by Alys Murray
“Yes, Nan.”
It was one of her bite-size pieces of wisdom, tossed so casually over her shoulder as she departed, yet it stuck in Daniel’s brain. She’d said the same thing to him since he was a child, over and over again through the years. That encouragement formed and shaped him into the man he was today. He’d been turned down many times before. Sure, not by someone who he’d shared a spark with and definitely not by anyone who’d given him a song, but still. He could live with the heartbreak.
“Now,” Angie said, throwing down her empty teacup and leveling herself at Daniel. She was clearly trying to play the intimidating manager card. “Where’s my song?”
A stone sank into the base of his stomach. His future was on the line here and he was stuck thinking about some woman.
“It’s not finished.”
“Not finished? But you were going on and on like mad about it yesterday.”
“I said it’s not finished,” Daniel snarled.
The wind, which was definitely in Angie’s favor only a second ago, now died between them.
“Oh, shit.” She winced, visibly bracing herself for the worst. “I was right about the Ashbrooke girl, wasn’t I?”
“We both know how much you love being right,” he said, simply. There wasn’t anything else to say.
“Yeah, but not when your career is on the line here. Alanis Trent wants to hear new songs.”
“I know that.”
“Then, finish your song.”
It’s not my song. It’s her song, which is why I can’t finish it.
“Yeah,” he said, mustering up a small smile even when hope cratered in his chest. “I’ll try.”
“A lot could happen between now and Sunday. Who knows? You might get your song yet.”
Angie wished him the best and retreated from the shop as quickly as she’d come. She muttered some excuse about not being late to a date, leaving him alone with his worry. Here he was, faced with the biggest opportunity of his life, the chance to capture his dream, and he was so busy thinking about Samantha Dubarry that he didn’t have any room in his mind for chords and lyrics.
For the next few hours, nothing much of consequence happened. Daniel worked himself into a stupor, sweeping rhythms with his broom and returning misplaced paperbacks to their places on the tight shelves.
By the time a timid ring of the front desk bell roused him from his worries about the future, the sun sank far beyond the hilly Oxford horizon, leaving the bookstore a beacon of hot light in the sea of darkened streets around it.
Daniel looked up. And had to fight to keep himself from laughing. There, on the customer’s side of the long wooden counter, stood a woman. At least, he assumed it was a woman. He couldn’t exactly tell as the top half of the figure’s body was obscured by a leaning tower of books balanced precariously on her forearms. It was like a half-human, half-book cyborg had wandered into his shop.
“Hello? I’m so sorry, but I could really use some help,” came a brittle, struggling voice from behind the wall of books.
“Here”—the broom in his hands clattered to the floor—“let me help you.”
“Thanks.” An American. Her voice, stronger now, told him everything he needed to know. Daniel picked books off of the precarious pile until her smiling face appeared. Her familiar, hesitant, shy smile. “I think my arms are going to fall off.”
“Oh.” He couldn’t help the sigh of surprise. And confusion. And suspicion. And want. He cleared his throat, squaring his attention solely ringing up the books on their ancient till. “Miss Dubarry.”
“I needed some books.” She slid the remaining stack in her arms onto the counter.
“I didn’t know you people read paperbacks. I thought your crowd was much more of the leather-bound book type,” he said, a twinge of bitterness coloring the words.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
Hand hovering over the nearest Stephen King thriller she’d most likely blindly ripped off of the shelf, Daniel’s muscles tightened. Angie had been right about her all along. She was a spoiled rich girl who thought her money could buy her anything. It seems I’ve upset a peasant. I really must go throw some pounds his way and perhaps some money will cheer the poor fellow up. What a shame. He’d been hoping she was better than that, even if she had been horrible to him.
“Does this usually work for you?” he asked, resuming the scanning. Not looking at her.
“Does what usually work?”
“Buying people off.”
“I’m not—”
He could almost hear her defense, the oh-so-innocent, wide-eyed, everything’s-always-worked-for-me-so-why-shouldn’t-this denial. Daniel didn’t want to hear it. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, his words started small and gained momentum as he went, knocking her interjections away. “It’s not enough to insult me in your home, you have to do it at my own place, too?”
“I need to—”
“I mean, I get it. It was stupid of me to think you’d want to go out with me, but do you need to rub my nose in it? Let a man make his mistakes. A stupid mistake, sure, but—”
He was flying now, both his tongue and his scanning arms. They were halted in their tracks when a light hand touched his own. Silence ensued for a moment. Not even the creaking floorboards or leaky roof interrupted them.
Their eyes met. And search as he might, Daniel could not find even a trace of untruth in hers. He hadn’t expected honesty.
“It wasn’t stupid.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t stupid. I was. I…” A shaking hand moved from his own and tugged at the end of her ponytail. By this point, he had only really seen Sam in two modes of operation. The straitlaced lady of Ashbrooke Manor or a frightened woman desperately trying not to want his help. This version, the one who paced his floor and spoke too fast, was new to him. He watched her with supreme fascination. “Can I tell you something?”
Dumbfounded, he nodded.
“I didn’t grow up like this. I didn’t grow up with Lord—with my father. I used to be Samantha Green, not Samantha Dubarry. I spent most of my life jumping around shoebox apartments in New York before…” She paused and pursed her lips. She must have decided he wasn’t worthy of the secret yet. He didn’t blame her. Everyone deserved at least some privacy, especially from perfect strangers. “Apartments and then foster care. I didn’t know I was Lord Dubarry’s daughter until a couple years ago. Apparently, my brother was going through some of his paperwork and found proof of my existence and felt so guilty he brought me over here. I’m not… I’m not this thing. I like jeans and greasy cheeseburgers and really handsome, really talented guys with eyes I can’t get out of my head. Trying to be this thing they want me to be… I got carried away. I fucked up, really. And I know I don’t deserve it, but I’d really like a second chance.”
The puzzle Daniel had tried to put together of her finally became a bit clearer. She was playing a part, trying to fit into jeans too tight for her. She hadn’t cast him aside because she didn’t want him or because he wasn’t good enough for her. The young, suddenly powerful, woman thought condescending to servants was something noblewomen did.
More than that, though, it struck him then that they’d only met one another a handful of times and she’d spilled her guts, her family secrets and history, right out to him. His blood curdled from the heat of his own guilt. Here he was, thinking she was some pampered, spoiled princess when, in reality, she’d traveled a much tougher road than he had.
And she thought he was handsome. And talented. He’d be lying if he said the compliments didn’t matter, that they didn’t soften him a little bit.
“And I’m so sorry for the way I spoke to you. The way I treated you.”
Whether or not Daniel knew it, he was a goner, right then and there.
“It was wrong,” she continued. “I didn’t mean it, and I’d like to make it up to you.”
“How?” he asked, still playing the skeptic but knowing full well
he’d take any make-up present she gave him so long as he got to drink cheap beer and dance with her on Friday night to some too-loud amateur swing band.
“There’s this ball. On Friday. It’s the beginning of the winter season, so my family is kicking things off in the country.” She gave a shake of her shoulders, rolling her eyes as if to say her family was too embarrassing. “It’ll be a proper wild one, as far as parties thrown by an MP go.”
“Friday’s the day of the Blitz Ball,” he muttered.
Pressure wasn’t something he wanted to add to this woman’s life. She clearly got enough of it from home. But…he’d been planning to go to the Blitz Ball for ages. It was the perfect place for romance. The 1940s was the kind of time where someone could look across a room, see a beautiful girl, and think, “I’m going to marry her.” Since Daniel was distinctly lacking in the time machine department, the Blitz Ball was as close as he could come to capturing their magic in his own life.
“I know, but I have to be with my family. And…” She pressed against the counter, leaning toward him. Her fingers alternated tapping her opposite forearm or fiddling with her ponytail. Her breath came in flutters. Even her eyes skidded from place to place, never resting fully on him. “I’d have a much better time if you were there.”
It was such a line. Daniel needed to know it wasn’t fake. Mostly because he so wanted to believe it was real.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why what?”
“Why would you have a better time if I was there?”
With a push off the counter, Sam returned to her pacing. Her fingertips twisted in the hem of her sweater. Not for the first time, Daniel wanted nothing more than to read minds, to slither between someone’s ears and understand what they were thinking. Sam’s angst at the question was evident, but what for? She’d asked him out. She must have liked something about him, even if he would serve as little more than terrific arm candy.
“I’m not really good at this romantic stuff,” she eventually managed.
“Try, please,” Daniel encouraged, hoping it wasn’t too harsh.
More pacing. More twisting. More waiting.
“Because…” She stopped. Her eyes widened slightly in revelation. And her perfect, pink, kissable lips formed words he’d been waiting his entire life to hear. “You sing a song my heart hasn’t ever heard before.”
He’d go to a million stuck-up balls if he could feel like this every day. Like he was the only person on earth worth her.
“I think we’ll make a poet of you yet, Samantha Dubarry.”
…
Ever since moving into Ashbrooke, Sam had developed a carefully crafted schedule. Upon her return from university, she would always ascend to her bedroom, work through her afternoon’s reading or write notes on her thesis, and then continue her night to the schedule of the house. Dinner at seven, drinks and dessert in the smoking room until nine thirty, and then straight up to the living quarters for a shower and bed.
After leaving Daniel Best and his bookshop with four plastic bags stuffed with paperbacks, she threw the schedule into the fire and dove headfirst into a scalding hot shower. Not because it was practical, but because she wanted to scrub herself clean of the afternoon.
Dammit. It hadn’t gone at all to plan. None of it. She’d expected to waltz in there, buy the books, and charm him into going out with her. All of her best-laid plans and practiced lines were useless when he turned his dejected eyes on her.
It had gotten too real. She’d told him about her past, for Christ’s sake. Told him about her struggle to maintain her own identity in this swirling vortex of the British peerage.
She’d even told him the stupid line she’d written in her diary. Diary, music is stupid and love songs are bullshit made to sell concert tickets and flower bouquets. Love isn’t real. But when he sang last night, it was like I could almost believe it was. It was like I heard music for the first time. Like he was singing a song my heart never heard before.
The page, like all pages of her diary, was burned immediately after it was written. Before she moved into her father’s house, she’d kept a daily diary, and she couldn’t break herself of the habit. But she never knew when the Animos Society would show up and what they would want to steal from her next, so keeping a record of her exact feelings and thoughts and fears and dreams seemed risky at best.
Still, once the pages were burned to keep them safe from prying eyes, she remembered her scribbles.
After her shower, when her skin was pink from the heat and the scrubbing, she yanked a comb through her hair and slipped into some pajamas. She’d rung Cook long ago not to expect her for dinner. This night was not a fresh salad, red wine, and beef bourguignon night. She was in for an ice cream directly out of the pint and cold beer night.
Which is exactly how Thomas found her twenty minutes later. Sitting on the floor of the kitchen, shoveling famous Cornish ice cream directly into her mouth with a hundred and fifty-year-old silver spoon. Still dressed in his suit from a day at work, he didn’t seem to mind she’d foregone her usual fine dining attire for the more comfortable NPR T-shirt and leggings.
Thomas merely sighed and—full suit and all—joined her on the tile floor.
“Tough day?” he asked, gesturing for the spoon. Somewhere, in another part of the house, candles were surely burning low over the delicious dinner whose scent wafted through the walls, but here Thomas was, scooping Butter Brickle out of the carton with gusto.
“No worse than any other,” Sam said, shrugging. Thomas was her brother. He was nice to her, but she couldn’t let him in. The walls needed to stay up. If she let herself feel one thing, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from feeling all the things.
“Did you talk to the Daniel kid?”
“Yes.” She nodded, taking back the spoon. She entertained the idea of purposefully getting brain freeze to excuse herself from this conversation entirely but ultimately decided against it. Thomas had, after all, been guiding her on this whole Mud Duck thing, even against his better judgment. “We’re going out on Friday.”
“Excellent news. Where?”
“Here.” Daniel’s disappointment at missing the Blitz Ball had been evident as soon as she mentioned it. As palpable as his sadness was, there was no way Sam would be going there. His choice of venue was too close, too personal, and, if she was being honest with herself, too romantic. No, she’d show off her family’s wealth and dizzy him with champagne and fancy dresses, like Thomas told her she should. “I told him we’re holding a ball.”
Thomas raised a single eyebrow, never taking his eyes from the ice cream.
“Are we holding a ball this Friday?” he asked, as light and easy as asking someone for the weekend weather forecast.
“Not yet,” Sam admitted. “But you can make it happen, can’t you?”
“I’ll start making some calls.” He was on his feet in a second. The swinging kitchen door opened, and he shouted through it, “Father!”
A moment, then, from the front study:
“Yes?”
“We’re holding a party on Friday. I’ll be making the arrangements.” Thomas turned and whispered to Sam, “No one calls them balls anymore, by the way, not really.”
“Wonderful!” Their father was more excited than he had been since he’d seen her in the front hallway with the regents. He continued freely, either not knowing or not caring Sam could hear every blessed syllable he said. “Make sure you invite those Animos chaps who were here last weekend. The one with the flat nose has his eye on Samantha and I’d like to see it through.”
Great. Not only would she be dancing with Daniel, she’d have to do it under the Animos’ watchful eye. Her chest tightened, and air suddenly became very scarce indeed. Thomas dropped his hold on the door and shot her an apologetic grimace.
“Sorry.”
“Well, you know what they say,” Sam said, locking her brave face into place. “The more the merrier.”
Chapter Nin
e
“It’ll take a miracle, but I think we might pull it off.”
The solarium of Ashbrooke Manor had been constructed as a wedding gift in the early 1900s from the lord to the lady of the house. In one of the many glass panels of the room, an inscription of their interlocked initials reminded every successive generation of the great display of devotion it was. Sam couldn’t help but think she’d divorce the Lord of Ashbrooke if he gave her such a present. A solarium was supposed to be a room soaked in sunshine, a place to escape the heat but indulge in the sun.
But this was England. And in England, solariums weren’t so much good for sun as they were for cloud and storm watching. If the fifteenth Lady of Ashbrooke had been a keen meteorologist, then it might have made a fine present indeed, but as it was, Sam thought it was a crappy gift at best.
As the rest of the house was being prepared for a party—a struggle for the household staff, as they’d already had their hands full trying to recover from the Rage weekend—the solarium was the only room with enough space to accommodate Thomas, Sam, and their mountains and mountains of party planning documents. With two laptops, a desktop, an inkjet printer, three cell phones, and a landline, it should have been easy to organize and keep things tidy. However, when Mrs. Long delivered lunch to the slaving pair, she almost passed out at the state of things. Papers and color samples and notecards and sticky pads and pens and highlighters and all other accouterments of party planning lay strewn across the room like fallen battlefield soldiers, their dead limbs twitching under the wind of the overhead fan.
The siblings each sat at opposite ends of the table.
“I’m glad one of us is cheerful,” Sam grumbled, crossing off a prospective caterer from her list. The hoity-toity Frenchman had hung up on her when she’d told him how soon the party was, and she assumed he’d not be calling her back anytime soon. “I should’ve thought this through more. Given myself time.”
“You don’t have any more time. The Mud Duck Ball is in less than a month, and you need to make sure he’s ready.”