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“Too cheap, common, and lacking in style. This is my personal car that I had shipped from home.”
“Home? Singsong City?”
“Home, Washington D.C. My family is in commonwealth politics, in case anyone asks you and expects you to know something about me.”
“I know everything about you.”
He gave me a look. “You know how I take my worms and my bodyweight the better for you to measure out your drugs. You don’t know me.”
“You’re brilliant, handsome, musical, with a secret love for puns. You’re from wealth and education, with a healthy dose of arrogance and self-importance. I know whether you’re bored or not by the way the corner of your lip twitches when you’re tired of listening to someone tell you how amazing you are and want to go back to learning something you don’t know. I know that you’re easily bored, which explains your methodical torture of me, who you singled out for reasons still mysterious.”
“You dropped worms in my soup instead of internalizing my contempt for you as was due your position. How could I possibly not enchant the mop bucket to empty as soon as you started using it the next night you worked?”
I leaned back in the cream upholstery and almost relaxed. “Yes, how could you possibly not make my work take five times longer than necessary? This car is amazing. It’s so quiet, and it rides as smooth as butter. Can I drive it?”
“Do you know how to drive? I just patted your head in my heart. Pity I can’t actually touch your hair or it will be spoiled. If someone asks you to dance, don’t say anything, just look down until they move away. That’s a gentle no that a civilized creature should accept.”
“And if they don’t accept my gentle no? Then am I allowed to knee them in the groin or stomp their instep?”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s when you say, ‘no, thank you, I’m looking for my father.’ And if that fails, then you say that you came with Percival Marigold, your betrothed.”
I flinched and sat upright. “My betrothed?”
“It’s a word that conveys a sense of unavailability that most males should understand, even when under the influence of your notorious charm.”
“Notorious?”
“Oh, yes. I was smitten at the first sight of your… What was it, the oversize boots or the bird you were talking to like a crazy person?”
“Are you sure you want your name linked with mine?”
“The name of Miss Bellham will be an advantage to me in every way.”
Bellham? My dad’s name was Bellham? What a silly name. “I’m not really betrothed to you.”
“Are you sure? Perhaps this is all an elaborate setup so that I can marry the janitor and be swept away, literally, by her and her trustworthy broom.”
I sighed heavily and then resolved to never sigh again until I’d taken off this torture dress and burned it. At least Percival didn’t seem to take notice of my enhancements.
It was almost sunset when we drove through the quaint beach town up to the hills overlooking the water. The drive was gorgeous, light glimmering off an endless stretch of water like I’d never seen before. My mother and I took a train ride a few times a year, but it was always north, not east, to the beach. It would have been a more pleasant drive with a different person sitting next to me, and a different dress smothering me to death, but it was almost relaxing until we passed the first mansion.
I watched it go by, crenelated towers harkening back to a mythical time directly after the war when the whole world was unstable. The next mansion was even larger, this time something massive and sprawling, like a lodge with pretensions of earthiness. Finally, he turned off on a well-lit drive that circled around woods until the road crested and I got to see the house lit up like a birthday cake, layers upon layers stacked and stunning, with the glorious view of the sea beyond.
“I hoped it would be somewhere public so it would be easier to get in and get out,” I said, gripping my hands tight while my heart pounded. It was such a huge house, more like a convention center than a house.
“What’s the challenge in that? This isn’t your father’s house, or I should say, one of them. For security reasons, he’d never open his private living spaces to anyone who hasn’t been properly vetted.”
“And I’m going to walk up to this incredibly paranoid person and announce that I’m his daughter?”
“About that… I suggest that you offer him your arm and wait for him to get the idea. He’s terrifyingly intelligent. If he dances with you, then he probably won’t kill us. If he refuses your arm and turns away, that’s a rejection and you should leave quickly. If he has his guards grab you, well, let’s not focus on that possibility.”
What were the odds that he’d want the daughter he’d thrown away? It was possible that he hadn’t known that my mom was pregnant, but there wasn’t much excuse for that, either, since he had slept with her knowing that if he did get her pregnant, their child would turn to stone.
“Weird. Usually you love to focus on the worst possible possibilities.”
He flashed me a smile so stunning that my heart lurched in spite of myself. “Only for you.”
We finished the rest of the drive in silence while I tried not to develop ulcers. If there was one thing my poor abused stomach didn’t need, it was ulcers.
