Chapter Eighteen 12 July 2023 #2
“It’s terrible,” he insisted. “My great-grandfather didn’t have the best taste, but no one can justify the cost of undoing it again. It’d be tens of millions of pounds.”
“Well, if there’s one thing you don’t have, it’s tens of millions.” Amira sighed. “Am I staying in my usual room?”
For the weekend we were joined by a few of his friends—all Old Etonians—as well as Demelza and Birdie.
We spent most of the day drinking champagne and shooting clay pigeons.
I had never learned how to do it, so every target sailed through the air unscathed when I tried to bring it down with my shotgun.
After a while, Colin appeared behind me and wrapped me in his arms as he murmured instructions in my ear.
“You’re focusing too much on the target and not its destination,” he whispered. “This is more about instinct than precision. Now take one deep breath and slowly exhale.”
The trap flung the clay into the air, and Colin guided the direction of my shotgun with his hands around my elbows.
“Now,” he breathed.
I squeezed the trigger, the force of the shot sending me back against his chest, and we watched as the clay pigeon burst into a cloud of orange dust. When I looked over my shoulder at him, he was smiling.
“You’re a natural. You were born to do this.”
The combination of champagne in my bloodstream, the shot still reverberating through my body and his arms around me was a confusing one.
“Lexi!” Demelza called from the stone terrace where everyone was sitting and watching. She held up my phone. “That Jack character is trying to reach you again. Gosh, he’s persistent, isn’t he?”
His name out of context in this grand place sobered me, and I immediately eased myself from Colin’s embrace like I’d been caught.
When I walked over to Demelza, she smiled at me sweetly and held out my phone.
Jack had called twenty minutes ago, and then followed up with a text to say he was going to bed but would try me later.
We hadn’t spoken in more than a fortnight, my summer schedule packed with early meetings, garden parties, Royal Ascot, and so many evening engagements that we couldn’t quite seem to make the time zones work.
Demelza cocked her head. “Still stuck in the talking phase? It’s such a bore when boys do that.”
When the sun set over the sprawling gardens, the Lutton staff laid out a lavish feast for us on the terrace. There was Oscietra caviar, whole cracked Devon cock crab and Dublin Bay prawns.
“Okay, okay, okay!” Demelza screeched across the table, which was lit by a scatter of tealight candles. “Never have I ever had sex with someone at this dinner tonight.”
“Gross, Demi,” Birdie muttered.
Everyone sipped their drinks—except for Amira and me—setting off a shriek of drunken laughter and confirming my suspicions about Colin and Demelza.
Colin’s eyes darted towards me briefly, though I pretended not to notice.
The champagne gave way to red wine, which was followed by negronis and then brandy.
I was thoroughly drunk for the first time in six months, and every drop helped as the man beside me droned on and on about the carbon-fibre superyacht his father recently commissioned.
“And what do you do?” I asked, feeling restless. “For work, I mean.”
I recognised him as one of Louis’s friends, though I had already forgotten his name again.
The only thing I could remember about him was that he once burned ￡50 notes in front of homeless people as part of an initiation ceremony for one of Oxford’s secret societies.
His father had to pay the Daily Post to catch and kill the video taken on a bystander’s phone.
“Well, I’m a landowner. What about you?”
“I’m… a princess,” I said, and the table roared like I had told the most dazzling joke anyone had ever heard.
When the staff began clearing away the table, Colin asked that they turn off all the lights inside.
“Hide and seek time, gang,” he said, rising from his chair.
“What? In the house?” I asked.
“It’s so fun,” Demelza slurred, her spaghetti strap slipping off her shoulder again. Dr. Villiers, who felt like she was buried fathoms and fathoms inside me, wondered if Demelza was one drink away from alcohol poisoning. “Anything can happen in a big dark house.”
“Okay, so for Lexi’s benefit, I’ll recount the rules,” Colin said. “Two people hide. East Wing only. Everyone else splits up into two groups to hunt down their prey. First team to bring a captive back to the terrace wins. Now, who’s going to run?”
“Oh, it has to be you and Lexi!” Demelza shouted, and the men beat their hands on the tabletop in agreement, knocking over candles and sloshing wine out of glasses.
My head felt foggy, but my heart was racing.
I was distantly aware that Amira had gone still beside me.
But then everyone was counting down from sixty, Colin was grabbing my hand, and we were running into the vast black belly of Lutton Hall.
I could hear our bare feet on the stone floor as we tore through the East Wing.
“Aren’t we meant to split up?” I panted.
But he said nothing as he dragged me along by his hot hand.
I was too full of wine to protest. At a door towards the darkest end of the hall, he stopped and pulled me inside.
It was the ridiculous library, bigger than the state-owned centre in Hobart, with lush mahogany shelves and Persian rugs on the floor.
He held me close to him and placed a finger to his lips, but I heard nothing except our breaths.
It would take the others ages to sweep every black room to find us here.
In the dark, he led me to a spiral staircase that took us to the second storey of the library: a mezzanine that wrapped around the entire room.
I could smell leather and dust and brandy.
I leaned against the shelves to try to steady myself against something solid.
In the near darkness, Colin was just an outline of a man.
My stomach felt heavy and my blood ran hot as his shadow loomed over me.
It had been so long since I’d been touched.
All I could think was what a good princess I had been for six long months, exactly what Papa had always wanted.
Now, finally, finally, I was in the dark where no one could see me for what I really was.
Colin’s hands slid up my arms and I felt his breath on my face.
It was me who kissed him. I leaned forward into the black void and my lips found his.
Then he was pushing me into the bookshelf, his hips holding me there as his hands plunged into my hair.
I pulled him closer, wanting him, wanting to be obliterated.
He was kissing me thoroughly and I realised Demelza was right: anything could happen in a big dark house.
By the time she stumbled into the library, I had most of his shirt untucked and his belt unbuckled.
“Caught in the act!” Demelza squealed.
“Well, well, what’s going on here?” the landowner boomed as he staggered in behind her. “Come down here, prey. We are your captors. You’ll have to finish that later.”
We returned to the terrace mussed and swollen-lipped.
Amira lowered her eyes and said nothing.
For the next round of hide and seek, Birdie and the landowner went shrieking into the house.
Once the hunters followed, we heard a shattering of glass and a proper scream.
Birdie had knocked over a vase and trodden in the broken shards.
As she sat sobbing among her bloody footprints, everyone froze, but Dr. Villiers kicked and thrashed back to the surface of me.
The alcohol and dopamine in my bloodstream were subsumed by a rush of adrenaline, and I calmly asked Colin to find me a first-aid kit.
This is who I am, I thought. Who needs desperate frottage in a library when there’s blood and chaos to mop up?
The others watched silently as I tended to Birdie’s wounds, which had barely nicked the dermis.
I hadn’t practised in six months, and a few minor cuts were as thrilling as the time Ben had let me perform a needle cricothyroidotomy unassisted.
Birdie hiccupped and squeaked as I flushed the last remaining cut and applied antibiotic ointment, wrapping it tightly with a dressing.
“You’re alright, Birds,” I said, taking her hand. “I don’t think you need stitches, but we can check again in the morning. If it’s not quite right, we’ll run you over to A&E for a look.”
The sight of blood smeared on the slate floors brought the evening to a natural end.
I sat with Birdie in her huge bed, stroking her hair like she was a child.
I was too afraid to leave her since she kept reaching for the “xannies” in her purse, insisting they would help her sleep.
I gently reminded her that benzos in her state would likely make her sleep forever.
Hiding out in Birdie’s room also meant I could avoid any soft knocks at my door in the middle of the night.
That was so fucking hot watching you do doctor things, Colin texted the day after we all returned to London.
I didn’t respond. Instead, I called Jack.
“Come visit me,” I said when he answered. “In August, we’ll be going to my family’s house in Scotland. You and Finn should both come. I know we talked about November for the reception, but that’s too far away. Come earlier. I miss you.”
“Okay,” he said immediately.
“You can check with Paula,” I said, suddenly shy. “I know it’s pruning season and—”
“Lex, I’m coming.”
“Okay, it’s just I know you don’t love spontaneity—and that’s fine. I’m always forcing you into things, like that time I said I didn’t feel like going to the garlic festival and then changed my mind because—”
“You really wanted a squidlipop.”
I’d wanted a barbecued squid on a stick that could only be purchased at a festival two hours away, and Jack had dragged himself off the couch to go with me.