For how dry my mouth is, my salivary glands may as well be secreting dust. Or glue, considering that my tongue no longer considers itself a functioning muscle. I clear my throat and remain silent for a full three seconds, and it’s only when another trolley of cake gets rolled by that I realise the world is still spinning.
“Um,” I answer, embarrassingly quiet and cheeks redder than Percy’s hair. Eric tips his head, half-lidded eyes flicking to my left hand, which is still raised in a dramatic enactment of what I’d do to Aunt Edith. I lower it, trying not to cringe. “It’s Afrikaans for a smack. Usually deserved.”
My cousin lets out another undignified noise, and I slam my thumb into the red button. She vanishes with a muttered curse, but I’m too mortified to feel any remorse. Eric pushes from the wall and strolls towards me, eyes never leaving mine.
“A klap,” he repeats, tasting the word as he comes to a stop. It sounds too polished in his mouth. “Should’ve expected you to have a special vocabulary for violence, murderous thing that you are.”
If only he knew.He raises a slow brow at the way my phone lights up with messages and speaks again because I’m still not functioning. I slip it into a silken pocket without a word.
“You didn’t have to dismiss her on my account.”
“She’s a menace.” My tone makes it impossible to hide my affection.
Naturally, Sherlock spots it. “You forget people like us need menaces sometimes.” Despite his attempts to outwit me at the lake, he gives me the sentimental response I’ve been waiting for, all without even mentioning Kairos. “I seeyourmenace encourages violence.”
I manage to keep my dignity intact through sheer willpower and lock gazes. A hum of approval fills the space between us. “We’d never go through with it. Too much scandal.”
“Oh, but you Sheffolks do scandal sobeautifully,” he whispers dryly, attention darting over my head to where the same woman from earlier waits for me to follow. She strides off after receiving one nod from him.
His palm finds my lower back with ease, nudging me into a walk. The heat radiates along my spine until it flares in a wildfire beneath my ribs. There’s an audience just beyond sight, poking once more at this expensive curiosity.
As he guides me, I try not to glance back at the now eyeless tapestry. “Interesting perspective from a man I could only wish to out-scandal.”
“Say that with any more bitterness, and I’ll have no choice but to believe I’m your next victim.”
The teasing words give me pause. “Call me a murderer enough times, and you’ll find it becoming truth.”
Eric releases a sigh disguised as a laugh, barely more than an exhale. “Your grandfather certainly has a bit to say on the matter.”
I stop short, nearly tripping over a bump in the runner. “You spent time with my grandfather?Alone?”
Warning bells are ringing at the mere prospect of that man gossiping with an exiled prince. He already got all weird when he saw I had Eric’s handkerchief, a little too fixated on his middle names. Never going to understand that man, honestly.
“Um, he didn’t say anything weird to you, did he?”
I’m half-dreading the answer, but that dread vanishes once I realise nothing can be weirder than what we’ve just lived through together. If the song in the trees didn’t make Eric run with his tail tucked between his legs, I fear no comment about statues watching him would.
“Your grandfather…” he begins with a chuckle, thumb drawing idle circles against the base of my spine. “How do I put this? He went on a tangent about some woman named Winifred—her politics, her porcelain complexion that she so adores, and how you would murder her without a second thought.”
Heat burns in my cheeks as that damn thumb continues tracing a lazy pattern. “Grandfather exaggerates, and he shouldn’t be entertaining gossip. If Gran heard him?—”
“Gossipisn’t the word I’d use,” he interrupts with an apologetic dip of his chin. Once he has my permission to continue, he effortlessly leads me around a corner and says, “It felt more like a tactical briefing than anything else. Can one person be so horrid?”
“Yes, but I’m hoping she wears one of those hi-vis vests to the ball. That way I’ll see her coming and know to turn the other way.”
I’m given another laugh, this time deeper and wider, making his eyes crinkle at the corners. The air prickles, and I swear every ancestor down this corridor, stiff in their gilded frames, leans forward for a better angle at him.
“You truly hate her, then,” he murmurs, almost approvingly.
We round the final corner, and I take advantage of the sudden rise in voices from the drawing room to regain my bearings, lest I say something too incriminating. Just in case these ghosts actually decide to off Aunt Winifred.
“The things she’s said about my mother… Well, let’s just say she has a tendency to slip racist little comments into conversation and then play the victim when anyone dares object.”
There is a brief, dangerous pause, both verbally and physically, as he comes to a halt by my grandparents’ twentieth wedding anniversary portrait.
“Ah, I see.” The fabric of my dress bunches beneath his grip, and he looks up at Grandfather’s oil-painted smile. “Well, according to him, she has only one redeeming feature: her granddaughter. I believe he called her‘the sweetest girl alive’.”
“Oh, Thalia,” I acknowledge with a faint twinge of irritation, though I know it’s uncalled for. My grudge against that blonde fever dream was, at one point, entirely because of her golden plaits—a living Barbie doll to be compared to.
