Chapter 6
Father is true to his word. He ices me out of New Year.
The entire day, I’m confined to my bedchamber.
I try the doorknob, because I want to go downstairs for breakfast, for the gifts from my family, but the door doesn’t budge.
It’s more than locked, it’s magicked shut.
Later, I wrangle the doorknob again.
This time, I know my family are gone from Elcott Abbey, and my mind is snagged on the piano—but I’m still locked in.
The day drags on.
Something about that wormy sensation in my gut, that anxiety stirring like a bubbling potion in a cauldron, slows down time. No matter what I do to speed it up, it just ticks on by.
I try to read. My eyes touch the words on the pages, but my mind doesn’t register them.
I try to bathe. I’m in the tub for about ten minutes before I give up on relaxation and clammer out.
I pack for the looming return to Bluestone, but my mind is too snagged on this morning and I can hardly remember what I packed and what I didn’t.
By the time the dreary sky is darkening with nightfall, and I’m staring out the windows lining the wall of the bedchamber, it’s time to sleep.
But I can’t find sleep.
I slip into the sheets, and they annoy me.
I’m under the warmth of the heavy duvet, but it feels lumpy and claustrophobic.
I kick them off, and I’m too cold without them.
Dawn comes, and it feels too soon but it also takes so long to lighten the horizon.
I suspect I only got a couple of hours sleep fractured through the night.
I’m quick to get up, shower, and dress for breakfast, but when Abigail comes into the bedchamber, pushing a trolley that’s stacked with tureens and fruit bowls and coffee pots, it’s clear I’m not invited to eat in the dining hall.
Abigail leaves the trolley and rushes out of here like her skirt is on fire.
Maybe Mother ordered her to stay clear of me.
Part of my punishment.
Cut me off from even more people.
No cell to use, no friends to visit, no chimes to ring the rotary phone, and so I suspect my calls are being intercepted by the staff and not forwarded to my room, because I damn well know Serena is too gossip-hungry to not call and find out what the hell is going on.
My family cut me off from the world, from people, and I have that weighty sensation pulling down on my insides, a realisation that this will be my life. Forever.
There is no other suitor coming to save me.
Dray stands at the end of my path.
My father will take my hand, like he did at the ball, and pass it to Dray’s.
And that will be that.
I would be a fucking moron to think, even for a second, Dray won’t be doing the same as my father, cutting me off from everyone and anyone at my slightest misstep.
And I’m a bit of a fuckup.
I imagine I’ll be misstepping so much that I’ll be practically stumbling through life.
A sigh sags me as I drop onto the sofa.
The mess of a ransacked wardrobe is discarded all over the rug and armchairs and coffee table.
I leave it, because I give up on this whole packing alone thing.
I need Abigail.
Even if she is a traitor, she’s a good packer.
I eye over the mess for a while, too long, and my mind keeps drifting away from me.
I flop onto my back.
The cushions hiss as my weight sinks into them, flattens them slowly, and I stare up at the chandelier. It glitters, clean, so clean, and dances with the reflections of artificial lights.
But even with a half-dozen lamps on, the glum of the winter darkens the bedchamber—or maybe that’s my mood reflecting all around me.
It’s a mood that startles when the door rattles with a faint knock.
Quick as lightning, I sit up and stare at the door.
The knock is recognisable. A quick rap of the knuckles, lazy but firm.
My gaze narrows on the polished doorknob as it turns—and doesn’t snag on the lock.
Those embers of rage simmer in me, in my narrowed stare, as the door inches open, and Oliver slips into the room.
The rich emerald of his eyes finds me on the couch. Something softens in him. “Morning.”
My face crumples. “It’s the afternoon.”
Unfazed, he presses his fingertips into the wood of the door, lazily closing it over until it clicks shut. “Oh, is it?”
There’s no sincerity in the question.
Still, I glance at the mantel clock and see it’s hours past noon.
I return a frown to him—to his refined fatigue.
Dark strands of hair are tousled, as if he’s been running his fingers through it over and over, and his plain black outfit, a sweater and slacks, is notably wrinkled.
Not wrinkled in a shocking and improper way, but sort of like he’s fallen asleep on a couch somewhere in the abbey, and he just brushed out the creases.
He steps around the litter of my exploded wardrobe.
The sleek leather of his loafers glistens under the lights.
The closer he gets, the more my eyes narrow.
“Spent the day packing?” He gently kicks aside a pile of bags. “Or was this a fit?”
I don’t answer beyond the slitting of my eyes, following him as he moves around the arm of the chesterfield.
“It’s a touch last minute,” he adds, like we’re in a conversation, like we’re friends. “You should be packed already.”
With each step he takes closer to me, a hike over all the piles of clothes and shoes, even the baskets of skincare I left out, my mouth twists more and more.
Oliver didn’t strike me.
Mother did.
Oliver didn’t ground me.
Father did.
But he did drug me at Versailles, forced me into a sleep that meant my family wouldn’t have to deal with me—with my ‘fit’.
Just a fit.
Just a tantrum.
Just Olivia being a brat again.
Not the utter and absolute collapse of my fucking sanity.
As far as I’m concerned, Oliver is as much the problem as my parents are.
So I’m unkind in my regard of him, the way my mouth purses as he inches around the edge of the sofa—then drops onto it, too close to my feet.
His smile is sly.
I aim a snarly look at him before I make a point of yanking my feet closer to myself.
But all I did was make room for him.
Angling to face me, he brings up a knee to rest on the cushioned seat, then drapes his arm along the spine of the couch.
“Happy New Year,” he says, his sarcasm half-hearted and weary.
“You’re a day late.”
Unfazed, he slides a thick envelope out from his waistband, then offers it to me. “Start it off with a happy thing, you’ll have a happy year.”
Something Nonna says.
The scoff that catches in my throat is bitter.
Still, he just holds out the textured black envelope.
The mantel clock ticks.
My stare is unwavering, same as his.
But Oliver’s approach is kinder than mine.
He gives the faintest, softest tut of his tongue, then brings the envelope back to himself.
His thumb slips into the gap before he tugs, peeling it open.
Face like stone, I watch as he removes the contents from the envelope—a brochure that carries a slightly perfumed fragrance I can smell from across the couch, and two thin strips of glossy paper.
Oliver lifts the brochure first. “I promised you that feline. Savannah, first generation.”
I eye the brochure. “Doesn’t look like a cat.”
There’s no point to my sass other than it being convenient, and that I hate him, and I want to claw his face off.
Oliver’s smile is curt. “I found a reputable breeder with a planned litter,” he tells me, and keeps his tone light. “The kittens will be ready in March. I thought we could sneak out of Bluestone to inspect them ourselves.”
He lifts the two thin strips of paper, and under the light, I see them for what they are.
Plane tickets.
“If we happened to take a whole weekend in Dubai, so be it,” he says.
For a beat, I just stare at him.
My expression is slack, blank, unreadable.
I know because he’s trying so hard to read me. That tight smile, his light tone, it’s a mask.
His gaze is calculating.
His eyes don’t seem to move, but his pupils are that of a hunter, and he might as well be scanning me over, trying to read everything on my mind.
Oliver is so dangerous that way.
To outsiders, he might be the friendly one of the Videralli, the Coven of Europe, of the Cravens.
Oliver can disarm with a smile, ease someone with his relaxed presence, gain trust too easily given.
Then stab a knife into every back turned to him.
If I was a guy, in business, in the aristos and elites, I wouldn’t trust him.
Even as his sister, his twin, I don’t.
Oliver is dangerous in a way that even Dray isn’t.
Dray’s mask is fitted to suit him. He wears it thinly, and he also wears the threat that he is.
Oliver doesn’t always do that. He sometimes likes to lure people in with the promise of friendship in a smile, kindness in his laughs. He has a way of making people relaxed, when they should be on guard.
But I know him.
What I didn’t know was that he was able to just pick up and leave Bluestone whenever he fancied.
I stare at him, wondering how often he’s done that, how many more of these privileges and freedoms does he get that I don’t?
If Oliver reads me, traces my thoughts, then he diverts with, “You were missed. I missed you. You should have been with us.”
My lashes flutter.
The sudden pivot to the things not said.
It surprises me.
I almost expected he wouldn’t mention it at all, just drop off the gift, then leave.
But he means to stay.
That’s obvious when, the moment the words are out of his mouth, lingering between us, the rattle of a trolley comes up the corridor.
Mere seconds tick by before Abigail wheels in a fresh serving of tea and coffee.
My gaze lands on the two cups and saucers set out beside a plate of scones and lamingtons.
I hate lamingtons.
I hate coconut. Not the taste or the smell, but the flakiness of it, the chewiness.
Oliver, on the other hand, loves coconut.
If he picks out a chocolate bar, it’s a Bounty or a Summer Roll—but his absolute favourite sweet is traditional Scottish macaroon, a potato fondant bar mixed in with a bucketload of icing sugar, then coated in coconut flakes.
Grandmother Ethel says that stuff rots the insides just as much as it does the teeth.