“So you are the wizard that made the pasta alla Genovese last night,” I said, taking his calloused hand in my own. “Thank you for that, I cannot tell you how much I longed for a taste of home.”
“Oh, the pleasure was mine. Usually I’m tasked with making the ordinary bland fare of my countrymen, so it was a delight to turn my skill to something different. Please, next time give me something truly challenging.”
I laughed at his exuberance, my awkwardness washed away by his genuine kindness. The others watched us still, but I took no mind to them.
I’d been watched all my life but received little true kindness so I would focus on that.
“Come and have a spot of tea with me while I finish these finnicky little petits forts,” Douglas encouraged me, turning our clasped hands so that he could lead me to a stool perched beside his workstation. “You look thin as a rake and in dire need of a cuppa.”
I slid onto the chair and tugged down my shirt fruitlessly when one of the male servants went slack jawed at the sight of my legs.
Douglas rapped the servant in question over his knuckles with a wooden spoon. “Young Jeffery, out with you. I believe you have some work to do in the dining room before supper.”
Jeffery blushed furious at being caught and scampered out of the kitchen along with the rest of the nonessential personnel.
“Don’t mind them, ducky. It’s been yonks since we had a proper young lady in the house and the lads are all a bit dense normally so your beauty don’t help none,” Douglas explained with a twinkle in his eye as he carefully began to pipe icing between small pink layers of cake.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you. Master Alexander hardly seems like the kind of man to abstain from female companionship,” I retorted with a snort.
Douglas paused his piping to blink at me and then roared with laughter.
I couldn’t help but laugh with him. It felt good to have some light-heartedness after so long in the pressurized company of Alexander or the vacuous chamber of my own solitude.
Douglas was young, closer to my age than I guessed Alexander’s to be, and he possessed the kind of happy personality that was infectious.
“Oh, there were women before you, for both of the masters, but none quite like you,” he prattled on, and I realized what a treasure trove of information he might be. “This is a man’s household through and through. Or it has been since the passing of Lady Greythorn.”
“Lady Greythorn?” I asked as a servant slid my way tentatively to offer me a cup of tea.
“Oh yes, the late Mistress of Pearl Hall. She passed, oh, nine years ago this May. A lovelier woman I’ve never known. Incredibly posh, but very down to earth with her household staff and family.”
“What happened to her?” I asked even though I didn’t fully understand who she could have been.
Wasn’t Alexander titled Earl of Thornton, not Greythorn?
Douglas paused his activities and looked around the room guiltily as if he’d been caught in the act of blasphemy against his employers. I could see his reluctance to continue, but I was determined to unearth some of the mystery around this great empty house and its master.
I leaned forward to place a hand on Douglas’s arm and looked up at him through my lashes with a pout curling my bottom lip just slightly. “I only ask because I recently lost my own father.”
It wasn’t a lie, not quite.
I had lost Seamus forever, just not to death.
Of course, the sadness was manufactured, but what was a little white lie between burgeoning friends?
My words had their intended effect. His face softened, and he patted a flour dusted hand over my own on his arm. “Poor thing, I’m so sorry for your loss. Well, it’s not really the thing to talk about such matters, you understand? Here, try this.” He shoved a gorgeously crafted little cake at me and waited until I’d taken a bite and moaned before continuing. “She died away from home while she was visiting… a family friend. Apparently, it was a tragic accident. She was drinking over dinner and wandered outside to the terrace for some fresh air. Next thing anyone knew, she was dead at the base of the building two stories down.”
I cringed at the mental image. “And who was she to Alexander?”
Douglas frowned at me as if I was dense. “Why, his mother, ducky.”
“Oh, and whatever happened to his father?”
Before he could answer me, the sharp clip of expensive shoes echoed down the hall, heralding the imminent arrival of a man who was most definitely not a servant.
He was exquisitely clothed in a charcoal suit, silk shirt, and matching tie with his dark blond hair brushed back from his broad forehead in a smooth wave that heralded back to the jazz age. It wasn’t his expensive suit or formidable demeanor that gave away his clear status in the household, but his very obvious resemblance to Alexander.
“He is very much alive and well,” the man in question said as he came to a stop in the entryway.
“Your lordship,” Douglas addressed with a deferential tip of his head. “What a pleasure to have you visit us here. Is there something I can do for you?”
“I’ve come for the girl.” He stared at me with dark, unerring eyes. “Miss Cosima Lombardi, we haven’t yet had the pleasure to meet. I’m afraid my son has been remiss in this regard, so I’ve taken it upon myself to make the introductions. Come here so I may do so while I look at you.”
I swallowed roughly and placed my delicate tea cup on the butcher block table in front of me before sliding off the stool, careful to hold down the edges of the shirt so I didn’t flash my Master’s father.
There was an instinctive kernel of fear in my belly, but I couldn’t be sure if the source was the heavy force of Lord Greythorn’s personality radiating throughout the room or the simple fact that he was Alexander’s father.
And if I thought Alexander was the spawn of Satan, maybe it was the devil himself I was then approaching.
When I stopped in front of him, he stepped close and tipped my chin with two of his furled fingers to study my face in the light streaming through the high windows.
“Golden eyes against inky hair,” he murmured. “Like the summer sun against the night sky. A beautiful study in contrast.”
“Thank you, Lord Greythorn,” I said, because I’d learned from an early age how to take a compliment, however discomforted I was by it.
His broad face broke into a surprising smile, creasing his pale skin into pleasing fold. “Please, we will be closer than all that. Call me Noel.”
I could tell by the sudden vibration in the air behind me that the servants were surprised by this allowance, and I didn’t know what to make of it.
“Yes, of course, thank you, Noel.”
“I’ve come to give you a proper tour of the house,” he told me, dropping my chin and offering his arm up like a true gentleman. “If you will do me the honour.”
I swallowed convulsively, fighting the instinct to look over my shoulder at Douglas for some indication of what the hell was going on. Instead, I placed my hand on Noel’s arm.
“I know you walked the house this morning,” he continued, clasping my hand over his arm in a way that felt just as final as the shackles I wore in the ballroom. I shivered as I realized that it might have been him behind the camera tracking my every move throughout the day. “But I thought I would show you the dungeon.”
To my utter shock and uneasy delight, my afternoon with Noel was incredibly diverting, and while it did include a brief foray into the dungeon, it was only to peek at the ancient cells and torture equipment mounted like art on the stone walls. He took me through the hall of pictures that spanned the length of the house on the second story, telling me interesting anecdotes about the Davenport family and Pearl Hall. The house was first built in the 1600s but had be consequently added to and renovated throughout the ages so that now the interior resembled more of a French chateau than a typical British home. It was elegant even in its enormity, each of the
over 250 rooms a marvel of colour coordination and detail. I learned that the first fork had been used in the dining hall in 1632, and that the extremely pious Bess Davenport, Duchess of Greythorn in the 18th century, had added a small, exquisite chapel to the left wing of the house. Each room was relatively overstuffed with furniture acquired across the centuries and busy with hand-painted wallpapers, gilt moldings, and elaborate plaster ceilings. It awed me to step over the worn stone steps, concave from the passing of many feet, to know that I was living in a home that had seen generations of royalty and important historical dealings. I’d never been a student of history, but by the end of the tour, I itched to read more about Pearl Hall and British culture.
We avoided speaking of Alexander, and even though it soothed me to pretend he didn’t exist, it was impossible to remove him from my thoughts completely.
He was an apparition in my peripheral vision. A ghost’s cool breath at my back. He haunted me as he had since the moment I’d saved him in the alleyway in Milano, and I couldn’t imagine a time, even years after this half-decade of servitude, that I wouldn’t feel him in my thoughts or harbor him like a cancer in my cells.
“That concludes our tour, I’m afraid,” Noel said as we descended the grand marble staircase into the pale blue great hall.
“We could go outside?” I said flippantly, as if my heart wasn’t pounding in my throat at the idea.
Noel’s smile thinned. “I think not; it’s late and the damp doesn’t agree with my old bones.”
“You’re hardly old,” I teased.
Something darkened his pale grey eyes and then vanished too quickly to study. He stopped at the foot of the stairs and took both my hands in his to give them a gentle squeeze.
“You are too kind to me, my dear. I know you are probably bored of my company, but would you by chance join me before the fire for a game of chess?”
I wanted to say yes because I was sick and tired of being so alone. I was used to a matchbox house full of passionate Italians, not castles filled with dead air.
But I didn’t know how to play chess.
I’d never even seen a chess set.
And I didn’t want to tell Noel, a British fucking Lord who had probably attended the best schools in the country, that I hadn’t even finished high school because I’d missed too many classes for modelling gigs.
He sensed my hesitation and bent his knees slightly to lower his great height in order to look in my eyes. “What’s your name again, dear?”
“Cosima,” I murmured, looking anywhere but in those eyes so like his son’s only I’d never seen Alexander’s warm with kindness.
His mouth twisted. “That’s a difficult name to pronounce for an old Brit. Do you have any other given names?”
“Ruth,” I told him with a cringe because each of my siblings had an English name from our Irish father, but mine was by far the ugliest. “Cosima Ruth.”
“Ruthie,” Noel said with a smile. “A new name for a new British woman.”
A frown buckled my brow before I could help it. I wasn’t British, and I didn’t want to be called ‘Ruthie’. It was an ugly name for a plain faced, meek girl.
I wanted to remain Cosima. Unique and beautiful, loving and vain. I didn’t want to lose an iota of my personality, not even to the only man who’d ever shown me any kindness outside of my own family and an oddly watchful mafia boss back home.
Before I could open my mouth to protest, he was laughing lightly and turning away toward the second salon.
“Come,” he said in a way that felt like a command even though his tone was light. “Come and I’ll teach you.”
I followed him through to the intimate den where a raging fire crackled in a fireplace big enough to comfortably fit a group of standing men. There was a small table set before the flames, the beautiful mahogany of the chessboard on top glowing in the warm light.
A servant appeared out of the shadows to pull the antique chair out for me, so I took a seat as Noel poured two fingers of scotch and sat himself.
“Now, there are many theories and philosophies about chess, dear girl,” Noel began, running his fingers over the pieces on the board and straightening them with obsessive compulsion until they were perfectly aligned. “But one thing is simple, this is a game of survival, an example of mental Darwinism at its finest. The goal is not to be the smartest person on the board but the craftiest.”
“That’s good. I’m not particularly smart,” I muttered, staring at the board in dread.
Noel stared at me, his eyes narrowed and his fingers stroking over his chin like a modern-day philosopher observing his subject. “Perhaps not, though, that’s yet to be determined. Now, sit back and listen.”
He explained for only a few moments, a quick rundown on the way each piece moved, that I had to go first because my pieces were white and his black, and that the winner of the game would receive a boon.
I had no idea what Noel could possibly want from me, but there were endless possibilities if I were to receive such a gift.
First and foremost, a phone call to my family.
I listened so hard to his instructions my ears strained and buzzed. My knee bounced with excess anxiety as I made my first move, pushing a pawn into the middle of the board. As we progressed through the game and Noel captured each and every one of my pawns, I felt a certain kinship to those limited, easily sacrificed pieces.
My life had been pawned my father, martyred in order to save the more important people in my life, the ones who could attain a better future than I ever would.
I just hoped, with every ounce of broken optimism in my heart, that my sacrifice would allow them to reach the other side of the board, to transform into any type of person they wanted despite the painful realities of their geneses.
I wondered idly, fruitlessly, what I may become at the end of this ordeal.
As I played with Noel, it was easy to imagine a different life, one with a father who would teach me chess as a young girl, who bought me lavish presents from his exotic travels just to spoil me, and one who would kiss me before bed each night with nothing but mint on his breath.
I wondered how different I would be; if the composition of my personality would have been arranged otherwise, and I’d be an altered woman.
Maybe one suited for the moniker ‘Ruthie.’
“Checkmate,” Noel said, placing his rook in line with my king. “If you want to get out of it, you must sacrifice that last pawn.”
I was attached to my last standing little solider, but I did as he taught.
He took my pawn with brisk, efficient fingers, glee so evident in the movement it seemed like they leapt across the board.
“Checkmate,” he said again, this time using his bishop to hedge me into a corner. “You might take him with your knight, though I’ll take that with my pawn.”
I followed his logic bitterly, tasting the defeat on my tongue. My heart beat too fast, flooding my body with adrenaline that had nowhere to go.
I vibrated in my seat as he said, “Checkmate, again.”
He was stalking me, hunting me across the board like a great cat playing with its food. It was a cruel and unusual trickery, especially when he had been so kind to me that afternoon.
Before I could question him, the half open door to the room slammed against the wall, and a tall, dark, and extraordinarily angry man appeared backlit in the doorway.
I had seen dangerous, scary men on countless occasions but never this close up and never with the considerable weight of their wrath focused so wholly on me.
It was clear Alexander was furious with me. His anger swelled in the air like static before the storm. Goosebumps raised on my flesh, and my already erratic heart began to canter through my chest.
“Alexander, good of you to join us,” Noel said pleasantly.
My head turned on a swivel to gawk at his composure. Was I the only creature in the house with the instinct to run before the storm?
Alexander didn’
t speak. Instead, he took a few prowling steps forward, his gait a tight roll of tensed muscles. It was only when he stopped a few feet from the table that the light from the fire cast upon his face, and I could see the stark wrath in his features.
There was no fire in his fury, no geyser of shouted curses and passionate exclamations as there would have been with any one of my family members or limited friends.
Only coldness so absolute that it radiated from him like dry ice.
My panicked brain tried to search for a reason for his madness, if only so I could arm myself with a flimsy excuse, but I came up empty.
I was with the man’s father playing chess.
Was it that I was having fun for the first time since I arrived? Was his kink thriving on my abject misery?
Or maybe it was that I wasn’t where he thought I should be, chained up in the ballroom like a rabid beast.
I held my breath as his eyes tracked over every inch of my body in his line of sight before they cut to his father.
“We had an agreement.” Each word was cut meticulously out of granite and shaped with deadly precision and control. I had the feeling if Noel or I made one wrong move, Alexander would unleash the violence I’d always sensed was coiled in his soul.
“Did we?” Noel asked, his bow crinkled in genuine confusion. “That I couldn’t play chess in my own salon with a guest?”
“She is no guest of yours.” He moved forward to stand beside the table, looming over his father. “She has absolutely nothing to do with you.”
Noel leaned back in his chair casually, his fingertips dangling over the arm, his diamond cufflinks winking in the light. He was the picture of an indolent lord.
“That is where you are wrong. She has everything to do with you, and you are my son, my heir, and my protégé. Everything you do is a reflection on this house and my own ability to rule. Therefore, Miss Cosima has absolutely everything to do with me.”
I jerked as Alexander’s hand slammed against the chessboard, sending gorgeously carved wood pieces all over the floor. One of the pawns landed badly on the marble foot of the fireplace and broke its neck.
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