Dr. Nelson left, and I pulled out my violin. I usually playedNigunfor my mother, but today, I was too on edge from the news to do that piece justice. Instead, I launched into Paganini’s Caprice No. 5, filling the room with brashness and light and fury as my thoughts whirled around me.
Poisoned.
My head spun. It didn’t make sense. It was something out of a bad murder mystery. Dr. Nelson seemed to believe it might be the fault of an unscrupulous herbal tea company, but there was another option. One I didn’t like to consider, but had to.
Someone could have laced my mother’s tea with poison. My first thought was her assistant, Natalie, who made the tea and who had long coveted a larger role in the company, but it could have been anyone with access to the storage room where the tea was kept.
But why would someone want to poison my mother?
* * *
The police came by later that day, and I gave them my statement and a list of names of people I remembered working at Mom’s company, as well as a description of the tea and its packaging. They took another statement from Dr. Nelson, then left me alone to play for Mom again.
Next thing I knew, Harrison rang to say he was downstairs. I packed away my violin and kissed her warm cheek. In the hallway, Dr. Nelson strode past, clipboard in hand. “Thank you,” I called out to her. “This is the first time in two years we’ve had anything like an answer.”
“I’ll call you if we learn anything else.” She patted my shoulder. “You play beautifully, by the way. Next time you visit, do you think you’d be interested in playing for some of our other patients? There’s not much to cheer them up around here – I think they’d love to hear beautiful music.”
“I’d love to.”
Outside, Harrison had parked in a pick-up zone right outside the doors. I slid into the backseat and gave a start as Dorien’s features came into view, emerging from the darkest corner of the limo. Seeing that smirk twisting across his lips and knowing my mother lay upstairs with poison in her veins tore me up inside. I couldn’t deal with any of his shit today.
“I finished with my chores early,” Harrison explained. “I even picked up a new lock for your room, which I’ll install as soon as we get back. I decided to swing out and pick Dorien up first, to give you a little more time with your mother.”
I nodded, a lump forming in my throat. I wanted to thank Harrison, but if I opened my mouth, I’d burst into tears, and I refused to cry in front of Dorien.
“Would you like your music on again?” Harrison asked as we pulled out of the parking lot.
“No thanks.” I sunk back into my seat, my mind still reeling from Dr. Nelson’s news and the statement I’d just given to the police.
Across from me, Dorien’s eyes flicked to mine, their deviant depths plunging into me, trying to draw out my secrets. “What’s got your tongue?”
I ignored him.
Dorien leaned forward, clasping his hands together and resting his elbows on his open knees, giving me this tantalizing glimpse of his toned thighs, of the buttons on his crotch tugging at their seams. Those eyes swept over me, and for a moment I was back in the practice room at Madame Usher’s New York City school, with Dorien grinning wickedly at me from behind the piano.
Back when things were simple.
I shook my head. He wasn’t getting his hands on this secret. He already knew too much about me, had too tight a grip on my heart. But Dorien never took no for an answer. His eyes tugged at mine. In their fathomless depths stirred all sorts of depraved and deviant things, all the rumors and stories of his exploits, all the promise of what I might feel in his expert hands. I could forget myself in Dorien’s eyes, and I had to be careful because right now that thought was way too tempting.
“You’re upset.” His words burned my skin like fire. It wasn’t a question. “Is it your mom?”
“You don’t care.”
“Faye…” The way his mouth lifted up at the edges as he spoke my name, and how his eyes revealed the deviant thoughts he kept for his own amusement…fuck. I’d tell him all my darkest secrets if that look was really for me.
“I’ll tell you about my mom if you tell me why your house is surrounded in barbed wire,” I shot back.
Just like that, his eyes turned to stone. Dorien leaned back, folding his arms over his chest, walling himself up in a private prison. And although I was grateful for the space from him, part of me longed for him to break through what bound him and tell me what he was hiding, so that I could break too, and share the pain I carried by myself for so long.
But it was not to be. We drove the entire way back to Manderley in stony silence, regarding each other with wariness from opposite ends of the limo while Harrison’s warning played over in my head.
Who are you, Dorien Valencourt? What do you have to hide?
Chapter Twenty
Faye
My days at Manderley faded into each other – one lonely hour after the next. The students continued to ignore me. At mealtimes they’d talk around me, filling the room with news of their upcoming recitals and visits with friends. Most nights one of them would shuffle around in the storage room to keep me awake. I bet they took turns – they always emerged for breakfast so well rested, whereas I looked like a crack panda 24/7.
