Chapter Seventeen
The beverages arrived a short time later. A straight-up, full-rez coffee for Owen; a frothy cappuccino for Brooke; and herbal tea for Alice. Sebastian got a milky de-rez brew. A plate of biscotti accompanied the hot beverages.
Sebastian tried a sip of his drink and immediately lost interest. He switched his attention to the biscotti and got an intent look.
“You recognized Travis in the video, didn’t you?” Alice said to Brooke.
“Yes.” Brooke’s sculpted lips tightened with bitterness. “I noticed the watch first.”
“So did I,” Alice said. “He told me his mother had given it to him.”
“That’s the same ghost shit story he gave me,” Brooke said. “Then I heard his voice. Even through that gas mask I could tell it was him.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe I fell for his lies. Every damn one.”
“I believed him, too,” Alice said.
“I think it’s safe to say that Poole had a powerful version of a hypnotic or possibly a mirror talent,” Owen said. “Either would make him a very good con man.”
“I thought he was my ticket out of Illusion Town,” Brooke said.
“Did he tell you he was going to marry you?” Alice asked, aware of a rush of sympathy.
“Not exactly.” Brooke flushed. “He said he had to go through a Covenant Marriage with a very scary woman his family had picked for him. He promised me it would be a typical upper-class business deal, a Covenant Marriage that was, in reality, a Marriage of Convenience.”
Alice clenched the handle of her teacup so fiercely it was a wonder it did not crack. “Except for the necessity of having a few children? Creating a family?”
Brooke looked surprised and then she groaned.
“Believe it or not, he told me that he would never have to sleep with you. He said that Kelbrook senior had told him you had some sort of very unstable talent and that it could not be allowed to taint the family bloodline. Under no conditions could you be allowed to get pregnant after the wedding.”
“Travis said that?” Alice asked, shaken by the harsh truth.
“He told me that marriage to you was a business matter—family business,” Brooke said. “Dunstan Kelbrook insisted he go through with it, but afterward we would be rich and could go our own way.”
Owen watched her with a deep suspicion that he did not bother to conceal. “Kelbrook was afraid of tainting the bloodline, yet he insisted that Poole marry Alice. Why?”
The edge on his voice made Brooke flinch. Evidently coming to a sudden realization, she switched her attention back to Alice.
“You don’t know, do you?” she said, appalled. “Travis told me that you had lived a sheltered life and that you were very naive when it came to the real world.”
Owen coughed on a swallow of coffee.
Alice ignored him. “I get that a lot.”
“Travis said you were not aware of the truth about your ancestry,” Brooke continued. Her perfect features tightened. “But I assumed that by now you had figured it out.”
Alice went very still. Sebastian looked at her with an air of concern and then abandoned a biscotti in favor of bouncing up onto her shoulder.
“Enlighten me,” she said.
She knew some of the charged energy of her emotional reaction had leaked into her voice, because Brooke softened with sympathy. On the other side of the table, an ominous fire burned in Owen’s eyes.
She silently cursed her own display of weakness. That was not the way of the Ballantine Method. Control was the way.
“According to Travis,” Brooke said cautiously, “your birth mother was a woman named Lillian Mallendar. She was the sole heir to a fortune, and she was Dunstan Kelbrook’s first wife.”