She clenched her jaw. “Thank you, Mr. Crowne.”
She bit out her safe word. I could see the words in her head. All the shit she wouldn’t say. I wanted it. I missed it like fucking air.
Call me on my shit.
She eyed the sucker in my mouth, and my grip tightened. I wondered how she was handling everything. While the du Lacs had stopped the video on traditional media, we were all over the internet. After my first scandal, I didn’t go online for a month. The only thing that got me through it was poetry.
She said I had a mask…Story was stone. I couldn’t fucking read her. It was driving me insane. I wanted to pull her aside. Demand she let me in.
Rip the pain from her perfect lips.
“There’s a servant entrance around back,” Lottie said, cutting through the moment like a knife. I quickly dropped her, swiping my hand across my pants.
“Follow them to my room and bring me back my house shoes.”
Snitch mumbled a “Yes, Mrs. Crowne” and followed two servants through the archway into the home. They weren’t dressed in a traditional maid uniform, as Mother would insist on, but in dusty gray-blue uniforms you might see the maids wear at hotels, complete with starched white collars.
“I thought you agreed you weren’t bringing her.”
Lottie didn’t look at me. “She said she wanted to come.”
I don’t want to believe my wife would lie to me. That I was corrupting sweet, pure Lottie.
But I can’t believe Snitch would willingly leave her uncle.
“I still don’t see why you wanted to bring her.”
“Let me get my girl back and I wouldn’t,” Lottie sniped.
I arched a brow at Lottie. Lottie never sniped. “You don’t think it’s going to raise questions, cause more drama, when she’s here?”
Lottie flexed her jaw.
“I just—”
“You really have no idea all the things that I have to do on my own, do you?” She spun on me, eyes flared. “What’s expected of me? Do you think I wanted this? You asked me to have your mistress as my girl.”
“She’s not my—”
“Pumpkin!”
Lottie’s glare lingered on me a moment longer; then she swiped it away with a serene smile, turning to her father. Chills ran up my spine.
I knew that smile.
My mother wore that smile.
“Daddy!” Lottie returned Mr. du Lac’s hug with a stiffness I knew too well.
All warmth drained from Mr. du Lac’s body when he turned to me.
“Grayson,” he said. I noted how he didn’t extend a hand to me, but I wasn’t surprised Mr. du Lac already wasn’t very fond of me, and punching his son and humiliating his daughter at her wedding…sure didn’t help.
I inclined my head. “Mr. du Lac.”
Arthur du Lac was tall like his son, with the same hot chocolate complexion as his children, and as with everyone in this world…he had too much goddamn power.
He gave me a stiff smile, then returned his attention to his daughter, as my mother and sister’s town car pulled up behind us. My grandfather would join us later, for the holiday only, of course.
Two servants appeared, opening the doors for them. My mother stepped outside.
“Lynette,” my mother said, giving a cursory glance to the estate. “Your house is lovely, as always.”
Tansy Crowne and Lynette du Lac did not get along. Their rivalry went back decades to when they were teenagers.
“Do we get our own bags or…” my mother asked, taking off her riding gloves and looking around expectantly.
“Of course we don’t have the pomp and circumstance of Crowne Hall, but our humble home can manage to get your luggage and take them to your rooms.”
Like magic, more servants appeared, chipping at the mountain of luggage for the weekend stay, piled high before the sprawling patchwork green lawn and thousand-gallon fountain that marked their humble estate.
We followed the du Lacs inside.
My mother and my sister followed their luggage up to their rooms, and then it was just Lottie and her mother and I alone in their grand foyer.
Lottie took off her sunhat and held it in her hands. Mrs. du Lac narrowed on the action.
“Where is your girl?” Mrs. Du Lac asked. “Your girl should be getting that for you.”
Lottie shifted, obviously uncomfortable. “Uh…”
Snitch still hadn’t returned. Was she lost?
“You don’t know?” Mrs. du Lac arched a brow.
“No, I—”
“She doesn’t listen to you?”
Lottie paled. “She listens to me. I just…I gave her the morning off. After traveling, you know.”
“You gave her the morning off?” Mrs. du Lac’s barely noticeable brow lift let us know that she did not approve.
“Lottie is being humble,” I said, wrapping my arm around her waist. “She forgot to mention it wasn’t her decision. It was mine.”
This was what a husband did. Defend his wife. Stood by her side.
Mrs. du Lac’s gaze slowly, deliberately, landed on me. “How thoughtful.”
Mrs. du Lac left and Lottie quickly shoved herself off me. Betrayal etched her features, lips parted. She looked like she was going to talk, but then she swallowed and shook her head, following after her mother.
STORY
Lottie had told me to follow the servants and bring back her house shoes, but I was lost. The du Lac servants had taken me inside the home, and that was it. They weren’t like Crowne servants with our rigid codes.
The du Lacs were a different breed of rich people. If Crowne Hall was stuck in the Victorian era, then the du Lacs never left the Gilded Age.
“Angel?”
I stiffened at the voice and kept walking, as if that would stop a guy like West du Lac. A moment later, his hand encircled my bicep, and he tugged me back.
“What are you doing in Asheville?”
“I’m here until the Crownes go home.”
He quirked a brow. “You’ve never been to my neck of the woods before.”
You never brought me.
I shrugged.
He dropped me and looked around, mischief lighting up his eyes. “I guess I owe you a tour.”
I’d always seen West at Crowne Hall, so even when we were teenagers, he dressed nicely, whether it was a suit or expensive designer clothes. Today he wore a cutoff shirt and athletic shorts, as though he’d just been working out.
The sight twisted my stomach.
It was…oddly intimate.
“I’m working.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m so late. I can’t find Lottie’s room.”
His brow furrowed, then he gripped my wrist.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re in the wrong part of Du Lac Manor. Let me show you, and if I happen to give you a tour along the way…”
I tugged my wrist free. “She’s probably out there waiting for me!” I dragged two hands over my face, clammy, stomach filled with knots, as ridiculous tears clogged my throat. Picturing Lottie waiting there had my heartbeat rising. I just wanted to do my job and not give her any more reasons to hate me.
Give me any more reasons to hate myself.