Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
I’m sitting in the dining room, stirring a cold cup of tea, making a journal entry. Until I broke my leg, I journaled every day.
Then, months went by. I still had my journal, but nothing seemed important enough to write down.
Now, Isla really inspired me to start journaling again. Nothing big, just the day’s events and any kind of random thoughts and feelings I am dealing with. It feels weird and formal at first, but soon I slip into the habit like a comfortable old coat.
When I finish, I pull my bookmark out. It’s a faded picture of my mom, my dad, me as a toddler, and a newborn baby Joy.
Brushing my fingers over it, I admire the colors: the azure blue sky, my mom’s yellow-peach dress, the bright red hi tops I’d insisted on wearing, and Joy’s onyx hair, already exuberantly kinky from birth.
As an adult, I look at this picture and I wonder why my dad looks so miserable.
In his navy slacks and white polo, leaning against his shiny white Mercedes, his wife and daughters very well turned out too.
You would think he’d be on the top of the world.
But apparently he didn’t think so. A wrinkle develops between my eyebrows and it’s not until I close my journal that I feel it easing away.
When Natasha strides into the room, I startle. She gives me a funny look, tosses her mane of curls, and stalks straight over to me.
I cross my arms, already on the defensive.
“What did I do now?”
Natasha drops an iPad down in front of me. She leans against the dining room table, smirking.
“Go on.” She gestures to the tablet. “Have a look.”
A sigh on my lips, I turn on the screen. To my surprise, I am looking at a handsome young guy, maybe twenty two or three years old, wearing a baggy black tee shirt and a pair of red basketball shorts.
“Who is this?” I ask, looking back up at Natasha.
She keeps smirking. “Swipe right.”
I tap the screen and like magic, there is a dark skinned young guy in a tight dark blue button up and tight pants. He’s posing at some sort of club and he’s really good looking, as evidenced by the five women surrounding him, eyeballing him jealously.
Natasha makes a gesture that I should continue swiping. I flick the screen a couple more times. Each time I am presented with a new guy. Every type of hobby is represented. Every ethnicity. And all of the guys are hot as hell.
Eventually, I look up at her. “What am I looking at, Natasha?”
“I want you to pick out the ten hottest men that you see there. I’m setting you up. No more wasting away out here in the middle of nowhere.”
I frown at her, skeptical. “I’m flattered that you care about my social life. I was under the impression that you don’t really give a flying fuck about me. It’s nice to know I’m wrong, I guess. But at the same time, I’ll pass.”
She leans forward, her smile turning forceful.
“I think you should consider it. I’ve seen the way you look at Lord Grayrose.
Like he is the ice cream van driver and you are chasing after him, waving your hands in the air.
A pathetic little girl who wants what she can’t have.
It’s disgusting behavior for one of his employees. ”
If I rolled my eyes any harder, I would probably go blind. Pushing myself to my feet, I start to gather my notebook and my cup. There is no reasoning with this girl, even though my hands shake as I pick up the cup. She called me names.
As my mother would say, there’s no use haggling with the devil if the devil is going to spew hatred and bile.
“Well?” Natasha demands. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“Why should I? You’ve clearly made up your mind about the issue. You just called me disgusting. Anything I say after that is just going to wind you up more.”
She bangs her fist on the table.
“You’d better listen to me, Ella. What, do you think I have missed how you walk around here in those short little dresses? Lord Grayrose is a red-blooded man and he notices you wearing next to nothing. He is easily misled and doesn’t know what he needs.”
“But you do?” I ask. Skirting past the table, I toss my hair and head to the door.
“I know him better than anyone. I know what’s good for him!”
I pause at the door, looking back over my shoulder. “You really think that one day, he’s going to realize that he’s been in love with you all this time?”
Natasha brushes her hair back from her face and then crosses her arms.
“What do you care? You’ll be gone by then anyway.”
Shaking my head, I call out as I leave the room. “I’m here for the rest of the month. Then… we’ll see!”
“What!?” she cries, following me out the door.
I don’t turn around. Pretending she’s not there, I walk down the hallway and to the front stairway. Then I skid to a halt.
Most of the stairwell is stone, with the exception of a small strip of wood running down the middle of the ceiling, all the way up to the top floor. I’ve gotten used to how everything is a little shabby around here.
I even got used to the way that there is a huge hole burned in one end of the castle that nobody ever talks about.
But now the small wooden track has come loose in splintered bits, some sagging on the stairs, some fallen to the ground. When I glance up the stairs, I can see that it has fallen or come loose pretty much as far up the stairs as I can see.
It’s impossible to walk around the splintered wood without brushing against it or even making it break more.
“What the hell?” I say.
That’s the moment that the front door swings open and Saffron comes in, hauling her own heavy luggage. She looks at me, sees the damaged wood behind me, and her eyes widen.
“Oh my god. Are you okay?” she asks me. She drops her bag and rushes over to me with a rustle of her long pink silk skirt.
I give her a quick hug. “Totally fine. I just walked around the corner and saw that the ceiling fell down. Natasha—”
I turn to indicate her. But the hallway is empty. I roll my eyes.
“Sorry, Natasha chased me out of the dining room. And then I came here and found this mess.”
She looks up the stairwell, dropping her bag to the floor. “Well… this is bad.”
“Yeah…” I eye her. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. I’m totally sorry for telling your parents that you had an apartment, by the way. It just sort of slipped out without me even really thinking about it.”
“I mean, I didn’t tell you not to tell anybody. It literally never occurred to me that you might accidentally tell my parents. That’s my fault.” She shakes her head.
“You aren’t mad?”
“Nah. How can I blame you?” Saffron wrinkles her nose. “My parents did absolutely shit a brick when they found out, though. Mum threw the biggest fit I’ve ever seen until I resigned the apartment.”
“You mean you gave it up?” My eyes widen.
She gives me a sneaky smile. “That’s Mum for you. She thinks that everyone has to listen to her all the damn time.” She grins. “Just think how mad they’re going to be when they find out that I’m taking next semester off.”
“Uhhh… pretty mad, I’m guessing.”
“It’s going to drive her insane!” Saffron says, looking cheerful. “I’m thinking about going to America. I’ll be way out of my mum’s sphere of influence. That’ll teach my parents to try to control every single move I make.”
“Whoa!” I say. “And I thought my dad was controlling. Your mom puts him to shame.”
She rolls a shoulder at that and leans against the stairwell, turning her gaze back to the problem at hand. “They can both be awful. It’s is certainly not a competition.”
I turn to the stairs, wrinkling my nose at the mess. “Yeah. What do we do about this?”
“Get Henri, I guess. He can make the decision about whether to call someone in to fix it or not.”
“What needs to be repaired?” As if saying his name summoned him, Henri appears down the hallway. He rushes toward us and comes around the stairs. His face flushes red and he looks genuinely distressed.
“Mon dies!” he cries. He looks at me, a hand flying to his heart. “Are you okay, mademoiselle?”
“I’m fine. I just found it like this.”
“This is terrible,” Henri says, his eyes wide as he scopes out the damage. “If you don’t mind, ladies…”
He shoos us along into the hallway. Saffron drags her bag out of the foyer and leaves it in the hall with a shrug.
“Where should we hang out?”
“Let’s go into the sitting room. Henri cleaned it after your parents were here, and I think no one has even stepped in there since.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll follow you,” Saffron says. “Why is it so quiet in here today?”
I open the door into the living room, holding it for Saffron. She barrels through it and lands on one of the yellow couches with a whiff.
“Isla is at camp. Keir is working. And Natasha is lurking around, being a freaking bridge troll.”
She laughs at my tone. “What do you mean by that?”
“Natasha is seriously unstable. I don’t understand why your brother employs her. I wonder if she already knew about the ceiling.” I take a seat on the couch and cross my arms.
Saffron takes a huge breath. “It’s hard to say. But… she’s been nasty to me in the past, too. Keir blew me off, claiming I had misunderstood the entire interaction.” She sticks out her tongue and makes a face.
“Really?”
“Really. She called me childish for saying I was too tired from studying to come down to dinner. She really has zero boundaries with anyone except Keir.”
I screw up my face. “She seems to believe that Keir will look up one day and realize that he is in love with her.”
“Ugh, gross. He’d better not. I used to say that the only person he could never date again was Kingsley. She is really toxic for Keir. But now, I’m amending my statement. He can’t date Natasha, either.” She gives me a sly look. “He can date anybody else in the world. You, for instance.”
“Funny that you should mention that. Natasha finds me competition, apparently. So she had a bunch of pictures of hot guys my age for me to look at. She said she wanted to plan some dates for me because I was acting like a ho.”
Saffron squints. “That sounds like a distinctly American term. What does it mean?”
“In her words, she’s been watching me parade around the castle wearing short skirts. And she’s doing Keir a favor by protecting him from my feminine wiles. She’s crazy.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Ella. I’ve been trying to get Keir to fire her for months.”
I snort. “He doesn’t believe me when I tell him that Natasha is in love with him. It’s creepy. Like Fatal Attraction-y.”
I pull a face and Saffron gives a whoop of laughter.
“The way that you describe things is delightful.”
I flush and grin. “Thanks.”
“Seriously. I will back you up if you decide to talk to Keir again. The very idea of him dating her is like… bleh! Can you imagine what sharing holidays with Natasha is like?”
I giggle. “No. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that she’s a terrible gift-giver, though.”
Saffron bursts out laughing at the very idea. I wiggle my eyebrows and giggle too. We pass away the afternoon like that, laughing and sharing stories. It’s the first time I really have felt at home here and I must admit, I love it.