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“Exercise isn’t the issue. Neither is your weight.”
“Your mother tells me you haven’t been sleeping here lately. Care to elaborate?”
“No. Nice dodge, though.”
“Lila?”
“It’s called work, Father. It’s also called privacy and being a grown woman.”
Her mother lifted her fork. “Prime heirs tell their matrons when—”
“Prime heirs don’t bother after they’ve been cut. Besides, I’m not prime any longer. We could talk about your private life instead, if you want.” Lila smiled innocently as her mother picked up her wine glass. “Hey, Pax, do you think we’re getting a new heir in nine months?”
“Probably,” Pax whispered a little too loudly, his eyes bouncing from mother to daughter, full of his old mirth. “They were both really loud for a really long time.”
“Yes, I heard spanking.”
Her mother’s face reddened, and not from embarrassment. “Elizabeth Victoria Lemaire-Randolph, you—”
“You started it.”
“I love it when you come to breakfast, Lila.” Pax smirked, patting his belly as he leaned back in his chair to watch the show.
Her father finally surrendered and took the same approach.
It took ten minutes and many more volleys and spikes on both their sides before Lila could slip back upstairs and change. Luckily, the chairwoman had said nothing about Alex.
The clothes in Lila’s closet swung like a pendulum as she pushed them aside to open her secret compartment. She donned bland, unmarked clothes and stuffed her servant’s garb into her satchel, as well as everything she might need to break into Mr. Nottingham’s home. She also grabbed her Colt and tucked her knife into her boot.
Her father caught her at the door, asking for an update, but she only shrugged and said that she hadn’t found anything yet. It wasn’t the time or the place to talk at length or in specifics.
What could she tell him, anyway? That she hadn’t done any research at all? That she’d let the New Bristol oracle screw with her mind? That the woman had said awful things about the man she wanted to take as a lover, a man he also wanted her to stay away from?
Screw both of them.
Lila hadn’t made it ten steps from the great house before someone else sought an audience. Her cousin Johnny Beaulieu put down a stack of flower-filled pots and hurried over.
“I’d almost believe you were waiting for me,” Lila said when he approached, his muscles sleek, his skin tan and sweaty from the sun. As the man in charge of every landscaper and every blade of grass on the Randolph compounds, he spent a great deal of time in it.
“I was. Can I walk you to the garage?”
Lila nodded. They followed the gravel path, their feet crunching the rocks underfoot. The sticklike rose bushes he’d planted the week before waved in the warm breeze beside them, still bud-less and brown. “I have to ask you something, chief, but it’s not really appropriate.”
“When has that ever stopped either of us before?”
“You may regret encouraging me before we’re done.”
Lila knew his question already. “I don’t know anything of Ms. Wilson’s current feelings toward you. I’ll probably never know anything about her again.”
He nodded, seemingly unsurprised at the news.
“She broke things off with you, didn’t she?”
He offered another frustrated nod. “Last week. She said that she wants nothing to do with the Randolphs anymore. She said the Randolphs had fucked her for long enough. Now whenever I see her on the compound, she hurries off in a different direction.”
“You and me both.” Lila opened the garage door. It screeched as it rose to the top. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Johnny. I did.”
“You had some part in her mother and brother being charged, didn’t you?”
