CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
(Charlotte)
Matt took me to a room he called the “silver salon,” where Alan had told us his Mrs. Ashe would meet us. The room smelled faintly of cigarette smoke under the overwhelming scent of the white and black roses arranged in vases on nearly every surface.
I sneezed and looked apologetically to Matt. “Allergies. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. And bless you. We’ll get you some antihistamines.”
At least the roses would cover the weed smell. And the allergies would explain away my red eyes.
The room clearly got its pretentious name from the color scheme; everything from the walls to the furniture to the massive area rug beneath our feet was a shade of gray. A gleaming silver chandelier and sparkling mirror over the ubiquitous fireplace completed the look. It would have been insufferably bland, if not for the varied textures of fabrics and finishes.
Once again, I was in a place where I felt extremely cautious of breaking something.
We’d only been there for about thirty seconds before Catherine came in and abruptly stopped. “Where’s Mother?”
“On her way down. She was doing some gardening,” Matt explained, dropping onto a sofa. He patted the seat beside him.
Catherine looked me up and down before I managed to sit. “What are you wearing?”
I looked to Matt in a panic. I’d thought I’d dressed nicely, in a sleeveless green dress of cotton eyelet with a tiered skirt and wide straps that tied at the shoulders. Sophie had assured me it was a day dress, and it was still day.
“Will you stop being so rude?” Matt snapped at her. “It’s like four-thirty. If you wanted to see us dressed for dinner, you should have gotten here later. Like I was hoping you were going to. You’re not exactly black tie, yourself.”
“I came directly from a meeting,” she said, taking a seat in an armchair. “I assume you weren’t able to leave until your guest’s school day was over?”
“Charlotte, this is my sister Catherine,” Matt began with facetious politeness. “Catherine, this is my girlfriend, Charlotte. Charlotte, Catherine is a massive bitch—”
Catherine glared at him, but that was her only reaction.
“—and she ‘works’ for her… What was the name of your foundation again?” he asked, dropping the hands he’d used to make air quotes around “work.”
“You know very well that I’m on the board of directors of the Warner-Dudley Preservation Society.” She seemed annoyed to have to explain to me, “We raise funds for the preservation of artifacts from the Gilded Age.”
“Ah,” I said, but what I wanted to say was, you preserve the legacy of rich assholes like yourself.
How could Matt be so warm and loving, and his sister so cold and outright hostile? Had he ruined her Barbie Dream House or something in their childhood?
“The Gilded Age was—” Catherine began.
I cut her off. “The period in American history between the end of Reconstruction and the election of President McKinley. I know.”
Matt chuckled.
“And I’m not in high school,” I added.
Catherine pursed her lips and said nothing.
The silence ticked by endlessly, until the huge pocket door slid fully open, and an older, friendlier-looking version of Catherine entered. The woman was dressed in a flowery, flowing caftan, with strings of pearls that hung nearly to her waist. Her dark hair was twisted up, revealing her long, elegant neck. She looked like royalty.
Matt got to his feet. So did Catherine. I followed suit.
“Mother,” Catherine said stiffly, leaning down to kiss the shorter woman’s cheek.
“Where are the children?” The woman asked.
“In the nursery, getting changed for dinner. They needed baths if they were going to sit at the table with us.” Catherine sounded horrified by the very notion of dinner with her own kids. I couldn’t imagine, looking at her, that any of her offspring would be allowed to get dirty in the first place.
“Mom,” Matt said, stepping forward.
With a motherly “tch,” she waved for him to stop. “I’ll come to you, dearest. Still using the cane?”
“That’s what it’s here for,” he said, his mouth a tight line as he went in for a hug. Stepping back, he extended an arm to motion me forward. “This is Charlotte.”
“Charlotte,” she said, her eyes narrowing as she visibly tried to recall. Then, recognition lit her face. “Scott’s sister?”
“That’s me,” I said softly. “It’s very nice to meet you, Mrs. Ashe.”
“Call me Elizabeth, please.”
To my surprise, she hugged me. She actually hugged me.
That answered my question about where Matt got his humanity from. Somehow, it had missed his sister.
Elizabeth checked the slender diamond-studded watch at her wrist. “Oh, good. We have time for a chat before we have to go get changed.”
“Mother, I’d like a chance to freshen up.” Caroline turned to us. “If you’ll excuse me, Matthew? Charlotte?”
I would love nothing more than for you to leave. Had I ever met anyone as instantly unpleasant as Matt’s sister? Maybe while working in retail. But at least then, I didn’t have to worry about seeing them again.
If things stayed good between Matt and I, I would have to interact with Catherine indefinitely.
Unless Catherine not liking you results in you and Matt not working out. I didn’t get the vibe from their interactions so far that he valued her opinions all that much. Still, family strife was a cause of breakups, wasn’t it?
“Well. This will give me a chance to get to know Charlotte better,” Elizabeth said cheerfully. We all sat down, and she lifted a slender silver bell from a side table. The bell summoned Alan almost immediately. “Coffee service, please.” Then, Elizabeth looked to me. “Would you prefer coffee or tea?”
“Coffee is fine.” My mouth was so dry, I would have preferred a full pitcher of ice water. Why did you get high before this?
“So. Charlotte.” Elizabeth folded her hands atop one knee. “I’ve met your brother on several occasions. He’s such a nice young man.”
“He’s forty,” Matt said.
“Forty is young to me.” She went on, “How did you and Matt meet? He never told me.”
I had a vivid hallucination of blurting, I met him when we fucked at my brother’s wedding. Thankfully, what I said out loud was, “We met at my brother’s wedding.”
“The wedding that didn’t happen,” Elizabeth said, clucking her tongue. “That’s such a shame. It’s unbearably rude to leave someone at the altar.”
“Why ‘unbearably,’ Mom?” Matt asked. “What a poor word choice.”
She made an impatient noise. “So, you got attacked by a bear. You survived. But your friend got his heart broken. That’s harder to heal.”
“Agree to disagree,” Matt replied.
Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed at the corners as she scrutinized me. “You’re quite a bit younger than Matt.”
“By fifteen years,” I confirmed.
“I was younger than my husband.” The way she said the word “my” implied that Matt was my husband. “By twenty-three years.”
“Pops liked ’em young,” Matt muttered.
“And Matty has always been very immature for his age,” Elizabeth said breezily, not bothering to give him any other response.
I decided right then and there that I liked her.
“What made Catherine run off so fast, I wonder?” Elizabeth asked.
“Oh, she caught me smoking pot on my balcony,” Matt shamelessly admitted.
“Matthew Leonard Elliot Ashe!”
I shot a look to Matt. “Leonard?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” he said.
“You know I don’t mind that you…indulge,” Elizabeth began. “But in broad daylight? What if the staff had seen you?”
“They probably would be able to tell me where the best dispensary is.” It seemed like Matt enjoyed teasing his mom. Not in a mean way, just to get a reaction out of her.
She didn’t fall for it, this time. Instead, she asked me, “Where did you find that dress?”
“Um, Bergdorf Goodman.” I smoothed the skirt.
“Green suits you,” Elizabeth pronounced, like her words made it so. “When we first married, Elliott and I lived in the city. I would go to Bergdorf and Saks almost every day. Elliott was so embarrassed that I bought clothes off the rack. But I enjoy shopping.”
All of my clothes were off the rack. Some of the dresses upstairs had cost thousands of dollars. And she was talking about shopping at Bergdorf Goodman like a guilty-pleasure trip to Target.
“I’m used to buying off the rack,” I said, hating how timid my voice sounded. There was nothing wrong with me for not having a bespoke wardrobe. I was a twenty-five-year-old who lived in her parents’ guesthouse, for fuck’s sake. I’d never bought anything as expensive as the underwear I was wearing at the moment, and that was okay. That was how normal people lived.
I was a normal person. Matt wasn’t. And my heart ached at the realization that Matt’s friendship with my brother, that Matt’s attraction to me, might have stemmed from the desire to not belong to this weird world.
And it would certainly explain the appeal of all the fantasy nerd stuff Matt was into. I would rather be an elf or a paladin or whatever than a rich kid growing up in a house that looked like an art museum.
“And what do you do for a living?” Elizabeth asked as Alan entered with a service cart. He parked it and turned over a short china cup. Before I could answer her first question, Elizabeth asked, “Sugar?”
“Um, sure.” I watched as Alan lifted two cubes from a crystal dish with his silver tongs. His eyes met mine expectantly. “Two is fine. No cream.”
“You were saying?” Elizabeth prompted me.
My cannabis-altered brain struggled with what we’d been talking about.
Matt came to my rescue. “Charlotte works at a dispensary back home in California.”
I would have perhaps chosen to answer with, “retail,” but the cat was out of the bag.
“Oh?” Elizabeth’s eyebrows rose in an expression so similar to one I’d seen Matt make often that it startled me. “Well, that’s lucky. New York recently legalized it, so you won’t have trouble finding a job when you move in with Matty.”
“Oh, we haven’t talked about—” I began.
“Mom, we haven’t been dating that long,” he said, taking a cup from Alan, who must have had the household coffee preferences memorized.
But we had talked about moving in together. Had something changed, now that I was in this environment, flailing?
“You brought her home,” Elizabeth argued. “It must be serious.”
“It’s serious.” Matt turned his head to give me a reassuring smile. “It’s very serious, for me. But let’s not scare her off?”
“Am I scaring you off?” Elizabeth demanded, and even Alan had his eyes on me to await the answer.
“You’re not scary, Mrs. Ashe.” I corrected myself. “Elizabeth.”
With a satisfied nod, Elizabeth took a sip from her cup. “You see? I’m not scary.”
She was scary. Just not as scary as Catherine.
“Tell me about yourself,” Elizabeth went on. “Where did you go to college?”
“I didn’t finish college,” I said, hating the way my voice sounded apologetic. The only people I needed to apologize to for my failed college attempt were my parents, who paid for it.
Elizabeth nodded sagely. “Good for you. I had to go to college to find a rich man. I hated every moment of it. Pretending I cared about political science on the off chance of becoming a senator’s wife. Bullet dodged. But you, you’re a clever girl. You found your rich man without having to go to all of that trouble.”
I had no idea how to respond to that. How would anyone respond to that? She obviously had been out on the prowl for a rich man to take care of her, which I could respect. Admire, even, for being so honest. But Matt had never been my escape plan to a better life.
Shrugging, I said, “The bear did most of the work.”
She laughed like she was genuinely charmed with my answer. But I hadn’t exactly cleared up the insinuation that I was a gold digger.
On the other hand, she didn’t seem to mind the idea of me being a gold digger. Was that something that was expected by these people? That relationships were built on money?
Alan reappeared. “Madame, you have a phone call. Mrs. Vandermere.”
“Oh, Kiki!” Elizabeth got to her feet immediately. “I hate to leave you, but this might take a while. Matty, you know how Kiki goes on.”
“I do,” he said with a nod. “Go on. We have to get ready for dinner, anyway.”
He stood like she was the queen, and bent down so she could hug him and kiss the air beside his cheek.
“Take a shower,” she said as she turned away from him. “You smell like the weed.” To me, she said, “So lovely to meet you, Charlotte.”
“Same.” I held up my hand and wiggled my fingers in an awkward wave.
Matt’s hand fell on my shoulder. “She likes you.”
I turned to look up at him. “Yeah?”
He nodded. “Definitely.”
“Because she said all that stuff about getting a rich man.” I hesitated. “You know that’s not why I hooked up with you, right?”
“Totally. You hooked up with me because I heroically saved you from an alligator, and it naturally made you horny.” He used his cane to gesture toward the door, and we started walking.
“The thing that made me horny was how hot you are,” I corrected him in a whisper.
“What a coincidence. That’s what attracted me to you.” He gave me an exaggerated sniff. “You smell like the weed too. I guess you need to join me in that shower.”
“Seriously? You want to get frisky in your mom’s house?” It seemed weird and rude, especially since I was a guest.
He checked his watch. “We have two hours. That gives us an hour to fuck and an hour to get ready.”
“I’m not hung up on the time management,” I clarified. “It seems like bad manners to show up to someone’s house and do that within hours of arriving. If at all.”
“Hey, who has more experience with the etiquette around here?” he teased, slipping an arm around my waist as we headed up the stairs.
“I have to concede that point. But I’m not convinced that this is ‘etiquette’ and not an excuse to get laid.”
At the top of the stairs, he caught me by surprise, swinging me around to pin me against the wall. I was trapped there, his knee between my legs, his body flush against mine. My heart pounded; if anyone saw us, there would be no way to pretend we were doing anything else.
Damnit. He knew how fucking hot that made me.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he whispered against my ear. “You’re thinking, ‘what if we get caught?’ We could. A staff member could walk by. Or my sister. Anyone. They could see you and know what a dirty girl my princess is.”
“This is unfair,” I whimpered.
“Is it?” His hand fell to my thigh, and he bunched my skirt in his fist. “Or is it convincing?”
He burrowed his face against my neck and left sucking kisses there until I squeaked, “No hickeys!”
“You can beg me for mercy,” he reminded me. “No questions asked, and I’ll stop. We’ll have a completely chaste weekend, if you ask for it. I’ll even have them move your bags to that guest room, if you don’t trust me.”
His hand inched higher, baring my thigh.
“Or I can take you back to my room, and we can be filthy while we’re getting clean.” He nipped at my bottom lip again. “Choice is yours.”
I could have said “mercy.” I should have said “mercy.”
But what I said was, “Shut up and take me to your room.”