Even though I saw her fallen face in my dreams, I’d been too selfish, too mired in my own shit to think about how that must have hurt her. I’d spent the last few weeks rubbing salt in her wound.
She set down her violin, inclining her head. To clap now would be to break the moment.
Instead, I turned to the piano and started to play.
I hadn’t prepared anything, but it was as if her composition was perfectly designed for me, for my style. I picked up on the theme of her piece, expanding and deepening it, giving it more emotional punch at just the right moments. I wanted to look, to see her reaction, but I knew that if I broke my focus, I’d lose the magic that wrapped around my fingers.
I gave her this music, this piece of me. With every note, I tried to say words that had never fallen from my tongue before.
I’m sorry. I miss you.
I need you.
I finished with a flourish, my fingers sweeping the air. I dared to look up. Faye stood in place, her fingers clutching the neck of her violin like she was about to break it in two.
I raised an eyebrow. “You like it?”
She nodded.
I patted the stool. “Come sit beside me.”
Faye hesitated, a million arguments playing out in her eyes. Her shadow side won, because she walked across the room like she was in a trance and sank onto the cushion beside me.
Where our knees touched, heat flared through my skin, leaping between us. I debated my options.
She’d look amazing bent over the piano, her dark hair spread out across the keys as she writhed in ecstasy—
No.I tried to ignore the throbbing in my cock. In the library, I broke through her defenses. I’d seen her stripped bare, vulnerable. She hated me for it because she believed she’d shown weakness, given ground to me that she couldn’t take back. I had to show her that her arrival at Manderley had shaken me.
I took a deep breath. My fingers touched the keys. With a single hand, I played a little ditty, the kind of thing we used to invent together all the time when we were kids.
“Do you remember that day you came over to my house?” She nodded. “I didn’t tell you, but it was the last time I ever celebrated my birthday. That guy who interrogated you – Father Aaron – he’s not my uncle. He’s a… he used to be a priest, but he was kicked out of the church for his extremist views, so he formed his own religion. My mother was his first and most loyal convert.”
Faye looked surprised. I think of all the things she expected me to say, this wasn’t it. “She wore this long robe…” she remembered.
“Yes. All Aaron’s disciples wear those robes unless they are in public. They weave and sew the cloth themselves. Aaron believes that humans have become disconnected from nature and the heartbeat of Mother Earth, so his cult is all about returning to that. At first, he spent a lot of time at our house, then he seemed to have an opinion on everything my parents did, then I got back from a residency in London and he’d moved in permanently.
“Aaron only targets the super-rich. When he discovered my musical talents, I became a key part of his plan. He saw a way to get his message out to many wealthy people – through my music. He took over decisions about my career. He uses my parents to control me, and me to control them. And that’s where you come in.”
Faye looked shocked. “Me?”
“At first, my parents were happy that we were friends. They approved of your father’s rising career. They saw you as part of the plan. They actually went to your mother and offered her money if she would promise you’d marry me.”
Faye’s eyebrows shot up. “She never told me that.”
“She probably forgot about it. According to my mother, Marguerite de Winter laughed in their faces and told them where they could shove their money.”
“That sounds like her.” A smile tugged at the corner of Faye’s mouth, but it was quickly snatched away by that melancholy. “I can’t believe your parents tried to arrange your marriage. That’s barbaric.”
“That’s Father Aaron’s influence. That’s why I told you we couldn’t be friends anymore. I had to do it, or—” I caught myself in time.
“Or what?” Faye jabbed her fingers into the keys. “Dorien, or what?”
I opened my mouth and shut it again. I couldn’t. All these years of silence and indoctrination. I couldn’t break the bonds of my cage, not even for Faye, not even when I desperately wanted to.
Instead, I laid my hand over hers, my fingers pressing down on the keys, playing the notes of the Mahna Mahna song. Faye’s lips parted in a silent O of surprise and delight. She let her left hand wander down the keys, playing the chords that must have come to her like muscle memory.
“I can’t believe you remember this,” she whispered.
