Society Girl (Animos Society)

by Alys Murray

  “I am telling the truth,” she snapped.

  “Then why haven’t you called me back?”

  Sam’s blood itched, mortification sinking into her every pore. She’d struggled to make them see her as their equal, someone who couldn’t fuck her way into this group. She’d adopted the nickname, worn nothing but underwear, and met every challenge they leveled at her so no one could mutter she didn’t deserve it. With this one outburst, Captain ruined everything. The sting of judgment weighed on her shoulders, heaped there by the men seated around her. Only one man stood between her and Captain, but even his defense was weak. Everyone bowed to Captain’s red-faced fury.

  “Mate, you’re being—”

  “Stop talking!” he shouted again, stammering over his Ks like a tantruming toddler. “I wanna know why.”

  “There’s nothing to say.” Sam reached blindly for a decanter in front of her. “Let’s have another drink.”

  Everything was too close, too hot, too mean, and too sharp. The walls closed in—on one side there was Daniel and the words she could never say to him, I love you. On the other, there was… Well, there was everything and everyone else, a pack led by the slobbering, raging drunk at the head of this table.

  “I want all of these guys to know what you’re doing.”

  “I haven’t been doing anything.”

  “You love him,” he accused.

  Captain was a hunter, the type of bred killer who could only be trained and raised in an environment where life in any form was meaningless unless it was one’s own. He didn’t sling the charge at her thoughtlessly or because he wanted to love her or because he craved love from her. He picked this particular weapon because he’d studied her and knew it was the most effective one.

  “I don’t,” she choked out.

  He rose from his chair and strode around the room like some kind of hateful catwalk, a Shakespearean stage built specifically for her torment.

  “You’re picking him over me. Do you know who I am?” A dark chuckle stabbed needles of ice under Samantha’s fingernails. “You American bitch, if you weren’t your father’s daughter, I’d use you and wipe the floor with what I left of you.”

  PJ attempted to cut his friend off one last time. “Reginald.”

  “Stop.” He knocked over a plate. “Fucking.” He stomped on the pieces. “Talking.”

  It was a scream. It was a command. It was so loud and so violent it rattled a misplaced fork off of the table. But more than anything, it was the nail in the coffin of dissent. Captain was out for blood, and he would get it. His rage covered them all, extended to them all, but focused on the shaking woman who would only look at him through the reflection in a nearby mirror.

  “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  “Everything!” He picked up a vase. It soared past Sam’s head, but only barely. “I want everything!”

  Crash. Sam lifted a shaking hand to her face. Her fingertips came back sticky and red. The shrapnel from Captain’s expensive projectile had cut deep into the skin.

  The room clutched the tense silence of an executioner’s chamber. Sam stared at the blood on her hands, unsure if they were moving because her vision was blurred or because of their trembling.

  This was the world she had chosen. This was the world she had chosen over Daniel.

  No. It wasn’t a statement. It was a question. An incredulous, defeated question. This was the world she’d chosen? This was the world she had chosen over Daniel?

  She’d never hated herself so much in her entire life.

  “I have to go.”

  She was out of her chair and out of the pub before Captain could even scream after her.

  “Piggy!” His heavy footfall followed her, as did the stampede of men who surrounded him. “You come back here!”

  “I have to go!”

  “Don’t you dare—”

  But Sam didn’t hear him. She was already too far away.

  The countryside flew past Samantha in a rageful fit of greens and yellows. A storm brewed, sending shards of silver down over the valleys and meadows, coating everything with the sickening colors of death. The picture framed by her windshield would have been fitting, poetic even, if she believed in fate. Or if this weren’t England, where it was overcast every damn day.

  She didn’t notice any of this, not consciously. The road was barely visible through the prison of tears walling her in. Her face still bled. She made no move to stop it.

  This was it. This was the crossroads she never thought she’d reach. Daniel Best had her heart and the Animos Society had her future.

  She had to pick. She couldn’t have both.

  She didn’t want both anymore.

  She could live without a future if it meant never seeing Captain again, if it meant not having to call herself Sam or wear her hair up or pretend to be something she wasn’t so she could fit into a box she hated in the first place.

  As a child, she dreamed of having a real family. Her father could offer her one. But Daniel loved her. And Lord Dubarry never showed any capacity for love. It was an impossibility a month ago, but now it was there, and it was real, and it was good. Better than good. It was life changing.

  By the time she bolted through Ashbrooke’s front door, ripping off the scarf she’d barely taken off since receiving it yesterday, Samantha was making decisions instead of plans. She’d call Captain tonight and tell him she was through with the Society. She’d have to apologize to Thomas, of course, and make amends for what happened between them. A bag would have to be packed because she was going over to Daniel’s house and she was going to give herself to him completely. She was going to tell him she felt the same way. She’d fallen in love with him, and then she’d call him in sick because they were not going to leave his bed until the tenth of forever.

  “Sam.”

  Halfway up the stairs, her father’s voice halted her.

  “Yes.” She leaned over the bannister to see him in the foyer, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and the Financial Times in another. He looked more like a father then than she’d ever seen him before; he was the British Mr. Rogers incarnate. A loose-fitting sweater replaced his usual suit, and there was an unusual spring in his step, totally unbecoming a member of the peerage. Sam stammered in surprise. “Y-yes, Father?”

  “Thomas told me about your final initiation on Saturday. The Ball.” He raised his cup in a faux cheers, toasting her as if he were toasting someone’s good health. “Exciting times.”

  “Mm-hmm,” was all Sam could reply.

  In her frantic planning, she’d forgotten about Father. He’d have to know about her failure. She’d have to tell him sometime. She had no plan for how to break the news to him and lose him forever. In her rush to be a woman in love, she’d breezed past the most important detail.

  “I told him to clear my schedule. We’ll have dinner, the two of us, to celebrate. I’m very proud of you, duckling. You’ve made us all very proud.”

  In a blink, Samantha was a lonely six-year-old girl standing on a street corner in New York City, watching a man in a suit carry his sleeping little girl in his arms, wishing it was her. Loneliness echoed and reverberated, shaking her to her very core as it sunk in what a terrible fool she was. She didn’t know herself at all if she thought she’d trade anything for her father’s approving smile.

  “Here.” The old man climbed the stairs, pulled a shining object out of his sweater pocket, and handed it to her. “My Society pin. It’s customary to pass them down, father to child. This one is almost as old as the club itself.”

  “Thank you.”

  He smiled. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”

  He was gone as fast as he came, climbing the stairs and closing his office door behind him. Samantha observed the pin. Rusting with age, it was an heirloom, a tangible recognition she was a Dubarry, dammit. She was her father’s daughter, her brother’s sister, and this house was her home. Her hand closed around it, feeling the sharp sting of the p
in press into the skin of her palm. Her blood spilled for the second time today. She’d been right about one thing. There was no choice between love and her future.

  She was just wrong about which side that meant.

  The slab of meat beating in her rib cage leadened and sank to her feet as she pulled out her phone and drafted a text message to Daniel. Pin digging deeper in her other hand, she typed the words sealing her fate forever.

  Hey, there’s this ball on Saturday… Do you want to come with me? I’d love for everyone to meet you.

  Chapter Twenty

  Samantha Dubarry dressed herself for the ball as if preparing for her own execution. Downstairs, she heard her brother furiously pounding out some music on the piano—a habit he had when he was anxious or trying to think through a problem—but the song mutated into the pounding of a hangman’s drum, every strike on the keys bringing her one step closer to the inevitable. To the end.

  Her choice of gown—a black floor-length A-line—absorbed all light and reflected her mood. Somber. Serious. From the last stroke of her mascara wand to the last turn of Daniel’s wheels in front of Pembrooke, where the ball was being held, she repeated a small refrain, letting it guide and focus her wayward mind. Animos. Father. Animos. Father. Family. Family. Family. All the while, she combatted the sight of Daniel in his tuxedo and the scent of his aftershave with memories of her childhood. Father’s Day events at school with no one to bring. Empty Christmas cards. Lonely afternoons where she basically raised herself on a diet of dry cereal and the lessons delivered by TV dads.

  Her younger self would finally be satisfied. Only one tiny heartbreak stood in her way.

  “You all right?”

  Pembrooke Manor belonged to Captain’s family. If she ever wanted to really twist the knife into him, Samantha might have pointed out the fact his family’s home was almost two hundred years younger than hers, it only had half the number of rooms, or they’d only hosted the Queen once, but tonight was about playing nice. Playing by the rules. And not having a repeat of—or even thinking about—the supper at the pub.

  It wasn’t Ashbrooke, but it was a fine British manor house with Downton Abbey charm of its own. Little did the two hundred or so finely appointed guests know this entire party was a ruse, a construction of wineglasses and shrimp forks built so a handful of young men could judge one another’s dates.

  God. She wanted to throw up.

  “Sam?” he asked again.

  “Why wouldn’t I be all right?” she said, lying through her teeth as they entered the ballroom, arm in arm.

  “You look nervous.” Daniel’s concern was a bullet she couldn’t dodge. But she could shrug off the pain.

  “Should I be?”

  She laughed as though her joke was amusing and led Daniel straight into the fray. The Animos men huddled around themselves, clinging to their dates and pushing them to dizzying heights of embarrassing ridiculousness, all with charming smiles on their smug faces. Samantha planted herself here, throwing back champagne after champagne. In this middle of a crowd, Daniel could occupy himself with other people, and he did. There were no requests for a dance or sweet mutterings about how beautiful she looked. He tried to fit in, joining in obnoxious conversation for a good, long while.

  “These guys aren’t what I expected,” he muttered in her ear.

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged and assessed the collection of women. Sam looked, too. Some “too” tall, some “too” short, some “too” wide, some with crooked teeth and “too” loud laughs. These were the kind of friends Daniel collected and the Animos men were humiliated to be in the same room with. “I thought they’d all be with bleach-blond model types, real Made in Chelsea women. These women are normal. Human.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Sam couldn’t bring herself to agree with him because he was right. These men did only go out with Made in Chelsea stick figures with wallets wider than their waists. His assessment of them was correct; they were vapid, cruel men who called their only female friend Piggy. What Daniel saw today was a performance of humility, the con before the storm that was to come. “Will you excuse me?”

  Before he could answer, she ducked away to the nearest bar. She needed to be drunker. Way drunker. Infinity times drunker. There was no hard liquor, only wines and champagnes, so she reached for the nearest glasses and set herself to throwing them back. One glass. Two glasses. Three glasses.

  “You’re thirsty,” the bartender snarked.

  Four glasses.

  “It’s going to be a long night.”

  Intoxication had been her goal in coming to the bar, but she left with nothing more than a throbbing headache and black spots populating her vision.

  “Back room,” Captain muttered as he passed her, his date firmly on his arm. “Ten minutes.”

  “We’ll be there,” she replied, continuing on to the slowly dispersing group of Animos members, only to find Daniel decidedly missing. When no one could tell her where he’d run off to, she scanned the room for him, picking apart clumps of party guests until she spotted his tall form. There, tucked in the corner of the room, was the six-piece band, sighing their way through some maddeningly calm neoclassical ballads. As the man plucked and strummed, Daniel chatted to the guitar player. She didn’t recognize him from the bookshop’s open mic nights, but Daniel spoke like they were old friends.

  For a few of the song’s movements, she surveyed him. His quiet grace and open friendliness. This, she realized, was the last time she’d get to see him this way, so she waited for him to turn, giving herself one last gift of time with him. Eventually, he returned to her.

  “What were you doing?” she asked, not unkindly.

  “I”—he held the word, clearly searching for a lie he could scrape together—“had a question about where he got his strings. What’s up?”

  “There’s a more private room in the back. Join me?”

  This caught him off guard. He blinked once, twice, and cleared his throat, extricating himself from her grasp and sliding a few steps backward, almost running into two waiters carrying silver trays laden with shrimp cocktail.

  “I’ll be right there. I”—he pointed over his shoulder, stumbling over his own two feet—“have another question.”

  With the grace of a Goofy cartoon, Daniel headed back to the band. Samantha considered waiting, but she decided against it. She’d be more comfortable if she knew what she was getting herself into.

  The Ancillary Chamber, as Captain called it, was a small, tacky ballroom off of the main one, dressed up like a medieval temple. Thomas would have wrung the neck of anyone who tried to pull off such a style in Ashbrooke. Houses, like dogs and spectacles, reflected their owners. The couples had moved into this room, where light music and refreshments were served from a long oaken altar running along the far end. Quiet conversation rumbled as the men sized up their competition.

  “Piggy!” Sam cringed. Captain hustled his date—a twiggy redhead with crooked teeth and kind eyes—over to her. “Where’s your date?”

  “Getting us drinks,” she fibbed.

  “Piggy, this is Bernarda. Bernie, this is Piggy.”

  “Sam’s fine.” Sam shook the woman’s hand as Captain excused himself.

  “Can I leave you two to get acquainted? Some ballots need my attention.”

  Bernie narrowed her eyes in confusion.

  “Ballots?”

  She called after him, but Samantha interjected, sliding in to distract her. All of the official Animos members would be given golf pencils and sheets to be filled out by the end of the night to determine their winner. According to Thomas, a winner usually evidenced themselves well before the night’s end and the clear winner was often decided without the cards, but it seemed they were taking no chances this year.

  “So, Bernie,” Samantha said, smooth as sea glass. “What do you do?”

  “I’m an assistant housekeeper. I work at Pembrooke. I never thought a guy like Reginald would lo
ok my way, but…” Bernie rocked on her heels, swishing her dress. “Wow. I can’t believe I’m here. I’m so happy to—” Her hand flew to cover her mouth. A shadow of shame crossed her face. “Sorry. I’m rambling. I ramble sometimes. It’s a nightmare. Sometimes I start, and I can’t stop, and… Shit, I’m doing it again.”

  The human cost of this “game” stood so close to Samantha she could smell her vanilla body spray. There would be so many victims tonight, so many hearts broken and dreams shattered and promises ripped up like a loser lottery ticket.

  “It’s okay.” She smiled weakly. “I don’t mind.”

  “The champagne makes it worse and Reginald’s been feeding me the stuff all night! He’s so thoughtful, always there with a fresh glass when I—”

  Her sermon was interrupted by a familiar voice; rushes of ice slithered down Samantha’s exposed back.

  “Hello! Yes, hello, everyone!”

  Oh, no. No, no, no, no…

  Sam pivoted but had to collapse against a gaudy nearby column for support when she saw. Daniel hadn’t been talking to the musician about strings. He’d asked if he could borrow his guitar. Daniel stood on the low altar with the unfamiliar instrument slung across his chest.

  God dammit, he’s going to sing.

  She knew that this moment was going to come. She knew it had to come if she wanted any chance of winning. It was his love songs, his utter, naive devotion to anything true and good in this universe, that made him the perfect Mud Duck. But her heart sank anyway.

  “I don’t mean to be rude, and thank you for inviting me to your party, but I thought I’d give the band a bit of a break, if that’s all right.”

  It was a new song, fresh and wintry, wrapping her in the same cloak of closeness they’d been cocooned in on the night of her birthday. She found herself thinking if things were different so often it felt as if she might rip into a million pieces, chasing those alternate realities. If things were different, she would have listened to his song every day. They would have danced to it at their wedding. She would have sung it to their children.

  Nothing was different. This was her life. This was the man she was going to lose.