Sin and Swoon

by Tara Brown

  She lifts a brow. “No, Canada, actually. I’m from the East Coast, but I have worked here for five years. Since I turned eighteen.” She opens the back doors to a terrace that takes my breath away. It’s ridiculous, like the house. We walk under a long pergola next to a huge pool with a water slide and a hot tub. I stop. “What’s with the two pools? Is one heated?”

  She pauses too. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “The pool out front and this one—is the one out front the cold pool? Like in Mexico?”

  She giggles, as if she were ten years old. “No, it’s part of the garden, part of the fountain. That’s not a swimming pool out front. This is the only pool.”

  I don’t even say the things floating around in my mind, and change the subject. “How big is the house?”

  “Twenty-four thousand square feet for the main house, a thousand square feet for the pool house, and two thousand square feet in the guesthouse.” She holds a hand out to the small house that’s actually a regular-sized house in the real world. We walk beneath purple flowers and vines growing on the top of the pergola. They smell like lilacs but aren’t bushes. I’ve never seen them this way. It really is beautiful. Even if it’s more of a retreat than a personal home.

  When we get inside of the guesthouse I sigh. It’s cozy and large, a perfect space. The small kitchen is a bar, really, and the sitting area has a huge fireplace and three oversized sofas. There are windows all around the house, letting in tons of natural light.

  “There are three bedrooms, all with en suites, for you to choose from.” She bows slightly, like she forgot but remembered last minute. “I hope you will be comfortable and let me know if you require anything at all.”

  I smile and watch her walk away. Dash passes her, looking spicy, so I quickly close the door and head for the bedrooms. He bursts through the door, instantly shouting in a lowered but not less angry tone, “Jane!”

  I close the door to a bedroom and pause there, hoping he will just give up and go back to his kind in the house that’s the size of an urban high school.

  But he doesn’t.

  He rushes through this door as well, just as I’m pretending to admire the general splendor of the oversized rooms. And looking for things to knock him out with so I can make my escape.

  “This is the guesthouse for people with children. It’s not suitable for my fiancée.” His face is red and weird.

  I back up slowly, lifting a finger. “You lied! You are a liar! Mr. Perfect Doctor is a liar! Who knew?” It isn’t even strong enough or what I am feeling, but I don’t know how to get it all out. I feel like I might explode, but if I do he might end up dead.

  He slumps, and my Dash comes sailing back in. “You never would have come. And I desperately needed you to come. Why can’t you see that? You aren’t easy to introduce because you like your routine and you hate everyone.”

  “What! I don’t hate everyone.” He’s blaming me? I fling my arms, suddenly angrier than I have ever been. He’s blaming me, which infuriates me, but I am far more pissed because he’s admitted to lying, which is petty since we both already knew he was. “You are an asshole! You—”

  “Stop shouting, please.”

  I lean in, not shouting but my tone getting much sharper. “You lied. You said your family was country-club wealthy. This is something else. She mocked my eyes, and your dad said I might die early from it. And the whole Asian thing was weird. It was like being with Angie during one of her Klan moments. Here in Virginia, I actually believe there still are some Klan.”

  He starts to make a motion toward me but stops himself, maybe realizing where it will get him.

  “Your mother hates me. She called me an orphan and told me she would help me fit in! Who even says that?” I stomp to my bed and lift the silk and fluffy gowns from the bed. “She left these here for me—picked my clothes for me! This one doesn’t even have a back. Maybe I’ll wear that one, and we can talk about my scars all night long.” I am on the verge of tears.

  He lifts his hands like he might choke me and walks toward me. He doesn’t choke me but takes the dresses and tosses them into the pile of fluff and lace and silk. “Baby, she means well. I swear. They aren’t racist. You do look a little ethnic in some lights, but I like that about you. You’re beautiful. I love every scar and flaw on you. And your eyes make you look unique.”

  “No girl, even an emotionally disabled one like me, likes to be called unique or flawed! I’m a hobbit here! A little circus freak with the weird eyes and the birth defects and the scars. Your mom isn’t even human. No older woman can walk in those shoes. Did you see her heels? They’re four inches, and she’s already probably five eight! She doesn’t even need them.”

  “Nine, she’s five foot nine, but it doesn’t matter. I love you. I love that you’re short and sort of different from anyone else I’ve ever dated. I did leave here, Jane, you will recall. I don’t live the way they do; I don’t need it. I never did.”

  “You sound like them too! You sound weird here. You said befouled before and now you’re all,” I mimic him. “ ‘You will recall.’ ”

  He wraps his huge hands around my face and kisses my cheek. “Stop! You are overreacting.”

  I pull back. “Really? After the circus freak comments and the birth defects and the ‘oh, you must be Asian,’ that’s where you want to go right now—overreacting? That’s the choice you’re making here?”

  “No.” He thinks for a second. He looks scared, and not because I’m a sniper. He’s never seen me flip out about things that are not work related. He’s never seen me act like a girl. I’ve never really seen it either, but I can’t stop. “Where is my super-cool unemotional fiancée who never gets worked up or fazed by anything? You never have the right response, I always have to remind you how to be or when to hug. Now you’re emotional and crazy? When old you returns, let her know I miss her.”

  He’s teasing me but he doesn’t realize I’m actually hurt. I’m actually feeling the pain I am trying to share with him. “She is never coming back! This spastic mess your family has made me, that you have made me, is sticking around forever.” I try joking back with him, hating that my heart is showing.

  He laughs like I don’t mean it, but I do. I vow silently never to be cool around him again. He strokes my cheek again and kisses me softly. “I adore you, Jane. I love you, but there is so much more to it, and I don’t know how to explain it. They are my family; I see them once a year. I put in the visit, and that’s that. You are my life. I am marrying you because you are my everything.”

  A cheesy grin finds its way to my lips as my eyes lower and a soft blush creeps along my cheeks.

  He smiles wider, and the green eyes dazzle me like my very own snake charmer. “There she is. I knew you’d come back.”

  I lean in, resting my head on his chest. “I wanted to be me, genuinely, not just Jane who can survive every situation. Does that make sense?”

  He kisses the top of my head. “Of course.”

  “Is there anything I should know going forward from here, beyond, obviously, the fact that you grew up in a ten-million-dollar home?” I ask as he tenses, making me pull back and look up into his eyes. He hesitates, but I sigh. “At this point, you might as well just say it, whatever it is. We have far surpassed the level of shit I can take in a night, so whatever is left, just do it. Lay it on me.”

  “There is the small matter of your job. I told them you are a scientist at the research facility I work at. We met at work. You are incredibly smart, and we are incredibly in love. I proposed in France at the bridge with the keys you are so fond of. You’re not quite as Catholic as you would have my parents believe. You hold a PhD in molecular biology but will quit working when we marry.”

  “Are you high? You went for molecular bio instead of psychoanalyzing like I do? I’m a criminal profiler. It’s a job—a real one. It’s respectable. If you wanted you could have told them about the years as an assassin and spy. I do have a title
in the military if you were desperate. I am Master Sergeant Spears in the real world. Is that not respectable enough? If not you could have said I was a shop girl. Anything is better than molecular biology! I don’t know my ass from a molecule.”

  He chuckles softly. “Deep breaths! Don’t get upset again.” He looks back at the window behind him, where his parents’ house is in perfect view. “They won’t even talk about your job, Jane. Women in society don’t hold jobs after they marry. They partake in tax deductions like charities and such. They raise kids and maintain the home.”

  “ ‘Maintain the home’?” I don’t even want to get started on kids. In my mind that conversation ended when he perused my file illegally. I roll my eyes. “Let me guess, you have our house already picked out for us, and it’s just down the road?”

  “No. I never come here. My houses aren’t near here.” He swallows hard.

  “Did you just say houses?” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “It doesn’t matter. I just can’t believe you say I am bad for keeping things to myself. You picked out a house without me? You picked out a mansion, didn’t you? And you clearly have others. You said houses.” When he doesn’t answer I open my eyes and glare. “How big is our home, Dash?” I can’t help but say his name like it tastes bad. “Did you buy it already?” I don’t actually like the ranting psycho I have become. I sound like a real girl.

  He swallows hard. “Actually, that is the funny part.” He looks nervous and glances back at the house. “I know I’ve been staying with you at your place—”

  “Our place.”

  He nods and laughs nervously. “Right, of course. Our place. But I have actually got a house, well, several, which is why I said houses. Real estate is an excellent investment. And while I own a few, there is one that is my main house. It isn’t close enough to DC, so I never really go there, and the staff—”

  “You do own houses? Houses?” I push back, fighting back bile. “Oh my God! Stop.” The panic is building inside of me again. “We can talk about it another time. I don’t need to know this shit for this mission. We are pushing this to need-to-know, that’s it. I don’t need to know you own houses with staff and expect me to go to these houses and keep them up for you.”

  “Mission?”

  I nod, taking a deep breath and looking around the room for possible weapons again. It’s surprisingly diverting. “Yes, this is a mission. I am a doctor named Jane Spears, and you are my mark.” I snarl at him. “Let’s see if you can live through the entire night.”

  I walk past him as he clears his throat. “We have to get ready for dinner.”

  I glance down at my jeans and sweater. “I am ready.”

  He shakes his head. “It’s a five-star affair, Jane. You may not wear pants unless they are designer and made from silk or wool.”

  I sigh. “I don’t own anything that will work for a fancy dinner, Dash. I brought my regular clothes. T-shirts and jeans, sweaters, and a hoodie in case we were going to be going anywhere that required me to be warm. And those dresses will make me hate myself for agreeing to endure this bullshit and pretending to be good enough for your family.”

  He clenches his jaw, clearly done talking about it all, and walks to the front of the house, down the long hallway, and grabs a bag I didn’t pack. It isn’t mine. And yet, somehow Nichols has snuck in here and planted it on me. He must be part spy and part servant.

  “I packed a bag for you.” He saunters back down the hall, dropping the bag at the entry of the room. The fight has been sucked out of him. “So get dressed. I’ll ask Evangeline to come back and ensure you look appropriate, and I will see you at dinner in an hour.”

  “An hour? Who needs an hour to get ready?” I wrinkle my nose when he laughs. “I hate you.”

  “I hope you can forgive me for all of this. And I really hope you see that it is they who are not good enough for you and that this is obligation on our part and not who we are.” He looks completely gutted, totally wounded. I know he doesn’t realize Angie and I say we hate each other jokingly twice a day. Granted, she says it more than I do, but she jokes more. Whereas I think it a lot.

  My heart sort of breaks, and not because of him but because of me when he turns to walk away. So I say, “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you, but I will use it to get my way in everything we ever do.”

  He glances back, smiling wide when he realizes that I’m kidding. “Sold.” He turns and leaves the room, leaving me with the fancy piece of luggage that says Gucci on the small tag at the top. I have a terrible feeling it cost more than my townhouse.

  13. Barons and dukes and senators, oh my!

  I don’t recognize myself.

  Not because I am crawling around in the mind of another person either.

  It is entirely because Evangeline has done my makeup. There was a whole bag of it from a store called Sephora. This is something I have endured with Angie a time or two, only Evangeline is some kind of wizard with the contents of the bag.

  I recognized the blush, the face powder, the liquid liner, and the mascara. The rest has been something else altogether. Little containers of blues and grays that look like paste but dry with a shimmer over my eyes, and tubes of gloss that swell your lips for you, like instant plastic surgery.

  I lean in, mystified at where my pores went and why my brows look so different. I don’t look like I might be just a little ethnic, not even a touch. I look like Barbie’s dark-haired friend. I turn to the side, marveling at it all.

  She nods, stepping back and smiling. “You look lovely. Lady Townshend will have no complaints.”

  I pause. “Lady? She makes you call her that?” I have never in my life met a woman who was given the title lady without being someone of importance. And the two I have met both remind me a lot of his mother.

  Evangeline doesn’t seem to understand, but then smiles widely. “He never told you?”

  I’m excited we have gotten past the curtseying and nonsense, but the comical look on her face makes my insides twist. “Told me what, exactly?”

  “Oh lord, he is already in hot water for asking you to marry him, I can’t believe he hasn’t told you. They’re gentry, something Americans would consider royalty. His father is a cousin to the queen of England. Sir George Townshend is a baronet. He’s been retired for some time from politics and Her Majesty’s Privy Council and the courts. We travel back to England in the summer and spend winters here in Virginia or in southern France.”

  “Oh, dear God.” I plop into the rattan chair next to me, completely mystified at his keeping such a remarkable piece of information to himself. I feel like a frog who’s been placed in a pot to boil and only now do I realize the water is burning me, when it’s too late to get out. I can’t believe he let me believe he was a simple and sweet doctor. I knew he was out of my league, but I didn’t know we were different species.

  I can’t swallow. My mouth is dry yet welling with spit, and my throat is knotted with my stomach. I look back at the reflection and start to laugh. “So his last name isn’t Dash? His name isn’t Benjamin Dash?”

  He walks into the room, forcing a curtsey from her. She flees from the room quickly, as if scared of the pussycat before her. She doesn’t realize it’s me who’s the dangerous one. Especially when cornered.

  “I am sorry. I had intended to tell you on the way over.” He pauses for a second, as if just seeing this shitty thing he has done to me. “Dashiell is my middle name.”

  I laugh harder. “Dashiell is not a name. Dash is a last name.”

  He shakes his head. “I swear to you, Dashiell is my middle name. Benjamin Edward Dashiell Townshend is my full name.”

  “You are lying. That’s a terrible middle name. No one would do that to their child.”

  He sighs, reaching for his pocket and pulling his wallet out. He offers the driver’s license I have never seen, something I should have checked. Jesus, it says Dashiell. I choke a little bit. “It’s a lovely name.”

  “It’s my mot
her’s maiden name, which is why I have it as my middle name.” He drops to his knees, making us nearly the same height. “It all means nothing. I am not the eldest; I will never take the title of sir from my father. His baronetcy will pass to my eldest brother, Henry, who is heir apparent. This isn’t my life. I left it a long time ago.”

  “Have you seen a purple scarf or a black-and-white cat?” I ask, starting to look around. “I think I’m being fucked with. I think I’m actually in a mind run. Oh God, I’m in a coma. I was in that girl and she died, and I’m stuck in here?”

  “No, this is very real.” He shakes his head, gripping my cheeks and forcing my face to turn and see him. “This doesn’t change who we are. You are you, and I am me. If I could tell the truth about who you are, how you’re a profiler and mind reader who used to be a top-secret spy for the UN, I would. If I could tell them who we really are, I would. But we are both sworn to secrecy on the matter, so I lie about being doctors together in a research facility.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. “First rule in lying and spying, Dash, is that you pick a lie close to the truth. So close, you believe it too.” I open my eyes, licking my lips and nodding. “Okay, so your parents are not American. They’re some sort of gentry, and you are not the heir apparent, ’cause that’s apparently a thing. Who knew? Anything else?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “You ever hear the phrase, ‘Is the juice worth the squeeze?’”

  He nods slowly.

  “I’m starting to wonder that very question.”

  “If I am worth it?” He looks genuinely hurt.

  “Not you, just love in general.” He doesn’t realize I have never loved a single person in my entire life except him. I don’t recall loving my family, not properly. I never truly loved the nuns or the other children. We knew what we all were. But Dash and Binx, I love with all my heart.

  He kisses me softly so as not to smear whatever the fuck is all over my face. “None of this reality is ours. If you only knew how many baronets there are—it’s not a special term. It means that during the 1600s one of my relatives bought his way into the courts to help the king at the time, James the First. It’s no different than being mayor or senator or a judge.”