18
Normally for dinner, I would change into more appropriate attire.
It’s an old habit that only rings through me now, a habit that has been dormant for years. But the reminder clangs in my bones as I’m escorted through the foyer by Mother and Amelia.
Amelia, in her silk dress that is far too much for this reunion, and more suited to a dinner on the sandy beaches of the Amalfi Coast.
Mother is little better, with a fitted black dress, cotton I think, and I wonder if I missed a scorcher of day in England but that it’s cooler now that it’s night.
But still, I am wearing jeans and a sweater that’s too small on me, and shows too much of my midriff.
Grandmother leads the way to the lacquered doors, held open by suited footmen, and I feel even more underdressed.
Her simple black ensemble—shirt and slacks and dress shoes—are all Chanel. She keeps it sleek and simple. Elegant. Plain to the untrained eye, and lightly decorated with a pearl necklace and a gold watch.
The brands come back to me, so effortlessly identifiable just with a look.
And I am suddenly hot with shame, my bargain bin clothes scratching and crinkling too loudly as I follow grandmother to the dining hall.
Asta doesn’t walk with us.
She hangs back at the foot of the staircase, her eyes on me.
There’s nothing to that stare, no hatred, nothing warm or cold.
She’s just watching me.
Like she’s waiting to see what I’ll do, if anything.
But it’s not like I’m going to rush at her and resume that fight from the academy.
It was years ago, first of all.
Secondly, she mopped the floor with me.
I don’t plan on getting knocked around again.
And she’s pregnant.
So pregnant she could apparently not fit into anything other than the horrendous, floral print stretchy dress that clings to her—and makes her look so much bigger around the belly.
Asta forgets me the moment footsteps come into the foyer from the courtyard.
The slightest relaxation softens the stiffness in her slender shoulders, like a ribbon pulled taut but it releases just an inch of tension.
I pause at the dining room entrance, and look back as the others come in.
Father and Dray move for us.
My brother draws away from them, and stalks right for Asta.
His smile is bright before he cups her cheek, tilts her head back—and plants a kiss right on her lips.
My brows shoot up to my hairline.
For a beat—I am frozen.
Staring.
Bewildered.
Asta…
Asta married higher.
She is with her second child now.
But it’s not Dray’s.
I throw an accusing glare at Dray, but he isn’t paying attention to me.
He mutters quietly with my father, neither of them breaking stride across the foyer.
I turn my back on them, on the fucking circus act of this coven.
And I land my gaze on the footman who looks at me from across the dining hall.
His blank expression is patient as he draws out a chair from the table—
It sends the message loud and clear.
My position at the table has changed.
Oliver has graduated. He married. He has a child already. His wife lives at Elcott.
And I’m the spinster sister.
I’ve been demoted from my usual chair.
I huff out an exasperated breath—
And glares swing at from all angles of the dining hall.
My cheeks heat in response.
I keep my gaze low as I make my way around the grand stone table. It’s new. Well, new in the years I’ve been gone.
I slip onto the tall-spined chair.
The footman pushes it in towards the new table with a surface that looks porous and rough but, as I glide my fingertips along it, I find that it’s rather smooth.
I lose interest in the table and look around the hall.
It’s as grand and large as it used to be, but this table is bigger than the last, so I feel closer to the stone busts on the podiums against the wall, planted between the portraits of Cravens passed.
My neck cranes.
As the whole party finds their seats, I consider the painted ceiling, the pale blue brushstrokes I used to stare at when I was a child and being stubborn about eating my vegetables and throwing my weight around my chair.
Mother used to wait me out. No leaving the table until the vegetables were eaten. No dessert. No juice.
She won. Every time.
I drop my chin down and look at the faded, scratched denim of my lap.
So out of place. A smear of dirt on marble.
Then the footman drapes a napkin over my lap.
Grandmother must be pleased, because the soup is served hot.
Steam wafts up from the dishes being carried in on silver platters—and something in me melts at just being waited on again.
I should be stiff and uncomfortable and horrified at being back here.
I had reason to run.
But I forget all about that as a bowl of Windsor soup is set down in front of me, the silverware placed on either side already, and bowls of warm, fresh bread rolls are set down along the stretch of the table.
This table is larger than the last.
And seating etiquette continues, lady and gentleman, so I feel further away from Father—which is a relief.
He sits at the head of the table. Mother on the other end. The heads of the household.
My brother is in the centre, dropping into the seat beside me, grandmother on his other side, and so his wife, Asta—which will take some getting used to and a lot of questions—is in the seat across from him.
Dray sits beside her, and on the other side of him is Amelia.
I make quick work of committing the new seating plan to memory, but it’s suddenly obvious that someone is missing.
Harold Sinclair.
I itch to ask—but I shouldn’t.
Instead, I start on my soup.
The whole table does, and it’s… uncomfortable.
The emotional waves of my return have been corked into a bottle, and we sit in the tense silence now.
The atmosphere is thick.
Father is mute at the head of the table. He hasn’t spoken a word since we sat down. And he only took two sips of his soup.
Mother is warmer. She weeps silently, but she is warmer.
We eat through the soup, then it’s taken away and replaced by the next course, and every other moment, Mother’s hand reaches out for mine—and when I meet her gaze, she gives a watery smile.
Amelia catches my gaze. Her smile is the sort of glitter on an ice sculpture. It’s beautiful. She is beautiful.
Her lips part, as if to speak, to ask something, but her words fail, and she returns to smiling.
Glad Grandmother Ethel didn’t see that. She might have caned her, too.
Father’s presence is what mutes the room.
Then the footmen bustle in through the doors, take away dishes, sweeping around the table, then another horde come in to serve the main course and fill glasses with wine and water before they are gone again.
Only two remain, standing against the wall.
I take my glass of red and sip, when all I really want to do is down it just to help me get through the thick atmosphere.
Amelia cuts a small piece of the smoked salmon on her plate. “How was the flight?”
I blink at her, almost with a fright, since no one has spoken since we took our places at the table.
She presses, “How did you like the new airliner?”
I nod. “It’s much bigger.”
And my cheeks heat.
Nerves have me fumbling my words, and I’m apparently not very eloquent anymore, if I ever was.
Mother saves me. “It has to be. With our families expanding, we require more space—particularly for the longer journeys.”
Amelia adds, “We do keep the smaller jet for shorter flights and parties.”
The families are expanding…
It’s a jarring reality check.
Things really have changed in the years I’ve been gone.
I knew it wouldn’t be the same, but I don’t quite like how it feels.
I glance at Asta, the mother of one child and another on the way.
She doesn’t look up from her plate. But she is the one expanding the Craven family.
And I wonder if anyone is expanding the Sinclairs.
I am blunt. Too rough around the edges, according to grandmother.
I just ask it—
“And Dray?” I look at him, directly opposite me. “How is your wife? I didn’t catch her name.”
A stillness spreads over the table.
Father slowly lifts his chin. His eyes are steel—and aimed right at me.
But I stare at Dray.
His trickery. His deceit.
How easily he slips back into old patterns with me. Or how easily I fell out of them, and trusted words too much.
He willingly misled me about Asta. He knew what I assumed, and he went along with it, probably enjoyed it, too.
He brings a small piece of asparagus to his bite. He takes his time and chews, then swallows, and the whole while, I hold him to my question, I stare, and wait.
The chandeliers above cast a gentle light over him.
Still, the sandiness of his hair is darker, his complexion paler, and there’s less of a glint in his eyes.
It doesn’t just look like he’s had no summer holidays of late.
It’s as though he’s more… severe.
The silence holds.
No one answers for him.
And even Asta glances up from her plate, shifting her stare from face to face, looking for a cue.
“I would hope for three children,” Dray says, lowering the fork—and the challenge in his stare is his old self, stirring in my presence. “But that might require an even larger aircraft.”
Amelia chimes in with a nervous laugh, “Oh, certainly. Between the children and the nursemaids and the nannies, perhaps we will need an entire fleet.”
No one laughs.
No one smiles.
But everyone watches me.
Because my question wasn’t answered. The whole topic of Dray’s marriage has been dodged.
I look at his hand on the table—but it isn’t his left hand, and so I can’t check for a ring.
He fixes the napkin on his lap with his left hand.
Asta clears her throat—
And that flings my gaze to her.
She reaches for her water.
And I don’t know why, but rage burns in me at the sight of her.
In my home.
At my table.
Sitting in a higher seat than my own.
A chill runs down my spine.
I gesture my knife improperly between Asta and Oliver. “When did you marry?”
Oliver stills.
The wine glass in his hand hovers at his chin, and he cuts his gaze aside to me. It’s a green wall—a barricade thrown at me.
He sets his glass on the table. “After graduation.”
Asta keeps her head down.
I arch a brow. “So soon.”
Just months after Serena and I left.
We ran in February, a couple of weeks before the aristos birthday season, which is just three weeks of birthdays back-to-back, since all the aristos marry in the same month.
That means Oliver married Asta just five months after Serena ran.
The storm darkens inside of me.
Mother interjects, “Oh, with Serena gone, Oliver could have his pick, but between business and the search…” Her smile renews and she pats me on the hand. “Well, isn’t it a happy thing that it brought Oliver and Asta together?”
Amelia adds, “Their engagement was a sunray in a storm cloud.”
She isn’t being tacky.
Amelia is sincere in that.
Oliver and Asta’s union might have been the only positive thing that happened to the coven that year.
Still, I want to gag.
Oliver doesn’t care to add anything.
Asta picks at the small potatoes on her plate.
She doesn’t look at me. Maybe she can’t bring herself to. The shame of being caught climbing into the bed of her best friend’s fiancé. Practically on her grave, too.
Bet she hoped the day of my return never came, that I would be lost and running out there forever.
I say, “I recall your affections laid elsewhere.”
Father sets down his glass, water that I’m sure he didn't even take a sip of.
He chides, darkly, “People have married, people have had children, found careers, moved, and died. This world did not stop running because you did.”
My face hardens.
Grandmother sips from a teacup, but the sharp focus of her eyes swerving back and forth gives her interest away.
Then a gentle touch glides over my hand.
I blink on Mother, at her faint smile.
She reassures, “You will be brought up to date on everything that has happened before you are reintroduced to society. I do not want you to worry about that.”
I’m not.
She knows it, too.
It’s just a steering.
A redirection.
“You have had quite the journey,” Mother adds with a pinched frown on her brow. “Perhaps it’s time to rest.”
It’s time to rest…
To not run anymore.
Not look over my shoulder with every step.
Not work myself to the bone, then survive on carbs and junk food.
Those words hit me harder than the hug that threw me into the car door.
But I’m not allowed to escape just yet.
Father rises from his chair. “Amelia, Dray, please stay and enjoy dessert. There is much to celebrate tonight.” Father turns on me. “As for you, we need to have a conversation. Come.”
I slide out of my chair, then bow my head in Amelia’s direction. I turn a stony look on Dray.
His jaw is feathered, a side-glare aimed at Oliver who starts to push out of his chair.
“Until next time,” I say.
With that, all manners and masks, I follow Father out of the dining hall—and Oliver follows at my heels.