“Nadine,” his father said. “It’s so good of you to join us. I heard you weren’t feeling well.”
Seeing that he had already poured her wine, Nadine grabbed for the glass and knocked it back in a single, impressive gulp. “I’m feeling better now.” She set it down defiantly.
Cal refilled her glass and then his own while his mother watched with an odd expression.
“It’s remarkable, the difference a simple dress can make. You look nearly as pretty as—” She froze like an animal caught out in the open. Her eyes skirted immediately to his father.
Cal picked up his own glass, not acknowledging the glaring faux-pax. But Ben, condemned so many times for making the same mistake, was not one to find absolution in others.
“It’s unpleasant,” he said, “being viewed through the same lens as one’s siblings. Isn’t it?”
Nadine’s eyes flashed. “Not if you love them.”
She was not speaking of him, and yet, he felt a strange release in his chest like a catch being unfastened. What a marvel, giving voice to one’s affections so guilelessly. To love like it was habit, with the certainty of being loved in return.
“I see,” Ben said. “So we return to this tired subject, do we? That explains the cut of your dress then, doesn’t it? It’s so much easier to admire that tender heart when it’s so fully on display.”
“Don’t be vulgar, Benjamin,” their mother said.
“And that’smydress you’re insulting, dick.” Odessa reached over the table for the bottle, making their mother wince as her trailing sleeves came precariously close to the enameled charger.
“Would you begrudge a pretty girl for her devotion?” Cal asked. “Or me, for having it?”
“You are a vulture who picks the bones of whatever body he pleases.” The words slid from easily, as if from an inner well of resentment, their passage well-lubricated with the ease that came only from repetition. “You have one type, Caledon. Female and alive, and any girl who worships at your church is at the mercy of a fickle and wavering god. You’re rather like your namesake in that way,” he added cruelly, with a look at his father for approval.
Cal smiled unpleasantly. “Yes, let’s talk about namesakes. Because I could say a thing or two about yours—”
The smugness vanished from his face. “Don’t youfuckingdare.”
“What’s the matter, brother?” He raised his wine glass, saluting the antlered chandelier casting its sinister light over the hardwood table. “Do you doubt the legacy?”
“Boys, don’t let’s fight in front of our guests.” His mother glanced worriedly in his father’s direction, who appeared to be enjoying himself. To him, this was just another form of bloodsport, like watching the ravens tearing each other apart in the fields.
Nadine gripped her glass tighter until it seemed that the fragile stem might snap in her fingers. With her severe expression illuminated in that frosty, wavering light, and her plump and rosy curves, she looked like a Flemish painting done by one of the old Baroque masters, a masterwork of light and color silhouetted in chiaroscuro relief.
But none of those old painters had ever allowed their sitting models even a fraction of the fire that he saw burning in her eyes now. Ben saw it. His father did, too, watching her with a quiet look of satisfaction that Cal knew better to think of as approval. Neither of them knew the depths of those fires, though, or how hotly they burned with the potential for destruction.
“You’re going to have your hands full with this one, Cal,” his father said. “She might be sitting here quietly like your mother, but there’s nothing tame about her eyes.”
He glanced at his mother, his father’s chatelaine, who saved her voice for the trifling matters of the domestic when she wasn’t holed up in her room awaiting his father’s pleasure. She didn’t meet his eyes; her gaze was turned downward, the glass at her right hand empty.
The large diamond on her left hand gave a tired gleam beneath the shifting lights as her fingers moved continuously, restlessly, as if seeking something just beyond reach.
“How did you meet your wife?” Nadine demanded.
His mother shook herself, straightening, as she slipped her left hand beneath the table to her lap. “Let’s not talk about the past,” she pleaded. “It’ll just get the boys fighting again.”
“What harm is there in recounting the tale of our great love?” His father’s smile glittered brighter than the silver. “I met my wife when I was very young, Nadine. When I was just a few years out of college—not that much younger than Cal, actually. My father wanted me to come back home for the festival and, of course, I agreed. It’s tradition, after all. And I am a follower of tradition if nothing else.”
He paused.
“I saw her with a group of her friends. They were all quite stunning but I knew that she was the one I wanted. I told her tomeet me in the woods when the festival was over and—well, one thing led to another.” He gave his mother a knowing look that made her pale hand clench. Cal’s stomach turned to see it.
Nadine was watching them closely. She had read the book. She knew what it meant to be a part of their ritual bridal hunt.
Don’t say a word, he urged her silently.Don’t betray what you know.
“Why do you ask?” his father said abruptly, as if the same realization had come to him.
