24. Dead Girl Breathing #2
I interject with narrowed eyes. “Then I’d crawl , you hear me? Your mum’s getting a klap from me as soon as I see her. She won’t see it coming.”
Her lips do an odd wobble, and I’m blessed with a proper grin from her, gap-toothed and everything. “If you’re whipping out the Afrikaans, then shit’s gotten real. You really think you and your bony wrists can handle a klap of that intensity?”
I lift a lace-gloved palm to the camera, giving my best imitation of Lydia and her no-nonsense glare. “A moerse one, too. Open-handed, one time, and free ointment for the swelling.”
“Please do,” she wheezes. “I’d pay real money to?—”
A deep, smooth and amused voice sledgehammers into the conversation, too close yet simultaneously too far. “And what, pray tell, is a klap?”
My heart jumps into my throat, dies a dramatic death and then resurrects itself at x2 speed.
The ghosts are giving me CPR; I can feel every cold touch trying to get me to breathe again, but I refuse to because Eric bloody Atherbourne is standing at the mouth of the corridor, one shoulder leaned against the wall and feet crossed at the ankles.
With the way his hands are shoved into the pockets of his slacks and the crooked grin painting his face, I can tell he’s been there for a while.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him today, and he appears irritatingly composed. His white shirt is ironed to perfection, rolled up slightly to reveal those inked forearms. If I were to turn the camera, my cousin would have a heart attack at the mere sight of him.
Percy, still invisible to him, slaps a hand over her mouth and squeals. “Holy fuck, is that him? It’s him, isn’t it?”
For how dry my mouth is, my salivary glands may as well be secreting dust. Or glue, considering that my tongue no longer considers itself a functioning muscle.
I clear my throat and remain silent for a full three seconds, and it’s only when another trolley of cake gets rolled by that I realise the world is still spinning.
“Um,” I answer, embarrassingly quiet and cheeks redder than Percy’s hair. Eric tips his head, half-lidded eyes flicking to my left hand, which is still raised in a dramatic enactment of what I’d do to Aunt Edith. I lower it, trying not to cringe. “It’s Afrikaans for a smack. Usually deserved.”
My cousin lets out another undignified noise, and I slam my thumb into the red button. She vanishes with a muttered curse, but I’m too mortified to feel any remorse. Eric pushes from the wall and strolls towards me, eyes never leaving mine.
“A klap,” he repeats, tasting the word as he comes to a stop. It sounds too polished in his mouth. “Should’ve expected you to have a special vocabulary for violence, murderous thing that you are.”
If only he knew. He raises a slow brow at the way my phone lights up with messages and speaks again because I’m still not functioning. I slip it into a silken pocket without a word.
“You didn’t have to dismiss her on my account.”
“She’s a menace.” My tone makes it impossible to hide my affection.
Naturally, Sherlock spots it. “You forget people like us need menaces sometimes.” Despite his attempts to outwit me at the lake, he gives me the sentimental response I’ve been waiting for, all without even mentioning Kairos. “I see your menace encourages violence.”
I manage to keep my dignity intact through sheer willpower and lock gazes. A hum of approval fills the space between us. “We’d never go through with it. Too much scandal.”
“Oh, but you Sheffolks do scandal so beautifully ,” he whispers dryly, attention darting over my head to where the same woman from earlier waits for me to follow. She strides off after receiving one nod from him.
His palm finds my lower back with ease, nudging me into a walk. The heat radiates along my spine until it flares in a wildfire beneath my ribs. There’s an audience just beyond sight, poking once more at this expensive curiosity.
As he guides me, I try not to glance back at the now eyeless tapestry. “Interesting perspective from a man I could only wish to out-scandal.”
“Say that with any more bitterness, and I’ll have no choice but to believe I’m your next victim.”
The teasing words give me pause. “Call me a murderer enough times, and you’ll find it becoming truth.”
Eric releases a sigh disguised as a laugh, barely more than an exhale. “Your grandfather certainly has a bit to say on the matter.”
I stop short, nearly tripping over a bump in the runner. “You spent time with my grandfather? Alone ?”
Warning bells are ringing at the mere prospect of that man gossiping with an exiled prince. He already got all weird when he saw I had Eric’s handkerchief, a little too fixated on his middle names. Never going to understand that man, honestly.
“Um, he didn’t say anything weird to you, did he?”
I’m half-dreading the answer, but that dread vanishes once I realise nothing can be weirder than what we’ve just lived through together. If the song in the trees didn’t make Eric run with his tail tucked between his legs, I fear no comment about statues watching him would.
“Your grandfather…” he begins with a chuckle, thumb drawing idle circles against the base of my spine. “How do I put this? He went on a tangent about some woman named Winifred—her politics, her porcelain complexion that she so adores, and how you would murder her without a second thought.”
Heat burns in my cheeks as that damn thumb continues tracing a lazy pattern. “Grandfather exaggerates, and he shouldn’t be entertaining gossip. If Gran heard him?—”
“ Gossip isn’t the word I’d use,” he interrupts with an apologetic dip of his chin. Once he has my permission to continue, he effortlessly leads me around a corner and says, “It felt more like a tactical briefing than anything else. Can one person be so horrid?”
“ Yes , but I’m hoping she wears one of those hi-vis vests to the ball. That way I’ll see her coming and know to turn the other way.”
I’m given another laugh, this time deeper and wider, making his eyes crinkle at the corners. The air prickles, and I swear every ancestor down this corridor, stiff in their gilded frames, leans forward for a better angle at him.
“You truly hate her, then,” he murmurs, almost approvingly.
We round the final corner, and I take advantage of the sudden rise in voices from the drawing room to regain my bearings, lest I say something too incriminating. Just in case these ghosts actually decide to off Aunt Winifred.
“The things she’s said about my mother… Well, let’s just say she has a tendency to slip racist little comments into conversation and then play the victim when anyone dares object.”
There is a brief, dangerous pause, both verbally and physically, as he comes to a halt by my grandparents’ twentieth wedding anniversary portrait.
“Ah, I see.” The fabric of my dress bunches beneath his grip, and he looks up at Grandfather’s oil-painted smile. “Well, according to him, she has only one redeeming feature: her granddaughter. I believe he called her ‘the sweetest girl alive’ .”
“Oh, Thalia,” I acknowledge with a faint twinge of irritation, though I know it’s uncalled for. My grudge against that blonde fever dream was, at one point, entirely because of her golden plaits—a living Barbie doll to be compared to.
Childish, but I never claimed virtue.
“Yes, I’ll have to agree with him there,” I offer upon seeing the lethal side-eye he’s giving me. This man reads minds; I’m certain of it. “Sadly, I don’t know much about her.”
There’s a smug glint in his eyes, and he no doubt files that piece of information away for later use. “Imagine my surprise when I’m explicitly warned against this supposedly sweet girl. He tells me she’ll be forced to flirt with me as part of her grandmother’s grand plan.”
Honestly, I’m not the least bit surprised Grandfather has warned him about her schemes.
At one point, shortly after Gabriel proposed to me, Thalia persuaded herself that she was in love with him.
Given how frequently she ended up at his family’s golf estate, I’m still not sure if those feelings became real, but it doesn’t matter anymore.
That love triangle ended the second the letter opener split Gabriel’s chest.
Still fearing that Eric can read my thoughts, I instantly visualise him and Thalia dancing together, hands on her waist while she smiles up at him. “Then you have my good luck. Thalia’s flirtations include nervous fainting and dabbing plump pink lips with lace handkerchiefs.”
As Gran’s voice rises in a complaint from the drawing room, a footman thunders by, muttering about buttercream stains on silk.
Eric barely gives the commotion a glance. “And you, duchess? What do your flirtations include?”
“Thinly veiled death threats, apparently. I’m afraid the only thing Thalia Fortescue and I have in common is that we’re both allergic to strawberries.”
Without looking at me, he mutters, “I’ll have to change my chapstick, it seems.”
I go still as a mouse, entirely too aware of my tail caught beneath a perfectly polished boot. I glance up at him, desperate to decode his expression, but the ass is perfectly composed. He can’t possibly mean—me? Thalia? I go with the latter to save myself any more embarrassment.
“I’m sure Thalia would appreciate the effort, my prince.”
“Hm,” he leans closer, so subtly, I almost don’t notice. “That would assume I was talking about her.”
Breath freezes in my lungs whilst his gaze remains stubbornly fixed on the locket adorning Gran’s neck in the portrait. The same one pulsing against my chest. I’m not taking air in properly; I forgot how.
With zero warning, his hand sweeps higher until he’s got an arm coiled around my back, drawing me closer. He blocks half the corridor from my vision with his height, and the world beyond this moment dissolves into muffled chatter and clinking silverware.