19 #2
Here, I stand and wait—as though I have an easier escape if I stay here. Like, if it’s Father knocking at the door, then I can just barricade myself in the ensuite, because I cannot deal with that again.
I can’t endure it—and keep my mouth shut about what I know, about his secret… my secret.
My shoulder digs into the doorframe.
I lean against it.
Abigail opens the bedroom door and dips into a deep curtsey. She holds it for a moment before rising.
So it’s either Oliver or Father.
I almost shut the bathroom door.
But then Abigail steps back and throws an uncertain look my way.
That hesitates me.
“Mr Dray Sinclair,” she says, her voice uneasy—
And my heart slingshots.
Abigail is right to be troubled about this.
For the same reason I suddenly become rooted to the ensuite doorway.
Men are not allowed to visit my bedchamber. Ever. Not unless they are immediate family, like my brother.
Even Father rarely comes to my room.
Before I can dismiss him, or make sense of his appearance at my door, Dray steps inside.
The shoulder of his cashmere sweater brushes by Abigail, her eyes wide and mouth clamped, as though to shut in any argument.
Sleeves rolled up, he slips his hands into his pockets, and under the chandelier light, the platinum watch on his wrist glitters.
His hair is more dishevelled now, looser and wavier, and falls over his brow—and so I know he was partaking in the celebration downstairs.
I blink at him, the shock lingering in me, hitching my tone, “What the fuck, Dray?”
His gaze is lured in by my voice, finding me by the ensuite door. His eyes are diamonds, made even paler against his cool complexion, like he hasn’t been enjoying the summer sun.
Dray arches a brow. “You will have to be clearer than that,” he says, coldly.
I push from the doorway.
My sock-wrapped feet come thudding down on the hardwood floor. But I only take two steps, because ultimately, I am a coward.
“You can’t be here,” I say. “You can’t be in my bedroom.”
Echoing it apparently makes it truer. To me. Not to Dray.
His smile is amused, patronising, then it’s gone, and there’s suddenly a hollowness in his stare.
“Your father permits visitors, Olivia—since you are not allowed to leave the confines of this room, or have you forgotten that already?”
I’m damn sure my father didn’t allow him to come to my room.
But then there’s a lot of things about Father I thought were true—and turned out to be the opposite.
Dray doesn’t wait for me to respond. Doesn’t wait for my permission to come in.
Without looking back at Abigail, he says, “Bring a bottle of single malt.”
Mute, I shake my head at her.
But Dray apparently overrides the authoritative glare in my eyes, because she turns on her heels and leaves.
The door clicks softly behind her. And the room suddenly feels quieter, the air thicker.
“After that conversation with your father,” Dray says, and he starts for me, “you can’t convince me you aren’t in need of a drink.”
His steps are casual, wandering almost, but the direction is clear.
I back up until my shoulder presses into the doorframe, firmer, as though the wood will split open for me and swallow me up.
If he doesn’t notice my nerves in that, then he does in the socks on my feet, how they curl with my toes.
My voice is smaller than I’d like it to be, “It wasn’t so bad. He could’ve smacked me—but he didn’t.”
My jab lands.
Dray’s smile is gentle over his pink lips.
Turning his cheek to me, he pauses at the bookshelf built into the wall, and looks along the crammed row of music compositions. Mostly piano.
The Bosendorfer springs to mind—and just the thought of playing the piano, being reunited with the instrument, is enough to soothe my insides.
But I don’t think Father will be letting me out of this bedchamber-prison anytime soon.
So the relief is short-lived.
Dray reaches out for the spines of old, leather-bound books. The entire histories of every grand musical genius in existence.
The imps have been and gone, because the fire in the hearth is lit, and the light dances soft over his cheekbone.
Then he turns his sharp, glass eyes to me.
In the firelight, his long lashes cast shadows down his face.
The smile is gone from his pink mouth, and he makes no effort to respond to my jab.
Maybe my old habits didn’t die, they just went dormant. And in the familiar anxiety around Dray, an intruder in my safe place, my bedroom, it’s rising again.
Dray closes in on me.
With each step closer, I fall back a little more—until my spine hits the other door, the one left open to my wardrobe.
Dray only spares a quick, disinterested glance at the walk-in over my head, before he drops his gaze to me—and those diamond daggers have me pinned.
His finger ghosts down the thin strap of my top, leaving my skin prickled in the wake of his touch. “You might want to put something on over these scraps you call clothes.”
Not scraps.
But I am filling out the top and shorts a lot more than I used to. And I’m not so keen on standing around and arguing it with Dray, when his implications linger in his wandering stare—
A stare that glides over my breasts.
I slide out from between him and the door, then dip into the wardrobe.
There isn’t much in here for me. No entire outfit that will fit.
But I don’t exactly want to stoke any latent lust in him. So I grab a dark blue sweater off the rack. I pull on the sweater and rush back to the doorway.
Abigail is pushing a trolley in, one that jangles and jingles all the way around my bedroom, then around the corner.
Dray is out of sight, too.
Probably snooping through my things.
I tug the hem down past my backside and come out of the walk-in.
I find Dray by the desk angled in the corner, between the wall of windows that open onto the stone balcony and the fireplace.
Abigail sets out a platter of sandwiches, which I doubt she got permission from Mother to bring, and a silver tray with a crystal decanter and a couple of tumblers.
But it’s Dray that stops me in my tracks.
I set the giant, overflowing folder down on the desk when I got into my room. Practically discarded it.
In it, is the newsletter.
The one with the article.
And Dray has found it.
He holds it up, slightly angled towards the glow coming from the hearth, and—with his other hand—he waves a silent, bored dismissal to Abigail.
Her hands leave the decanter immediately, and she abandons me.
I wander over to the desk.
The sandwiches aren’t what lure me in. It’s the little bite-sized cakes beside them that tempt me.
Dray doesn’t look up. He scans the article he’s probably read a dozen times over. The bomb I threw into the Videralli then ran from.
I pause at the fireplace, like my legs suddenly think for me, and refuse to take another step towards Dray while he’s reading that.
But time has passed.
So much time. Three years.
And so there’s no ice in his voice as he says, “This was certainly the most self-destructive tantrum I have ever witnessed from you.”
A scoff jolts me. “Tantrum?”
Over the newsletter, he slides a shadowy look to me. “What would you call it?”
I part my mouth to retort, but before I can utter even a word, he’s answering for me—
“An attempt to expose the unfairness of your pampered, privileged life, all to escape what? A marriage that is arranged, as are the majority of marriages in our society.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I mumble. “I already got the lecture from my father, so—”
“This is no lecture, Olivia.” He tosses the article down and takes a threatening step towards me.
“This is a warning. If you ever do anything like this again, whether it’s attempting to contact Serena, or writing an unfavourable letter,” his teeth bare around the words, “the consequences will exceed the lengths of your imagination.”
“So you won’t just slap me again?” I lift my chin, but my insides constrict. “Maybe just set Asta on me to do your worst?”
His smile is relaxed, too soft for the memory flashing in my mind. “You think that was my worst?”
“Oh, no you have other ways.” I move around the coffee table, avoiding him as I advance on the desk. But I give a pointed look over my shoulder. “I remember that, too.”
His shaped, dark eyebrow lifts, a contrast to his sandy blonde hair, loose and ruffled. He rests his hand on the mantel above the fireplace, his gaze following me to the cakes.
I pluck a midnight blue piece from the platter. “I remember the blackout, Dray.”
The surprise fades from him, and he calmly watches me pour myself a scotch.
I pop the cake into my mouth.
“And?”
I throw a dark look at him and force back a mouthful of cake. “I remember asking you to stop.”
Begging, more like.
Hitting out at him, grabbing, writhing—
He draws away from the mantel and snatches my tumbler of scotch before I can take it.
He says, “There is no sound in a blackout.”
My dark stare follows him to the arm of the couch. He drops onto it, like it isn’t rigid and stiff under him, like the pain doesn’t bother him at all, and he sips the scotch.
He brings the glass down to settle on his thigh, and he loosens a tired sigh. “What do you want me to say, Olivia? That I forced you? That it was a mistake—and I won’t ever do it again?”
Hesitation steals me. “Would you mean it?”
His smile is lined with perfect, white teeth.
He doesn’t answer.
My stare turns blank. It holds for a long moment, and he makes no move to look away. No shame written on him, no blush on his cheeks, just unabashed resolve.
I turn for the decanter and pour myself another. “I’m even less convinced my father let you come to my room.”
“Shall we call him?”
He teases me with that—a dare to call his bluff.
Because I won’t.
Knowing Father these days, knowing him better now than ever, I get the feeling that either way, I’ll be in trouble.
I’ll be in trouble for questioning Dray’s authority or some crap, or I’ll be in trouble for interrupting Father over something frivolous, or this would be a hugely scandalous visit to my room that I am entertaining, and that also would be my fault.
There is no winning here.