by Sara Forbes
Everyone's there when we enter—Mother, Letty, and Ken. They're sitting primly at the dining table, waiting for the three empty spaces to be filled. Under Mother's instruction, Hayley takes the place on Ken's side, Lawson on Letty's, and I take the head of the table, opposite Mother. Father's old position is usually occupied by Seb and I still don't feel comfortable in it, but Mother insists I sit there to “balance out the table.”
Mother straightens her spine and graces Hayley and Lawson with a faint smile. “I'm glad Mrs. B had the presence of mind to tell cook in time that we had guests.”
Mrs. B slides me a look that says you're on your own and hurries out of the room with a tray of dishes.
The whole table awaits my official explanation of our guests' presences and my absence from work this afternoon, even though it's clear they've all formed their own opinions. There still needs to be an official explanation, because that's how things are done in my family.
I clear my throat. “Well, I met Hayley in London and we decided to spend some time together for a few days before she flies back to Oregon. After our incident in Jayvee's, which I'm sure you're aware of, I decided it's best she wait it out here until the media circus dies down. Her uncle—Stig, here—just happened to have some time off too, and he's offering his assistance on the Saudi wedding deal. He has great experience with public tenders, which can only help our application.”
I take stock of their reactions, daring anyone to question as much as a syllable of it. They don't believe a word I'm saying, but that isn't the point. “Please make them both welcome in our home.”
Mother gives a tiny nod. “Surprise guests are always a pleasure.” What she means is the total opposite, but it's better than nothing. Besides, she of all people could do with a little distraction. “Welcome to our home, Ambassador Lawson, Hayley.”
“It's Stig, please,” Lawson clarifies.
Hayley says a quiet, “Thank you.” Her stiff posture conveys all the discomfiture I'd expect her to feel in her position. I can't make this any easier for her.
Mother tugs her linen napkin from its ivory ring. It signals that we can all eat now. Nobody says grace anymore. That was Father's thing. Mother seems to believe we've been forsaken and there is nothing to be particularly grateful to any deity for. Me, I'm just praying this meal can finish without some kind of disaster.
Ken shakes his head in silence and starts spooning asparagus soup into his mouth.
Letty beams at our two guests and pours Chardonnay into everyone's crystal goblets. It's a decent vintage. We get it from a small vineyard outside Beaune that we usually pick up on the drive back from our villa. Then she breaks the silence in her loud, plummy voice. “Well, I think it's too thrilling to have some visitors again.” With a flick of her hair, she laughs her big laugh. Letty takes life on its own terms and finds it amusing for reasons no one else can quite fathom. It can be irritating at times but right now her laughter is a welcome sound.
Hayley smiles at her.
I give my sister the evil eye so she won't get it into her head to start an interrogation. “How's the Saudi wedding going?” I ask.
“Fine, no thanks to you.” Ken points at me with his spoon. “No disrespect to your guests, but if you'd other plans for this afternoon, all you had to do let us know.”
“You seem to have handled it just fine.”
“We talked to the head of their wedding council, a man of some importance. They expected the heir to be present. It's an insult otherwise. I told him you'd call him this evening.” Ken's eyes glitter with schadenfreude because he knows I had other plans, specifically with the guest sitting to his left.
“Fine,” I snap.
Ken slurps his soup with relish. “This wouldn't have happened if you'd just shown up when you were supposed to.”
“Alex must've got all tied up,” Letty says with a wicked smile.
I know what my sister's thinking. She's seen me in compromising positions—women running out of my bedroom missing garments or fully naked. She's seen a woman bound to the posts of my bed with four Hermes silk scarves. I'm not proud of that moment, but I was only twenty–two and Patty Whatshername did insist on it and even provided the scarves. I'm much better at locking my bedroom door these days.
“Letty, just shut up.” I throw a look at Hayley. Her eyes are huge pools of darkness, burning out from the cheeks that are flushed pink. Her lips are slightly parted in shock. The tiny diamond–shaped hole of her mouth draws my attention. I want to fill that delicate parting, ease it wider and wider with my lips, then my tongue.
She's driving me mad with her porcelain, virginal act. Where was all that primness when she leapt over that bar in Jayvee's? When she poured a drink very precisely over my cock? I'm starting to feel cheated.
“Alex?” Letty's pouring water out of a jug.
“Mind you don't spill it on him,” Ken says to her.
“Ah, it's only water, not a Cosmopolitan,” Letty shoots back and they both burst into laughter.
I glance at Hayley, trying to signal that she should just ignore all this. To my relief, she's got a half smile on her face.
“Do you ride?” Letty asks Hayley.
Hayley's face lights up. “Yes.”
Yeah. Just not me.
“Great! Why don't I saddle up Gandalf and Frodo tomorrow afternoon and we'll take a canter over the estate?”
“I'd love that!”
Hayley's reply sounds genuine. Like most people, she's taken immediately to Letty. I'm kind of jealous of the two of them riding off all afternoon.
One look at Hayley's exhausted face and it's clear she's ready to crash. My gaze moves over to Mother, whose poker face is in danger of cracking under the strain. I'm going to need to sweet talk the whole idea of having these guests under our roof if her frosty attitude has any hope of thawing.
After dinner, Letty accompanies Hayley to the living room to show her the new piano, so I decide to check up on the office work I missed. When I reach the stairwell, Ken is coming down. He blocks my path with an outstretched foot against the bannister.
“Alex, what are they really doing here? What's going on?”
“Lawson needs protection,” I say in a low voice. “She's part of the package. Don't worry about it.”
He nods. “Mother's not happy.”
“Yeah, what's new?”
“I suppose it's your dick doing all the thinking as usual?”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Here's what it means.” Ken comes closer so I can count all the worry lines that really shouldn't be on a twenty–three–year–old's forehead. “When it's clear Seb's not coming back and your job here is actually permanent, that yes, you do actually have to run the business, and you'll never see your chopper again, you're going to bolt, aren't you? I think these schemes of yours—the stupid Saudi wedding and now this—are your over–the–top way of saying ‘don't expect too much from me.'”
“I'm glad you have it all figured out,” I say.
“You'll run. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day. And then who'll it be? Me? Letty?” He laughs. “I don't think so.”
“Seb will come back.”
“Alexander?” Mother calls from the drawing room before I head upstairs.
Crap.
Ken flashes me a smug look and saunters off.
“Mother.” I loiter in her doorway, tapping my hand against the doorframe. “You look wonderful.”
“Sit down here and stop pandering.”
I sigh. Entering the warm room, I take a place on her sofa and pretend not to see the tablet where she's been playing online poker again.
“These people.” She gives a practiced shudder and pulls out her knitting needles from a basket by her side. She's knitting this hideous, gray scarf that each of us is dreading is for us. “How long are we to be graced by their presence?”
“Not long. Just until Friday. Why?”
“I'm looking forward to having t
he place to ourselves, that's all. It's bad enough Ken wanting to open up for more public days without inviting people into our private sphere as well.”
“I never agreed to more public days. Ken answers to me, Mother.”
“Nobody doubts that, darling.” She reaches for her ball of wool and starts winding up a loose end, never taking her eyes off me. “Now. Is it true you're not piloting anymore?”
“No, I'm taking a break.”
Her look is appraising. “I know this has all been very sudden for you. Your plans have been rudely interrupted, as have everyone's. I know you miss Sebastian terribly. Don't we all?” She sighs heavily. “But shacking up with the latest actress from America is hardly the cure to your troubles.”
“Artist, Mother, not actress.”
Her eyelids droop like there's no distinction there she can be bothered figuring out. Her knitting resumes at double pace. “Alexander, you're the duke now, whether you like it or not. The world is watching you. As a dowager duchess I'm telling you that you simply can't afford to take the same liberties as you've been doing up to now.”
When I don't answer, she says in a feeble tone, “It feels so chaotic here without Sebastian.”
She's obviously overheard my argument with Ken on the stairs. I pat her hand. “Yeah. I know.” She's not a touchy–feely mother so I let her hand go. I'd be lying if her assessment of “chaotic” didn't sting, even if it's kind of true.
Despite Seb not being her biological son, he's her clear favorite, and he's ironically the one most like her—determined, calculating, melancholic. She could have rejected him when, as a newlywed, a strange baby was unceremoniously dumped on Father, but I'd say abandoning that baby never even occurred to her. I was told by Mrs. B that they had some weird bond from the beginning.
Mother took Seb in as one of her own even though he was conceived around the same time as she'd started dating Father “exclusively.” Maybe that term was used more flexibly in the nineties. She always stuck up for him as he grew up—we were never allowed tease him—and she protected his identity fiercely even when the press hounded them for photos of the heir. But when they somehow uncovered the truth ten years ago, Father was forced to change his mind about succession. That was when my face started appearing on websites and newspaper articles all over the place. Nobody seemed to mind that, least of all me. I was a sixteen–year–old getting a lot of female attention.
Mother straightens her back and attacks a new line of stitches with determined speed. “Where were you going anyway? Don't let me stop you.”
11
HAYLEY
I LEARNED TO RIDE when I was seven, tagging along behind a horse–obsessed cousin. I kept it up regularly until I was twelve. That training served me well today. Riding with Letty was wonderful. We took off, her on Gandalf—a large, four–year–old gray stallion and me on Frodo, a slightly smaller brown two–year–old. We galloped across acres of rolling, grassy countryside, which Letty informed me is all part of the Belgrave estate. I can't pretend I'm not impressed.
I haven't seen Alex or Uncle Stig all day and it's helped swing my mood back to a tentative normality. It's therapeutic, being here with Letty in the stables, unbridling, getting the horses ready for the night after our ride. The pungent stench of old manure and the rituals of brushing and sweeping help to calm my nerves. Low sunlight streams in through the leafy trees, bathing everything in dappled light—golds, bronzes, and dusty pinks. No wonder the impressionist school of painting started in Europe. My uncle was right on one point. It's not good for an artist to stay in one place, under the same sky, all the time.
Letty pauses in brushing down Gandalf's mane. “Mother wants me to marry Peter Maxwell, you know.” She throws back her head, laughs showing all her perfect teeth.
“Who's he?”
“An Earl from Gloucester with a big trust fund. Frightfully clever chap.”
“Well, that's good?”
“He's about as exciting as that bale of straw you're sitting on.”
“Oh.” I'm wrapping a blade of straw around my ring finger, pretending it's gold, trying to tuck in the end so it looks neat. “Do you want to marry him?”
“Not particularly.”
My head darts up. “Well, why does your mother want you to?”
“Oh, he's rich. I may even do it, you know.” She hums an aimless tune.
She reaches down and pats my arm. “Don't look so shocked, Hayley. The aristocratic way is to marry for money and take a lover for love. My parents just got lucky that there was actually some affection there too.” She laughs. “Purely accidental.”
“But surely nobody needs to marry for money nowadays?”
“I like this lifestyle.” She waves around at the stables, the sheds, and the fields and sighs. “I'll never make money from my piano. And I don't want to help my brothers with the tedious eco–farming accounts all my life. Alex says I shouldn't forget that.”
“Really?”
“Yes, he says I'm the most likely to marry into money and that I shouldn't waste any opportunities, as no man will ever be good enough for me anyway. You may see us as rich, Hayley, but we have cashflow problems like anyone else. Actually, ours are much bigger. The taxes alone are insane. I try not to think about it too much.” She returns to brushing Gandalf's mane with extra vigor.
My mind jumps to the paintings in the living room, the Louis XIV table, the elaborate candelabras on the dining room table, the countless gold furnishings, are they too attached to them to sell? Although that would only be a short–term solution, of course.
I'm staring into the distance through the window when I see someone coming toward us—a man strolling up the path from the house. Even from here I recognize Alex's gait. His jacket is tossed over one shoulder and his sleeves are rolled up to the elbows. Designer sunglasses round off the model photoshoot look. He looks like he means business. My breath catches. I rise from my bale, hastily rip the childish straw ring off my finger and crush it under my boot.
“Enjoy your ride, ladies?” he asks, peeking in the stable door. He drapes his blazer over the fence outside and stares out into the same scene I've been admiring all afternoon.
“Why don't you join us next time?” Letty sings out.
“I'll think about it. Anyway, Letty, your rehearsal.” Alex nods back to the castle. “Your tutor's sitting in the hall, twiddling his thumbs.”
“Crikey.” Letty glances at her watch, drops the brush into a bucket and swipes straw from her riding jacket.
“The poor boy. I must leave you.” She glances between us both, with a knowing smile. “Try to behave yourselves while I'm gone.”
“You just focus on not murdering the Polonaise,” Alex says.
“Oh, like you'd be able to tell?” She slaps her brother on the shoulder, throws me a wink as she dashes down the path to the castle.
I'm sorry to see her go. But it's exciting to be left alone again with her brother. This time, I can think straight. I've met all his family and they're good people. Well, as far as I can tell, even if some of them are less than welcoming.
“I'm sure she plays the Polonaise well,” I say, just to say something as I join him standing by the fence.
He turns and smirks. I'm mere inches apart from this hunk who's taller, stronger, more beautiful than anyone I've ever been with. My reflection wavers in his sunglasses, with my fly–about hair burnished red in the sunlight. I lower my gaze to the tendons in his thick neck, the angle of his jaw. Just being near him sets my skin prickling, hot and cold flushing through my body as I remember his touches on the stairs. “Look, I wanted to say … I wanted to say thank you.”
He inches his fingers along the fence until it makes contact with my little finger. I flinch away and swallow nervously. Then, I slowly move my hand back into position, making contact with him again to show him I'm not intimidated.
“Thank you for …?” he murmurs.
I meet his eyes. “Thank you for getting Uncle Stig and m
e out of danger. For taking us on and making it okay with your family. I'm glad you did … although I'm not sure what your mother and Ken make of us.” I round up my breathy speech with a nervous laugh.
His whole hand now cups over mine, big, strong, and warm. “You're welcome. Now, tell me what you want.”
“What I want?” I blink in confusion.
“Yes. What do you want?”
It's not what I'm expecting. I take a step back, out of his grasp, glancing at the castle. Maybe it's time I got back inside.
He steps forward, clasps my upper arms and maneuvers me up close so that my nipples graze his hard torso. My body tightens. I'm overpowered. I breathe in his scent, intoxicating. I can't think. Do I want this? I let my eyes close and tilt my head up. Then I open them again because I want to see this. With his whole body leaning in to me, his head angled so the sunset cuts triangles of orange into his cheeks, his gaze so intent on me as if I'm the only creature in the world, he's hard to resist. My mouth slackens.
“You want me to kiss you?” His voice rasps in my ear, his breath cool on my burning cheeks. He steps back, letting go. He doesn't want it?
Angry tears spring up in the backs of my eyes. I'm burning with indignation. I've read this one wrong, so horribly wrong. How could I be so dumb?
He's turned his back to me to lean over the fence, gazing out at the fields. After a minute that feels like an hour, he speaks again. “The vibe I'm getting from you is that you'll let me do things to you, not that you want me to do them. Don't get me wrong, I'd do those things to you and much more.” His voice is rougher, raspier. He swings around to face me again.
I'm glad he can't he hear my heart.
“But I have to be sure. I find it very difficult to read you.”
His vivid, blue eyes glint in the low sunlight. As his gaze roams over my hardened breasts, I feel as exposed as if he'd just ripped off my clothes. Down below, I'm wet. But he doesn't—or shouldn't—know that. I'm hot. I'm confused. I wish I knew how to play this game.
