Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter
Twenty-Three
“She knows who cut the rope?” Marina gasps as I relay the information a couple of minutes later. “Who was it?”
Infuriatingly, Britannia winked out like a lightbulb being switched off as soon as she made her revelation, leaving me with a headful of unanswered questions.
I drop down heavily onto the dressing table stool. “I’m not sure. She didn’t hang around long enough to tell me.”
An idea, small and stubborn, strikes me. I don’t say anything yet, because it’s an inkling, an instinct, a not quite fully formed thought. Artie, who arrived just as Britannia departed, is making furious, spidery notes in his notebook.
“So if she knows who did it, then they can’t all be trapped here by the unresolved mystery,” he says, looking up uncertainly as if he doubts himself. “Is that right?”
I mull it over. “Just because she knows, it doesn’t mean the others know she knows,” I say slowly.
“Did she really say I could wear the dress?” Marina says.
I nod. “She said to help ourselves. Let’s see if we can find Bohemia and Dino, and when we’re done, we can come back and do the whole Cinderella thing if you want.” I glance at Artie. “Don’t put that in the notes.”
“Here, kitty-kitty!”
I roll my eyes toward Marina. “What are you doing?”
“Calling the lion.”
We’re in Fletch’s bedroom, working on the assumption that if Britannia had laid claim to the Princess Suite, then it follows that the Knight Suite would most likely have been her husband’s lair.
It’s similar in size to my room, but there is an air of masculinity to the pared-back mahogany furniture and steel-blue eiderdown.
Fletch’s leather carryall adds to the look, still left abandoned on the chair.
“Why don’t you go the whole hog and fetch Goliath a saucer of milk?” I say.
“I’ll fetch it!” Artie exclaims, hopeful of yet another mission to the kitchen.
We both look at him long and hard.
“Artie,” I say. “Do you genuinely think a ghost lion will drink a saucer of milk?”
He shakes his head and studies his fingernails. “A bucket?” he says, clutching at straws.
Marina puts her hand on her hip. “Have you asked Hells Bells to go to the ball with you yet or not? Because today’s Thursday and the ball’s in two days. If you don’t do it soon, someone else might beat you to it.”
Artie is wide-eyed and slack-mouthed, a combination of horror that Marina has even brought the subject up along with fear that someone else might steal his girl from under his nose.
“She wouldn’t do that,” he says. “Would she?”
Marina shrugs. “I hear that Lady Lolo has hired a hot guy to be on gong duty on Saturday. He’s going to have a lot of spare time between bonging the gong and he’s going to need a foxy date.”
Artie looks wretched.
“Go and fetch the lion a saucer of milk, Artie,” I sigh, and he hightails it from the room so fast he almost trips over his own feet.
I narrow my eyes at Marina when we’re alone.
“What?” she says, shrugging. “You have to be cruel to be kind with some people. He’ll be thanking me on Saturday night, trust me. Tough love and all that jazz.”
I hadn’t really given any thought to taking a date to the ball. I flutter my eyelashes at her and dip my chin. “Will you come to the ball with me, please?”
“Piss off, Bittersweet. This is the first ball we’ve ever been invited to. There’s no way I’m going with you as if we’re a pair of wallflowers in Pride and Prejudice. This arm needs a proper man.”
She crooks her elbow at me to emphasize her point.
“Well, Marina,” I say.“If you don’t ask someone soon it’ll be too late.” I smile sweetly and wish Artie was there to savor the moment. “You’ll wish you’d said yes to me then, won’t you?”
“Oh, please,” she says. “I’ve already sorted my date.”
I’m taken aback. “Who?”
“Hot Gong Man.”
“Really? I thought you’d made him up to scare Artie.”
“Nope. I bumped into him a day or two ago outside on the drive. Date secured within ninety seconds. He’s fabulously handsome, I’m all-around shamazin’, job done.” She snaps her fingers. “I’m not all mouth and no trousers, you know.”
“Right.”
Balls. What am I going to do about a date?
Because I’m not doing anything that involves the word date with Fletcher Gunn.
I wouldn’t ask him, and it’ll snow in hell before he asks me.
It’s just not who we are or what we do. I mean, he can ask me to shag like wild boars and that’s okay; it’s offensive and brash and I can mock him and refuse.
But something as downright civilized as asking me to accompany him to a ball…
no. Just, no. I’m already worried about what I’m going to wear for the date I don’t yet have, because everything in Britannia’s wardrobe is überglam and beautiful.
Can you wear Converse with a ball gown? I reckon I could pull it off.
Something growls behind me and pure fear ices my spine.
“Goliath,” I murmur.
“Shit,” Marina mouths, stepping closer to me as if she’s going to fend him off. “Here, now?”
I turn slowly and there he is by the window with his owner alongside him.
“Bohemia,” I say resolutely, not looking at the hulking great lion.
“I presume you’re looking for me,” he says. “Unless of course you have an ulterior motive for being in a gentleman’s bedroom?”
Is even he having a flippin’ pop at me about Fletch? I can’t decide.
“I need to talk to you if you have five minutes.”
Something close to a sneer curls his lip. “I’m not sure I can fit you in. The life of a retired ringmaster with no big top or performers is nonstop.”
Oh he’s droll. He’s terribly English, his upper lip is so stiff it looks like he’s had Botox.
He’s not unattractive, but he is rather bland, if that makes sense?
His slicked-back hair is a nondescript color, and his always cold eyes are an indistinct blue-gray.
Right now he’s looking down his long nose at me as if I’m inferior because I’m not some bendy acrobat type or fire-eating bearded lady.
I rack my brains for something I could tell him that might make me seem more on his level, more likely to open up to me.
“I could put my foot behind my head when I was five,” I say. “And I learned how to make my thumb disappear for the school talent show when I was ten.”
He’s staring at me as if he’s trying to decide whether to set his lion on me, but I press on regardless and demonstrate the truly terrible magic trick my gran taught me in an attempt to make me look normal, because telling the talent contest judge his dead mother didn’t approve of his penchant for women’s wigs wouldn’t have gone down very well.
“Too random,” Marina says.
“Just warming him up,” I say out of the side of my mouth.
“Is it working?” she asks.
“Nope. In fact, I think I’ve made him angrier.”
“What exactly do you want of me?” he growls, and then he cracks his whip hard against the floor and makes me jump.
“Well,” I say, dry-mouthed because Goliath has just started to pace.
I think the whip is a signal for him to do something.
Rip one of my limbs off, probably. “Forgive the intrusion, because I know this is a bit of a personal question, but did you by any chance cut the ropes on the trapeze in order to try to kill your wife? Or to kill Dino, maybe?”
I know. I know. Way too direct. If I had more time or more tact, I’d probably have thrown in a few more social niceties before going for the jugular, but the damn lion is making me nervous and I’m keen to get this conversation over with as soon as humanly possible.
Bohemia stares at me and then he takes a slow step closer. I take one back, and sure enough, he draws closer again. It’s like a very slow, very menacing dance.
“You’re going to end up in the wardrobe at this rate,” Marina murmurs, quiet and urgent.
“Check behind the coats and see if you can find Narnia,” I whisper. “Because this lion is no storybook hero.”
And then Bohemia does something unexpected. His shoulders slump and he drops his whip to the floor. Instantly, Goliath lies down and I breathe a little easier.
“Have you ever truly loved anyone?” he asks, world-weary as he looks over at me.
My every instinct is telling me this conversation is important, so I answer him as honestly as I can.
“I thought I did. But we’re not together anymore, and now I’m not sure I ever loved him as much as I thought I did.
He’s a bit of an ass, you see, and he broke my heart, but now it’s mostly better again and I’m not sure you can feel that way if you truly loved someone.
I imagine you’d always feel a little bit heart-bruised. ”
Bohemia’s brow is deeply furrowed, as if he’s perplexed by my answer. I’m not surprised. I’m quite perplexed by it myself, to be honest.
“I loved her too much. I told myself I loved her enough for both of us, and that in time, as she grew older and less ravishing, she’d realize she loved me too.” He has the bleak gaze of a man who knew he’d never be enough. “I offered her a good life.”
I listen and try to decipher what he’s saying. There’s quite an obvious age gap between him and Britannia; he probably had one hell of a game keeping track of her.
“She must have loved you too. She married you, after all,” I say, trying to help.
He huffs. “Britannia was barely eighteen when she agreed to marry me. Or when she was promised to me, if I’m to be completely accurate.”
I go very still. “Promised to you by who?”
He looks away from me, out of the window at the busy scenes going on outside.
“They were different times, back then. Simpler, in many ways. Britannia’s father was my most brilliant trapeze artist, and in exchange for his livelihood and top billing, he encouraged his daughter to look favorably upon me when the time came. ”
“Do you mean she had no choice but to marry you?”
He sighs. “She wasn’t forced at gunpoint or anything so dramatic; I’m not an unreasonable man. It was just an agreeable outcome for everyone concerned.”