Thoroughly Whipped

by Cole, Tillie

  “Okay,” I said, “this room was just to prepare pastry?”

  “Yes.”

  “This entire room?”

  Harry rolled his eyes, took me by my elbow and led me from that room and into one with bells. A bell for each room, where the duke or duchess (and anyone else staying there) could ring a bell and a servant would come running.

  Harry quickly took me out of the servants’ quarters too when I began lecturing him on the issue I had with civility.

  “It’s all so surreal,” I said as we walked down a hidden path to the lake. In the distance I saw the rest of the guests engaged in archery. From where we were, I could see someone who looked like Sally completely ignoring the target, instead taking aim at passing birds.

  “I wanted you to see.” He led me to a wooden bridge on a private part of the lake. We sat down on the embankment. The sun was shining and warming my face. Harry took off his cardigan and rolled up his sleeves.

  “In New York…” He ran his hand down his face. “I appear a businessman, which of course I am.” He gestured to the fields of trees around us. “But I am also more.” He bowed his head, hiding his face from me. “I suppose I run from this sometimes. Hide who I am so people don’t think something of me that I’m not.” He looked up at me. I saw a plea for understanding in his expression. “But this will all be mine one day. God…” He took a deep breath. “It was not too long ago…” He was referring to his father’s heart attack. I reached for his hand. “After our argument, and then my father’s heart attack, it has put things into perspective for me.”

  “It has?”

  Harry nodded and stared down at our clasped hands. “I cannot deny who I am. And more than that, I think, when all the layers are stripped away, I actually like who I am.”

  “Then that makes two of us.”

  Harry kissed my hand and lowered it to his leg. “I am proud I’m going to be a duke one day, Faith. I am proud to be of this Sinclair line. But I told my father there had to be changes.” His voice switched from soft to stern. “After us…after everything…I knew things had to be different. And I had to be the one to make it happen.”

  “You did?” I was too afraid to ask what those changes were.

  “Come,” Harry said, getting to his feet. “I have more to show you. Then we’ll have lunch in the gazebo.”

  “Who are you?” I laughed, feeing like I was in a dream.

  He pulled me closer and cupped my cheeks just like I loved. “Harry. Just Harry.” I waited for a kiss, but it didn’t come.

  Harry held my hand and led me to the stables. By the time evening rolled around, I had seen all of Harry’s favorite rooms and sights on his land. He left me at my room with a promise to see me at dinner.

  I wore a long red dress and heels. And I kept my hair down, just how he liked it. I wore my favorite red lipstick and walked to the great dining hall. I had caught a quick glimpse earlier in the day, but as the doors opened, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was adorned with paintings, tapestries, and sculptures, and in the center of the room there was a table so big it looked like it could have held a banquet for a hundred people. It almost blocked my view of Harry, at the fireplace, turned away from me with his hands behind his back. He faced me, his lips parting, when he saw me in my dress.

  I held out my arms. “You like?”

  “Very much,” he said with a tight throat. He kissed my cheek, and I admired him too.

  “Very handsome,” I said and took a drink he had waiting for me. “Wine,” I said with relief. “As much as I love champagne, I couldn’t take another drop. I’m a wine cooler and beer kind of girl, you know?”

  “Shall we?” Harry held out his hand and led me toward the table. On the way, I went over on my heel, the wine spilling on the carpet.

  “Shit!” I turned to Harry. “Please tell me that wasn’t some priceless antique.”

  Harry shrugged. “Just a few centuries old, that’s all.” He leaned in closer, and I almost fucking whimpered at his addictive scent and how it made my thighs clench. “It has survived two world wars and the house fire of 1819, but I’m afraid it has succumbed to the klutziness of one Faith Maria Parisi.”

  “Harry!” I said, distressed, my hands on my head. “Is it really that old?”

  “No. Just over one hundred. But honestly, in this place, that’s practically brand new.” We approached the table. Harry pointed to the other end. “You are seated down there, and me up here.” He pointed to another seat. I counted the chairs in between. There were thirty.

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “No,” Harry said with a completely straight face.

  When his lips hooked up into a small smile, I shook my head. “Oh, you’re full of the jokes tonight.”

  “For now.” He led me to the place he had declared was his and pulled out the chair beside him for me. “Let’s eat, and then we can talk.”

  A cave burrowed in my gut. Since I had arrived here yesterday, everything between us had been perfect. But no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get rid of the elephant in the room. I needed him to explain about Maître and NOX and everything in between, and I needed to apologize for my part too.

  “So, what are we having?” I asked, trying to push the heavy stuff aside until after dinner.

  “Roasted quail with cabbage.”

  “Lovely!” I said, immediately dying inside. I was famished and needed real friggin’ food. But when the dishes came, and the dome was lifted —“Tortelli de Zucca,” I said, seeing my favorite dish on my plate.

  “I thought we’d leave the quail for another night.”

  I covered Harry’s hand with my own and squeezed. “I knew you were a good man underneath.”

  We ate and made small talk. When the coffee had been drunk and the dishes cleared away, Harry led me to the now-lit fire and poured me a glass of whiskey. I sat beside him on the couch.

  Silence stretched between us until Harry said, “Faith. Please allow me to explain. Explain everything.”

  “Okay,” I said, the warm glow from the fire not staving off the chill in my bones.

  Harry leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his whiskey dangling from his hand. “You must understand that the way I was—arrogant, rude, and cold—came after I lost my mother. I’m not saying this to ignite sympathy. I am saying it because it’s true.” He took a small sip of his whiskey. “My father and I, over the past week, since his heart attack, have had many discussions.”

  “You have?”

  He nodded. “We had a lot of things that needed to be said. I had a lot of things that needed to be said. He needed to know what he had done to me that changed me. That had made me…act out after Mum died.” I took a sip of my whiskey too, letting the warmth slide down my throat.

  “When I was at university, I was a little wild,” he confessed. “Spent much of my time drunk and sleeping around. I was Hyde, studious by day and a total bloody mess at night. And that’s what I became used to being.”

  I couldn’t imagine Harry this way. But then I’d never lost a parent, so I couldn’t imagine how that would have affected me. “I was in New York one summer with my father.” He smiled, but it was wan. “A friend of mine invited me to the Hamptons. I went, of course. When we were there, he told me of a party that was happening that night. A sex party, only everyone wore masks. It was completely anonymous. People in the Hamptons needed it to be anonymous. They had reputations to uphold, positions of power to protect.”

  Harry gazed into the fire, going back to that time. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said. “It was freedom. Being in that mask felt…” He frowned. “I’d spent my entire life under a microscope. People watching my every move. Don’t do this, Harry. That will harm our business, Harry. That isn’t how a viscount behaves, Harry. I was sick of it. Sick of living with a ghost of a father, sick of living without my mother. Sick of living for others and not myself.”

  “Harry…” I whispered, feeling weight pressing on my
chest at the sadness in his voice.

  “I had told a friend about the party. He lived in Manhattan.” Harry swilled the ice around in his whiskey. “He told me I should organize something similar on the Upper East Side. Charge people to attend, get them to sign NDAs, and insist on everyone wearing masks and cloaks to protect themselves.” Harry shrugged. “So I did. And not only was it popular, it was a roaring success. And I’d done it without any input from my father.” As crazy as it sounded, I felt a flash of pride for Harry at that.

  “At first, I rented houses, moved the club to a new location each week. By then I’d named it NOX. Eventually we made enough for me to invest in a permanent place.”

  “The townhouse in Manhattan?”

  Harry nodded. “Yes.” He laughed. “I had a waiting list as long as the Brooklyn Bridge. But by then, my wild times had come to an end, and I saw NOX as a real, viable business. But also as a way out for people like me. People who felt like they were in a prison of sorts in their everyday lives.” Harry downed his whiskey then poured another, topping up mine too.

  “Thank you.”

  Harry sat back on the couch. “By the time we were established, although my wild streak had long since died, I had gained a reputation.”

  “Maître,” I said.

  “Maître.” Harry shook his head. “From that first night in the Hamptons, I had used that fucking French accent. I could, can, speak French fluently, of course. It was all I ever spoke to my mum. And I don’t know…” He trailed off, at a loss for words.

  “It offered you more protection.”

  Harry met my eyes. “Exactly,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. “It was stupid really, but donning that mask and cloak and that damn accent made me someone else. For a little while, I wasn’t Henry Sinclair III, heir to a dukedom. I was Maître Auguste, and being him felt really bloody good. I kept to myself. No one knew me and my business thrived.”

  Harry took my hand, like he needed the strength, needed my support. “I was no longer indulging in my former wild ways, Faith. But—and it could be argued this was worse—I had become a hard and cold man instead. You were right when you claimed I was pompous and arrogant. I was. And I was fine being that way. In my social circles it was common, and even revered.” He held my hand more tightly. “And then I met you.” His lip curled fondly. “And you crashed into me like a wrecking ball.” Harry kissed my hand, my fingers. “I had never, in all my life, met anyone like you.”

  “Same here,” I said, feeling like I had a balloon attached to each of my shoulders, lifting me high off the ground.

  “That first day, in the meeting room for the interns…” I winced, remembering that day all too well. Harry sighed. “I had just begun getting some help.”

  “Help?”

  Harry rubbed his fingers over his heart. “After all the drinking and shagging around stopped.” He stared at the flames in the fire, lost in the past. “After I calmed down and tried to focus on my life, my future, most of the time I felt numb. When I wasn’t numb, I was angry or sad.”

  “Why?”

  “Mum,” he said, the single word filled with so much love it made my heart clench. “I hadn’t realized it, but I was still in shock. Even as a man approaching his mid-twenties, the shock, the trauma from losing my mum so young, festered within me like a mortal wound that would not heal.” He paused and gathered his composure. “Her death…our not saying goodbye…had broken a part of me, taken away a piece of my heart that, honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever get back.”

  “Harry,” I said, my voice catching with sadness.

  “I have always been introverted. I would look at people like you, full of life and joy, talking freely with others, and wonder how it came so easy. How you could brighten up the room by your mere presence.”

  “You think that of me?”

  Harry met my eyes. “Yes.”

  “The day before we first met, I’d had a rather intense session with my therapist.” Harry sighed. “It had affected me greatly, talking of my mum and dad and those years after her death. I had a headache and felt so bloody angry at the world. Angry that I wasn’t sure who I was as a man, as a person, and sad that I had wasted so many years filling the absence in my heart with mindless and superficial relationships.”

  Harry’s lips lifted in a smirk. “Then I met you, so full of life and exuding happiness. The other interns moved to you like you were a magnet and they couldn’t resist your pull.” He frowned. “I had never seen anyone so…so…alive as you were. Alive, and…beautiful. So exceptionally beautiful.”

  Exceptionally.

  “Harry—”

  “I liked you. Despite myself, and how wrong for a man of my station my peers and father would say you were, I liked you. And that tormented me more than anything. I would see you in the office, all vibrant and confident, men and women falling at your feet…I didn’t know what to do with you. With how I felt about you. I refused to believe it was attraction and convinced myself it was distain.” He laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile too. “Then you said ‘yes, sir.’ No matter what I said to you, you would always smile and answer with ‘yes, sir’ and it broke me.”

  “I knew it got under your skin,” I confessed.

  “That it did,” Harry said. “In fact, it almost drove me insane.” He raked his hand through his dark waves. “Even when I returned to England over the summer, then began working in publishing in Manhattan part time, I would often think of you. The woman who had gotten to me like no other.” He huffed a laugh. “Henry Sinclair the Third is nothing but an overprivileged cockface. An overprivileged cockface who needs nothing but a good spanking and a thorough fucking.”

  Harry laughed loudly, and I melted at the happy sound. “Those words tortured me, Faith. Circled my mind for years.” He quickly sobered. “I tried to tell myself I didn’t care that you disliked me, that you were nothing to me, didn’t even know me. But even if I convinced my mind that it was true, the dull ache in my heart exposed me for the liar I was.

  “When my father told me he wanted me to take over his New York office a few years later, I immediately said yes.”

  “To get away from the pressures of being here?”

  Harry held my eyes with his own. “That. I had NOX there, which I could be closer to, I could escape the stifling society scene here in England for a bit…and, I now realize, because I knew you’d be there too.”

  I reared back in shock. “What?”

  “Call it masochism, call it self-punishment, but I wanted to take over the New York office, and despite how much I fought it, I wanted to see you again.”

  “You hated me,” I whispered.

  “I tried to convince myself I did.” He shrugged. “Turns out it was something else entirely.” I didn’t have any words. “But I was intent on keeping you at arms length. I knew you thought me cold and arrogant, were repelled by my unpleasant character. So I played the part. If you hated me, I could never let myself believe there could be anything more between us. It was my only line of defense.”

  “You did a stellar job,” I joked. Harry chuckled. “I would never have guessed this man lived underneath the façade.” Harry nodded.

  After a deep breath, he said, “That night, at the nightclub, when we bumped into each other.”

  “The night I got invited to NOX?”

  “That wasn’t me,” he said. “As much as you were under my skin, I would never have tempted myself that way. By having you in my club.”

  “Then who—”

  “Christoph. He’s a scout for NOX, for the sirens.” Harry held up his hands. “I was there with Nicholas. He had flown in for a visit, and we were meeting some of his friends. I had no idea Christoph had scouted you, I swear. It wasn’t until I was in my office on the top floor that first night that I knew.”

  “How?”

  “I saw you on the camera coming in through the main entrance.” Harry coughed. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. The woman who got to me like no
other was entering my club. Coming to be a siren.” Harry blushed, and his eyes filled with apology. “I couldn’t do it, Faith. I couldn’t see you with other men.” I felt out of breath at his confession. “I sat at my desk trying to think of ways to get you evicted. But then I watched you navigate your way through the main room. I saw that you were nervous. The loud and vibrant Faith I knew was intimated and, I thought, a little scared.” He shook his head. “It killed me to see you that way.”

  “I was overwhelmed,” I whispered. “I thought I could do it, then saw everyone and froze.”

  He smiled and laughed. “Then, in typical Faith fashion, you took out the sex swing room in one fell swoop.” I laughed too, just remembering that calamity. “I saw Gavin bring you to the back room, and saw your defeated posture.” His shoulders sagged. “I wanted to comfort you. I wanted to tell you that you needn’t be embarrassed. I needed to know you were okay.”

  “That’s why you called me up to your room?” Familiar butterflies were back in my stomach.

  Harry nodded. “I warred with myself over what I wanted to do, what I ultimately did do. I wanted to assure you that you didn’t need to embarrassed, and I planned to send you on your way. But when you saw me, that nervousness you’d displayed downstairs faded away. You seemed interested in me, relaxed in my presence…and curious.” Harry ran his hand down his face. “Curious about me and what I could do. All rational thought left my head after that. I convinced myself that, as Maître, I could get you out of my system then get on with my life. But it only made me like you more.” The last sentence was said so softly it made my eyes glisten.

  “Then the unbelievable happened. I talked to you. Me. As Harry. In the elevator. And it wasn’t completely strained. You didn’t seem filled with hate toward me.” Harry took a long swallow of his whiskey, like he was working up to something. “But more than that, I liked the person I became around you. You tunneled through the protective shield of arrogance and rudeness I’d adopted around you. And as we continued to be thrown together, I started to remember. I started to remember the Harry I had been before my mother died and my father stopped caring about life. I remembered that I could laugh and crack jokes and not be dour and miserable, just existing, each day like the next.”