Chapter Twenty-Three #2
I can’t disguise my distaste. “You make it sound so cold and clinical. More like a business deal than a marriage.”
“Isn’t that the irony?” he says, grim-eyed, as he shakes his head. “It may sound cold and businesslike to you, but for me it was anything but. Britannia was sixteen when I fell in love with her.”
I look down, because I don’t want him to see how much his words are affecting me. She was so young. My heart hurts for Britannia.
“And I waited, and I waited, and when she was of a respectable age, I made sure that she came to me. She was eighteen, I was forty. Is that so terribly wrong? To love someone, to wait for them, to make sure they know how much you’re willing to sacrifice to be with them?”
“What did you sacrifice?” I ask, not taking my eyes from his for a second.
He laughs, hollow and empty. “Besides my sanity?”
I can’t gauge if he means that literally. He looks like he might. Is he telling me that he lost his mind and cut the ropes? I don’t say a word. I just look at him steadily, hold my breath, and wait.
“I sacrificed everything for her. My reputation. My heart. My lion. And then my life.”
And then he’s gone, taking Goliath with him, leaving me staring at an empty space. I know more, but nowhere near enough, and it’s frustrating the hell out of me.
“He’s gone.”
Marina sits down on the end of the bed and taps notes into her phone as I relay the details of our conversation.
“Poor Britannia,” she says, picking at the edge of the eiderdown.
I can only nod. The more I hear about Britannia Lovell’s life, the more I understand her. And the more I like her.
“We need to try to find Dino next. I’d like to save Britannia until last,” I say. “Oh, and I need to talk to Lady Eleanor again too.”
“And Artie,” Marina says, standing up and flicking her hair over her shoulders. “He never came back with that saucer of milk.”
We pause on the kitchen steps before we round the corner into view, because we can hear Artie speaking, and they’re the kind of hurried, shaky words you definitely don’t want an audience for.
“So, I was wondering, if you might, possibly, potentially, need someone to take you to the ball on Saturday? I’m very good at holding coats and at making sure your drink is topped off and I’m not too bad at the waltz as long as it’s slow and you don’t mind me counting in your ear.
Unless, of course, you’re going with the man who’s coming to bong the gong, because that would be totally understandable too.
He can probably waltz without counting and everything.
And tango. And fox-trot. I can’t fox-trot. Or tango.”
Marina winces and clutches my upper arm hard with her face screwed up, and I feel the exact same way. It’s painful. I want to shout, “For the love of God, man, stop speaking!” so badly that I fold my lips in tightly on themselves to hold the words in.
“Yes.”
Oh my God, it’s like sweet, sweet music.
Marina’s wince turns into a grin that touches her ears, and I feel like a proud mama whose son just got four big fat yeses at the X Factor auditions.
Marina and I are his crowd and we give him a silent standing ovation before strolling in and pretending to chat about nothing in particular.
“Everything okay in here?” I look blandly at Artie. He grins at me as if he’s just won the lottery, and Lestat lifts one eyelid in greeting from his position beside the ovens.
“I was just coming up,” he says. “I’ll be there in one minute.”
It’s the closest he’s ever likely to come to asking us to leave. “We’ll be in the reception hall when you’re ready,” I say, shooting a smile at Hells Bells as I back out. Marina does the same and chucks in a cheesy double thumbs-up.
“You may as well have just told them we heard them and be done with it,” I mutter once we’re out of view.
“Sh,” she says, straining to overhear them again.
I lean my back against the hall wall, knowing that we really should give them some privacy now.
“Umm, Bells, can I just double-check something?” he says, sounding agonizingly unsure. “When you said yes, did you mean yes, you’d like to come to the ball with me, or yes, you’re already going to the ball with the gong man who can fox-trot?”
I close my hands over my ears with my fingers crossed for him.
I can’t bear to listen. I watch Marina freeze as she waits with bated breath, then punch the air as if she’s just won an Olympic gold before grabbing my hand and running us through to the reception hall and flopping down onto one of the sofas.
It’s thankfully quieter in here now; I’m guessing that most of the hard work is going on in the ballroom.
“Act normal when he comes in,” she says, finger-combing her hair into place.
“She said yes! Well, what she actually said is that she’s not keen on the gong, it makes too much noise and that she can’t fox-trot either and, yes, she’d like it very much if he’d take her to the ball, thank you very much. ”
I laugh and shake my head. “I don’t think I’ve ever known a couple more suited to each other.”
Britannia appears by the fireplace. “My Aunt Eleanor and her husband were the most perfect couple I’ve ever known.” She looks toward the library, where at this moment Lord and Lady Shilling will no doubt be engaged in a ghostly hand of whist.
“Britannia.” I greet her with a cheery smile. “Do you have any idea where we can find Dino?”
She laughs prettily, pearly teeth against siren-red lipstick. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”
I shrug. “I fancy a chat.”
“Dino isn’t much of a conversationalist. He’s more of a…
How can I put this?” She drums her pink fingernails against her teeth.
“Let’s just say he’s more of an actions-speak-louder-than-words man.
He tends to spend his time in the dungeon.
He likes to think of himself as a tortured artist; it suits his sensibilities. ”
“Right then,” I say. Artie has just reappeared and Britannia has made her exit through the wall, so I stand up and point toward the hallway with both hands. “This way, troops. I’m reliably informed that Dino hangs out in the dungeons.”
Marina holds a hand out and I pull her up from the sofa to stand beside me.
“Well, isn’t that fabulous,” she groans. “Don’t go anywhere near the shackles, Artie.”