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It was then I winced as the young man quickly hid his expression of revulsion.
One did not touch one’s own luggage in a setting like this.
Though, the distaste he was quick to hide was over the top, but perhaps not in a place like this.
Even so, I didn’t like it.
Needless to say, Lou had not grown up with money either. She’d lived the first sixteen years of her life on a council estate. For the last thirteen, Dad took care of everything, except, of course, for the eighteen months since he’d been gone. In the years in between, her life was a whirlwind of jet-setting between fashion shows and photo shoots, parties and dating Hollywood actors. Weekends in the country with the hoi polloi wasn’t on her agenda.
She didn’t know the rules because she didn’t have to bother to learn them.
I, on the other hand, had never been my father’s favorite, but I’d been adjacent to his money, and as such had learned to make my own way in these worlds long ago.
It was too late to cover her gaffe, so I forged around the car, hooked my arm in hers and turned to the man. “We’ve been driving a long time. Tea and Portia sound perfect.”
He nodded, threw an arm toward the steps, but preceded us, jogging up as we followed more sedately.
Hit number two landed on us both as we entered Duncroft.
Particularly me.
I felt a jolt of electricity hit the second I stepped over the threshold.
I’d traveled widely, and I honestly couldn’t say I’d ever experienced something as audaciously beautiful, with the razor’s edge of exquisite taste, as the enormous entry of Duncroft House.
It was the joint of the cross, the entirety of it, and the ceiling rose all four stories and was topped with a glass dome. The sweep of the elegant staircase spiraled round and round to the top floor, making the space seem cavernous.
And embedded that feeling that we were insignificant.
The floor was a sea of pristine-white marble, the walls a shade of lilac gray so pale, if the crown molding wasn’t an immaculate white, I would have thought it too was that color.
In front of us, opposite the front door, beyond the sweeping staircase (also all white with a thick, dove-gray carpet runner clamped at the top edges of the treads by a thin rod of burnished silver, the color of that carpet having to be insanely difficult to keep clean), all you could see were windows that framed a massive conservatory. And well beyond that, barely discernable through the jungle of plants, were manicured lawns and gardens, and beyond that, heathered moors.
Four wide hallways led off of the foyer.
And at the foot of the stairs, atop the broad newel post, stood a figure carved in white marble.
I didn’t know who she was, Aphrodite, Hera, Persephone, some other goddess. She was walking tall atop grass and flowers, the flowers rising up to mingle with the graceful folds of the shift that closely skimmed her feminine curves. Flowers also mingled in her flowing hair.
Her head was tipped back, and a serene expression was on her face.
Serene and…replete.
There was something sexual about her. It was nuanced, yet still managed to be overt. As if she was caught walking over the grass through the flowers while orgasming.
She was also tall. If she were on the ground, she’d be as tall as me.
She would seem curious and even wrong anywhere else but in that vast, bleached space, and if the person who sculpted her did it in that exact spot to make her proportions and impact as flawless as it could be, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“Your keys?” the young man requested.
I turned to him.
“I’ll get your luggage and park your car,” he explained.
I nodded, took my car fob off the ring and handed it to him.
He dipped his chin and said, “This way.”
