Chapter 1
Quill
Les Secrets de la Soirée
Tom Kristiaan
I was born with ink in my veins.
Some might call it tragedy, some melancholic weakness, and others an obsession with escapism. But essentially, it formed the foundation of my expectations of this world.
Expectations were our greatest motivators.
Images we painted in our minds. Images of a state we would achieve if we worked hard enough for it.
Images of a better future. Images of the things we desired most. They drove us to keep going, to chase one goal after another, no matter how sobering the reality ultimately was, because we humans were hopeless dreamers who didn't give up until we got even a tiny fragment of that expected happiness.
What hardly anyone seemed to notice, though, was that expectations were a deceptive construct. Something I should have been aware of when I entered the small, ivy-covered villa on the edge of Maple River in the higher forest area.
Even the butler in the entrance hall, who had helped me out of the heavy black felt coat I had stolen from my half-sister, had looked at me as if I had come to the wrong place.
I blamed it on the mascara and the black knee-length velvet wrap dress I had paired with black leather oxfords, as if this desire for comfort was some kind of fashion statement.
One that would never be accepted. This detail screamed that I didn't belong in this snobby town with its influential residents and their champagne lifestyle.
I didn't even try to fit in here, no matter how much my father demanded it of me. I would never bow to him and become part of Virginia's legal elite.
My gaze fell on the pleasantly lit salon, furnished with polished oak furniture and ochre-colored velvet upholstery, as well as curtains of the same color drawn across the floor-to-ceiling rounded windows.
A good thirty gentlemen, dressed in expensive suits, had made themselves comfortable in three rows of seats.
At the front was a podium where the speaker, an elderly gentleman – probably in his seventies – wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a brown three-piece suit, was about to begin his speech.
When he spotted me, confusion immediately crept into his glassy eyes.
I had often been to events like this. Local reading meetings where a lecturer, often a literature professor, gave a talk on a literary topic, an author, or trends in literature. Gatherings where people talked about books afterwards and everyone exchanged a book with someone else.
A longing part of me craved these literary gatherings, craved finding people with whom I could feel connected through literature. Especially after days like this, when I no longer knew what made it worthwhile to continue indulging in the delusions of human life.
Only, I realized at that moment, I had ended up in the wrong place.
Here, I wouldn't even come close to finding what I was looking for, and the urge to turn on my heel and return to my toxic family's estate before they noticed that the unwanted crack in their facade was missing again was one I fought hard against.
The critical glances of the men in the room, who made me feel like fair game on an elite hunting ground, confirmed that I would not be sharing the first edition of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, which sat in my handbag like a rock in the surf of this patrician small town, with anyone here today.
As usual, I was late. Something that seemed to be one of the deadly sins in Maplecrest.
The man on the podium wanted to say something, but I quickly started moving again and walked to the last free chair in the back row.
It took a while before the men were forced to take their confused, critical, or even lustful glances away from me in order to give their full attention to the speaker.
“Gentlemen.”
His gaze lingered on me briefly, but quickly moved on, as if I were an ink stain on a neatly written letter that no one wanted to rewrite. Only he didn't know that I wasn't just a stain. I was the entire inkwell that would flood this town and leave its mark if I didn't disappear soon.
I swallowed the sadness that was welling up inside me, knowing full well that there was nowhere I could run to unless I stole money from my father, who was practically drowning in it, along with the flawless part of his family. He wouldn't even notice...
“Today’s lecture is dedicated to the insignificance of women's literature and the problems that attempts at literary equality entail, as well as why romance novels infiltrate the minds of womenfolk with false ideas.”
Some of the men laughed, but I couldn't even blink as my hands clenched around the bag containing the book.
Where the hell had I ended up here?
The man behind the podium began his lecture, and with every word that slipped through his thin lips, the stone in my stomach grew heavier.
What value did I have as a woman in this room? A room filled with men who listened to this man as if his lecture were enriching their intellect.
The man next to me leaned toward me, and I almost flinched when he said something in a lowered, amused, pleasantly masculine voice that only I could hear.
“You shouldn't be here.”
Automatically, I looked to my left, ready to use my non-existent quick wit to put the next misogynistic man in his place, when my eyes met the cornflower-blue eyes of the man sitting next to me.
I was someone who could stare unabashedly, especially when something caught my eye that I found aesthetically appealing. I would be lying – something I had become very good at – if I claimed that the man next to me, who must have been in his late thirties, was not the epitome of aesthetic appeal.
His midnight blue tailored suit flattered his eyes, as did the tie with its barely visible shimmering floral patterns above his white shirt, which disappeared into his dark blue satin vest.
His defined face had sharp, masculine features, covered with well-groomed stubble, on the dark blond tips of which barely noticeable gray traces were already spreading.
The roots of his ash-brown short hair, from which two strands hung down onto his forehead, appearing gray-blond in the light, were a graphite brown, also kissed by age, as were his curious, sparkling eyes, around which two barely noticeable wrinkles ran along the right and left sides.
There was also a skin pearl under his eye, which pressed against the otherwise smooth skin in the form of two tiny dots.
A beautiful imperfection that was easy to overlook, just like the dimple.
Something was different from all the other men in their mid-thirties into whose beds I had stolen myself for every headless, albeit unsatisfying, night until now.
This man had the aura of an ancient artifact whose forgotten presence one had never even known about and which one now craved to explore, in the hope of solving mysteries whose existence one could only glimpse in shadows.
I hadn't come here to fuck someone. Certainly not a man who didn't respect women and listened to lectures like that. But to lose myself one last time in the hands of older men, pretending they cared about me, treating me well until they got my body...
I had always had a weakness for men who were much older than me. And even though my best friend, Lara, criticized me for it, she would never be able to convince me that immature boys my age could give me what an experienced man could.
I was messed up. Everyone who knew me knew that. And I lived it out without restraint.
It was only when the smile slowly but surely disappeared from the lips of the man next to me and he looked at me as if I had already successfully countered him that I realized I had been staring longer than usual.
“Excuse me... Do we know each other?”
He eyed me with a searching gaze, curiosity in his eyes.
Completely taken aback by his question, I froze.
I would certainly not forget someone as memorable as him.
“Unless you secretly stalk me in libraries, probably not.”
The mere thought sent a tingling thrill through the insides of my thighs.
I quickly looked away, overwhelmed by the heat in my cheeks.
Well done, Quill. This man is probably one of the biggest assholes in this uptight rich man's paradise, and you're thinking about letting him fuck your brains out.
I blamed it on ovulation, suppressed the heat between my thighs, and tried to follow the lecture.
The old man listed a handful of classic English romances, such as Pride and Prejudice and Emma by Jane Austen, works by the Bronte siblings, and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, and dragged everything they stood for through the mud with his bare judgment.
The men in the audience laughed sporadically and applauded before the speaker continued with an appeal to those present not to read or distribute such books in order to shape a proper and exemplary image of literature for future generations.
The urge to anonymously send all those present my favorite erotic book grew with every poisonous word that buzzed through the room.
I snorted quietly, leaned back with my arms crossed, and immediately felt the gaze of the man next to me resting on me, as if he had never stopped looking at me.
The mere thought of it made my stomach feel a dim flutter.
“Professor Percyval DuClair is the most conservative linguist and humanities scholar at Maplecrest University,” he said quietly beside me, making me grateful that I had never finished high school. All that to end up in a lecture hall with a professor like this?
“You're probably the first and last woman who has ever attended one of his lectures.”
His voice took on an amused tone again, and the urge to look at him and catch that smile again was tempting, especially now that I wanted to distract myself from the lecture.
Instead, I leaned back further in the comfortable chair.
“The longer I'm in this town, the more I wonder if it's the money and the comfortable lifestyle that make all the women here forget that we're nearing the turn of the millennium.”
My gaze automatically wandered to the man next to me, who was smiling down at his hands, which were decorated with prominent veins.
So, he didn't take it personally?
I couldn't help but admire his handsome profile. His straight, equally defined, pointed nose, the way his slightly wavy short hair lay back at the sides, streaked with soft gray.
Of course, he noticed me staring and looked up from his hands.
Blue is my favorite color, mysterious stranger. Should I tell you?
My curiosity threatened to make me reckless and playful, and I secretly thanked him for speaking first.
“If I may ask...” He hesitated, studying my face in a way that lust-driven husbands looking for a one-time fling didn't normally do.
“What brings a woman like you to Maplecrest?”
Now one corner of my mouth turned up too.
A woman like you.
The fact that he was even talking to me as if I were in my mid-twenties and not just nineteen. What makeup and the right clothes could do...
I raised both eyebrows, grateful that this quiet conversation was distracting me from this humiliating lecture, which seemed to be getting progressively destructive.
“Is it that obvious that I'm not from around here?”
He continued to study me, and a pleasant feeling spread through my stomach.
Lara would tear me apart if she knew I was once again throwing myself headlong into a moment. Only this moment was more intense than all the ones I had already tried to capture. He was just exploring me with his eyes, like one would explore a map. As if he were looking for something.
The mere thought that this extremely handsome man could find something in me awakened a deceptive desire within me. The sobering truth? That I was empty and useless, a worn notebook full of ink stains and smudged pages.
“Women in this town are usually lifeless.”
I didn't know what it was, but something shifted in my chest and I couldn't tell if it was a good or bad feeling. All I knew was that this conversation was taking a dangerous turn.
If only he knew how lifeless I was. That he was obviously not a good cartographer.
Embarrassed, I looked down at my hands, which, as so often, were covered in ink stains. A mark left behind by my careless fingers. Another telltale sign that gave me away among all these people conforming to etiquette.
I felt the stranger, who was feeling less and less like a stranger, follow my gaze, not daring to look back at him.
“I guess I got lost.”
Stranded in a town where I didn't belong, but with nowhere to stay if I decided to leave.
No place in this world would ever feel like home.
Not the place three small towns away where I had cared for my alcoholic mother until she had left me alone in this misery of life, not the house my half-brother had brought me to a month ago, and not any other place in this vast, empty world.
“So you were searching for something?”
When I looked up, I caught him staring at the ink stains on my hands.
“Something I can't find in this life.”
That was the moment I realized this wasn't a good idea.
This man was anything but a quick fling, more than a reckless night.
His mere words gave me the deceptive feeling of security, of being able to open up to someone.
To show someone my sharp shards as if the blood running down them were a work of art to be analyzed and not a rampant plague.
I would find no salvation. No cure. And he wouldn't be able to help me either.
I would break again, too weak to hope once more.
Something that would break me, and I already consisted of too many shards.
I didn't want anyone to shatter even the smallest fragments of me left on the floor of this world... with his mere words.
God, Quill. That a stranger can already tear you apart with his words...
I shot up.
The lecturer fell silent.
I gave him a punishing look. One that would burn itself into his memory as unpleasantly as possible.
One he would remember when he put his granddaughters to bed and read them bedtime stories, as people did in rich families with a lot of time on their hands.
I wanted him to never forget the look of a wounded woman.
Then, without giving anyone else in the salon a second glance, I stormed out of the villa, ignoring the butler who rushed after me with Brittany's coat but stopped at the door and let me escape down the stairs and finally across the gravel into the mild Virginia summer night.
I had intended to wait one more symbolic day before taking the bullet that had been staring at me expectantly from my bedside table drawer for weeks. It was mocking me. Laughing because I was clinging to a lifeless existence.
– Leaking Batteries Diary