“Never mind.” I couldn’t tell him how scared I was. Once upon a time, I’d been at dinner parties like this every weeknight. Vincent and I were invited to everything, and I blazed confidently through every gallery opening, every first night performance, every jubilee and centenary ball.
Now, I was an outcast. Persona non grata. A poor, pathetic, sad old lady—the crazy ex-wife who had losteverything. I was someone to be pitied, someone to be avoided in case the humiliation and shame were catching.
I was still me. The confident, happy Susan was still inside me somewhere. She’d just been beaten, bloody and raw, until she was almost dead. I just had to find her again.
Donovan moved closer and took my arm. “Come, Chosen. I am with you.”
Chapter
Seventeen
Professor Owen’s maid, Gladioli, stood on the steps outside the manor house, silhouetted by the light of the open door behind her. “Hello, Mrs. Susan!” She waved happily as Donovan, and I walked up the long driveway.
“Hi, Gladioli!” I waved back, then did a double take. It sounded like Gladioli. She was wearing her usual uniform—pressed black knee-length skirt, crisp white shirt, black tie, sensible shoes— but she looked… different. She was a foot shorter than I remembered, and her skin was creased with a billion more wrinkles than usual. Her nose and chin were so long, they almost met in the middle of her face.
Her gray hair was green. My footsteps faltered.
Donovan felt me hesitate and squeezed my hand gently. “She is a brownie.”
I spoke out of the corner of my mouth as we walked towards her. “How the hell did I not notice that before?”
“You did,” he murmured back. “Your eyes saw her. Your mind may have refused to comprehend what you were seeing.”
The brownie waved me forward excitedly, and I got over her odd appearance quickly. I kissed her on both cheeks. “It’s good to see you, Glad.”
“I was worried you would never come back, Mrs. Susan,” she said happily. “I missed you. None of the Professor’s guests ever offered to help with the washing up before. You were the first.”
“And, if I recall correctly, you threatened to stab me in the chest with a dessert spoon and carve out my heart if I so much as picked up one plate,” I said fondly.
“Of course I did. It was a terrible insult to me.” She grinned back. “I would have done it, too.” Her eyes drifted upwards, taking in Donovan’s blisteringly handsome presence. Her lip curled in disgust. “I see you have mated again. Ugh. He is infinitely more disgusting than your last one.”
I blinked. “Ah…”
“Well met, Brownie,” Donovan rumbled. “I swear on my life, I have not laid eyes on an uglier creature than the one who stands before me right now.”
“Donovan!” I gasped.
Gladioli’s sneer disappeared, and she grinned, preening like a little girl with a pretty dress. “You are welcome here, sir.” She bowed. “Please, go on in. The Professor is receiving his guests in the antechamber.”
We walked inside. “What was that about?”
“Brownie diplomacy,” Donovan murmured softly as we walked down a massive, red-paneled hallway lined with portraits of stuffy people peering down their noses at us. “Their beauty standards are the opposite to ours.”
“So… you just told her that she is the prettiest creature you’ve ever seen?”
“Essentially, yes.” A hint of a smile lifted the hard line of his lips. “And she thinks I am more handsome than your husband.”
“Ex-husband,” I corrected. And he was. By miles. Donovan was the most beautiful and terrifying man I’d ever seen in my life. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t my date; we were here on a mission. My stomach churned again. “Speaking of ex-husbands, there might be a few people?—”
“Susan!”
I looked. Professor Owen waved at me from an alcove up ahead, just before the closed doors of what I remembered was the formal dining room.
I smiled. Dean Owen looked like a living definition of a “wacky professor.” Small and slight, bordering on skinny, dark-skinned, with scruffy white hair and a long white beard that brushed his chest, the professor wore a purple velvet three-piece suit, the waistcoat embroidered with what looked like tiny, stylized vaginas. A massive rottweiler sat at his feet, panting. A little puddle of drool lay underneath Bonbon’s mouth.
The professor waved us forward. The massive hallway seemed almost a whole football field long. The manor house was obviously a Domicile. How had I not noticed it before?
Just before we reached him, his eyes swiveled towards Donovan, and they widened in shock. His mouth moved, and he muttered under his breath. I caught the words as they echoed towards us.
