Chapter 1 #2
Grandmother apparently wants to steal me back to Craven Cottage for more torture, the consequences of my behaviour this weekend.
Running through the gardens at a ball with a wet dress and even wetter cheeks is not a good look.
But Father finds an answer that softens my bolted shoulders. “It is too close to the New Year. She must be home for the ritual.”
Father draws away from Harold, who, with a scathing glare at me—that raises my brows—turns on the group and stalks to his Royce.
Amelia pauses to rest a hand on my shoulder, her quiet goodbye, before she joins her husband.
Dray follows.
And I’m left to the mercy of my family.
None of them appear to be speaking to me.
Not Grandmother as she stalks to her own car.
Not Mother who doesn’t spare me even a glance before she’s moving for the door Mr Younge holds open.
Father takes the door on the other side, Oliver his shadow—until it’s just me and my steps that drag over the stained concrete floor.
The potent stench of the airport chases me into the car, and even as I slip into my usual seat, beside Oliver and across from Mother, the burn of it down my throat is stirring a tinge of nausea in my gut.
The car door closes on us—traps me with avoidant gazes, gleaming smartphone screens, and a silence thicker than a slab of butter rammed down my throat.
The Royce purrs to life, Mr Younge in the passenger seat beside the driver, separated from us by a tinted privacy screen.
Finally, I’m alone with my family.
The whole agonising morning at Versailles—when I ignored the breakfast served in the hall, snubbed the knock at the door that came with no name, so I imagine it was either Serena or Landon (who is now apparently my friend), and when, starving with a bubbling acidic gut, I dragged myself to the cars out front, and was joined by Oliver and Dray for the silent journey to the airport—I waited for this very moment.
But now that it’s come, and I am sunken into the comfy seat of the Royce, the airport moving by through the tinted window, and all three phones are out, screens glowing, I choke.
The anger they hold onto, my parents especially, is for how I was seen at the ball. In a shambles.
Oliver would have told them all about the sedative he drugged me with, and the why.
Because I know.
I am to marry Dray Sinclair.
And yet, their anger is aimed at me.
Courtney has pestered me for years to tell my parents, tell them what Dray does to me, has done, will continue to do for the rest of my life if they allow this marriage.
How can I expect them to understand… if I don’t tell them the truth?
But that’s no easy thing.
The resistance in me presses the toes of my shoes into the floor of the car; it digs my fingernails into the curve of the leather seat; it grits my teeth together in an awful, painful way, because that is still less agonising than facing this—
The moment I tell my parents who Dray really is. The moment I speak a truth I am not supposed to voice.
I just don’t know how they are going to take it.
I clear my throat, but the sound is weak, like a coarse breath, quick to stop, as though I swallowed back a light tickle.
My mouth sucks inwards and, for a beat, I bite down on my lips before releasing them. They are slow to plump again, and it’s only now I realise I haven’t drunk much water in a while.
Not really a concern right now.
My heart lurches as I rush out the word, “I—”
And that’s it.
The fleshy cords in my throat inflame and cut me off too soon.
Frowns lift all around me.
My lips are parted around words that fail to come, and now I am a gaping, stunned fish under three steady gazes.
“I…”
Again, the flesh of my throat pulses and cuts me off, like the beginnings of an anaphylactic strangulation. I try again, but all that comes out is just sputtering.
Heartbeats pass, frowns dig deeper.
Mother arches a preened, neat eyebrow.
Oliver’s murmur is thick with derision, “Are you having a stroke?”
Heat sears my cheeks.
Father’s dull stare grazes over me before he tightens his jaw for a moment, as though to bite down on his words, and will himself scraps of patience—then he lets his attention drift back to his phone.
That flurries a panic through me, a blizzard in my chest, that I’m losing the fleeting attention he spared on me.
The words come spilling out, “I need to speak to you.”
The faint tapping of thumbs on phone screens swirls around the car—then stops.
Thumbs slide to the side buttons, click, then the three smartphones lock.
A procession of attention turns on me, but not interest. The looks are tedious.
Father considers me, cold and distant. “About what, Olivia?”
It isn’t a question asked kindly. The enunciation of his probe is curt and annoyed. It’s exhaustion—like he’s already so sick of me.
It shrinks me in my seat.
Hands wringing on my lap, I breathe through the resistance lurching in me.
I commit before the fear can take hold, and my answer comes in a whisper, “About Dray.”
Mother loosens a slight, shaky breath.
I read it as nothing less than ‘Gods, no, Olivia— don’t do this.’
But it’s Father I worry about.
There’s something odd about Father. Always has been. How he treats me like the favourite in so many ways, taking me home from Bluestone if I am poorly or injured, plumping up my allowance when I burn through it too soon, but there’s a coldness in him, too.
Like now, the way he looks at me with a weariness, a distance, and I could almost be convinced that he doesn’t give a damn about me.
Maybe I sometimes delude myself into thinking I am the favourite. This time last year, or even just six, seven months ago, I would’ve bet my dowry on my position, the affection I get from them.
Now? I wouldn’t bet a knockoff.
Now…
I am facing down the barrel of a gun.
The trepidation is a ball lodged in my throat.
Three steady stares latched onto me, and all I can do is bite down on the inside of my cheeks as my mind scrambles.
Once I speak this truth, there is no going back.
No matter the direction it takes, there is no return trip to the way it was before.
I fumble it, “Are you really going to sell me off to him?”
Father is still for only a heartbeat before he jerks with a disbelieving scoff. The disdain burns too dark in his eyes before he steals them from me, turning his cheek.
My fingers untangle before my hands slide down the thighs of my trousers, an anxious reaction, fingernails cutting into the cotton threads, as though it’ll ground me.
Mother’s exhale comes soft from her nostrils, and her gaze flickers to Oliver beside me.
Out the corner of my eye, he is shaking his head only slightly, the obviousness of his disbelief flooding the car.
Ok, I definitely didn’t get off to a great start.
My nerves got the better of me, my scrambled brain worked against me, my mouth just pushed words out before they were ready.
Sell me off…
No, not the best wording.
I shove my fumble aside and, chest swelling with a deep inhale, try again. “Am I engaged to Dray?”
Father’s cheek is still turned to me.
His gaze simmers in the dimness of the car, but I see the glisten of leafy hues, the aim of his stare out the window at the passing scenery.
“Father,” I add, soft, “I can’t marry him.”
His profile is sharp, tension bound in his jaw. Slowly, he turns his stare on me—and the fury in it has my own gaze swerving down to my hands clenched on my knees.
My throat bobs.
“Dray…” I start, breathy. “He is…”
Tension has Oliver as stiff as a garden statue on the seat. The burn of his gaze on my face is scalding enough to flush my cheeks, and I can read that stare without even looking directly at it.
He’s telling me to shut the fuck up.
He knows where this is going.
But I have Father’s attention, a stare hooked onto me, one I can’t bring myself to look at.
I watch my fingernails digging into the cotton of my trousers. “Dray is different at Bluestone.”
If the outside noise invaded the car through a cracked window or an open door, none of them would be able to hear my quiet murmur, a voice too subdued, because I know, I know I shouldn’t be saying any of this.
What other choice do I have?
Accept my fate without a fight and submit to Dray for the rest of my fucking life?
The thought of it rolls through me, a wave of sick.
I lift my gaze, but not to Father who I can’t bring myself to look at.
Instead, I find Mother.
Her balmed lips rub together, unease in the way her hands are threaded on her lap, and she stares out the corner of her eye at my father.
“Dray makes my life hell.” My voice trembles—and in a blink, a tear falls down my cheek.
“For ten years, he has made sure I know just how much he hates me for what I am. He’s the reason I try to run away from the academy all the time.
He’s done things… He has trapped me in closets, pushed me over in the hall, locked me out of the dormitories overnight… ”
I turn my defeated gaze on Father’s stone face—
And my heart sinks at what I find.
I falter.
Father doesn’t look at me anymore. He has angled his cheek to me again, his gaze returned to the window and the passing countryside.
“Father?”
His jaw tenses.
In my peripherals, Mother’s head shakes ever so slightly—but it’s a warning I don’t heed.
“Father, please.” The tears invade my voice, wobbling it. “If you knew… If you saw what he’s like, what he’s really like… It sounds childish, I know, but it is torment, and it’s constant, and—”
“Enough.”
A dismissal.
Spoken plainly, quietly… but firm.
My gulp is audible.
My face is twisting with the ache in my heart. “You’re not listening to me, if you could just hear me out, then—”
Father’s shout bellows through the car, “Enough!”
The shout strikes me like a smack.
I jolt in the seat, suddenly rigid all over.
Father’s glare slides to me, slow, lethal. “You will do as your duty requires. Your petulance will have no place in the discussion of your arrangements, and no tantrum will change this. You have shamed our family too many times, girl.”
Mother’s hand touches her face, fingers pressed lightly to her lips, and her lashes shut.
Father is undeterred. “That all stops now.” His lips curl around his clenched teeth. “Am I clear?”
Instinct sinks me deeper in the seat.
I watch him warp through the mist of tears. But the shock is fading and the ache is mounting in my chest.
Breaths come choppy through my nostrils, as though I wrestle them. My mouth flattens, a trembling line, and I turn my wet cheek to him, to Oliver’s stony face, to Mother’s hidden one.
I watch the countryside drenched in mist pass the window for the rest of the ride.