Bred By the Silent Bidder (Auctioned to the BRATVA #3)

Chapter 1

Amelia

The party is by any objective measure, a triumph.

The flowers are perfect. The champagne is cold. My sister Cecily is radiant in a cream dress made specifically by her favorite designer, and her fiancé, Connor, is standing beside her with the polished ease of a man who has spent his entire life being exactly where money expects him to be.

My mother is in her element. I can tell by the way she moves through the room, touching arms, leaning close, delivering those small targeted smiles she keeps in reserve for occasions when she needs people to feel individually noticed.

She's good at it. She's been good at it since before I was born, and watching her work has always been a little like watching a professional do something I could never quite master.

Cecily is twenty-four. She met Connor six months ago at a friend's wedding in Connecticut and by the time she came home she was already talking about him like he was the one.

My parents adore him. He's American, which is mildly exotic, and his family has the kind of money that doesn't advertise itself, which they find tremendously reassuring.

He's also, incidentally, the sort of handsome that photographs well, says the right things in any given situation, and never seems to have an opinion that might make anyone uncomfortable.

Cecily loves him. I can see that clearly, and it matters to me more than anything else about this evening.

What also matters, with increasing urgency, is that I find somewhere to stand that is not within conversational range of my Aunt Prudence.

I've been avoiding her for forty minutes, but It's a small room.

"Amelia." She materializes at my elbow and I give a little start before masking my annoyance with a small smile. "Don't you look lovely. Is that the dress you wore to Charlotte's summer party?"

"It might be."

"You should treat yourself. A woman your age ought to have a wardrobe that turns heads." She pauses, doing the thing with her eyebrows that means she's about to say something she's been rehearsing. "Have you spoken to Oliver Fortwell this evening? He's just joined his father's firm. Very eligible."

"I haven't, no."

"I could introduce you." Her brows lift just enough to tell me this isn’t a polite offer to further my social networking; it’s a very strong suggestion.

"Please don't."

She looks at me with the expression of a woman who finds me bewildering and slightly exhausting, which is fair, because I find myself bewildering and slightly exhausting at family parties too.

"You know, Amelia, your sister has found a wonderful man.

There's no reason you couldn't do the same if you simply made a bit more effort. "

The champagne in my glass is very good. I focus on that.

"Effort," I say, pleasantly. "Right."

"I only mean that you can be a little intimidating, darling. Men like to feel wanted, not frightened into submission.”

"I'll bear that in mind." I sip my champagne, hoping that will put an end to the conversation.

She sighs, but pats my arm and moves away, satisfied she's done her duty.

I turn toward the window and breathe through my nose, watching the garden lights reflecting in the black glass and remind myself that I chose to come tonight.

Cecily is my sister and I love her and she wanted me here, which means I am staying until at least ten o'clock and I’m not going to say anything regrettable to anyone, including Oliver Hartwell, who is currently telling a story near the fireplace that seems to require a lot of gesturing.

My mother finds me twenty minutes later.

She has a man with her who looks to be in his mid-thirties, sandy hair, navy jacket. He's smiling already, which is always a bad sign, because men who smile before they've been introduced are usually men who've been briefed about you.

"Amelia, this is James Durham. His family is in the oil business." She says this as though it’s a personality trait. "James, my elder daughter."

"Lovely to meet you," James says, with the practiced warmth of someone who has attended a lot of these events. He has a drawl that tells me he must be from somewhere far from here, south, Texas maybe…

"You too," I say with a polite smile, because I was raised well. The sign that is building in my chest is difficult to press down. But I manage it, barely.

My mother watches us with the calibrated attention of a woman who has arranged seventeen of these introductions in the past six months. She’s keeping score.

Then she's summoned by someone near the door, and for approximately four minutes James and I conduct a conversation that covers his work, his love of American football, and how he enjoys coming north to hunt once a year.

I smile and nod the whole way through. But something in my gut tells me he doesn’t mean hunting in the traditional sense.

By the time James has excused himself, my father has arrived at my side.

"You could try," he says mildly.

"I was perfectly civil."

"Being civil isn't the same as trying, Amelia."

My father is a good man in most respects and he loves me, but tonight he looks at me with an expression that makes me feel like a child again, being told that what I wanted wasn't quite the point.

"I'm not interested in James Durham," I say.

"You're not interested in anyone. You're twenty-seven, and you've become far too particular."

There it is.

"Particular," I say.

"You know what I mean."

"I do, yes. You mean I haven't settled for someone who bores me, or irritates me, or I don’t find attractive."

He sighs and sips his whisky, looking out across the party where Cecily is laughing at something Connor has said. Her hand is on his arm, her whole body angled toward him with that easy, natural happiness. "Your sister is going to have everything she wants. I'd like the same for you."

"So would I," I say. "I just don't want it with someone who isn’t going to be a good fit."

He doesn't answer and eventually he drifts back toward the center of the room while I stand at the window alone. I’ve always been someone whose company people find a little too much, whose standards people find a little too high, whose life is going exactly the way she planned it.

Except for the part where she keeps coming home to a quiet apartment and the feeling that she is somehow still waiting for something that hasn't arrived yet. Or maybe doesn’t even exist.

I want a husband. I want children. I want Sunday mornings and a family that belongs to me. That's not particular or difficult. That's the most ordinary thing in the world, and somehow I've made it to twenty-seven without it while everyone around me acts as though I'm the problem.

I finish my champagne and get another one.

It's near the end of the evening that I end up in the small sitting room off the main hall looking for my coat and instead finding my cousin Harriet.

Harriet is two years older than me, married, and has always operated with a cheerful disregard for social propriety that I've quietly admired.

She's sitting on the arm of a chair with her shoes off and her phone in her hand, and she looks up when I come in and says, "Oh thank God, someone I can actually talk to. "

"I was looking for my coat."

"Your coat can wait. Come and sit down. I've had three glasses of Margaux and I want to tell you something interesting."

I sit. "How interesting?"

"Very." She leans forward with the brightness of someone about to say something they know they probably shouldn't. "I overheard some talk between the men earlier…" she trails off and waits for my response.

Irritation tingles over my skin. I hate this to-ing and fro-ing that gossipers employ.

"Just spit it out Harriet, I’m tired and the hotel has a bath with jets that I’ve been looking forward to all night."

"Urgh, fine," she says rolling her eyes. "You are no fun. I overheard them talking about an auction."

I shake my head and paw through the hangers looking for my coat.

Harriet continues, unfazed by my lack of interest. "Where powerful men go to find wives.” She glances at the door, then back at me.

I frown at her. She can’t be serious.

“Have you heard anything about Lionel Pietty?”

I shake my head slowly. The name isn’t ringing any bells for me. But why would it? I’m only in America for my sister’s engagement party. I fly back to the UK in three days.

Harriet settles back with the air of a woman about to become the center of the gossip world.

“It’s being held in three weeks, somewhere just outside of the city. Eligible women, eligible men, negotiations. It all sounds so scandalous—” a shiver of excitement runs through her, “so exciting.”

“You’re married, Harriet, happily,” I point out, my hand finally finding the shoulder of my coat. I pull it free.

“But you aren’t, dear cousin. And from what I’ve heard, the men at that auction are some of the most powerful in the country.”

I look at her with a snort of laughter. "You're telling me I should go to an auction and allow myself to be sold to some random stranger? That’s a whole new level of insane, Harriet, even for you."

"I'm telling you it exists." She examines her fingernails.

"I'm also telling you that the men who attend have, as a rule, a fairly particular profile.

Old money or new money but always substantial money.

Russian, Eastern European, American old guard.

The kind of men your mother would find utterly alarming.

" She glances at me. "Or the kind of men you might find rather useful, depending on your current mood. "

My current mood is that I’m tired, my feet hurt, and I want a hot bath with bubbles. But the thought does intrigue me…

"Is it safe?" I ask.

"From everything I've heard, impeccably so. Pietty runs it like a contract negotiation. Everything above board. Several women from very respectable families have attended."

"And the men?"

"Frightening," Harriet says cheerfully. "Absolutely terrifying, by all accounts. Rich, powerful, foreign, connected to things I don't think either of us should ask too many questions about." She pauses. "The sort of men who make Oliver Hartwell look like a potted plant."

Across the house, I can hear the sound of the party, my mother's laugh, my father's measured voice, Cecily's happiness filling every room it touches.

I think about the evening I've just had.

About being introduced to man after man as though I'm a problem that needs solving.

About being told I'm particular, as though wanting something real is a flaw rather than a standard.

If my family want a husband for me so badly, I can find one myself.

The thought arrives fully formed and sits there in my chest like something lit.

Just not one they'll approve of.

"Harriet," I say pulling my phone from my clutch ready to cancel my flight. "How do I get in?"