When the duchess joined Spin and Zhi at the door, she was all regal smiles. "You both get cleaned up while I see to dinner."
Zhi kept his strong jaw closed. His gaze still glazed.
"Yes, ma'am," said Spin. "I'm sorry, I mean yes, Your Grace.”
She tried another curtsy. A real one this time. But she’d never been any good at it, and so it looked as though she were squatting before a personal trainer, and doing a bad job of it.
“Sorry,” she said after the poor display. “I was raised in America."
“You did just fine,” said the duchess. “And you may call me Nian, my dear. I’ll see you at dinner.”
Spin and Zhi stood silently as they watched Nian walk away. Spin turned to Zhi, but he was still in his rose-gold state of denial. When she was younger, she resented being pulled from that place before she was ready, so she turned on her heel to leave him be.
"I'll go find Lark,” she said.
Before she took a step, his hand halted her. His fingers were gentle on her bare skin, but their heat seared her. She was certain he’d leave a mark.
"Thank you," he said quietly.
Spin kept her eyes on his fingers. She wondered if that's where his calluses came from? From protecting his mother from that monster.
"Don't mention it,” she said.
He didn’t let her go. She chanced a glance up. His gaze connected with hers.
In his clouded gaze, she saw clear understanding. He might struggle with communicating with the cultural slang of the club, but this language between them he understood perfectly. They shared a common language of dysfunctional homes.
After one more lingering look, Zhi bowed his head. Then he straightened and turned.
"Hey," she called after him.
He stopped and glanced over his shoulder at her.
“No texting or DMing without me.” She wagged her finger.
A small smile quirked at the corner of his lip. He gave her a quick nod. And then he was gone.
A second later her phone chirped. The peace-sign emoji popped up on her phone.
Chapter Seventeen
Dinner was entirely civil and a bit surreal. Zhi sat back and watched his mother make idle chit chat with Spin and Lark as though the earlier scene had never happened. He had changed his clothes. His mother wore a pale plaster on her temple. Spin sat with her hair free of the bandana, and they spoke about such mundane things as the weather, the sweetness of the meat Lin had prepared, and the refreshing citrus in the lemonade.
Lark made up the bulk of the conversation. He’d caught the magician’s assistant glance at his mother’s temple exactly once, but she never brought it up. Zhi doubted Spin had told her friend about the incident. In fact, he knew she hadn’t.
He wasn’t sure how he was certain. But he was. Likely, it was the same certainty he’d had when he’d stood next to her after … the incident.
No one had ever stood by him and his mother’s side during or after one of his father’s rages. The staff knew better than to get between them. Nian would always defend her husband. She’d once threatened to sack a footman who had come to her defense. Soon everyone simply waited until the dust settled to clean up the mess the nobles had made.
Not this time. This time, Spin had been by his side. She’d tended to his mother as though she’d done it all before. He got the feeling that she had. But for herself? Or for someone else?
He was dying to ask. But he wouldn’t. Just as they’d made a silent agreement to not speak of what happened earlier today, he knew he couldn’t ask her about her past.
In the present, his mother was peppering Spin with questions about her life and getting nothing. Spin wasn’t shutting the duchess out, not at all. In answer to one of the duchess’ questions, Spin would say something vague and turn the conversation toward Lark. Lark always had an interesting tale to tell. When the conversation came back around to Spin, she’d smile and redirect the question to his mother.
Zhi sat quietly, watching the DJ work the room. She was masterful at distraction. She mixed and spun the record away from her every time the needle of a question was dropped. By the time the dishes were cleared, he realized he knew not one more fact about the woman than he had before he’d sat down.
Again, he wondered what she was hiding? Why wouldn’t she share any of herself? The woman he’d seen back in the music room, she had been the real Spin. He was sure of it. As she’d layered the different beats one on top of the next, he’d been granted a peek inside her world.
There he saw a woman who was complex. She could be soft and airy like the notes she pressed on the piano. But she could be loud and raucously annoying like the repetitive percussive beats of the polka. She was also loyal and inclusive like the way she’d had Zhi clap along to be part of the song.
She was all these things rolled into one. But pull them apart, and you didn’t get the whole picture. Zhi wanted to know more. He wanted to turn the volume of her up and learn the words to her score.
“Begging your pardon, Your Grace?”
Zhi looked up to see Oswald at the dining room’s entrance. He still wore his service coat. Zhi couldn’t help but see it was threadbare. The staff didn’t usually have to worry over that so much as guests were an irregularity here at the estate. But Oswald and the rest of the staff had had to don their tired uniforms for the entire day so as not to tip off Spin that there was anything amiss. He couldn’t have her tell Parker the true state of his affairs.
“There is a matter that needs your attention,” Oswald demurred.
Zhi held in his sigh. He knew that any matter that needed his attention would require him to get his hands dirty. He rose, bowing to his mother and inclining his head to the women.
Before he stepped away, he caught Spin’s eye. Her penetrating gaze made him think that she knew what was up. But she couldn’t. She might be a translator for him between two worlds. But she didn’t know his inner thoughts.
He felt the doubts touch the corners of his eyes at that thought. She’d seen so much of him and his private world. If he wasn’t careful, she would see it all. He turned from her, shutting off her view of himself, and proceeded Oswald out of the room.
“What is it now?” he asked once they were out of earshot.
“Best if I just show you.”
Zhi had been neglecting many of the repairs while Spin and Lark were in residence. He didn’t want them to catch him in his overalls getting his hands dirty. He’d tried to keep them from the third floor, but that hadn’t worked.
Spin had found out the big secret of his parents, something he hadn’t discussed with even his closest friends. Though he knew that Alex and Carlisle had always known there was trouble at home. There had been similar trouble in their own homes. Zhi supposed that’s what happened when people didn’t marry for love.
He and his friends rarely spoke of their troubled homes. They went wild outside of it instead. Now, Alex was settling down, happily in love and engrossed in a new business. Carlisle wasn’t looking for love. The baron-to-be’s every waking moment was spent on saving his own family’s business and fortune.
Zhi wondered if he could tell Spin the truth about his intentions with Parker. It was clear the two weren’t an immediate match. But Zhi was determined to make the woman happy if she’d give him a chance.
He still needed Spin’s help with ensuring that chance. Perhaps she could help him make a mixtape. Was that still a thing? The thought of sifting through music with Spin warmed him. It soothed the tension that had been building in him since leaving his father’s room.
“Here we are,” said Oswald.
Zhi snapped back to attention and closed his eyes with a groan.
Oswald had brought him down into the basement. The exposed pipes before him were corroded and leaking. He could hear the strain on the metal. Zhi pinched the bridge of his nose, the tension returning.
“It won’t hold much longer,” said Oswald. “We’ll have to get a professional
in if there’s any hope of keeping our heads above water.”
“Let me give it a try first.” Zhi stripped off his jacket and got to work. He might be able to get the pipes under control for a few days, a few weeks at most, but if he didn’t solve the problem soon, everything would burst.
Chapter Eighteen
Spin watched from the corner of her eye as Zhi rose and strode from the room. When his gaze had caught hers, she’d felt her heart quicken. Her mouth had gone dry, and suddenly her lower lip felt the need to be tugged into her mouth for moistening. Something passed between them, she didn’t know what, but it was something.
She didn’t like it.
He’d been quiet through dinner. She’d felt his eyes on her the whole time. Each time she’d deflected a question about herself and redirected the conversation to Lark or back to Nian, Zhi’s eyes had never left her face.
Spin got the feeling that he knew she was hiding. Worse, she was certain his lowered lashes told her that he wouldn’t let her hide from him. She’d avoided his gaze until that last moment when he’d bowed to her, and their gazes had caught and held.
Tearing her gaze away had been a chore, but she’d done it. Now she’d need to tear herself away from him. He had no idea that he’d gotten closer to her in one day than anyone had in years.
She found herself wanting to tell him that he wasn’t alone in how he’d been raised by termites. Why termites? Most animals in the wild weren’t monogamous. Termites were some of the few.
They were known to mate for up to twenty years. Unfortunately, the lifetime partnerships had human statistics when it came to divorce. Nearly half broke up before death could part them, and when they broke up, it was violent. There were scientists who’d seen them chew the other’s antennae off.
Spin wanted to tell Zhi that she understood the dysfunction between his parents. She wanted to tell him that she understood how a mother could love someone who hurt her emotionally and physically and still go back for more. She wanted to tell him that it was okay to hate his father, that he should go through with his threat to send the monster away because it would never get better.
But she had done none of those things for her own mother. So instead, she’d bit her tongue, and she’d looked away.
He left the room without knowing any of that. He’d looked so tired, so alone. Guilt filled her heart, and she wanted to run after him.
“I hope you’ll stay with us your entire stay here in Cordoba,” said Nian.
Spin turned back to the duchess. Her gaze immediately went to the bandage on her forehead where antennae might have been were she of a different species.
“We’re only here until tomorrow, and then we have to go back,” said Lark. “I have shows and Spin … well, she always finds work.”
Spin smiled evasively. She did always find work. She had the healthiest relationship with money that she knew. The secret was to not chase after it. She’d known from a young age that things came to those who didn’t chase after the object of their affection.
“What is it you do, my dear?” asked Nian.
“I’m a DJ.”
“Do you mean you’re on the radio?”
“No, ma’am. I play records, but not on the radio. I play in clubs.”
“Is this your own music?”
“It’s the music of other people. I mix their songs together to make something new.”
Nian’s bright eyes lit up reminding Spin of the painting in the hall. “You mean like a maestro?”
“Yes.” Now Spin’s smile brightened. “I suppose so.”
“That’s simply fascinating. I studied the piano. I was quite good in my youth. And then I met my husband, and that life was over for me.” The duchess’ smile was wistful and sad.
Lark caught it. She looked to Spin. Spin gave a slight shake of her head. She knew that Lark had seen the Band-Aid on the duchess’ forehead.
Lark hadn’t come from an abusive home, but she hadn’t grown up in the best of neighborhoods. She knew the signs of abuse. And though she was the type of woman to want to call out the abuser; the one who would be in the driver’s seat if a girlfriend wanted to do a drive-by on her cheating boyfriend. Lark also knew when to hold her tongue.
“My mother always said you shouldn’t let a man hide your light,” Lark said.
Well, she almost always held her tongue.
Nian’s gaze began to cloud over. Before she could retreat into herself, Spin intervened. She grabbed at the first happy thought she could muster.
“I heard Zhi playing,” said Spin.
And just like that, the duchess’ face lit up again.
“We had a little jam session earlier,” Spin continued.
“You played with him?” Nian frowned as though she were confused.
Spin nodded.
“He’s never played with anyone but me.”
Spin told the butterflies in her belly to take a hike. That didn’t mean anything. She’d barged in on him and sat down without an invitation. He was too polite to kick her out. Never mind that he’d clearly enjoyed their session.
“I do hope you stay longer,” said Nian. “This house was once filled with guests. But now … that my husband is ill …we don’t get very many.”
Spin noted the chips on the plates. These weren’t the finest. She’d been in a big house before. These were the types of plates used by servants. The forks were actual silverware and not gold plated. There was a ducal emblem on them, but like something that might be sold in a gift shop. The meat served had not been the choicest cut. The butler’s uniform was frayed.
Nian rose. Lin materialized from the doorway. The maid’s bun was once again a tight circle of neatness. But her black uniform was more slate gray than black, as though it had been washed more than its fair share of times.
“I’m going to check on my husband and retire for the night.”
Spin and Lark rose as the duchess made her way out of the room.
“She’s really nice,” said Lark once they were alone. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on with that bruise on her head?”
“Not my story to tell.”
Lark nodded in acceptance. “Too bad we can’t stay longer. This place is like a fairytale, but we have to get back to the real world. Did you book the tickets yet?”
“I’ll get to it.” Spin still wasn’t quite ready to tell Lark she wasn’t heading back with her. No reason to ruin the day. Not since it was practically over. She’d just wait until tomorrow.
Chapter Nineteen
Once again, Zhi started the day drenched in water. Although this time, it was mostly sweat. After a long night and early morning, he’d won another round with the pipes. Only just barely.
He’d graduated from YouTube with the DIY problems he was facing. A real plumber would have to be called in soon. Or they’d all have to grow fins to stay in the house. Or maybe it would be easier to clean the pool and use that as a water source.
He didn’t care so long as he got himself dry. But as he headed for the grand staircase, he heard feminine voices rounding the corner. He slunk back beneath an alcove just before Lark and Spin came into the front door with shopping bags.
“You didn’t have to buy this for me,” said Lark.
“It’s cute on you,” said Spin.
“You’re too generous with your money.”
“You know my philosophy on money. It’s better spent than kept.”
“That’s only because money seems to find you no matter how much you give it away.”
Zhi waited for the two women to pass. While he did, he kept his eyes on Spin. Something passed over her face at the talk of money. It was a curious conversation. Just like everything about her.
She clearly didn’t come from money. She lived a bohemian lifestyle. She seemed to detest excess. But she was happy to spend it on her friends. The woman was a walking contradiction.
When the coast was clear, Zhi slunk to his room. Turning on the shower, he hesitated
as the pipes groaned. But the water came through. He stepped beneath its spray, thankful for the heat. He soaped up and washed the grime of the last day off. He wanted to luxuriate for an hour or so, but five minutes was all he gave himself. He didn’t dare try his luck with his patchwork pipe job.
Toweling off, he went to his wardrobe. He itched to slink into something comfortable and entirely informal. Unfortunately, as long as guests were on the grounds, he had to play the part. So he pulled on slacks that hung a little loose on him. The toes of the shoes he stepped into pinched. There was a thread loose on the tail of his shirt, which he tucked in.
Once presentable, he stepped out of his room and headed down to properly receive his guests. The girls were nowhere to be found. He found himself a little disappointed at the empty hall.
He pulled out his phone and tapped the Instagram app. He could send Spin a DM, but he decided against it. What had she said about waiting? He was too impatient to remember.
He had no clue why he was feeling so agitated. He was hanging out with Parker tonight. He should be focused on that.
Looking up, he found himself outside of the music room. The door was cracked open. His heartbeat picked up when he heard the first notes from the keys. But his pulse quickly settled as he recognized the tune and its player.
Zhi came into the room, closing the door behind him. His mother didn’t mind being heard. She just didn’t prefer to be watched as she played.
When she saw him, she changed her tune. Sliding down to one side of the bench, she began a partner song. Zhi sat on the other end of the grand instrument and picked up his part. The music wasn’t so loud that they couldn’t converse.
“I like your friend,” said his mother.
“Spin?”
“What an interesting name.”
“Says the woman who named her son a letter of the alphabet.”
“I suppose her name is Elle.” His mother’s lithe fingers moved quickly over the keys for her part.
“Why would you think that?” Zhi’s fingers moved slowly as they accompanied her in this part of the melody.
The Duke and the DJ: a Sweet Royal Romance (The Rebel Royals Series Book 3) Page 9