This time I move to her, place my hand on her back and take hold of a lock of curled hair between two fingers, playing softly with it. Her shoulders relax and she breaths, letting out air she’s probably been holding in since we raced down the corridor.
“I know you didn’t choose this.”
She turns and looks at me, eyes blue and are wide like the Cornish sea in summer. “I have a choice, Isaac. There’s always a choice.”
She stands up and walks away from the door, heading to where there’s a sofa that’s more comfortable than styled and sits down on it. Her shoulders sag and she holds her face in her hands, her elbows stabilised on her knees.
I watch her from my side of the room, uncertain of what move to play next.
The door opens and Micky enters, his shirt untucked and his face devoid of its usual scowl. “The place is secured. One intruder is no longer of this earth. We think another two have managed to escape.”
“How?”
“We don’t know. The fucking cameras were disabled. Someone exited through the gallery window on the ground floor. Their footprints are in the mud outside; just one set.” He looks seriously pissed.
“What makes you think there was a third person?” I can see Micky’s folded arms stiffening, his mouth a tight line.
“The man who ended up near this door was blocked at the west entrance but everyone is accounted for. Someone closed the door and barricaded it. Stopped him from getting out.” His brow creases.
“Who’s the man who’s dead?”
Micky shrugs. “I’d like to say I care. We’ll find out. For now we’re on alert. Or rather the next shift is. I’m going to bed.” He looks at Blair. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll go through what we know.”
She stands up, her shoes in her hand and walking barefoot. “My dad. Is he okay?”
Micky doesn’t move. “He doesn’t know anything’s happened. He asked how you looked tonight and what the speeches were like.”
“I’m going to visit him before I go to bed.” She turns to me. “I’ll see you in my suite?”
“Of course.” I watch her leave, Micky behind her, and I stay lost in thoughts that don’t stay still enough for me to understand any of them.
* * *
I head back to my room first, wanting to lose the suit I’ve worn and shower before seeing Blair again. It’s the same room as last time, and the time before and it reminds me of Ben. Sometimes every place I go reminds me of him and the emptiness that’s there when he isn’t.
The shower is hot and the water pressure hard. I make the most of a few minutes of quiet, where I can be lost in the sound of the water and the hit of it on my skin. When I head out of the bathroom into the room, it’s cooler, the window open and the curtain blowing in the night breeze.
There’s an envelope by my pillow, one that wasn’t there before. My name is on the front, printed in capitals in a script I haven’t seen before but I recognise anyway.
I don’t open it.
I don’t need to know what it says.
Ben
I’ve left twice before but this time I think it could kill me. The sun rises in four hours and it’s enough time to put enough space between me and the castle and the list of questions that will come thick and fast from all angles should anyone see me.
The pines offer enough cover for me to slip away easily, the cameras are back on and the place secure. Micky will work out who was behind it, because there won’t be many people who know how to black out given cameras in a certain order or where the weak points are at given times. Micky will know it was me and will think I’m a traitor.
I pause under the pines and look towards the castle, most of the windows unlit and my eyes fall where I know Blair might stand, looking out over the loch, watching the water or whoever’s below.
Isaac is with her now. I saw him close the curtains at the window I’d left open. Saw his light go out and then the silhouette of him as he passed the glass that lined the corridor from the guest wing to the private suite of the next monarch of Scotland.
I know she’ll have kissed him when he got there. Know she’ll have gripped the tops of his shoulders as she did and then her palms will have slipped down his chest, resting on hard abs that he never had to work to maintain because years of surfing does that. She’ll have pushed her fingers under his shirt and grazed the tips across his chest, lingering around his nipples and he’d have taken back control before he could lose it all because Blair has that power to take everything.
She never needed the power because I’d have given it to her anyway.
I know he’ll have cupped her ass, his fingers close to her centre as he did, hands staying above her knickers. Her nipples will already be hard, waiting for him to touch them, taste them. Bite.
