“We’ll help.” Dorien gave a bitter laugh. “After all, servitude might be in my future.”
* * *
Dorien and Ivan carried their plates through to the kitchen while I wiped down the table. When I came back, they’d both tied frilly embroidered aprons over their dress shirts. Ivan filled the sink with hot water while Dorien tried to flick his ass with the tea towel.
“If you’re here to help, you need to actually help.” I pointed to the dishwasher. “Fill that, and give everything that doesn’t fit to Ivan.”
“Aye, aye, Kitchen Mussolini. And while we’re slaving away, what will you be doing?”
Pinching myself to make sure I’m not hallucinating this madness.“I’ve got to tidy the spice rack and fold the laundry.”
Having them in the kitchen was odd. A memory flashed in my mind – of a different kitchen, and a different boy. Dorien’s eyes widening as he took in the tiny confines of our shitty walk-up the first time he came over after music lessons. “Wow,” he bounded over to look at the colorful Mexican tiles my mother used to decorate the wall. “This place isso cool.”
I’d never thought of our little apartment as cool, especially not when I compared it to Dorien’s penthouse. I only went there once for his birthday, and it looked more like a Star Trek set than a home – everything glistening so white it hurt my eyes, his mother hovering over us in a floor-length brown robe with this creepy smile on her face, and that guy Dorien called Uncle Aaron grilling me about my father’s career while we ate a gross buckwheat birthday cake.
And Ivan… that guy looked like he was made to put on a pedestal to be worshipped in a pagan temple – hella distracting when one was trying to clean the counters. He moved around the kitchen with such quiet grace that I kept stopping to watch him and forgot what I was doing. He followed me into the laundry as I pulled the sheets out of the dryer and silently picked up the corners to help fold them. I worked hospitality jobs for long enough that I was pretty neat and tidy, but his military-straight corners fascinated me.
“I folded a lot of laundry as a boy,” he volunteered. “Lots of tourists visit our city because of its medieval buildings. Our mother would do laundry for the hotels for extra money. Elena and I had to go around to collect the dirty sheets, and return the clean linens.” That was the most words he ever said to me. Actually, the most words I heard him say toanyone.
“When did you come to the States?” I asked.
“We were eight years old. We played a recital in Bucharest. Elena… even then she played like no one else. Master and Madame Usher approached my parents afterward and offered to bring us both to the United States. They would act as our guardians and ensure we had the best education. They named a figure that had my father’s eyes bugging out of his head, and my parents agreed right there. They did not ask us what we wanted.” His eyes flashed with resentment. “We have been at Manderley now fifteen years.”
I knew we were skating around the crux of why he worried about Elena off on her own, but he wouldn’t reveal more. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. “How can youstandit?”
Ivan dropped his eyes to the sheet, which slid through his deft fingers as he folded it with precision. “It is not a matter of choice.”
I was puzzling over those words when Dorien poked his head around the corner. “Dishwasher is on. Is it time to play yet?”
“What’s the sudden interest in me?” The memory of our kiss scorched through my body. My toes curled into the floor. And then I flashed back to the weeks of ghosting, the rotten pranks, my violin in pieces on the bathroom sink, and I wanted to kick myself.
“Relax, Sprite. We’re just hanging out.” Dorien’s lips curled back into his signature smirk. “Unless you have a standing engagement with the resident ghost.”
At the wordghost, a flicker of panic crept up my spine. All the things I’d seen and heard and felt at Manderley that I couldn’t explain, that were connected to the Bad Boys of Baroque in some way… and here I was agreeing to spend time with them,alone.
I could just say no and return to my room and read a book or practice my Paganini.
Icouldsay no…
But standing between Ivan and Dorien, with their eyes locked on mine, no was not an option. I thought of my mother in her hospital bed, and her lifelong resolve to take every opportunity and seize the days while she still had them. I shrugged, hoping they couldn’t hear my heart pounding against my chest. “Sure.”
I followed the Muses down the hall. Dorien ducked into the Blue Room and pulled a bottle of Scotch from the cabinet. Tucking it under his arm, he led the way to the ballroom, shoving the double doors open to reveal the vast space, shrouded in cool, dappled light that peeked through the trees.
Ivan moved to light the silver candlesticks on the sideboard. I noticed someone had moved my violin case from the practice room to under the window, next to Ivan’s. Dorien sat down at the piano, his fingers sweeping over the keys as he pulled the stopper and took a swig straight from the bottle. “Play with us.”
The way he said it, with the corner of his mouth twisted up, purred through my body. I knew he wasn’t just talking about music. I held my hand out for the bottle. When Dorien pressed it into my fingers, his touch lingered on mine, and the pounding in my heart ratcheted up a notch.
I yanked the bottle away and took a deep swig. The alcohol burned the back of my throat and pooled warmth in my belly. The tiniest bit of my nerves slipped away. I slapped the bottle into Ivan’s outstretched hand and picked up my bow. “What are we playing?”
“Ladies’ choice,” Ivan said.
“What about the Broken Muses piece, ‘Confessions of an Opium Eater’?” All their pieces had weird titles like that, many referencing old gothic literature. I loved this piece because it was a perfect example of what Classical music could do – it transported you as the listener into a darkened corner of an opium den and sent you on a dizzying high before crashing you through the despair of addiction.
Dorien tapped the opening bar. “It’s not written for two violins.”
“I might have a few ideas about that.” I didn’t tell them that the notes haunted my dreams so much that I’d toyed with the composition.
Ivan nodded to Dorien and lifted his violin to his neck. Dorien’s part was low, the notes long, the sound reaching me deep in my belly. Ivan’s eyes locked on mine as he came in with the melody. He conjured the sweet scent of the drug, the air heady with smoke, the seductive promise of unexplored parts of the mind…
