“Do you want to go for a walk?” I asked. “Unless you fancy a game of chess or reading a war novel, there isn’t much else to do around here.”
He paused for a while, although I didn’t think it was in hesitation. It was more like confirmation, like he was replaying my words over in his head to make sure he hadn’t imagined them.
“Sure,” he eventually said, edging his chair back and standing up.
When I moved to stand he held his hand up for me to stop, then rushed round to stand behind my chair and assist me. I laughed and tried to disguise it as a cough; it amused me that he thought I’d sit and wait for him, expecting him to help me up like he owed it to me. I’d have done anything to be able to stand by myself, like my skeletal system intended.
“Hold on,” I said, stepping out of his hold, sitting back down and pulling my chair in.
“What are you doing?” he asked, looking around for the answer.
“Watch.” Pushing my chair back, I stood again and held my arms out. “I can stand by myself. You don’t need to do that.”
“It’s just chivalry, Trixie.”
“I know.” I nodded. “But it’s outdated. Come on.”
Tradition said the man was supposed to lead the way, but I decided I’d do it, taking the path that would lead us through the orchard and out of the other end into another meadow that seemed to have no end. William wasn’t family; he wasn’t my brother or my father and he hadn’t been tasked a job by Ruby other than to spend the day with me. I’d previously thought I’d had no Ashford instincts, but I was wrong. I could sense that William was not a man of importance—or what would be considered important here. He exerted no authority over me which meant one of two things. He wasn’t of the same social standing as my family which meant he had no right to demand I do something. Or, like me, he wasn’t as set in his ways as the others; maybe he could see that some traditions should have died out with the descendants who wrote the rules. I suspected it was a little of both and I’d be damned if I didn’t enjoy the freedom being around William offered.
“So,” I said as we walked between two rows of apple trees. “You work for my family?”
“I do.”
“So you know what they do? You know who they really are?”
“My education was not quite as satisfying and I’m sure there are things I don’t know, but yes, I know who they are and what they do.”
“And what’s that?”
“Miss Ashford.” William stopped and reached up to one of the trees, ignoring the step stool left behind by one of the pickers, and plucked two ripe apples. “I’m afraid your initiation is out of my hands. It’s to be served by someone who has the power my name forbids.”
“What does that mean?”
William wiped the apple on his shirt, over the rise and fall of one pectoral. I watched. He slowed down, allowing me time to stare, to map out the contours of his chest, and wish I was the apple. Damn it.
“It means what it means, Miss Ashford.”
“Stop calling me that. It makes me feel uncomfortable.”
“Sorry ma’am.” I rolled my eyes. So did that. What was wrong with my given name? “History has the habit of repeating itself. When something works it is often replicated, the kinks ironed out, problems solved, so that each model is an improvement on the last without losing its signature.”
“Sounds a lot like evolution.”
“It is.” He smiled as if relieved that I understood.
I did. I understood that the basis of the knowledge the rest of my family, and William Tate, had was evolution. I imagined the lessons I’d heard about over the last twenty-four hours began with a lesson in evolution, why Darwin was a genius and how our family tree could be used as a model to explain why it worked. I just didn’t know what it was we did.
“And you don’t have the power to tell me what it is we continue to replicate?”
He shook his head, finally handing me the apple and taking a bite of his own. We continued walking and I waited patiently as he chewed his mouthful, watching him swallow and lick the juice from his lips before he spoke.
“I do not.”
That was it?
“Because you haven’t evolved to obtain that much power?”
“No, I haven’t. My family serve a different purpose to yours.”
“So who has the power?” I knew the answer, but I asked anyway. I needed to hear it from someone else and I had a feeling I could trust William. “Elias Blackwood?”
A smirk played on the corner of William’s mouth; it looked a lot like the twitch I’d seen in Elias when I thought he wanted to smile but showing any emotion was far beneath him. I wondered who had taken the action first; if William had taken it from Elias, vice versa, or maybe it was another thing the men of the family were taught. Ruby left nothing to chance. Which meant William and I were here, together, for a reason.
“Elias has all the power.”
I knew it. How had I believed, for a fraction of a nanosecond, that he was security?
I cursed myself for being so stupid. One minute I trusted my instincts, and the next they disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“What was that?” William asked. He hadn’t heard me swear. It seemed I had perfected the art of covert profanity.
“Nothing.”
I forced a smile at him and took a bite of my apple.
Percy sent a text when he was outside and my phone buzzed against my thigh as I tipped back the last of my drink. Alcohol. It may not have been enjoyed on the beach in Miami, or a mountain in Thailand, or while playing poker in Russia, but it did the job.
It let me be free, just for a while, as I watched writhing bodies smothered in blood. I watched women dance in nothing but thin rags around their waists, torn from the bodies of victims of the night. I watched men sink their teeth into slender necks. I watched men and women strike themselves with blades, opening themselves up to search for a fix from each other. We were killing each other, day by day and with each drop of blood shed. By day I tried to stop it—I tried to conquer the evil that had stolen my home from me twenty years ago. By night I split my time; I held justice in my hands and I either served it the only way it could be served and flourish. Or I bathed in the evil I otherwise tried to abolish.
I stood from the table I owned in the corner of the seedy bar—tossing money onto the table for the deprived to kill each other over, and I sauntered through the madness as the crowd parted and hungry, lust-filled eyes followed the ripple of every muscle in my body as I walked.
I stepped out into the cool air and climbed straight into the back of the car. Percy didn’t get out and open my door; he didn’t dare. When I settled on the back seat, he locked the doors and pulled away from the kerb.
“Good evening, sir?” he asked, sniffing away the stench of copper that I’d brought into the vehicle with me.
“It was.”
“You have a fresh suit waiting for you.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go straight home? It’s getting late.”
“Yes.”
I stripped out of my blood-splattered suit in the back of the car and slid the door on the small in-car wardrobe open. Percy had hung a new, freshly pressed suit inside and I took it out, pulling it on haphazardly. Precision was for sober times. Routine was for times when I hadn’t just witnessed sadomasochism at its best. My schedule went out of the window with my right to claim innocence when I became Eli Blackwood and flourished in the behaviour that made him the legend of the Blackwood lineage.
I poured myself another drink and lit the cigar Percy had set out on the console, waiting for him to open the window and allow the night air to whirl around me and remind me who I was and what I was here for.
William Tate. I knew he was a snake. Sure he was my friend, but—as far as I knew—there was always a little competition between friends. A little rivalry that made things exciting and stopped the bond going stagnant and poisoning us
both. I didn’t know if the hostility William and I shared was just that bond testing itself, history repeating the story that had happened time and time again with alternating outcomes, or whether he really was the snake I suspected he was.
He was here. I’d instructed him to leave by nightfall but I could sense his presence the second Percy drove through the iron gates of Ashford Estate and crawled along the mile-long lane to the house. I should have told him to turn back, I knew that, but my conscience had deserted me when I needed it most. I should have walked into the house and headed straight into Sector 2 to burn of the alcohol, the frustration and the hunger I had for the woman I had ordered Tate to entertain.
But I didn’t.
I got out of the car and told Percy to take the guest house. I watched the car crawl along the gravel to one of the houses in the small employee village just beyond the forest. He’d collect me in the morning in time to get to the bank, when Elias Blackwood of 2016 would return.
When the back lights of the car disappeared into the thick foliage I shoved my hands in my pockets and performed a sweep, a lot more casually than I wanted to. I took slow, calculated steps so I didn’t attract attention. I needed to see William in action without giving him time to put on an act, and I needed to see Trixie’s natural reaction to him. I knew what it would be—Ashford’s, Blackwood’s and Tate’s had all been blessed with the same innate ability to charm members of the opposite sex. I wanted to watch Tate charm Trixie in a way I never could. I wanted to watch to both punish myself for not just ending this the first night I met her, and I wanted to watch so I could imagine it was me. For a second I would let all barriers fall away so I could feel what humans were supposed to feel, without detaching myself from emotion and thought.
I found them on the terrace, sitting on a swinging bench beneath night blooming flowers that carried Trixie’s scent with much more potency than they could hope to exude. Trixie was wrapped in a tartan blanket smoking a cigarette, and William had one leg curled under the other, his foot planted on the floor to keep the momentum of the swing. He was smoking a cigar and it was contaminating the scent of the princess he accompanied. A man was not supposed to smoke around a woman; I’d make sure he suffered punishment for that. He was in the presence of an Ashford and he needed to remember his place.
“Good evening, Tate,” I said, stepping out of the shadows.
William froze; Trixie’s eyes rose to meet mine in an instant and her icy glare only served to expose my frustration. I tried to stay calm, I tried to remain composed and professional, because that’s what this was—a job.
“Elias.”
William shot to his feet, his cigar hanging loosely from his fingertips. His weight shunted the swing and Trixie’s arm extended to grip the arm of the bench to support the sudden movement. I moved quickly, placing both hands on the seat William had just vacated to keep her seat balanced.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She pulled the blanket tighter around her. “What are you doing here?”
Ignoring her question, I stood up, righted my jacket and turned to William.
“You. Get lost.”
“But-”
“You’ve been dismissed.”
Like the obedient Tate he was, William nodded, looked past me to Trixie and offered her an apologetic smile. One he wasn’t permitted to give her now I was here. I stood firm, between him and my Ashford, and waited for him to leave. He crossed the terrace and stepped into the house before I could stop him, not waiting for permission to stay in the house. He’d pay for that, too.
“Elias, what is your problem?” Trixie asked.
I should have demanded she didn’t say my name again, but I liked the way it sounded when it rolled from her tongue and hung in the air with the scent of untarnished night.
“I don’t have a problem,” I lied, because I did. A big one. “It’s dark, it’s late and you should be in bed, not gallivanting with a Tate.”
“William was instructed to keep me company.”
“William was ordered to leave before night fell. Your father finished work hours ago.”
“I know. We dined with him tonight,”
“I thought I taught you to be careful who you trust.”
She shouldn’t trust William. Everything about him and the reason for my sudden hostility towards him hinted at ulterior motives and stank of intended betrayal.
“I trust William. I don’t trust you.”
“That’s your second mistake.”
Trixie stood and folded her arms across her chest, the blanket billowing to the ground. She had a look of defiance in her violet eyes and I swear to God, it took everything I had not to torture it into oblivion.
“What was my first?”
Good question. What had been her first mistake? Perhaps I shouldn’t have numbered them—I’d already lost count. Was the first distracting me? Seducing me with her innocent charm? Threatening to overthrow the composure I’d spend years perfecting? Or the fact that she was here, that something she’d done had brought us to this point, with no way out?
She was standing too close—far too close. I could feel the heat of anger and arousal radiating from her. She too was tempted by danger, seduced by the things she couldn’t have; provoked to hunger for the things she was banned from thinking about. Her eyes never left mine and it made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like discomfort; I avoided it at all costs because I knew the beauty that laid not far beyond it. I didn’t like unpredictability, and I had no idea what Trixie was thinking, what she would say or what she would do. I almost wished William was back here—she’d seemed to have had no thought of me when she was wrapped up next to him.
“You’ve made plenty of mistakes, Trixie,” I said, folding my arms to mirror her body language. I couldn’t read her and I’d shut her out like she had me. “Step away.”
“No.”
“Take a step back.” I took a deep breath and cleared my throat. “Please, just take a step back.”
Please. That should have worked, right? I was just doing my job—I didn’t deserve to be punished by her defiance and tempted by her like the forbidden fruit, when I was doing as I’d been asked. I had to stop myself wanting her. It wasn’t allowed. We were family and we had a destiny that didn’t involve any of the thoughts in my mind.
“What happens if I don’t?”
“Don’t push me, Ashford.”
“Tate, Ashford…what’s with the second names? You have to remind us that we’re beneath you, as if your attitude and blatant look of disgust isn’t enough? No, I’m not stepping back. I’m not diseased so your health is safe. I’m not going to touch you—believe me that the last thing I want…but I’m not your pet and I won't obey you and beg for treats that should be mine anyway.”
She had definitely been raised by Ruby. She was impossible.
“Are you going to stick with that reply, Trixie. Is this where the night is going to go?”
“Where else is there to take it? I was perfectly happy before you turned up.”
“Happy?”
“Yes. It’s an emotion. You should try feeling one.”
She’d been happy. With Tate. I’d ruined it. She thought she disgusted me. She thought I thought I was above her…she thought I was above her. She had no idea that we were equals and it was my job to inform her of that. My attitude had little to do with her, and a whole lot to do with who I was. Who I’d been raised to be, and the name I’d been raised to live by. She was annoying, yes, but she was refreshing. She was like an unexpected breeze that had shaken up the dust of the ghosts who followed me constantly, and it was amusing wondering how my ancestors would have dealt with the dark horse of the family. Trixie Ashford had the potential to be the most powerful queen of GRIT and I had to allow her to take her place, no matter how much it threatened mine—everything I’d planned and everything I’d hoped to do when the family was finally mine.
“Okay.”
Compromise. It was something A
mbrose had taught me never to do, but I’d had to learn how so I could manipulate others into both coming to an arrangement with me, and believing I would honour our deal.
“Okay?”
Her eyes narrowed at me, concentrating her angry stare at the collar of my shirt. She refused to look into my eyes as she prepared to desensitise herself. Good choice. I was still not far from Eli Blackwood and he would have gladly returned in an instant, and she would need to be able to shut off every fibre of her being to survive it.
“Okay. You want me to be nice, you’ve got it. Come on.” I gripped her wrist. “Time for your first lesson.”
No. No, no, no. That hadn’t been what I wanted to do. I hadn’t wanted to touch her but now I had I couldn’t let go. I hadn’t wanted to teach her anything tonight when I was in a fragile state of mind, trapped in limbo between 2016 and 1670, but I couldn’t help but imagine her reaction, picture the flush of disgust and arousal in her pure eyes, and I wanted it now.
I dragged her into the house and along the hallway to one of the home offices.
“Where are we going?” she asked, breathless as she struggled to keep up with my long strides. “Elias, where are we going?”
“You wanted to know the truth. I wanted to ease you into it gently. I wanted you to learn piece by piece, so I could save you from what will feel like a huge betrayal. But you just won't listen. You won't trust that my thirty-two years in this world know better than your 48-hours of hints, clues and promises. Ruby wanted you to learn about what we do, so I’ll teach you the only way I know how.”
He was too fast. I tried desperately to keep up with him, but he made me stumble over my own feet and when I tripped on the carpet as he pulled me into a room off to the left of the hallway, I gripped his wrist with my other hand and held on tight. I’d never moved so fast, I’d never been so out of control of my body as I was now, being propelled through a section of Ashford House I’d never known existed.
Elias (GRIT Sector 1) Page 11