically squeal. “I can’t believe it! How on earth did he manage to book them?”
“Your father knows people.” Isabella shrugs enigmatically.
“You must have figured out by now your father believes in rewarding good behaviour,” Isabella says. “Your eighteenth birthday is a chance for him to reassert Archaic authority. If things go as planned, he’ll be more than happy to arrange for you to spend more time with the band. You’ll like them a lot–they’re good lads.”
“Seriously?” I feel like I have died and gone to Heaven. “Wait, you’ve met them?”
“Someone had to make sure they knew where to set up. Their music isn’t really to my taste, but I can see why you like them. I can definitely hear their influence in your music.”
“You’ve been listening to my music?” I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I was supposed to have privacy in my room.
“Sound carries further than you think in this place,” Isabella tells me. “My office is just down the hall, so I hear you singing sometimes. You have a lovely voice. Maybe your father can set up a session with a recording studio so you can put together a demo. I’m sure he will support your music until the time comes for you to take over the family business. You should talk to him about it.”
