Chapter 17

Seventeen

THE TURRET

I was lounged on Lou’s bed in the Poppy Room.

Lou was packing.

I didn’t have to talk her into it, she’d made the decision herself to leave, (yes, she was that angry at Portia and that done with bending herself into pretzels for my sister). By the time Ian escorted me to her room, she was on the phone with the trustees, her laptop open in front of her, booking tickets for a train to Leeds tomorrow morning.

“The train this afternoon leaves too late,” she told me. “I don’t want you driving in the dark, and I’m just knackered, Daph. So I’ll go down and ask Bonnie if she wouldn’t mind making me a tray for dinner. I’ll take a bath tonight and have a quiet night up here. I’ll say my goodbyes and we can head out in the morning.”

I was concerned she was knackered. She shouldn’t be. She’d been resting a great deal lately. Though I knew her headaches took a lot out of her, the aura that always happened after never lingered like it’d been doing at Duncroft.

But mostly I was relieved she was getting out of there.

“Soooooo…” she drew that out and said no more.

“So?” I prompted.

“You ran to Ian in your fright last night?”

She looked at me and batted her eyes.

“I needed to know about the bouquet,” I explained lamely.

“When I asked Rebecca where you were this morning, she told me in Ian’s room. It took him that long to explain about the bouquet?”

“Shut up,” I mumbled.

“Another reason for me to leave, I’ll no longer be the third wheel. You have him all to yourself to play backgammon.”

I threw a poppy-red silk bolster pillow at her.

She smiled.

That made me feel better.

“He thinks Portia and Daniel aren’t done with their games,” I shared.

“He thinks right,” she replied. “A trait of hers is being radically counter intuitive. Instead of learning from her mistakes, she pushes harder, which only digs her hole deeper. I don’t get it.”

I didn’t either.

And I’d turned that over enough in my head, I knew no discussion with Lou about it would serve up any answers.

“Ian wants to work together to figure out what they’re up to and thwart it,” I told her.

“I bet he does,” she teased.

“And yes,” I said seriously. “He made it clear, when I told him I wanted to take you and leave, that he wanted me to stay because he wanted time to get to know me better.”

She straightened from pressing down on the mound of folded sweaters in her case and exclaimed, “I knew it!”

That almost made me smile, but I cautioned, “Don’t get excited. We like each other. But he hasn’t even kissed me.”

“Poor play to make a move on a woman who just ran screaming to you in the night,” she remarked.

“I didn’t scream,” I told her.

I did, just not while I was racing to Ian. Only after I got to him.

“Well, it’s good you’re out of that room and you know Portia and Daniel have been screwing with you, so you can sleep tonight. And it’s good you’re staying to get to know him, because you already know, I like you two together and I’m tickled pink you’re giving a man a shot again. Especially a man like Ian, and I don’t mean how drop-dead gorgeous he is.”

This was the thing.

Because it was flirty and there was hand holding, and Ian had made me sleep by his side last night.

But it was also easy and friendly, and my sister was seeing his brother, and I had more than one concern about that. She’d also dated Ian, and this could all end up a mess.

And then there was that forehead kiss.

Ulk.

Bottom line: was I reading into the flirty when I should be reading into the friendly?

“And there you go, talking yourself out of how blatantly into you he is,” Lou noted, watching me closely.

“I think I need to get some things straight,” I admitted.

“Do that. Be honest. I sense he’ll appreciate it and want you both on the same footing from the jump, whatever that is. Though I know he likes you, and in future, you’ll be spending more time in the southeast wing.”

I rolled my eyes.

She ignored this and carried on, “But also, one of us, and obviously that’s going to be you, has to stay and see how things turn out, because Portia played into our hands. Daniel was not best pleased her allowance plummeted. He might come from money, but that doesn’t mean he has it. She could already be acting as his sugar mama.”

“Mm,” I hummed my agreement, because from what I saw between them not twenty minutes ago, that was a definite possibility.

“So now that you’ve erased any possibility of the high life for both of them, we’ll see the real of their relationship,” she concluded.

“Yes,” I agreed again.

“It’s all going to be okay, Daph.”

Her change in tone, reassuring and sympathetic, made me focus fully on her.

“Do you think it was just a joke?” I asked.

Her expression altered, grew harder at the same time contemplative.

And then, like it was difficult for her to force out the words, she said, “You know, it might be the headache talking, the drama of all this, but some things seem to be coming clear. I hate to say it, but I’m not sure I’d put anything past your sister. So keep your chin up, lovely, and your eyes open.”

Indeed.

The strange and intrusive request for an entire week in the country. Dragging Ian from his life too, so we were all drawn into the game. Daniel walking into the mist in the dark of night. Them throwing us together, then disappearing for nearly two days. The Carnation Room and carnations. Whatever was standing between Lou and Richard and Jane, something that was still her secret, and I wasn’t going to pry, but I had to admit, I was curious.

Ian was right.

He knew more about how this house should feel.

Even so, I felt it too.

Something was off.

Something was coming.

At least Lou would be out of it.

And Ian and I were a team.

“I’ve done what I can here. I’m going to pop down to see Bonnie, maybe get a snack and a bottle, then come up and take a bath,” Lou said.

My cue to roll off the bed and leave her to it, something I did after stopping to give her a quick hug.

After I slipped out of the Poppy Room, I kinda wanted to go to the Brandy Room to look for Aunt Louisa’s diaries, but I didn’t.

I went to the Rose Room, mostly because it was closer, and I was feeling lazy.

I threw myself on the chaise longue and watched the unchanging gray horizon.

That was numbingly boring, so I got up to grab my Kindle.

Not to read Steve Clifton’s book about his aunt. I was giving dead women stories a rest. I got my e-reader to go back to the book I’d been reading and take a couple of hours to myself before I had to start to get ready for dinner that night.

I walked my Kindle back to the lounge, stretched out, opened and woke it, only to stare at what came up on the screen.

The hairs rose on the back of my neck.

It was an old-timey picture of a group of people standing in front of Duncroft House.

“What the…?”

I looked at the header, and it was Steve Clifton’s book.

I went to the table of contents and saw that there was a section of photographs.

I let out my breath.

I’d opened the book last night. Somehow, I’d hit something that forwarded it to the photo section. I’d never done anything like that before, and I’d never known the Kindle to jump around either.

But that had to be why that photo came up.

Since I was there, I went back to the photo and lifted it to my face, looking closer.

It was an old black and white, not sharp to begin with and even more difficult to see on an e-reader. The people were mostly dark forms wearing the height of twenties outdoor fashion: the women in big, boxy coats, some with fur trim, and cloche hats with feathers or rosettes or ribbons, the men in suits with wide-shouldered overcoats.

Dorothy with her flair and platinum hair was easy to spot off to the side. She had a leg kicked back and she was leaning into both hands she was resting on the chest of the man beside her.

His head was turned, not her way, in the opposite direction. The picture was taken while he was moving, making his face a blur. But he was tall and dark, and his shoulders were broader than others, because the shoulder pads in his coat were augmented by the real thing underneath.

And I knew it was William because Virginia and David were front and center.

David had his arm around his wife, and he was smiling at the camera, the man of the house, the king of his castle, the god of his domain. Devilishly handsome and stylish and living his best life with an injured beauty at his side and a vixen in the wings.

Virginia had her eyes cast down to what looked like a few feet in front of her, which was the gravel of the drive.

The others were striking gay poses too, like Dorothy. Arms flung up or out, one man in the back had jumped up high, one man on the opposite front side to Dorothy was hunkered down, looking like he was pumping his muscles for the camera. Some were holding up coupé glasses of champagne or full bottles of it.

Good times.

Fun times.

Happy times.

And then tragedy would strike.

I was about to try to figure out how to enlarge it so I could get a better look when two things happened.

One, my phone vibrated against my ass with a text.

The other, I noted a woman in the back row. All you could see was her head. She was short-ish and mostly hidden.

But she was not striking a jolly pose.

She was gazing at Dorothy and William in a manner that I looked back to William to see if he might not be turning his head to look at his brother and/or Virginia. But to look at whoever that woman was.

My phone vibrated again, so I slid it out and saw it was a text from Ian. One of the things he did other than work while I mindlessly watched stock info I had no hope of understanding on his TV, was put my number in his contacts.

With a little thrill at getting his first text, I set the Kindle aside and pulled it up.

I’m heading your way.

I typed in, From where?

“Here,” he said a couple seconds after my text whooshed, doing this after opening the door and sticking his head in.

When he saw me in the turret, he fully came in.

“Am I driving Lou to the station?” he asked as he sauntered my way.

“She’s leaving in the morning. She’s going to kick back tonight. She’s still a little headachy. Her train leaves at nine thirty.”

“Right. I’ll let her know I’ll be ready at eight thirty to take her to town.”

“You don’t have to do that, Ian. I can drive her.”

“You can come with, but I need to get out of this house.”

That sounded awesome. “Then I’m coming with, because I do too.”

After I said that, I quickly moved my legs because he was aiming his ass at the lounge where they were resting.

“Are we hanging out?” I joked.

He sprawled, legs stretched in front of him, crossed at his ankles, and linked his fingers behind his head. “I showed you mine, your turn to show me yours.”

All right.

Flirty banter aside…

Were we doing this?

And if we were, what was this?

I rotated to sit on my ass and scooted up so I was leaning against the high back swoop at the corner of the lounge, my legs crossed in front of me.

“I think it’s kinda important I know what’s happening here, Ian,” I said quietly.

He watched closely as I moved and spoke, his expression shifting, and he replied in the same tone, “I think I’m distraught you don’t already know, Daphne.”

“You’re a huge flirt. You have been since the beginning.”

“I am. But not unless I want to sleep with the woman I’m chatting up.”

He unlinked his hands and held one palm out my way when I opened my mouth.

I shut it.

He went on, “I’m understanding at my request this morning you’re now needing full disclosure, so allow me to share that yes, in the beginning, I simply wanted to fuck you. But unfortunately, you’re plucky and witty and I have this damned weakness for a woman with an American accent. Not to mention black lace bras, flawless skin, fantastic fucking hair and zero patience for fuckwittery. So I’m afraid the bad news is, I like you for more than a brief week-in-the-country fling.”

“Plucky?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“Do you really have a weakness for women with American accents?”

“A development I discovered Friday night.”

I smiled at him because he was funny, and I was super, mega relieved that he was where I was with what was happening between us.

“I have a lot of baggage, honey,” I warned.

He looked around and then peered out the window before he came back to me and raised his brows.

I chuckled.

He reached out to wrap his fingers around my ankle and gave it to me straight.

“I’m absolute shit at relationships.”

And again, that was a relief. The honesty, and that we shared that trait.

“My father was a cheat. My ex-husband was a cheat.”

“I know,” he said gently.

“I don’t know what it does to a man to see a woman he cares about suffer because of behavior like that, but you haven’t made a secret you’re struggling with processing it with your dad. I will say, that’s a one and done for me. I admire women who have that forgiveness in them. I tried it with François. I lost five years to that forgiveness when I should have been living my life without the heartache he brought into it. It’s a mistake I probably won’t make again.”

“I would not ever do that to you or any woman, darling,” Ian assured. “It’s my staying power you need to be warned about.”

I covered his hand on my ankle. “I might not have investigators like you do, but I’m hell on wheels with a Google search, babe. So that isn’t lost on me. Now I’m warning you, my mom was bitter, and I have some of that ingrained in me. Dad imploding our family. François making a fool of me and killing the love I had for him. Watching Lou fade and shine depending on whether Dad had a mistress or remembered he had a wife. You might think me plucky, but it’s the circumstances. Normally, I’m a resolute cynic.”

“So we’re both going in eyes open.”

“Yes. Eyes open.”

He stared at me.

I stared at him.

We kept doing this.

The longer we did, the more my nipples tingled.

Because this was happening. Really happening. The friendly and the flirty.

And I wanted it badly.

I also wanted to jump him, and I wanted that badly too, but the minute the thought entered my head, he whispered, “Tonight, after dinner, in the Conservatory. I want to kiss you first there.”

“Why?” I whispered back.

“Because I knew I wanted to fuck you when you said, ‘Mutual, I’m sure.’”

I smirked.

“Though it could have been your cleavage,” he admitted mock ruefully.

That made me laugh.

He continued, “And I knew you were interesting when you called me on my shit and took your sister’s back. But I knew I wanted to know you when you met me in the Conservatory.”

That was wonderfully romantic. Because it was, I felt elation.

But I fake pouted.

And gave in.

“Okay. After dinner then, I suppose.”

“Poor baby,” he murmured, pulling at my ankle until my leg was in his lap. Then he pulled at the other one. “Sexual frustration is hard on us all. I should know.”

“And how long has it been for you?” I asked flippantly. I really didn’t want to know, and I didn’t expect him to answer, except as a joke.

“Since yesterday evening, after you left my room. I came for you all over my stomach.”

My vagina clenched.

He knew it and grinned roguishly.

This made my vagina clench even better.

Bastard.

“I’m glad I brought my vibrator,” I replied blithely. “After you kiss me tonight, I can come up here and finish myself off.”

His hand still around my ankle squeezed.

“Bad girl,” he murmured, staring at my mouth.

“Down boy,’ I returned. “It’s your rule about delayed gratification, and you were the one who brought up touching yourself.”

His hand went up my cords along my calf.

He had a light touch.

I shivered.

It was his turn to smirk.

“Now who’s the tease?” I asked.

“And who’s the flirt?” he returned.

I dropped my head to the back of the lounge and cried, “Ugh!”

He slid his hand out of the leg of my pants and promised, “I’ll be good.”

I looked at him. “That’s the problem.”

He chuckled.

“Shall we change the subject to one that won’t require cold showers?” I suggested.

“Shoot.”

“It’s not going to be fun, but it’s on my mind.”

“Then get it off your mind, darling,” he invited.

“What did you mean when you said Daniel shit on women?” He appeared confused for a moment, before I reminded him, “You were talking to your father. I was listening in the hallway.”

Humor lit his eyes at the reminder, then, as usual, he didn’t delay or prevaricate.

He socked it right to me.

“I mean, like your sister hasn’t grown out of pulling nasty pranks, when it comes to women, my brother hasn’t grown out of laddish behavior. What do you Americans call it? Frat boy.”

“Has he ever had a serious girlfriend?”

“Yes. Portia.”

Good God.

Daniel was thirty-five years old.

Not good.

He rounded my legs with one arm while he turned to me and rested into an elbow on the back of the lounge, giving me his undivided attention.

Not that I didn’t have it before, but he was definitely settling in to share.

So I relaxed with him and settled in to listen.

“I’ve not been a choir boy,” he confessed. “And when I end things with a woman, and there have been many…”

He paused to watch my response.

But since I already knew about the many women from my Google search, I didn’t have one, so he carried on.

“I cannot tell you they were all in agreement that our relationship had run its course. But I learned to be careful about leading a woman on. I had a girlfriend when I was eighteen and I was not serious, but I liked her. Our relationship was intimate, and it was the first time I had that with a longtime partner. I liked getting it, so I wasn’t as careful with her emotions as I should have been when I put in the work to keep her. This meant, when it was over for me, she was blindsided. It might have been over, but I cared about her still, and I felt like an ass. To this day, if we’re ever in the same space, she avoids me. And to this day, I still care about her and I’m aware I hurt her so much, it still stings, twenty years later. And that, my darling, doesn’t feel very nice.”

I hated he hurt her, even inadvertently.

And I hated they both still suffered for it.

But I loved that he got why that was.

“I bet not,” I said, because he’d stopped talking and I needed to say something.

“So I take pains not to do that again. It isn’t to say a woman hasn’t been ugly because she’s not getting what she wants from me. But I always know I gave her no indication I intended to give it. If she misread things, that’s one thing. The other side of the coin…” He gave my legs a squeeze. “We’ll just say, I’m careful to make sure the other side of the coin never happens.”

“I like your honesty, Lord Alcott.”

“Eyes open, love,” he reiterated his earlier warning.

I nodded.

He kept speaking.

“To finish, I would hope you’d understand that if I’m with a woman, she means something to me, during and after. So when Danny would swoop in and toy with someone who used to be mine…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what word to use to express it. But it isn’t fun to know my brother shits on any woman, but one who means something to me is far less fun.”

I could see how it would be, and I was reading between the lines his words were a vast understatement.

“I’m sure,” I said softly.

“I sense we’ll soon find out where he’s at with Portia, but from what I saw earlier, I’m not sure, at this juncture, who’s shitting on who. But it looks like a watershed moment happened in the Sherry Room. I just hope we don’t get caught in the spillage.”

“Mm.” I hummed. After I did, Ian studied me for so long, I asked, “What?”

“Ask it.”

“Ask what?”

“Ask about what you’ve been noticing, but I can’t ask about it, because if I do, I’ll sound like an arrogant prick.”

Well, damn.

“It’s not a question,” I said.

“It’s an observation, so say it.”

“Portia is pining for you.”

He drew in a big breath through his nose, expanding his chest, then he let it out.

“So it’s not just me feeling that,” he remarked.

No, it wasn’t.

And it might explain a few things.

Why we were there for a full week, all the more time for Portia to rub her relationship with Daniel in Ian’s face. And the fact Ian was there at all. It was a meeting of the families, of course, but he was a busy man, who it was my understanding managed a vast empire.

Lady Jane never left Duncroft. We’d have to come here to meet her.

If there was going to be a sibling meet, we could have had dinner with Ian in London.

“She looks at you a lot,” I remarked. “She was furious you were in here with me last night. Some of her only displays of affection for Daniel are when you show one to me.”

“Yes. Yes. And yes.”

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Thus, this is what we’re working with,” he began.

He then ran it down.

“My father is about to lose his title, so he’s acting more of an ass than usual. My mother is off, maybe because of that, maybe because of Portia, maybe for an as yet unknown reason. Danny’s future lies in the balance because it’ll soon be up to me, not only his status here at Duncroft, but if I’ll continue to allow him to be a line item on the estate’s balance sheet. And instead of having a man-to-man chat with me about it, Danny has some play he’s making, we don’t know what it is, but I sense it’s coming.”

All true.

Ian kept going.

“And now there’s the possibility that whatever it is, is independent of what Portia is up to. She wants me. She may or may not have been using my brother to attempt to make me jealous. This backfired. Worse, she threw you in my path. Now you have me, which could exacerbate whatever she has on her mind to do. And the stakes that hang in the balance of all of this are hearts, minds, family ties and the small matter of a hundred billion dollars, which two of those players want their hands on pretty badly. Neither have control of it, but you do, and they just tied your hands in confiscating it. At least for the next year. Have I covered it all?”

He’d been pretty thorough.

Though my favorite part was, “now you have me.”

And none of the rest was favorite at all.

“I think that sums it up nicely,” I replied.

“My brother told me about your éclairs before I even met Portia. I’ve been to your shop. I’m partial to your Viennese whirls.”

I loved that.

And I loved he’d tasted my work, he’d had a part of me, even before he met me, and he liked it.

I didn’t tell him that.

I said, “Those are simple.”

“There’s nothing simple about excellence. Especially the kind that’s no muss, no fuss, just sweet and decadent.”

“You’re being flirty again, babe.”

“No, Daphne, I’m not.”

What?

Wait.

Pow!

Right to the heart.

Argh!

“I’m not loving this kissing date we have for later when you’re right fucking here,” I groused.

“It’s better to wait. Promise.”

“I hope so, for your sake,” I muttered.

He grinned at me and the promise in his eyes made me shiver again.

“Okay, changing the subject…” I began, starting to reach toward my Kindle to show him the picture I found, but stopping dead when we both heard a spine-chilling scream.

And if I wasn’t wrong, it was coming from Lou’s room.

Before I could blink, Ian was up, bent to me, finger in my face, growling, “Don’t leave this room.”

And then he sprinted toward the door.