AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Anything wrong, your grace?” Eva asks when Maddie’s got her nose in a book a few minutes later. I clear my throat and give her a questioning look. She smiles, hesitantly. “You’re frowning. I thought the point of a break away was to rest, relax, smile.”
“I’ll smile when these emails are handled,” I say, lifting my phone and then go back to the screen with a sigh. Sometimes it feels like life is only handling one emergency after another, without a single chance to catch my breath. When the hell am I going to actually get to live?
Maddie squeaks and crawls over me minutes later, depositing herself into my lap, and my phone hits the seat in the middle ofan email. It bounces and slides to the floor, my arm wrapping around her to prevent her from spilling off of me.
“Madeline,” I say, voice sharp, but her impish smile up at me stops me in my tracks from truly being angry with her. Eva’s grinning too, and she gets my phone, sitting up with a gasp as we pull into the semi-circle driveway that leads up to the lake house. Her jaw drops at the sight of it, and I glance over my shoulder as we turn.
“Lake, lake, lake, lake,” Maddie chants, squirming in my lap, unable to contain her energy and excitement. I haven’t seen her this alive in…
Months. Longer.
My throat tightens.
“This is it,” I say to Eva. It’s redundant, but I need to cover my feelings. There was every reason to come. Maddie’s delirious joy was one. Seeing Eva also relax, was another. Here she is far away from my brother, and safe from his advances while I plan my next move…
To keep her from him and bind her to my side forever.
Maddie spills out of the limo as soon as we’ve stopped and one of the lake-house staff has opened the door. There’s only four of them here, a woman who is housekeeper as well as cook, a lifeguard trained in remote first aid, a footman, and the driver. All four line up for us, and I nod to them with a smile. Life is a little less constrained here, social rules are somewhat relaxed.
I can smile.
What a fucking difference.
“C’mon Eva, you have the room next to mine, and it’s beautiful,” Maddie yells, racing up the walk through the front garden. Tall pines stretch to the sky around us and around the house, so different from the ancestral home of Wester Hall. This place is all wood, gleaming red beams and glass windows, affording us the best views of the trees and lake.
“Good afternoon,” I greet the housekeeper, Mrs. Harris, and she smiles.
“It’s good of you to come, your grace, perhaps just what you need?” She tilts her head. The front doors are open, two large arched monoliths, and Maddie has disappeared inside with Eva trailing after her.
“Yes, exactly what we all need,” I murmur.
“Tea is waiting on the deck for you,” she replies and I nod, following after my daughter and my… obsession. Eva is nothingbutthat. I know because I am not interested in sitting out and reading the newspaper, taking tea against the backdrop of clear waters and mountains.
I just want to find her and see Tahoe through her eyes. Watch her drink it in and discover it. Let her sink into the waters and let down her burdens.
And her hair. I want to see that neat bun she wears come down and spill over her shoulders, soft brown waves wet at the tips from swimming.
But I resist the urge to chase after her and Madeline. I force myself out on the deck. They’ll come when they’re done exploring.
The lakehouse is perched right at the edge of Emerald Bay state park, a perk reserved for only the titled and high-born, to have property so close to public lands.
Because public lands are only public at our allowance. I step outside into the sunshine, and the lake stretches out in front of me, mountains sloping in the distance. I could disappear here, into this simple, quiet, still world. I rarely, if ever, entertain here. There are no people to please, nobody to be concerned over whether they’re upset with their seatmate at dinner. There are no scheming nobles, nobody with a barely-titled daughter trying to foist her off on my younger brothers.
And there is nobody to disturb myself or Madeline.
An unholy shriek splits the air behind me, and the temporary hellion that has replaced my daughter pounds out onto the wooden deck, her feet bare. She’s already in a swimsuit. Eva follows her and gives me a brief smile, a towel over her arm and a bottle of sunscreen in one hand.
“No running,” she calls to Maddie, but it’s a lost cause. Madeline is already half-way down the dock that stretches into the crystal waters, right up to a diving board mid-way along it. She doesn’t even stop, barely making the sharp turn without toppling.
The diving board hardly bends under her weight and she’s popping off the end, water splashing up into the sky as she breaks the surface.
There’s a muffled curse behind me, and I raise an eyebrow at the lifeguard, a young man I haven’t met before, who goes running down the dock after Maddie.
“Is that alright?” Eva asks me, uncertain, about to step off the deck and onto the dock to follow.
“He’ll make sure she’s fine,” I say, and then gesture to one of the lounge chairs, wooden and stained with a deep red gloss and made more comfortable with a cushion. “Can I get you a tea?” I ask, and her eyes widen in surprise.
This isn’t Los Angeles.
