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“Not the paintings. They belong to the trust, which belongs to everyone in the family. But you’re right. I do inherit the bulk of everything, which I know is massively unfair. You don’t have to tell me. Dad would have left everything to Lia if he could have.”

“How does Charlie feel about that, being the spare?”

“He’s never said anything.”

“Are you sure? He did sleep with your girlfriend the day you broke up with her. Sounds like he was trying to tell you something.”

Arthur exhaled loudly. “Maybe. He had to know I’d give him anything he wants or needs. Except Wingthorn,” he said with a tight smile. “It’s mine.”

“Why are you here if you prefer it there?”

“Renovations. We’ve all had to clear out. Charlie and I were staying here until he got sick of me and moved in with a friend. Mum and Dad are in New York on an art shopping expedition.”

“So we’re completely alone here?”

“Yes,” he said, “and I have to confess something incredibly stupid.”

“What?”

“I like hearing you say ‘we.’”

To hide her smile she raised her wine glass but didn’t drink. She lowered it and held it with two hands, staring into the crimson liquid as if trying to divine from it what the future held.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

The answer was no. She wasn’t all right and hadn’t been for possibly her entire life. Certainly not since her mother died.

“In the dream,” she said, “right before I cut your head off…you looked at me and said, ‘I’m not your enemy.’”

“I’m not your enemy.”

Hearing him say those words sent a shiver through her entire body. That uncanny feeling of a dream being real and the real world being a dream.

“I wish you were,” she said. “I don’t want to think I wasted all these years hating your family for nothing.”

“What my grandfather did to your mother was unconscionable. If he had some obligation to her and he refused…God, even if she were a total stranger…” He met her eyes. “We can still be enemies if you prefer.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Friends, then?”

“You know we could never be friends.”

It was becoming almost painful, the space between them. She wanted to sit on the sofa at his side, to pull his head into her lap and stroke his hair, black as a raven’s wing. His dark eyes studied her. He seemed to intuit what she was feeling, or perhaps he simply felt the same, just as strongly, this aching need to touch each other.

He said, “You banished me, remember? I can’t come to you. You have to come to me. Or make me come to you.”

It was true. This was how it had to be if she was to be his master and he was to be her servant. She had to make the first move. She had to open the door. She had to tap the first domino. She had to say the magic word.

“I need a little time.”

“Take all the time you need,” he said.

Outside another wind blew hard against the house, rattling the old windows. The evening darkened deeper. The air was electric with waiting, heavy with possibilities. She’d broken their deal by sending him away, and if things were to continue with them, the rules would be different…and so would be the prize.

But the stakes were much higher now. Someone else was playing the game with them.

“I’m terrified,” she said. A sinister November wind crept in under a door. She shivered.

“If it is him—if it’s Lord Malcolm knocking paintings and books onto the floor, to get our attention—I don’t think he’d hurt you.”

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