“Morning, trash. Sleep well?”
I whirled around. Dorien leaned against his doorframe, wearing only a pair of boxers and a smirk that would raise the Titanic from the bottom of the ocean. The saliva dried on my tongue as I glimpsed the tattoos dancing across his naked skin.Don’t give him the satisfaction of looking. That’s exactly what he wants—
Yeah, turns out I have no self-control. My eyes swept over the hard lines of his torso. Dorien was sin itself – his unearthly angelic beauty hid the bitter pride and desolate state of his soul. I paused at the Gothic lettering spelling out a Latin phrase across his chest.In Cauda Venenum.
So different from the boy I’d known, and yet exactly how I’d pictured him. Dorien was always destined to be a rebel. Being the Bad Boy of Baroque was written in his future from the very first time he put red paint on Madame Usher’s chair.
Why do the bad boys have to grow up so damn fine?
“No ghosts visit you in the night?” Dorien lifted one perfect eyebrow.
“Fuck you.” I stormed past him. His scent hit me – the dark heart of cinnamon and frankincense, dappled with sweet violets. Pure lust shot with innocence. I longed to drown in that scent, to allow it to pull me under even as it warned me that I could lose myself in its depths. “And stay out of my room.”
Dorien’s cruel laughter followed me down the stairs.
* * *
Over a breakfast of granola, Greek yogurt, and frozen berries (if the students thought they were getting bacon from me every morning, they had another thing coming) Madame Usher informed us that Dimitri Solokov – the producer of the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra – would dine at Manderley on Friday.
“Following your private lessons, gather in the ballroom this afternoon. You will each perform your best concerto for Master Radcliffe, who will choose one student to perform for Master Solokov.”
My heart pounded. I’d only been at Manderley one night, and already Madame Usher dangled an incredible opportunity in front of me. To have Dimitri Solokov rapt by a solo performance… that was a fucking big deal. Even when Mom was rich enough to send me to the prep-school and my private lessons, I could never even hope for that kind of connection.
The other students continued shoveling food into their mouths as if Solokov’s presence was no big deal, as if bombshells like this dropped every week. Maybe they did.
I’ve walked into a whole other world.
Madame Usher rose, indicating breakfast was over. I rose, too, circling the table to collect the plates. As the students filed out of the dining room on the way to composition class, Titus drew up beside me, his broad shoulders blocking the door so I had to slow my step to avoid crashing into him. Damn, that boy wasfine –that buzzed haircut with the cornrows down the middle, tied away from his face so they flowed down his back, the body of a freight train if locomotives modeled Calvin Klein, and those eyes of fire and brimstone. If Dorien was the Lord of Hell, then Titus was Demon-at-Arms. Too bad he’d already decided which side he fell on. He leaned in close to whisper in my ear, “Don’t even bother showing up today. Fingering like yours is only good for strangling cats.”
I didn’t dignify Titus with an answer, but I shot him a look that I hope articulated how little I cared what he thought. His words only made me more determined to succeed.
His lips curled back into a smile. It wasn’t warm exactly – the same fire in his eyes flickered across his face. “You drool in your sleep. It’s adorable.”
The words slammed into me. I stopped in my tracks, my body rigid. Behind me, Heather swore as she crashed into me. She shoved me aside without a word and stomped away. My head spun.
Titus was in my room. He watched me while I was asleep. Now he’s smiling at me like that’s not creepy at all.
He could have doneanything. Fear rippled through me – a fear born of uncertainty, of knowing I was at the bottom of the food chain and these guys could do anything they liked to me without consequences. Clearly, they planned to do just that.
An image flashed in my mind – a maid in the same scratchy wool dress I now wore, crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, her neck bent at an impossible angle. Titus opened his mouth to say something else, but I shoved my way past him and fled toward the kitchen.
As I rounded the corner, my chest heaving, I glanced back over my shoulder and noticed Dorien glaring at Titus, who shrugged and pushed past his friend on his way to the practice rooms.Weird. What’s that about?
In the kitchen, I dumped the crockery into the dishwasher without rinsing it. I had no time to collect myself, to reel from what I’d just learned. I splashed cold water on my face and rushed to the Red Room in the turret for composition. Master Radcliffe had already started the class. No one acknowledged me as I took my seat at the end of a semi-circle surrounding the piano.
For the next three hours, I forgot all about the shitty students and the note on my mirror and the scratchy dress and even Mom’s illness. Music could do that to me – it was my escape from reality. Composition wasn’t my strongest area, but the way Master Radcliffe explained and demonstrated the concepts held me rapt. When he played through a short piece he’d composed in the moment, tears sprung in my eyes. If I could be evenhalfas good as him, I’d be a world-renownedMaestra.
I had to leave the class early to prepare lunch. It sucked dragging my ass from the chair and leaving the others to soak up the final minutes of Master Radcliffe’s wisdom.
Yesterday, I’d hurriedly scheduled a food delivery. When I entered the kitchen, the table groaned under the weight of the bags. Harrison moved through the space, making the low kitchen seem smaller somehow as he shifted the meat and frozen vegetables into the chest freezer in the pantry.
“Thank you for helping.” He’d just saved me a ton of time, and I know he was busy repairing the hole I made in the porch.
“’Tis my pleasure.” Harrison dusted off his hands on his filthy overalls. “It’s nice to have a break from the weeding. How are you finding the school?”
“It’s… different.” I flopped a salmon fillet onto the chopping block, wishing I was slapping the wet fish across Dorien’s smug mouth or Ivan’s icicle stare or Titus’ glorious cheekbones.
“Those students are giving you trouble.” It wasn’t a question.
