“I’m going out on a limb here and suggesting you don’t want to go on a date with Mr Goldsmith?” Isaac takes a step closer to me, his voice low.
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
He laughs, shakes his head. “I just want you to know that this wasn’t my idea.”
I feel the fire blaze through me. “What isn’t your idea?”
He nods towards William. “Him.”
“Aren’t you his advisor?”
“Apparently. Though he’s difficult to advise.”
“You have a nickname of the ‘kingmaker’.” I adjust my dress. Right now, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a form of torture designed by some grumpy country. “You were instrumental in Goldsmith being chosen to lead the party. I assume it’s your job to keep him there?”
Isaac smiles, nods. He’s still tanned from his few days in Antigua. “It is. But I can only have so much influence.”
“You’re looking for a wife for him?”
“He’s looking for a wife for himself. Yes, being in a committed relationship will help his image. We have a general election in a year’s time – how he presents himself will be key to how the party performs.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the type to settle down.” We’re both watching the Prime Minister as he talks to Lennox, the two of them laughing at something. Friends, or so it seems.
“He isn’t, but he knows he’ll have to be.”
Those eyes.
“Have you ever been to Seattle?” I’m done talking about William. I know what the plan is, they’re hoping we’ll have a mutually convenient relationship, even if it’s just the show of one.
“Yes.” Isaac’s eyes burn. He rubs the dark stubble on his chin. “Twice.”
I bring my finger to my mouth and suck on the end.
His eyes are now on fire.
It was him I saw. In Seattle. In a club furnished with benches and whips and depravity that tames the beast that lives within us all.
I was on my knees in front of another man, his cock in my mouth, his hand in my hair, careful not to move my mask. Isaac was concealed in darkness, his face hidden with a mask of his own. Another of his identities.
As the man whose cock I sucked pulled out and came over my breasts, it was Isaac’s eyes I was watching, seeing the approval in them. The want.
He knows.
He knows it was me.
“It’s a good city. Good coffee. We’re you there for business or pleasure?”
“Both.”
* * *
Midnight crawls in unnoticed by most. A pianist is lost in her music. The bartenders are mainly pouring Scotch by now, all pretence of cocktails evaporated. Two men talk with two blondes at a card table, one has his hand on her leg and I suspect that a deal has been struck and the night will end with all parties satisfied. A pretty blonde is a prop every single politician seems to require.
I answer politely the questions posed by the wives of two of William’s guests, conversations I could have in my sleep, and I move away from the library to seek the guest area where I’m staying, my room next to Ben’s, Lennox’s nearby. The Scottish quarters. Tomorrow it’ll be decontaminated by some of William’s household.
The central hallway is quiet, the time that vortex between evening and sleep, where people find their ways back to their secrets and the things they do behind closed doors. I find the corridor I remember running down as a child with Claire, our bare feet skidding over the tiles now replaced with thick carpet.
My shoes are in my hand and the zip to my dress is undone part way down my back, enabling me to actually breathe for the first time this evening. I want a shower and my bed, and tomorrow I want to leave early, which isn’t going to happen as William is keen to show me around the gardens.
