“Y-yes.” She tried to hand it to him. “Here.”
“Hold onto it.”
“But what are you—”
She broke off with a cry when he slammed his fist against the door, making it jump on its ancient, weathered hinges. All his anger, that pent-up frustration—Cal took it all out on the solid pine heartwood with a fury that was nearly primeval in its intensity.
Eventually, one of the servants answered the door.
“Can a mannotgo into his own cellar for wine without being locked in?”
“I don’t know how it happened.” The servant sounded shaky; either he had been ordered to close the door himself or he knew who really had and feared reprisal. His face paled further as he met Cal’s stony look. “It must have blown shut and latched itself.”
“Latched itself,” Cal repeated, arching his brows at the obvious lie.
The servant took a step back. “I—I’ll check the mechanism right away.”
“Yes, you do that. God forbid any other guests find themselves locked in.”
Inwardly, he seethed at the farce of it all. The lines had been drawn: he, on one side, his family on the other. Just like a slamming door. The message was clear. If he were to continue on this path, he was going to be thrown in with the prey in the dark.
“That was not an accident,” he said, once the servant had slinked away. “Someone thinks you know something and I suspect I know who. I suggest that you don’t prove them right by forcing me to compromise you more than I already have, Nadine.”
“They think you told me about Noelle.”
“Yes.”
She considered that, cradling the wine bottle to her chest. “B-but you tell your brides everything anyway, right? Eventually? That’s what you said about Ben. You said he was supposed to t-tell Noelle everything and he didn’t.”
“You’re not a bride.”Not yet.
They were walking deeper into the house, up the staircase with its creaking planks and the unsmiling portraiture of his various ancestors. Back to their interconnected rooms and the hallway that bound them as effectively as a jess.
He saw in Nadine’s eyes a latent understanding for the necessity of the prop in her hands and the reason for all of his angry bluster. Forgiveness did not come with it but there wouldbe plenty of years down the road to earn that back—if he could get her through this alive.
She held up the wine, drooping and exhausted. “What should I do with this?”
“I suggest you enjoy it,” he said, frustration making his voice cold.
All he wanted was this small, tender thing; to keep it safe and close. He had asked for very little from his family, and he had given plenty of himself. He had played by the rules, abided by the dictates of his blood, and even now, they would deny him this.
Perhaps that had always been his father’s intent and he had simply been too blind to see it. After all, even Ben, his favorite, had been forced to give up that which he claimed to love.
Cal thought again of that night when his father had ordered Ben to kill the deer—Jessica. A young tourist he had lain with at just seventeen, drawn to the yearning in her eyes that offered everything and demanded nothing. Seeing that same gentle face rendered lifeless, frozen into a death mask of horror and betrayal, had condemned him to over a decade of meaningless hook-ups that did little to ease his solitude and a loneliness he saw as his penance.
Maybe that should have been the night he shook off his family’s so-called tradition. He had pursued a career in law thinking that perhaps he could find a loophole that could break him of this curse, but in the end, his family’s control had proven too strong.
His father thought him weak. Sometimes, he felt weak.
Sometimes, he wanted to be.
That night, he let himself into Nadine’s room, slipping into bed beside her. The sheets still smelled like what they’d done earlier, and she was warm, solid and yielding in his arms.
Cal leaned forward and buried his face in her hair, breathing in the sweet scent of soap and the saltiness of her own sweat-damp skin.
“No,” she murmured, hoarse with sleep.
“Darling.” He gave her a squeeze. “Come back to me.”
