During his walk back to camp, David considered Mia’s final words. In his years in prison and the subsequent months, he’d given up on ever impressing Katy again. Or even speaking to her. But if Mia was right about Cassie, then that lent credence to Rufus’s palace story. And what he’d overheard Cassie talking about . . . was how Katy’s engagement was a farce. A conversation Katy’s cousin had been willing to fire somebody in order to protect.
There were still so many mitigating factors, but if that was true, then maybe, just maybe, David had a chance at more than just redemption.
And if he had a chance to get Katy back, he was bloody well going to take it.
12
Katy
It was several hours before Katy was composed enough to go back inside. By the time she made it in, she’d missed morning tea and caused Oliver considerable grief. Which, given how much he already worried about her, she did feel a bit sorry about.
“Katerina, love,” he said as he walked briskly toward her. She had just entered the parlor in which they had taken to spending their leisurely hours to find him pacing anxiously inside. “Where have you been?” He stepped forward, looking decidedly less composed than normal, and gripped her shoulders gently with both hands.
“Just strolling through the rose garden,” Katy replied, which was a half-truth. “Time got away from me.”
In reality, she’d needed a lot of time to stop crying. And even after that, she’d needed more time to think and calm herself. And then to not look like she had just been crying. She still wasn’t truly ready to be back in the palace. But she couldn’t keep hiding forever.
“Until this late?” Oliver continued. His grip on her shoulders tightened just barely, and though it wasn’t painful, it still felt cloying. “I was about to go looking for you.”
“Oliver,” Katy said firmly, stepping back to shake off his grip. “I’m fine. I don’t need a chaperone.”
“I’m not saying that, love. But you missed tea with my parents, and you weren’t answering your phone. I was worried about you.” He put his hands on his hips and looked down.
Katy had screened a couple of phone calls when she’d known she was too emotional to talk to her fiancé. Guilt began to settle into her stomach.
“I’m sorry, Oliver,” she said gently. “Actually, there are some things that I need to be honest with you about. Things that I should’ve been upfront about previously.”
Katy looked up sadly into Oliver’s confused, perhaps even resigned, eyes, steeling herself for the conversation to come. But a heavy knocking at the door interrupted them.
“Knock, knock!” Cassie announced as she pushed open the tall oak door. Boris lumbered in behind her.
Katy took a deep breath, both relieved and disappointed to have her conversation interrupted right when she had finally worked up the courage to speak some hard truths.
“Hope we’re not imposing on anything,” her cousin offered, cheerfully oblivious.
“No, of course not,” Katy replied. It wasn’t necessarily the truth, but it was how she had been taught to respond to the question for the past two decades. After all, there wasn’t really a polite way to say, “Yes, you’re interrupting.”
“I heard the party planning is pretty much complete,” Cassie said. She cleared the space between the door and the fireplace to stand close to Katy and Oliver. Boris followed dutifully with his usual bored expression.
“Yes, and I owe your cousin a great deal of thanks for that,” Oliver said politely. He looked down at Katy proudly while he continued to speak to Cassie. “She has quite the knack for details.”
Katy smiled, though she couldn’t really keep her continued sadness out of the expression.
“That’s good to hear. You two made a great team,” Cassie said approvingly. “If only I could get this big lug,” she looked lovingly over her shoulder at Boris, “to help me a little more with the wedding plans.”
“That’s women’s stuff,” Boris said gruffly, which Cassie beamed back at, as though this was the most adorable reaction in the world.
Oliver shot Katy a look, to which Katy returned a tiny shrug, knowing Cassie and Boris were too involved in each other to notice.
“Anyway,” Cassie went on, looking back at Katy. “If you don’t have any planning to get to today, I was hoping we might get to spend the day together. Since we’re both about to be old wives.”
Katy grinned. It was easier to handle her engagement when it was being joked about.
“Besides,” Cassie continued. “It’d give our men some quality bonding time.”
Oliver’s shoulders visibly sank.
Before anyone could argue, Cassie had grasped her cousin’s arm and was propelling her out of the room.
“Toodles!” she called back playfully.
When they were out in the hallway and alone, she smirked at Katy.
“Finally, a break from our boys,” she said with a wink.
Katy was grateful for the break, but probably not for the reasons that Cassie thought.
Cassie rolled her eyes exaggeratedly, her face flushing. “I love him, obviously. But he’s always pawing at me. Like he can’t get enough. It’s exhausting.”
A stuffy-looking butler passed them in the hallway with raised eyebrows. When they were past him, Katy and Cassie giggled at their recklessness.
“Keep it down, or you’ll get us kicked out for being too low-class,” Katy joked.
Cassie laughed. They were walking through the palace to the first-floor staterooms. Katy figured that they were headed to her cousin’s room.
“So, what about you and Oliver?” Cassie asked as they turned down a long corridor.
“What about us?”
“Don’t play coy,” Cassie teased.
But Katy simply shook her head and looked at her cousin in confusion. Surely she wasn’t implying what Katy thought she was.
“Your sex life, hon.” Cassie shrugged like it should have been obvious.
Katy’s face immediately reddened by two shades. “Cass. Give me a break.”
“Oh, come on. You know everything about me! It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone.”
Katy sighed as they stopped outside Cassie’s door. “It’s not like I don’t trust you with the information, or anything. I just . . . don’t want to talk about stuff like that. At all. With anyone.”
Cassie rolled her eyes and opened her bedroom door. “Well then, this is about to be super awkward.”
Katy’s jaw dropped as she walked into Cassie’s room. It was full of black and silver balloons, bouncing off the ceiling and floating away from the door. There were streamers hanging from the ceiling and chunky pieces of glitter all over the old hardwood floors and elegant runners. And on Cassie’s four-poster bed: two pink sashes that read Bride-to-Be, two white silk robes, a silver tray with a chilled drink and two crystal flutes, and several bow-wrapped giftboxes.
“Surprise! It’s our bachelorette party!” Cassie said with aplomb. She shut the door behind them and ran over to the bed to fetch a robe and a sash for Katy.
Katy’s eyes were still wide as she took in some of the finer details of the room—such as a very large and very anatomically correct inflatable in the corner.
Cassie threw the sash over Katy’s shoulder and then helped her into the silk robe. She noticed where Katy’s eyes had drifted and laughed.
“Oh, I named him Carl. But you can just pretend that it’s Oliver, if that’s easier.”
In fact, that was much harder to deal with.
Cassie went back to her bed and gathered up her own accoutrements. When she was dressed, she sat on her bed and patted the duvet beside her. Katy walked over and sat beside her cousin.
“Wow, Cass. You really went all out.”
Cassie poured a glass and shoved it toward Katy before pouring one for herself. “Nonsense. The servants did most of this. I just bought Carl.”
Katy laughed, though she was still feeling embarrassed. A few
seconds earlier she hadn’t even wanted to broach the subject with Cassie, and now she was having a whole romance-themed party!
“I thought it’d be fun for us to have a kind of naughty afternoon in preparation for our new lives. I’m just so excited. For both of us,” Cassie said.
Her smile was so genuine that Katy immediately felt disarmed, and then, incredibly appreciative. Cassie had set all of this up so that they could both have some fun together. Even if, as usual, their ideas of “fun” didn’t really match up, Katy was touched.
“Thanks, Cass. This is really awesome,” she said. She certainly preferred a low-key celebration with just herself and her cousin to the kind of wild bachelorette parties that pop culture had prepared her for. Sometimes even Cassie could be tactful, it seemed.
Cassie took a big gulp of her drink. “That’s what best friends are for. I just wish we could talk a little bit more about things. I know you’re shy about it, so it’s okay. But it can be hard not having anyone to talk to.” She looked down for a pause.
Katy took a deep breath. She knew what that felt like. So even if she wasn’t a fan of discussing these things normally, she wanted to make Cassie feel less alone.
“We can talk about stuff,” she said. “Just don’t expect me to be able to offer much by way of advice.”
Cassie looked up. “Hey, you have plenty of experience. Don’t be so modest.”
Katy didn’t respond. Instead she took a small sip from her glass.
“Sorry,” Cassie quickly added. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories. I just mean, maybe you’re not as inexperienced as you think you are. I’m sure Oliver is very satisfied.”
Katy looked up at Cassie. “Satisfied with what?”
“Well, with . . .” A lightbulb seemed to click in Cassie’s head. She looked scandalized. “Are you and Oliver not physical yet?”
Katy shook her head. Of course not.
“But you guys do some stuff, right?”
Katy shook her head again.
Cassie looked surprised. “Do you guys at least make out?”
“Cass, can we talk about your love life?” It was perhaps the only time in Katy’s life that she had ever purposefully tried to go there.
But Cassie was persistent. “Hold up. Katy. At least tell me that you and Oliver have kissed before.”
Katy’s silence answered the question. Cassie raised her eyebrows. “Wow. Well, at least your honeymoon will be new and exciting, then.”
Katy took another drink from her glass. If that was as far as the conversation was going to go, she considered herself lucky.
“Okay, since you’re not big on gab, why don’t we get into the gifts?” Cassie offered. She picked one up and passed it toward Katy.
Katy smiled, both grateful to be out of the physical intimacy interrogation and truly touched by her cousin’s thoughtfulness. “You didn’t have to do this, Cass.”
“Let’s see if you’re still thanking me after you open them. They’re not really for the faint of heart.” She smiled devilishly.
Cassie was right about that. Katy opened six or seven presents to find a dazzling array of things that were seemingly designed to make her blush. Between the scandalous underthings that looked like they wouldn’t cover anything to the toys that were definitely not meant for a child’s playroom, Katy stayed red for a solid ten minutes. Even worse, Cassie accompanied every gift with tales of her own experiences. And, as always, Katy felt that the less she knew about that, the better.
She was glad when the gifts were done. She took a long, therapeutic sip to mark the occasion.
“Thank you, Cassie,” she said blushingly. “But I feel awful. I didn’t get anything for you.”
“You’ve been my best friend for twenty-something years, Katy. Trust me, that’s a better gift than some fuzzy pink handcuffs. I just wish I could properly repay you.”
Katy felt tears spring to her eyes. “Cass. I love you so much.”
Cassie leaned forward and hugged Katy tightly. “I love you, too.”
* * *
After a few hours of chatting, which thankfully became much less awkward after the subject was changed, Katy left Cassie’s room and headed back to her own. It was dinnertime in the palace, but she had gotten full on the hors d’oeuvres Cassie had set out in her room. Even if she hadn’t, she probably would’ve skipped the formal dinner anyway. It was always two awkward hours of sitting beside Oliver, unable to ignore how much she disliked the way he kept a hand on her thigh throughout.
Katy’s mind jumped back to the unseemly gifts she had opened in Cassie’s room, which were now weighing down a large bag Cassie had loaned her. How on earth would she ever be able to make love to Oliver? She didn’t even like his hand touching her thigh! The more she thought about it, the more this engagement just seemed so rushed and wrong.
And now David is back on your mind.
Katy made it to her room and quickly snuck inside, stowing her bag of bachelorette gifts under her bed. She needed a hot bath and a book. A crossword puzzle. Sudoku. Anything that would relax her mind and get David Rosen off of it.
But she knew already that it was a useless endeavor. Since her conversation with Zeke, David was almost all she could think about. Right before she’d seen Oliver in the parlor, she had been picturing what her life could’ve been like with David instead. In Cassie’s room, she had been thinking back to the only man who had ever known her so intimately: David. And even now, as she ran a steaming bath and began to disrobe, she knew that David would be right beside her in the tub.
In her mind, anyway.
Katy thought back to the phone call with Zeke as she slipped into the rose oil-perfumed water. David was out of prison. And Zeke thought that might mean he’d try to reach out to Katy. Was that true? Would David honestly want to speak to her after so many years? After he’d refused to take her calls, never responded to her emails, not tried to get ahold of her since that one final call at her seaside summer palace?
If so, why?
Katy closed her eyes and slid down into the hot water. The idle fantasies she’d been tormenting herself with all day collapsed with her, and the pain of it all resurfaced. Old hope and old trauma warred with each other within her.
And if he did try to reach out to me, should I even try to talk to him?
13
David
Giles’s hands shook in a way that made David anxious.
“You’re all right?” he asked the older man with concern.
Giles looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “Fine. Just fine. Had to lay off the sauce to call Martha. But she said she’d call you today to set up an interview, so it was all worth it.” Giles took a long drink from a plastic flask. David hated to see it, but he also knew that in Giles’s state, it was the only thing that would stop the shakes.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it,” he told the other man.
“Well, don’t go forgetting whose plan this was in the first place, lad!” Mick winked and puffed a cigarette. David didn’t feel like reminding him that this was only half true, since Mia had supplied at least half of the plan to get him into the palace. Mick’s enthusiasm was always good at buoying all their spirits, anyway.
It was midday, and David, Mick, Rufus, and Giles had been laying out their plan for the better part of an hour. Giles had done his part already: calling in a personal reference to Martha, the woman in charge of hiring decisions for the palace and a former client of his now-shuttered antique restoration company.
David had already emailed the woman his résumé from a library computer. It was only partially fabricated, with the fake name Mia had texted over to his new burner phone, a fake name that came with a snazzy new fake ID to match.
For this to work, David was going to have to become Calder Rhines. A bespectacled, olive-skinned man with closely cropped dark hair and a trim beard, whose American passport photo very much resembled David.
Or it would, after a shave and a haircut.
“Is this a real person? If so, is he . . .” Talking to Mia in the library earlier that day, David had been too nervous to finish his question with the word “dead.” He didn’t understand any of the logistics of fake identities. And he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.
Mia hadn’t attempted to soften the details. “Best not to ask questions, Señor. If this goes sideways, you’ll want to maintain plausible deniability.”
David had swallowed hard.
With the phony identity, he had drafted a professional résumé that screamed prestige: private tutoring, bilingual in English and French (a skill David could prove, the only positive that had ever come of his time with his horrible ex, Yvette), and six years of experience as a butler for a wealthy American family. Mia had assured him that if Martha did call for a reference, some mysterious person would indeed answer and recommend Calder emphatically.
“One of the perks of the business,” she’d said in her Spanish accent. “Lots of international favors available to call in.”
Now, standing in a small huddle of friends underneath the overbridge, David was feeling downright hopeful. The palace staffer was due to call any minute now. She’d already told Giles how glad she was to hear from him, since she badly needed a new butler. And David still had quite a bit of Mia’s money in his pocket.
“But how are you going to clear the interview?” Rufus asked. He had taken to homeless life so quickly that David had almost forgotten that he’d worked at the palace only days before.
“Yeah, that’s got to be a tough job,” Mick chimed in. “I don’t think they’d even let me within a ‘undred meters of the palace. And no offense, lad, but you ain’t look like no ‘Calder Rhines.’ Pure toff name.”
“I’ll handle that today,” David replied. He had a salon appointment booked already. Another one of Mia’s “international favors.” If the stylist recognized him, they weren’t going to tell anyone. And they’d be willing to use a passport photo as style inspiration.
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