“This,” he curls his hand around her necklace and yanks it toward him, eliciting another gasp as she’s pulled forward, “was not part of Maureen Vandenberg’s collection.”
I want to move.
Crane my neck.
See if the necklace is the locket.
But I also don’t want to move.
Maybe not ever.
Not when I can feel the tautness of Jude’smuscles, his breath against my ear, his hand on my hip, his beating heart against my back.
“Please, Rafe. I’m only telling you what Denis told me.”
Rafe lets the necklace go.
Isabel stumbles backward and I catch a glimpse of a glimmering ruby pendant resting just above her décolletage. It’s not the locket, but it is familiar. I recognize it just like I recognized the symbol, only this time, I know where it’s from. I can still remember it—holding a little boy, shielding his body as sirens blared and bombs rained from the sky. I was wearing that necklace in a dream. I wrote about it in the journal on my nightstand.
“I was only going to borrow it,” Isabel says tremulously. “For dinner tonight with town council.”
Rafe steps closer.
Isabel flinches, but his touch is gentle as he brushes his knuckles down her cheek.
She sniffs. “I promise I would never do anything to upset you.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” he says. “Which is why you will give me the necklace now.”
She looks up at him, crestfallen. Hesitant. But then her attention drops to the ground. She turns obediently and lifts her hair. Rafe unclasps the necklace, his lips so close to her neck, he’s practically kissing her skin. “I never want to hear you mention this necklace again, do you hear me?”
She nods.
He curls his fingers around the pendant. The chain dangles from his fist. His face is a mask of mutiny as he turns on his heel and storms away.
As soon as Isabel flees, we make our decision.
Jude and I follow Rafe.
Down the corridor and into the ballroom where his footsteps echo. We catch a glimpse of his polished boots as he exits through a set of doors on the opposite side. We hurry after him on quiet feet, into the antechamber opposite the foyer, out into the gloomy afternoon, where the hedge maze stands centerstage—a horticultural masterpiece that has consumed Dad’s attention as of late. Rafe is striding around it, toward the woods beyond.
The sky rumbles.
There’s no time to converse. No time to consider. Rafe’s moving too fast. We follow him into the woods, down a shadowed path where the rain is a soft drizzle misting through the trees. Rafe doesn’t stop until he reaches the small clearing with the well.
We hunker behind a tree, watching as he yanks a stone from the well and removes a small pouch from behind it. He pours three gemstones into his palm. One is red, like the ruby necklace. Hecompares the two, and whatever he sees sends him into a rage.
Rafe roars at the sky.
Birds take flight.
I flinch.
Jude’s hand circles my wrist—a silent reminder to stay still, stay quiet as Rafe hurls the gems into the trees. He crumples the pouch in his fist and stalks away.
My pulse pounds like a drumbeat beneath my skin, so frantically I’m positive Jude must feel it. Heat blooms where his fingers touch my wrist. Very slowly, he lets go, and I exhale a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“What was that about?” I ask.
