Chapter 3

Three

THE WINE ROOM

My bedroom was a feminine extravaganza in the colors of cream, carnation pink and deep, rosy red.

It was mammoth. It was spotless. It had a bed with four posts that was so tall, I had to climb into it using the step beside it, and heavy, highly embellished but workable curtains. The room also had a seating area complete with a puffy, inviting couch in front of the pink marbled fireplace, and a delicate writing desk in the corner.

And the en suite was a dream.

If I were in a hotel, I’d be in seventh heaven, wouldn’t leave the room for the entire week, and instead I’d read a half dozen books, take daily baths, and drink nothing but champagne from breakfast until I fell asleep.

I wasn’t in a hotel, and I didn’t enjoy the idea of liking the choice that was made for me, because this room wasn’t insulting. It was the belated welcome Lou and I should have had when we arrived.

However, the weird part was that an hour ago, a maid had knocked on the door and asked if I needed any help dressing, “Or with your makeup and hair, Miss Ryan?”

Flabbergasted, hopefully politely, I’d declined.

One could take that as a very nice offering from the Alcotts, but who had lady’s maids anymore?

Stylists for special events, sure.

Someone to help you do your hair for dinner at home? No.

But I was ready and it wasn’t time to go down yet, so I grabbed my phone and texted Lou.

Can I come over?

It took mere seconds before she returned, Sure!

I left my room, walked across the hall and down two doors, and knocked on the one I’d watched the maid lead Lou to before I’d entered mine so I’d know where she was.

My windows faced the lawns and forest at the front of the house.

Hers would face the wing that made the other strike of cross.

She opened the door with perfect hair and makeup, but still in her robe.

“Hey,” she greeted.

“I feel like I should leave a note on my door so our guide will know where to find me when they come up to get us,” I replied as she stepped back, and I entered her room.

I stopped a few feet in, closing the door behind me and making the decision to do everything in my power not to let her see my allocated space.

Hers was not as big and it was oppressively filled with furniture, all of it high quality, maybe even priceless, but it was still mismatched. Likely discards from other rooms, or pieces that were too valuable to throw away, but where they used to reside had been updated and they were no longer needed.

It was fashioned into a usable room, the colors and fabrics were all in lovely shades of pale green and blue, with a theme of flowers, but it seemed close, disorganized and suffocating, not airy, artful and appealing.

In other words, I was welcome.

Lou wasn’t.

“Rabidly private, as I said. I guess not a surprise,” Lou noted as she shrugged off her robe and tossed it on a flowered chintz chair to stand unabashed in her underwear like she was backstage at a fashion show.

She reached into the opened wardrobe, and I saw she was unpacked, as I found I’d been after we were escorted to our rooms.

We hadn’t asked them to do that, or not to do it as I’d have preferred.

I wondered what they thought when they put my vibrator into the top drawer of one of the nightstands.

It had been a wild idea to pack it, but I figured I’d need every avenue open to find ways to relax this week, so in it went.

And now the staff knew it did.

Fodder for discussion belowstairs.

“It’s good you’re here, you can zip me up,” she said. “We’re running out of time. They said they’d be here at six twenty to escort us down, yes?”

“Yes,” I confirmed as I watched her step into a column of sequins and pull it up her body.

It was a midi sheath dress, fully sequined in burgundy, except the twin bands of silver around the waist. It was high necked and sleeveless.

And totally not Lou.

She looked like the mother of the bride, not like she’d walked hundreds of runways wearing haute couture and wasn’t even forty years old yet.

I felt my heart warm and my temper flare, seeing yet again how badly Lou wanted Portia to like her. How badly she wanted to do what she could to make this go smoothly for her stepdaughter.

Lou looked the picture of appropriate, middle-aged-woman elegance when I didn’t even think she’d admitted to herself she’d hit middle age.

I, on the other hand, was wearing a dress I’d thrown in as a spare, not expecting I was going to wear it.

It was pine green, totally simple, except it was skintight, had a plunge V that showed cleavage down nearly to my midriff, which meant my breasts were swaddled in support tapes to give them the perfect curve at the expanse of skin that was showing.

It hit the floor in a trumpet skirt with a high slit up the right leg, and I’d paired it with the fan-shaped, Divas’ Dream Bulgari necklace of rose gold, diamonds and malachite Dad bought me, with its matching earrings, bracelet and ring.

My shoes were rose gold Sophia Websters with four-inch skinny stiletto heels and the requisite dramatic butterfly embossed with crystals at the heel. I’d likely have to take them off to walk back up to my room after dinner, but by damn, I was teetering in on those damned shoes.

And my hair was fashioned in a side bun that took four tries to make look nice.

It was in your face, the tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry, the flesh bared, the shoes that were so far away from velvet Mary Jane flats it wasn’t funny, and I had zero fucks to give that it was.

I zipped up Lou and she moved to sit on the arm of the chintz chair to put on her own high heels, pretty silver sandals that showed off her beautiful feet but made no statement at all.

“You should be you,” I said quietly.

Lou didn’t look up from her shoes. “I need to be what Portia needs me to be.”

Dad had married Lou because she was famous for being gorgeous and she made him look to his cronies as cronies like Dad’s envisioned the world. Like he could pull a beautiful young woman due to his looks, virility and prowess, and not due to the sole fact he had billions of dollars.

What Dad saw only at the very end, was that Lou may have married him because her career was waning, and she had a life she wanted to sustain. But she’d stayed married to him because somewhere along the line she’d fallen in love with him, and she was going to stick, no matter what wasted him away.

And she did, through cancer wasting him away.

“I’m going to talk to her tomorrow if I can get her alone,” I vowed.

“You don’t have to do that,” Lou said.

“Part of growing up is learning how to treat people who’ve done not one thing to hurt you.”

At that, she looked at me. “I know it was a shock to you girls when your dad married me.”

“Louella, that was thirteen years ago. It’s time she got over it.”

“I get it. My dad spoiled me.”

I didn’t have to say her dad was a bus driver, so how she was spoiled was nowhere near the privilege Portia enjoyed, so I didn’t say it.

But I never played poker, and not only because I didn’t like gambling.

Thus, Lou read my expression.

“I don’t want you two girls fighting about me,” she asserted.

“We won’t fight.”

“It’s obvious this boy is important to her.”

“He’s not a boy. He’s a thirty-five-year-old man. And Portia is a twenty-eight-year-old woman. We’re all grown-ass adults here, Lou. It’s only that Portia isn’t acting like one.”

“I remember what it was like, that first flush of love.”

I did too.

It was a trick of hormones and pheromones, and millennia of a dizzying number of behavior patterns, all designed so we’d find someone with whom to procreate to make sure we didn’t allow the human race to die out.

Sadly, that first flush of love could hide what would someday become searing rivers of hate.

I just hoped my sister wasn’t following in my mother’s footsteps.

Or mine.

“What it shouldn’t be like, is losing yourself to the guy you like and trying a different look because he likes more feminine clothes. He either likes Portia as she comes, or he doesn’t. We’re going to find out soon which way that goes.”

“This, I can’t debate,” Lou replied, again appearing anxious, but not about our sojourn to the bucolic north and a possibly haunted house, but that perhaps Daniel Alcott wasn’t the right man for Portia.

There was a knock on the door. I went to open it.

It was a uniformed maid, not the one who’d asked about my hair and makeup, nor one of the two who had brought in tea. She was the one who’d escorted us to our rooms in the first place.

It seemed this massive house had a massive staff.

Guess it was six twenty.

“Hello,” I greeted.

“Miss Ryan,” she said, glancing at Lou. She dipped her chin then asked, “Are you ready to go to the Wine Room?”

If it had alcohol, absolutely.

Lou rose from the arm of the chair and went to the bed to nab her evening bag.

Watching her do that, I realized I’d forgotten mine.

“I have to stop by my room to get my bag,” I told the maid.

“Of course,” she murmured, then her brows drew down and she called, “You don’t have to turn out the lights. While you’re at dinner, we’ll be preparing your rooms for the evening. We’ll take care of the lighting.”

Lou halted in position of dousing a bedside lamp, her head turned to the maid.

“Um…” she mumbled.

Lou had her moral epiphany a few years after she came to understand what it meant in reality how ridiculously wealthy my dad was. Which meant, at first, she’d gone mad, but since then, she’d whittled down her charitable causes to being avidly climate change conscious and an animal rights activist, getting photographed repeatedly while protesting fox hunts and the like. She threw some of her billions of pounds at the same.

Now, I had to stifle a laugh at how in pain she looked to leave a room with the lights on.

“It’ll only mean another day of flooding in Pakistan sometime in the future,” I drawled.

“Not funny,” Lou said, walking away from the lamp.

“I wasn’t meaning to be.”

When I glanced at the maid as we moved out of the room, her face was blank, and I knew the staff would not be coming in to turn off the lights, then rushing back up to turn them on when we headed to bed, all in an effort to make sure the globe didn’t warm to the point of catastrophe in a few decades. But instead, they probably did turn down service, so although the lighting we’d return to would be subdued, at Duncroft House, they didn’t care about flooding in Pakistan in the slightest.

We walked to my room, and I realized my mistake as we neared the door.

“I’ll be out in a jiffy,” I said while sliding through the door without fully opening it, nearly closing it behind me, then racing on my four-inch heels to the bed to grab my bag, teetering once on the brink of a sprained ankle, catching myself in the nick of time, and racing back out.

“I’m not going to throw a fit because you left your lights on,” Lou assured me huffily.

I was relieved that was why she thought I wouldn’t let her see inside.

The maid started walking.

We followed, and as we did, I pulled my phone out of my bag. I noted we had five minutes to get to cocktails, and even though we were a good walk away, I didn’t think it would take five minutes.

Punctuality obviously was key at Duncroft House.

“Are you allowed to share your name?” I asked the maid’s back.

“Brittany.”

“Nice to meet you, Brittany,” I replied.

She didn’t look back as she said, “You as well.”

I stared at her back thinking this maid was different. Chilly, instead of just formal and professional.

Lou and I exchanged looks, and neither of us spoke again as we followed Brittany to the Wine Room.

Newsflash: sadly, it wasn’t filled with wine.

It was the color of wine: all burgundies and currants, with mahogany furniture. The walls looked papered in wine-colored leather (and I hoped they were not). The furniture was definitely leather, with some dark tapestry. And there was an interesting picture of a medieval couple on the wall.

Honestly, I didn’t get to take much in before Daniel Alcott was upon me.

“The big sister!” he cried, moving my way, dragging my sister with him.

She was in ivory again, a full pleated skirt that reached her ankles and a pleated top, the halter neck a ruff of chiffon, her shoulders and arms bare.

And she definitely had help with her makeup and hair. She was good with both, but her elaborate updo was not something a layperson could do, no way, and her face looked like a TikTok influencer had been at it.

Daniel let Portia go in order to take hold of both my biceps and touch his cheeks to both of mine.

He smelled cloyingly of cologne that stated a little too boldly, I’m a man!

He pulled away but didn’t let go as he looked down on me and smiled broadly.

Startling blue eyes. Thick, golden-blond hair, the same as his mother’s color, if a shade darker. A healthy tan. He was tall. He was fit. He was handsome.

He was fake as shit.

I’d seen pictures of him, more when I started researching the whole family after Portia hooked up with him, then deeper when she’d asked us to this week at Duncroft.

He was not the financial wunderkind his brother was. He was his mother’s light to his father’s dark. And Daniel’s reputation was more of a happy-go-lucky playboy than his older brother’s inveterate philanderer.

But regardless of his effusive welcome, he did not want me there, and the fact he’d not even glanced at Lou told me how he felt about her.

In other words, the edge I was riding about this week got sharper.

Sharp enough to cut.

When I said nothing, he finally let me go and looked to Lou.

“Louella,” he muttered far less enthusiastically, as was his touching only one cheek to hers.

I watched this and turned annoyed eyes to my sister before I moved in and did the touching cheeks thing myself. “Portia.”

“You look pretty,” she said.

We moved away and I let my gaze wander her head and hair before I replied with grudging honesty, “You do too.”

I turned my attention to Daniel’s parents, and I saw that Portia had told no fibs. Like Daniel and Portia, Lou and me, they were decked out. Exquisitely tailored suit and tie for Richard, a one-shouldered, deep-rose satin gown with a knotted waistline and some gathering to give it some interest, for Jane.

“Lord and Lady Alcott,” I greeted.

“Oh, it’s Richard and Jane, of course,” Daniel invited, to his father’s jaw growing tight, the same happening around his mother’s eyes.

“Drink, Miss Ryan?” I heard said low, and I looked to my side to see a tall, thin man in a black three-piece suit and pale-blue tie that had the family shield emblazoned on it standing there, though also slightly behind me.

A new member of staff.

The butler.

That meant I’d seen four maids, whatever they called the guy who took care of the bags and car, and a butler.

Already a lot of staff, but I figured there was even more.

A number of them.

As I thought: massive house, massive staff.

I had no idea, but maybe the Alcotts were even more loaded than we were, and that was saying something.

“Champagne, if you have it,” I ordered. I turned to the room at large. “We’re celebrating, correct?”

“Absolutely,” Daniel brayed cheerily.

Richard and Jane remained mute.

“Mrs. Ryan?” the butler asked Lou.

“Champagne too, please.”

He dipped his head and floated away.

Daniel had retrieved his own drink, what appeared to be a G and T, and he lifted it my way.

“I’m not ashamed to admit, I’m addicted to your éclairs,” he proclaimed. “When I’m in the city, I try to swing by your shop. This was even before I met Portia,” he declared, sliding an arm along my sister’s waist and tucking her to his side.

“Well, thank you,” I replied.

“Best patisserie in London, even The Guardian said so,” Daniel told his parents.

Portia piped up. “Daphne studied in Paris. Grand diplôme from Le Cordon Bleu with an internship with François Perreault. He’s known to have the best patisserie in Paris. It’s in the Latin Quarter.”

Unspoken by my sister, but probably known by all the Alcotts, was that I fell in love with and married François Perreault, and then, after the third time I discovered he’d cheated on me, I’d fallen out of love and divorced him.

The courtship lasted two years.

The marriage lasted two more.

The divorce was five years ago.

The bitterness remained.

Although everyone knew François, I suspect even the Alcotts—he was that famous because he was that good—they were completely unimpressed.

I wished I could have filmed their non-reaction at the mention of Frankie’s name. He’d lose his mind that they hadn’t sighed with reverence.

Though, Lady Jane had a figure like Lou’s, so I doubted she’d had an éclair or a mille-feuille in a long time.

Or ever.

The butler handed me a coupé glass of champagne.

I checked to see if Lou had hers (she did), before I raised mine and asked, “Shall we toast to family and new friends?”

“Perfect!” Daniel cried. “I’ll toast to that!”

Lou and Portia raised their glasses with Daniel, Richard and Jane slightly held theirs in front of them.

I ignored their lukewarm participation (they were still participating) and said, “Cheers.”

And then I drank half the glass.