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“Magic words,” I admonish Maddie gently as I climb in the car. She blinks at me, frowning.
“Are you crying?” She asks, suddenly, as the driver shuts the door behind me and walks around to the front.
“No—“ I turn away from her, to the window, grabbing for my seatbelt, and stroke my thumb across my cheek. Warmth, dampness, greets me.
Iamcrying.
And as I see the duke disappear inside the house, I know why.
Because I have no idea what he is thinking, and he brings up a storm of confusion inside of me so great it threatens to destroy me. My fingers drag on the glass as we pull away. And I havenobody but myself to blame for it.
It’ll always,always,be like Paris.
The flight home is uneventful.The house party has dispersed, and Mrs. Harris is pleased to see Madeline and me ordering us upstairs to have hot baths.
“I’ll take care of her tonight,” she offers to me, “you look positively wrung out.”
I sink beneath the bubbles of my bath in my private bathroom with a sigh and dutifully guide my mind away from thinking of him. Sleep steals over me when I finally drag myself, pruny and bone-warm, to bed.
Clatter! Clash-crash!!
I wake up to noise in the hallway much to early to be alive. Blinking blearily, I sneak next door to Madeline’s room, peeking in at her.
Batter-crack!
I am going to fucking murder whoever is making that noise. Thankfully Madeline has slept through it because it’s six in the morning. My whole body is one big ache from not enough sleep, but I get into my uniform and throw my hair back into a pony-tail, ready to face the day, no matter how early it’s begun, disappearing into the shadows of the night any thought of the duke, or the way he touches me.
Outside in the hall, I’ve got my best frown on, and my hands on my hips, ready to rip a strip and down the body of whoever’s making the noise.
There’s two of the footmen, moving in and out of one of the larger bedrooms, and I glare at them. They’re carrying furniture, and trunks with them, a range of things set outside the door.
“What’s going on?” I ask in a hush as I walk up to them as they see me and stop, setting down their burdens. They exchange a look.
“You’d better get downstairs, Mrs. Harris is about to have a heart-attack,” says Jonah. I glance at the accumulated furniture and personal effects. None of it looks familiar to me. There’s a velvet chaise, deep red, almost blood-red, a collection of peacock feathers in an inky-black vase, and a stack of hat-boxes, all in deep blue.
“Whatever this is, it can wait until Lady Madeline is awake,” I say, knowing now I have a bit more authority, at least in this area. “So go make yourselves useful elsewhere for now.” They’re both red in the face, so a break would probably be welcome. I have no idea where they’ve been hauling all of these things from.
“Right, but when Mrs. Harris yells at me for stopping work, I’ll let her know it was your fault,” Reggie says, while Jonah punches him in the shoulder. I throw my eyes up to the ceiling and then back at the two of them.
“And if you wake Lady Madeline up, we’ll all pay. So go. Now.” I make a shooing motion at them and they begrudgingly leave the hallway. I give the collection of things one last look. It’s a mess out here, but they’ll keep for now.
When I emerge down in the servant’s hall for breakfast, safe in the knowledge that Madeline will likely sleep another few hours before waking, I walk right into the thick of the chaos.
“How was I to know they’d return so early?” Mrs. Harris is saying to Mrs. Waters, the household manager, as they stand at the long dining table, a laptop out and two cellphones on the wooden table-top, showing a travel itinerary. “The last we had from Lady Ruby and hervalaidwas that they’d be gone for the rest of the month on tour.” She turns as I walk in and gives me a harried but welcoming smile. I’m grateful that whatever fuss is being kicked up right now is going to distract me from… the duke. My face warms just remembering. I need to watch myself. It feels like Paris is shadowing me, old choices I promised I’d never make again are happening all over. How can I be so helpless to my own mind? It’s my worst enemy. Can we pretend that we never touched?
The way he looked at me before I left Tahoe says no.
I’m so fucked. Without having been actually fucked.
“Oh good, you’re here,” Mrs. Harris turns to me, her skirts swishing. She looks more like Mrs. Harried this morning, bags under her eyes that I’m going to be nice andnotpoint out. Nobody likes being told they look tired. Ask me how I know, as both giver and receiver of those words in the past.
“There was noise in the hall, I though it was going to wake up my lady,” I say, and funny how weeks ago using those titles seemed so formal and distant, and now I say it casually. Like it’s normal for me to be in this world. As if I belong.
The duke’s whore.
My cheeks flame alive, and I swallow hard, hoping Mrs. Harris doesn’t notice. What is wrong with me?
I’m not. I’m not those horrible names, those bad words. I’ve seen the duke as he really is, haven’t I? And…
