The slab of meat beating in her rib cage leadened and sank to her feet as she pulled out her phone and drafted a text message to Daniel. Pin digging deeper in her other hand, she typed the words sealing her fate forever.
Hey,there’s this ball on Saturday… Do you want to come with me? I’d love for everyone to meet you.
Chapter Twenty
Samantha Dubarry dressed herself for the ball as if preparing for her own execution. Downstairs, she heard her brother furiously pounding out some music on the piano—a habit he had when he was anxious or trying to think through a problem—but the song mutated into the pounding of a hangman’s drum, every strike on the keys bringing her one step closer to the inevitable. To the end.
Her choice of gown—a black floor-length A-line—absorbed all light and reflected her mood. Somber. Serious. From the last stroke of her mascara wand to the last turn of Daniel’s wheels in front of Pembrooke, where the ball was being held, she repeated a small refrain, letting it guide and focus her wayward mind.Animos. Father. Animos. Father. Family. Family. Family.All the while, she combatted the sight of Daniel in his tuxedo and the scent of his aftershave with memories of her childhood. Father’s Day events at school with no one to bring. Empty Christmas cards. Lonely afternoons where she basically raised herself on a diet of dry cereal and the lessons delivered by TV dads.
Her younger self would finally be satisfied. Only one tiny heartbreak stood in her way.
“You all right?”
Pembrooke Manor belonged to Captain’s family. If she ever wanted to really twist the knife into him, Samantha might have pointed out the fact his family’s home was almost two hundred years younger than hers, it only had half the number of rooms, or they’d only hosted the Queenonce, but tonight was about playing nice. Playing by the rules. And not having a repeat of—or even thinking about—the supper at the pub.
It wasn’t Ashbrooke, but it was a fine British manor house with Downton Abbey charm of its own. Little did the two hundred or so finely appointed guests know this entire party was a ruse, a construction of wineglasses and shrimp forks built so a handful of young men could judge one another’s dates.
God. She wanted to throw up.
“Sam?” he asked again.
“Why wouldn’t I be all right?” she said, lying through her teeth as they entered the ballroom, arm in arm.
“You look nervous.” Daniel’s concern was a bullet she couldn’t dodge. But she could shrug off the pain.
“Should I be?”
She laughed as though her joke was amusing and led Daniel straight into the fray. The Animos men huddled around themselves, clinging to their dates and pushing them to dizzying heights of embarrassing ridiculousness, all with charming smiles on their smug faces. Samantha planted herself here, throwing back champagne after champagne. In this middle of a crowd, Daniel could occupy himself with other people, and he did. There were no requests for a dance or sweet mutterings about how beautiful she looked. He tried to fit in, joining in obnoxious conversation for a good, long while.
“These guys aren’t what I expected,” he muttered in her ear.
“How so?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged and assessed the collection of women. Sam looked, too. Some “too” tall, some “too” short, some “too” wide, some with crooked teeth and “too” loud laughs. These were the kind of friends Daniel collected and the Animos men were humiliated to be in the same room with. “I thought they’d all be with bleach-blond model types, realMade in Chelseawomen. These women are normal. Human.”
“Mm-hmm.” Sam couldn’t bring herself to agree with him because he was right. These mendidonly go out withMade in Chelseastick figures with wallets wider than their waists. His assessment of them was correct; they were vapid, cruel men who called their only female friendPiggy. What Daniel saw today was a performance of humility, the con before the storm that was to come. “Will you excuse me?”
Before he could answer, she ducked away to the nearest bar. She needed to be drunker. Way drunker. Infinity times drunker. There was no hard liquor, only wines and champagnes, so she reached for the nearest glasses and set herself to throwing them back. One glass. Two glasses. Three glasses.
“You’re thirsty,” the bartender snarked.
Four glasses.
“It’s going to be a long night.”
Intoxication had been her goal in coming to the bar, but she left with nothing more than a throbbing headache and black spots populating her vision.
“Back room,” Captain muttered as he passed her, his date firmly on his arm. “Ten minutes.”
“We’ll be there,” she replied, continuing on to the slowly dispersing group of Animos members, only to find Daniel decidedly missing. When no one could tell her where he’d run off to, she scanned the room for him, picking apart clumps of party guests until she spotted his tall form. There, tucked in the corner of the room, was the six-piece band, sighing their way through some maddeningly calm neoclassical ballads. As the man plucked and strummed, Daniel chatted to the guitar player. She didn’t recognize him from the bookshop’s open mic nights, but Daniel spoke like they were old friends.
For a few of the song’s movements, she surveyed him. His quiet grace and open friendliness. This, she realized, was the last time she’d get to see him this way, so she waited for him to turn, giving herself one last gift of time with him. Eventually, he returned to her.
“What were you doing?” she asked, not unkindly.
“I”—he held the word, clearly searching for a lie he could scrape together—“had a question about where he got his strings. What’s up?”
“There’s a more private room in the back. Join me?”
