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“Ahh here it is,” I said to myself, finding the ripped lining of lace. “This isn’t bad at all. I’ll have it fixed in no time.”
Throwing the dress over my shoulder, I nodded and slipped out the door.
“How long till my fitting?” Mackenzie demanded.
“An hour. Tops,” I replied.
“Make it forty-five,” she demanded.
I didn’t glorify her with a response. Instead, I just smiled and disappeared down the hall to my small sewing room. It was actually one of the massive guest room closets, but Aurora and the girls hadn’t wanted to go up and down the stairs when they had me alter their clothes. I busied myself carefully tearing off the hem and cutting a new strip to length. When I was done, Bentley probably wouldn’t be able to tell it had been ripped at all.
Someone cleared her throat at the door, and I looked up, crying out when the sewing needle caught my fingertip. I let my foot up on the pedal and whimpered, pressing my bleeding thumb to my lips.
“Are you really planning to do laundry tonight?” Mackenzie asked. By the way she raised her brow, I could tell she wasn’t buying my story for whatever reason.
“That’s the plan at least. Did you need me to do something else? Your sheets or your towels?” I replied.
“Did you steal these?”
It was only then that I noticed she’d been holding something behind her back. When she pulled it out, my mouth went dry. It was the box I’d hidden my riding outfit in. I’d covered it with a few thin blankets that I’d never imagined Mackenzie or her sister would stoop so low as to even touch. They’d been stained and full of holes, plus I’d hidden it at the back of my small closet underneath my thrifted winter jacket.
“What?” I asked, unable to hide the horror in my voice from this unexpected invasion in privacy.
“This is way too nice for the likes of you,” she spat as she pulled out the riding jacket.
“I bought that with my own money. I have the receipts,” I answered.
“Do you really think mother would let you near the horses? They’d probably catch something contagious from you,” she snarled.
“What about the work horses?” I tried. There were two of them housed in an older stable on the rear of the property. They were mainly used for carting stuff around. Sometimes, they were dressed up to provide a client with a romantic trail ride tour across the sprawling acres of Hampton Manor, but most importantly, they weren’t client horses.
“She probably wouldn’t chance that either. They may be work horses, but they’re far more valuable than you,” Mackenzie continued.
“Please put that back where you found it,” I tried.
I almost never spoke up for myself in front of either of my stepsisters, but I had spent a decent amount of money on my riding gear. I never did anything nice for myself. My entire wardrobe was from the local thrift store, or old hand-me-downs from the two of them, or cheap stuff from the flea markets in the towns closer to New York City. The riding outfit had cost me a couple hundred dollars. It was probably my most valuable possession other than my mother’s sapphire necklace, but I’d always kept that hidden beneath my clothing for fear of something like this.
“Or is it that you’ve already been close to the horses, and mother doesn’t know yet? Have you ridden them and ruined them for us? Are you already costing us money?” she pressed. Her vicious gaze landed on me, and I realized that she was out for blood. I didn’t know why. Maybe she was on her period, and I was just the closest one for her to attack.
“Of course not,” I replied, still doing my best to keep my tone respectful.
“So, you have been near the horses then? Mother forbade you from that, and you know it,” she continued, the corner of her mouth lifting in a mean-spirited smirk.
“I never said that,” I shook my head frantically.
“If she knew you were sneaking around the stables and trying to ride our client’s horses, she’d kick you out on your ass so fast that you wouldn’t see it coming,” she said with a cold smirk. It was as if that was her intention, and I couldn’t think of a reason why she’d turn on me so harshly.
I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to play into her game.
“What do you want, Mackenzie?” I asked, slumping forward, and trying to ignore the throbbing sting of my thumb.
“Why did Bobby Fletcher say that you were pretty?”
“Bobby? He…what?”
What did Bobby have to do with any of this?
The Fletchers were a particularly rich family. I wasn’t sure what they did, but I thought the father had a pretty large reach in the tech industry, and that afforded them an exclusive stabling location for Shadow Dancer.
