Chapter 18
Another Scheme
LANIE
I couldn’t sleep, so after tossing and turning, I left my room to walk the grounds wrapped in my robe and contemplate what life might be like if I decided to marry him. A day before, I’d still been playing the game. I still wanted to twist the knife. Why now, did this frighten me?
I thought through what happened in the time since my arrival.
My thoughts landed on first my disdain for Baz’s father, but soon turned to Baz’s sweet sister and the beauty of this place.
I easily understood why my mother had never gotten over it all.
As I wandered the gardens before the house came to life, I imagined what life was like growing up here.
I listened to the sea and smelled salt in the air.
This would have been a beautiful place in the summer, I thought.
I walked through the rows of rosebushes and wondered if this place had once been filled with the laughter of children and barking dogs.
Dora Elizabeth would have gotten her dog if we lived up here—maybe a Scottie named Angus?
As the sun rose, I smiled and thought about its warmth and how lovely it would be to pace these rows with a baby on my hip.
I thought about the appointment the following week I made with the fertility clinic my sister recommended—the one I insisted I needed to ensure my eggs wouldn’t go to waste.
But no matter what my imagination spit out, I couldn’t shake what I could have if I agreed to some stupid hare-brained scheme.
I could have this slice of heaven. I could give these moments back to my mother.
After losing my father, I knew how fleeting life was.
But what did I get out of it beyond the house?
I never entered this to saddle myself with a man who had no desire to wed me.
“It was just a game to wound him… until it wasn’t,” I whispered, standing in the walled garden.
Now that the game was over, what did I do? He hurt me. I should have felt self-satisfied, but I couldn’t. Yes, his outburst was unacceptable, but that was raw emotion. When he felt betrayed, it guilted me.
Returning to the room in the still early-hours, I found Baz awake. He looked at me expectantly. I expected him to be gone or yell at me. Instead, his face spelled concern, then relief.
“Are you… you’re alright?” Baz asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“I worried… I thought you’d run off.”
He missed me? It wasn’t the response I expected.
“I’m fine. I… I want to go home, but I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t just run off without letting you know.”
Baz massaged his greying temples and let out a low groan.
I had never seen him shirtless and still in bed in the morning.
It was as if he always just appeared in a suit out of nowhere.
I assumed he simply blinked and was fully clothed.
I found him sexy like this, even if I still wanted to throttle him.
“So… what now?” He sighed. “You just run back to London?”
“Baz, what else do you expect me to do? Marry you?”
His face went from worry to anger. “Isn’t that what you wanted? Didn’t you engineer this—”
“No. Baz, it is true that I knew something you didn’t. It’s true I wanted to hurt you, but… once I accomplished my mission… I didn’t want to. It’s not that.”
“Then you just want to torture me?” His voice grew stronger.
“No more, Baz. I… I don’t want that,” I promised, tears welling. “Can you please not yell at me right now? I’m trying so hard to not be angry with you, Baz.”
BAZ
Normally, tears didn’t affect me the way Lanie’s did.
I labeled such things as hyperbole and moved on.
Instead, even hung over, Lanie’s tears cut me down.
I began to doubt my worries about her. I questioned whether I should have given her a chance to explain.
Racked with sobs, Lanie’s tiny body shook the bed.
I’d been harsh, I supposed, but her reaction came out of left field.
She cried herself to sleep. When I woke, she was gone.
I panicked, but here she was, back and hanging her robe over a chair.
She went to the wardrobe and began sorting.
“Lanie, please. Just come and talk,” I called.
In the tiniest voice she repeated, “I want to go home. I want you to call a plane for me or I will walk.”
I sighed. “Lanie, I cannot do that for you.”
“Are you holding me hostage now?” She stood before me, face puffy from crying all night.
She looked pitiful. I felt like a monster.
“I… I need you to just play along. You agreed—”
“No. I was willing to play along and help you because I assumed your father was a fucking asshole who probably tortured you and your siblings. He stole this place from us. I wanted to get you back at first. I played the game and tortured you until I realized you were not that much of an asshole. If anything, you are misunderstood—just like I am.”
I reached out my hand to take hers. “Then… just sit and we’ll talk.”
She held my hand. “And so you can apologize?”
“For what?” I asked.
She pulled her hand back, her face flashing to rage.
“Of course not! You know, I feel like an idiot that I felt guilty for what I did! But after what you said last night? No. You think I am some sort of whore. You are no different than the others! They all want to cage me and shame me. I am not staying here. You can lose your inheritance for all I care! Maybe your brother will care for this place. Maybe—unlike you—he has a motherfucking soul!”
She stood—mostly naked in some sort of lingerie she put on for me last night. It was hard to concentrate with her nipples visible and a thong barely covering anything underneath the netting of the top. She was perfection and I ruined everything.
“Alex isn’t going to take care of the place, Lanie. He’s going to hand it over to someone else to run as a museum.”
“Well, maybe that is what needs to happen. You don’t care about this place. You just want the money. You live for money.” Lanie blessedly folded her arms over her breasts.
“That’s not entirely unfair,” I granted her. “And perhaps I am not over-the-moon about this place, but my sister is. She has some very bad social anxiety and struggles with people.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s easily overstimulated. She’s the sweetest person, but she needs routine and places to escape. Here, she has her horses, her garden, and a volunteership in the village at a creche. She’s happy. This is her home. If she loses it, she’ll be crushed.”
“Eleanor is lovely. I had no idea. She said she wasn’t a city girl.”
She softened and stepped closer, once more exposing the nipples that would have been mine if I’d just gone along with it.
“She’s autistic. She’s wonderful, but she struggles with change and can meltdown in certain situations. I don’t want her living alone in a new house somewhere. That won’t help her anxiety or stability long-term. She survived university, but it wore her down. I won’t have her go through that again.”
Lanie crossed her arms over her chest, giving me a brief reprieve from her nipples. “But you don’t want her moving in with you?”
“No. If I was around more in a place she could call home, I’d be glad to have her live with me.”
Lanie sighed. “Why didn’t you say that she was autistic, and this was part of the deal?”
I did a double-take. “Well, because I didn’t want it to color your first meeting and, clearly, that impulse was right because—”
“I’m not dragging your sister’s autism. Jesus!” She threw her hands up, then balled them. “It’s just… you should have told me more about this. You’re claiming I knew all these things like I stalked your social media or targeted you.”
“And you didn’t?”
“First of all, your web presence is non-existent. I suspect you don’t even have social media on your phone.”
“I don’t,” I admitted. “I do not live perpetually online like some people.”
“That is so unnecessary—”
“It was. You’re right. I’m just upset.” I tried to save what little face I had left.
“So, yeah, there was nothing there to find. I didn’t stalk you. Caleb brought me to the party after a hookup. I was bored, he asked me to go, he was hung, I went. Is that what you want to hear?”
“When did you find it out?”
“When he told me your entire title. I decided to seduce you and torture you by not letting you have me, which was fun for… a minute.”
“Then why did you agree to this?”
“Because once I let you have me, I was…” She looked down, her words fading. “Because I was into you. I liked you. Okay, I craved you. But… then I felt bad because I knew something you didn’t, and you seemed genuinely tortured by this thing.”
“Oh, so you’re just benevolent?”
“No, Basil!” She rubbed her temples. “Neither of us is all that benevolent. I did care about you. I did feel bad. I also wanted to see this place for myself.”
She appeared honest, shifting her weight and expecting me to respond with kindness. Still livid, I wasn’t there yet.
“I don’t know how to help you, but I cannot marry you, Baz. I won’t marry a man who tells me he hates me. I put up with a lukewarm man who gaslit me for years.”
“I don’t hate you, darling,” I sighed. “I said those words—”
“You cannot just go around screaming at people and snapping your fingers, Baz. You can’t just buy me off, either, which I suspect bothers you.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps, it changes the power balance. Regardless, If I lose my inheritance, there will be no one to look after Ellie. Alex loathes her and despises that she never married. He will put her up in some godforsaken place or force her to move south. So, it’s not just me. It’s all of us, okay? And… I am sorry.”
Lanie slowly deescalated. She kept her arms folded, but her face softened. “For what?”