24. Dead Girl Breathing #3
“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but your grandmother has an unimpeded view of this corridor through that doorway.
” His tone drops to a murmur of conspiracy.
I’m unable to confirm that statement through his chest, however.
“Francesca darling, give me some credit; I’m not stupid.
If she wants a compliant prince orbiting her granddaughter, I’m only all too willing to oblige. ”
That refined ‘darling’ drags a velvet touch down the length of my throat. I tilt my chin up and give him the driest look I can muster, pretending his presence isn’t triggering every nerve in my body.
“I warned Gran about underestimating you.”
So much for her waiting to step into the ring; he’s already turned the castle into one.
He lowers his chin just enough for his breath to dance across my cheeks. It smells of the lemon-scented sweets Grandfather keeps in his office. “Again, I’m perfectly willing to be underestimated; that’s my point.” The devastating casualness of his tone has me floundering for what to say.
I settle for surrender, albeit not in quite so many words. No use in pretending the reins are still wrapped around my trembling hands. “And you’re so eager to be her obedient lapdog, aren’t you?” I manage, voice hushed and shaky as I raise my left palm to land on his bicep.
Awareness burns through me of how we must look; me half-pinned against Prince Problematic.
“Indeed,” he says softly. I don’t even remember when we started whispering. “Anything to ensure my continued presence here in Sheffolk.”
“You’ll do anything ,” I repeat slowly, trying not to blink like a startled deer, “to remain here in Sheffolk. And what exactly do you gain by being here, Eric? Good standing with Sheffolk’s matriarch and heir?”
He draws me in even closer. “My reasoning isn’t nearly so diplomatic.
I’m thinking more… Connie Francis blaring in the woods .
” The thunk of my heart falling out of my ass is almost audible.
“I’m thinking of your terrified expression that morning.
And I’m thinking that I’m insolently, grotesquely intrigued by you, Francesca Sheffolk. ”
My nerves are overrun with perverse, dark pride.
‘Insolently, grotesquely intrigued’ crawls beneath my skin and digs another grave there.
He’s peering through the glass like so many before him, watching this tragically well-behaved duchess still pretending she hasn’t drowned, but he stands his ground as the gawkers thin out.
He stands until he sees the bubbles in the water, and he knows I’m only pretending to be dead.
I’m revolted by the revelation, flattered by the sincerity of it, and I feel so disgustingly seen.
The glass is all that separates us, and I fight the urge to ask him to break it.
It’s vile, truly, the way he won’t look away, and God do I desperately want to move.
To see what he’d do with the information that something still beats within me.
But fear keeps me anchored. Gran says I must be careful, that trust will eat me to the marrow.
I know she’d build shelter from her ribs if it kept me safe—so would Percy, Uncle, Grandfather and even Edmund—but they don’t know what it’s like within that shelter.
That cage. I feel the bruises forming before I even move, because Eric isn’t offering me safety. No, that would be too simple.
By offering to document my pulse, he’s binding me to the reality that I’m still part of the living.
And suddenly my grave has six feet of stairs.
I press him, this potential ally. This anomaly. “You’re intrigued enough by me to become a lapdog?” Another tear goes through my pride at hearing the breathlessness of that question. Percy would poke fun at the way these knees threaten to fold.
“For a front-row seat at your tragedy, I’d let them collar me in broad fucking daylight,” he ripostes, dry enough to cut, and it does .
The confession ruins me, for he’s named something I’ve tried to keep unnamed for fifteen years. He’s gone and said it aloud, branding the words across every inch of me. Tragedy . For just one breath, I’m ancient— mythic even —and there’s no pity in Eric’s voice, just fascination.
Quietly, sensing my complete and utter surrender, he steps back and offers his hand, reminding me that the real duchess awaits.
Stupidly, I stare at it. Ancestral judgement prickles my scalp as I consider taking this Atherbourne’s hand.
They aren’t exactly angry, merely… alert.
Their chill shadows me, wanting to see what I’ll do with a man like this.
A man akin to those they’ve no doubt buried before.
They whisper that it shouldn’t feel like anything, but when our palms meet—separated only by thin lace—and his fingers curl over mine, they melt to mist beneath his warmth.
The ease with which they give up frightens me.
We walk. Each step is heavy with promise, echoed in the way his thumb maps a vow against my pulse.
I wonder if he reads the single question it beats: Is this rescue or retribution?
Because if Godwyn left my lungs working after the lake, after Gabriel, surely he did it to watch me drown in what comes next.
In Eric.
Across the threshold, the air tastes sweeter, and Gran sits in front of an array of cakes, her gaze drawn away from them.
She’s already watching us, enemy and heir, fingers interlaced beneath ancestral eyes, imparting warmth to centuries-old grief.
She doesn’t see the ruin cradled in the middle, the potential devastation of trusting a name in the house our ancestors built to keep out.
But perhaps this is what fate demands: for me to spend the coin that not even Redford’s ferryman can touch.