4. Cassian
CASSIAN
Irearrange the villa twice before she arrives, and I do not enjoy the part of myself that thinks about it that hard.
The first rearrangement is logistical. Sebastian has the staff move three pieces of luggage out of the east guest suite — the one I'd planned to put her in, the one with its own entrance through the garden — and into the wing I keep for myself.
There are reasons I tell him are operational.
The east suite has a separate keypad code I don't control.
The wing has only one door in and one door out, and the door is mine.
The wing has Sebastian's office on the floor below, which means a member of my staff is always within shouting distance of her, which means she will not be wandering the property at three in the morning, finding things she should not find. These are the reasons I give.
The second rearrangement is the wine. I tell Sebastian to put the Castellans' Bordeaux in the cellar and to send up two of mine for dinner instead. He raises one eyebrow.
"They sent it as a gift, sir."
"It's a vinegar with a label. We're not drinking it."
"Mrs. Castellan will ask."
"Tell her it's resting."
"Resting."
"For the meal. Tell her I had it decanted privately for the occasion. She'll repeat it at her next dinner party and feel important. Everyone wins."
Sebastian does not smile. He never quite smiles. But the muscle at the corner of his jaw does the small movement it does when he is deciding to humor me, and he picks up the phone to call the cellar.
By six I am in the foyer. I have changed twice. I tell myself I have changed twice because the first shirt was wrong with the jacket. I do not interrogate the second answer.
She comes down the stairs at four minutes past, and the dress is something I haven't seen before — a soft blue, sleeveless, the kind of cut that is modest in every measurable way and somehow not modest at all.
Her hair is down. I notice that because in three years I have never seen her hair down, which is the kind of detail I don't enjoy noticing about my own staff and have, evidently, been noticing anyway.
"You're late," I say.
"Four minutes."
"Four minutes is late."
"My mother is not here yet."
"Your mother is in the drive. I can hear the car."
She glances out the window, registers that I'm right, and the small breath she takes is not quite steady. I lift my hand to her. She looks at it like it's a snake.
"Maren."
"What."
"Take my hand."
"Why."
"Because they are about to walk through that door, and the first thing your mother will look for, after my face, is whether you reach for me on instinct. You do not yet reach for me on instinct. So we'll fake it until you do."
She puts her hand in mine. Her palm is warm. Her fingers are not quite steady either, and she has the grace not to pretend otherwise.
"Breathe," I tell her.
"I am breathing."
"Through your nose, Maren. Not your mouth."
She laughs once, sharp and surprised, and I feel it travel up my arm through her hand, and it is — I will think about this later, when I have time to think about it — it is a sensation I will need to manage.
The doors open.
Delilah Castellan is exactly as her daughter described and somehow more so.
She is small, sharply dressed, with the kind of expensive posture that comes from a lifetime of being told to sit up straight by women who were told the same thing.
Her hair is a careful, glossy color. Her eyes do me in three seconds — shoes, watch, jaw, hand at her daughter's back — and then she is moving across the marble with both hands extended.
"Mr. Rourke."
"Cassian, please."
"Cassian." She seizes my free hand in both of hers and squeezes. "I have waited to meet you."
"I'm sorry it's taken this long."
"Oh, please. The two of you. You were — Maren wouldn't tell us a thing."
"That's a habit I'll be working on."
I say it lightly, with the ghost of a smile, and I feel Maren stiffen at my side and then, to her credit, lean into me. She is a quicker study than I gave her credit for in my office. Delilah's eyes go bright at the small motion.
The father is next. Graham. He is a tall, soft-shouldered man with kind eyes and a handshake that's stronger than I expected, and he holds my hand a beat past the polite mark and looks at me directly.
"Take care of her," he says.
"I intend to," I answer, and I find, somewhat inconveniently, that I mean it as a sentence even if the engagement is a fiction.
Owen is third. He is, as Maren described him, a young man dressed like an older one — pressed, careful, every inch a junior partner imitating a senior one, and I know the shape of him before he opens his mouth because I employ four of him in legal.
He tries to crush my hand. I let him think he succeeded.
Sienna comes last. She is taller than her sister, slimmer, with her phone in her hand and a smile that is not warm and is not meant to be.
"So," she says. "The man himself."
"Sienna," Maren says.
"What. I'm being friendly."
"You're being you."
"That's what I said."
I take Sienna's hand and bow over it half an inch — not enough to be theatrical, exactly enough to be remembered — and I say, "I've been told to expect you."
"Have you."
"Your sister speaks of you often."
"Does she." Sienna's mouth tilts. "Funny. She speaks of you almost never."
"Sienna," Delilah says.
"I'm just saying."
"Don't say. It's their evening."
I draw Maren in against my side without looking down at her, and I feel her exhale against my ribs. "She's right, actually," I say. "Maren is private. It's something I admire about her. Shall we eat."
Dinner is in the side room with the long teak table and the open doors to the terrace.
Sebastian has done the lighting the way I asked — low, candle-warm, the chandelier dimmed almost to nothing — and the wine is poured before they sit, which means no one has time to ask about the Bordeaux.
I keep my hand on the back of Maren's chair while I push it in, and I let my fingers drift across the bare skin of her shoulder as I move past, light enough to be missed by anyone who isn't looking for it.
Delilah is looking for it. Delilah's smile blooms.
We are three courses in when Sienna decides to do her job.
"So how did you propose, Cassian? I want every detail."
The table goes quiet in the way tables do when a knife has been set down on purpose.
"Sienna," her mother says.
"What. The man can answer a question."
"It's all right, Delilah." I set down my wine. "It was, ah — informal, actually. It wasn't planned. We were on the south terrace, after a long week, and?—"
"On a Tuesday?"
"It was a Friday."
"Mar said it was a Tuesday."
"Did I." Maren's voice is bright and brittle. "I think I — I might have?—"
I move before she can press further. I take her wrist where it lies on the table and guide her toward me, careful but sure. She slips off her chair and into my lap with a soft, startled sound that carries across the table. I hold her steady with one arm and reach for my wine with the other.
"It was a Friday," I say to Sienna over the top of Maren's shoulder. "She remembers it as a Tuesday because that was the day I told her I loved her. They're related events. She conflates them. Forgive her."
The silence that follows is — I will say it plainly — the silence of a table that has been won.
Delilah's eyes are wet. Graham has set his fork down. Sienna's phone is, for the first time all evening, face-down on the table.
Maren is not breathing. I can feel that she is not breathing. I tip my head against her temple, and under my breath, in the small space between her ear and the room, I say, "Eat, sweetheart."
She picks up her fork.
Later, in the corridor, when her family has drifted to the terrace and we are momentarily alone in the half-dark of the hallway between the dining room and the parlor, I set my hand at the small of her back and steer her into the alcove by the portrait of my grandfather.
"Don't hesitate."
"I—"
"You hesitated twice. The wine. The day. Sienna noticed both. If she noticed, your brother noticed, and your brother is, of the people in that room, the one I am most concerned about. Do you understand."
"Yes."
"If you go down, Maren, I will go down with you. We are tied to each other for six days. Do not flinch. Do not look at me like you're asking permission. When I touch you, you let me touch you. When I speak for you, you let me speak. Do you understand."
"Yes."
She is looking up at me. Her eyes are very wide and very dark in the low light, and her cheeks are flushed from the wine or the lap or the hallway, and I cannot, in this moment, tell which, and the fact that I want to know which is something I’ll deal with on my own time, in private, with the door shut.
I let her go.
"Good girl," I say, and I walk back to the terrace before I can watch what that does to her face.
But I hear it. The small, sharp inhale behind me.
I file it away.