Page 39 of The Beautiful Ones

I glanced at Adrian.

He was watching Elin now.

The tender expression he had worn for me had vanished. Something ancient and knowing looked out through his beautiful face.

Elin tightened her grip.

“Do not be alone with him,” she said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ELIN

Cécile looked down at my hand where it gripped her wrist.

The color had returned to her face, and her eyes still shone with the astonished joy of what had happened at the pianoforte. I hated that I had brought fear into that joy. I hated Adrian more for making the two impossible to separate.

“Do not be alone with him,” I said again.

Her gaze moved past me to Adrian.

He stood beside the pianoforte, pale and immaculate, regarding us with perfect composure. Nothing in his appearance suggested that moments earlier he had been waiting in a frozen bedchamber at the opposite end of the house. His white shirt was smooth. His dark waistcoat sat precisely against his body. There was no frost upon his hair or dampness upon his boots.

Yet I could still feel the cold of his room inside my bones.

Cécile touched her throat.

“He h-helped me.”

The words came with difficulty, but she forced them out for his sake. That frightened me almost as much as the ice.

“He was upstairs,” I whispered. “In the blue room. He spoke to me in Swedish.”

Her brows drew together.

“He knew my name. He knew things I have never told anyone here.”

Cécile glanced at Adrian again.

He did not deny it.

“Miss Andersdotter has endured an alarming evening,” he said. “Fear does not always arrange events in their proper order.”

His voice was gentle enough to sound concerned. Only I heard the warning beneath it.

“The water froze,” I said. “The whole basin. He was standing beside it, Cécile. He said they came to collect what is owed.”

Her eyes widened, but her attention returned to the ivory card upon the pianoforte. Adrian's silver pencil lay across it. She picked it up and wrote quickly.

He was here with me.

She turned the card toward me.

“I know.”

She wrote again.

Then you are mistaken.