I laughed. “Yes, simple man indeed.”
We were quiet for a moment thinking our own heavy thoughts before I whispered, “I’m sorry, Xan.”
He squeezed me tightly and turned his mouth into my hair. “The woman I’ve bought and used poorly empathizes with me. What did I tell you about that tender heart?”
“I think I’m already in as much trouble as I can be,” I muttered.
His shocked laugh vibrated though me.
“Xan,” I asked because I’d always wanted to, and the air between us was fragrant with intimacy. “How old are you?”
“I’ll be thirty-five on Friday.”
“Seriously? We have to celebrate,” I told him because it was a mandate in my family that birthdays had to be enjoyed.
I hadn’t enjoyed my eighteenth birthday, and I wanted to make up for it by enjoying Alexander’s with him.
“We have a ball to go to actually. We’ll stay in London the next few nights and return to Pearl Hall after that. I’ve got you a dress already in the closet.”
“Oh, well, I was thinking more like birthday cake and balloons, but I guess Lords do balls for birthdays,” I mused.
He pressed his smile to my forehead and then replaced it with a kiss. “We can do birthday cake after the ball, how about that?”
“Deal.”
We were quiet again for a time, and I almost drifted to sleep before I asked, “What are you going to do about the Order? What if they turn on you?”
He didn’t answer for a long time, and when he did, I wasn’t sure if I was already dreaming.
“It’s what I’ll do to the Order if they come for you that I’m worried about.”
I made Xan laugh eighteen times on his thirty-fifth birthday. My plan for the day had gone superbly with the help of Riddick, who actually made the calls and reservations for us, and Mrs. White, who had also travelled with us from Pearl Hall and helped me make the cake. We baked the Sicilian Cassata rum cake the morning before while Alexander was out on business, and I’d presented it to him in bed that morning when I woke him up.
This trip signaled my first time going to bed and waking up with him, and the new intimacy felt right given how my feelings had changed for him.
It felt even better when he’d eaten the icing off my nipples and between my legs until I came in his mouth and then claimed that I tasted better than the cake.
It was a silly plan, and I’d been nervous when I suggested spending the day together in London to celebrate, but Alexander had been surprisingly kind about my overenthusiasm. I think he’d even enjoyed going on the London Eye, although that was probably only because we had occupied our own pod and he’d played under my skirt in full few of the CCTV cameras until I’d come all over his hands.
I’d never seen Alexander as relaxed as he was with me that day. He was still cold and aloof, unflappable, and difficult to impress, but there was a smile in his eyes that made them glow like multifaceted diamonds in the weak London light.
Experiencing him like that made me feel like a girl with a school crush, which was vaguely ridiculous as I’d never before been one. But the giddiness that rushed through me when he held my hand and led me through the crowds or pulled out my chair for me at high tea in Fortnum & Mason was enough to made me light-headed.
There was another, potential reason for my light-headedness, but I didn’t want to dwell on it before I knew for sure.
When we’d returned to the Mayfair house to get ready for the ball, Alexander stopped me on the brick path before the door and took my face in both hands.
“I want to thank you,” he said solemnly and vaguely uncomfortably, “for planning today. I haven’t had much fun in my life and none since Chiara died and… Edward left. So this was splendid.”
My heart was bright in my chest and even though that worried me just as my giddiness from earlier did, I allowed myself to feel happy because I hadn’t had much of that lately either.
“You’re very welcome.”
He stared at me for another long moment, trying to translate the words he saw written in the line of my face and the gold of my eyes. I kept my features on lockdown, desperate to hold my secrets for just a while longer.
Then, his hands slid into my hair, and he tipped my head back so that he could give me a kiss so luxe it felt like satin against my tongue.
Now, I was sitting in the bathroom before the large mirror staring at Mrs. White as she fussed with my hair.
My make-up was done, a sultry cat eye that made me look like the Egyptian Cleopatra, and gold dust that shimmered on the ledge of my cheekbones and in the expanse of décolletage that was reveal by the low-cut sheer gold dress.
Mrs. White was braiding some pieces of my hair and crossing them over the top of my head so that they looked like dark crown. I watched, my leg bouncing with anxiety, as she threaded filaments of gold through the coils so that they caught in the light.
I looked like a queen, but I still felt like the pawn, especially after spending thirty minutes the bathroom throwing up before Mrs. White appeared.
A pawn didn’t have many choices that were not dictated by the other pieces on the border.
I couldn’t even plan for my uncertain future without first trusting someone in my treacherous life to be my confidante.
“You are unusually flushed today, love,” Mrs. White noticed as she spritzed my spicy perfume over my neck and hair. “Are you feeling quite right?
“I think something at tea didn’t agree with me,” I admitted, just in case she heard me vomiting earlier.
I needed to trust someone with my secret, but I was leaning toward Douglas or even Riddick instead of Mrs. White. There was no specific reason for my hesitation, but something in my gut told me to trust one of the other men with my explosive secret.
“Well, you look a treat, and Master Alexander will be knocked off his feet at the sight of you.” She laughed delightedly and then peered at me in the reflection of the mirror as I leaned over to adjust my aching breasts in the cups of the dress. “He seems taken with you.”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s trained me well enough.”
“No, dear, I’ve seen him with his fair share of women, and none have made him as… intense as you do.”
“He laughed today,” I told her to counteract her words. “Eighteen times.”
Her lips pursed as I revealed my hands.
My throat burned as I ached to take back my telling words.
“Listen to Mrs. White, sweet,” she advised me as she cupped my face in her plump, pale hands and looked at me in the mirror. “You are losing your lustre as knackered as you are. Let me tell you something, it is a quick end when the bloom falls off the rose…unless you have something else of value to give them”
“Give who?” I asked, confused by her speech.
“By the Davenport men. If you give them something they need, they’ll keep you even after they’ve used you.”
“Okay,” I drew the word out slowly because something about her over bright eyes and cryptic words made my flesh drew tight with goosebumps. “What could I possibly have other than my body that is any value to two of the richest men in England?”
“A baby,” Mrs. White said, and her words hit the bull’s-eye so sharply, so neatly, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it coming. “An heir or a spare.”
I swallowed thickly, unable to find my voice at all, let alone the proper words to refute her enigmatic guess.
When I didn’t answer fast enough, she smiled sweetly and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “That’s what I thought, love. That’s what I thought.”
Finally, my voice surged through my throat, and I stood, spinning around to face her with my mouth open to say, “Mrs. White—”
“Bloody hell,” Alexander said from the doorway, where he stood resplendent in an entirely black tuxedo. “You look a vision, bella.”
I placed a shaky hand on my lower abdomen and watched as Mrs. White winked at me, then scuttl
ed out of the room, shutting the door behind her.
My eyes swung back to Alexander, and my heart stuttered as he crossed the small space to stand in front of me. His hands went to my shoulders so that he could twist me back to face the mirror. One hand lingered over the column of my neck, his thumb brushing over my pulse as he studied me.
“I’m a wealthy man and a titled lord, so I own many things of incredible worth and beauty, items both inherited and bought. One of my most precious possession is this,” he explained as the other hand came out of his pocket to raise a glinting gold necklace constructed of stylized gold thorny stems and riddled with clusters of seed peals. There was a perfectly blood red ruby the size of a toddler’s fists nestled at the heart of the necklace like a rose protected by its thorns.
It was one of the most awe-inspiring things of beauty I had ever seen.
Alexander raised it higher over my chest and then clutched the other end in his hand on my neck so that he could clasp it around me.
“I wanted to see what my most expensive heirloom would look like on my most treasured possession,” he murmured as he clicked the necklace closed and smoothed it flat with his fingers.
I watched in the mirror as his hands settled over my collarbones, framing the gorgeous collar necklace that hung from my throat, and his ownership of me seemed complete.
“This is your collar tonight,” he explained in a voice like drug smoke, the sound of it heady enough to make me high. “Everyone who sees it will know you are mine, and they will know how much you mean to me.”
“Dangerous,” I whispered through my dry mouth.
It was so dangerous for so many reasons. We couldn’t afford to fall in love. Not the Master with his slave, not the avenger with the tool of his trade, and certainly not the man whose mother had been murdered by the girl’s father.
There was no hope for us, and that was without outside forces interfering.
The Order and the Camorra.
Noel and Salvatore.
My baby.
I stared at the picture we made in the mirror, how well it lied to make it seem as if we were the perfect couple. We looked absolutely breathtaking together, regal and opposite but synergetic as if our differences fit together like puzzle pieces to complete the picture just right.
I sucked in a shuddering breath to control myself because Alexander’s stare had turned sharp.
“When a Master collars a slave, Cosima, it is a very powerful thing. It means I believe you are worthy of praise, worthy to wear the weight of my powerful name around your throat. What do you say to that?”
“I say thank you, Master,” I whispered thickly as I brought my hands to his, my fingertips over the cool necklace. “I hope I prove worthy of the gift.”
The opulence was staggering. Light dripped from glittering chandeliers and thickly branched candelabras, reflecting off the multifaceted jewels adorning the ears, throats, and wrists of London’s most elite persons all gathered in the ballroom at Mayfair’s grand Grammar House. Gorgeous women floated across the glossy floor in lavish gowns while the men stood in groups drinking liquor and talking about politics and sport. The room itself was like the inside of a music box, so ornate in golds and reds and murals that it made me slightly dizzy even though I wasn’t dancing with the multitudes of beautiful couples gracing the dance floor.
Instead, I stood by Alexander’s side as he hobnobbed with some of the city’s wealthiest and most prestigious men and women. I’d even heard someone say that the most scandalous second prince, Alasdair, was at the ball, though, I wouldn’t have known him if I saw him.
No one talked to me very much, and there wasn’t much to be said when they did. I had nothing in common with such people, and it showed the moment I opened my accented mouth.
Alexander kept me close, though, his hands eloquent on my hip or stroking across my back, platitudes for my boredom.
It was no wonder he enjoyed our celebration in London that day if this was how he usually spent his birthdays.
Finally, the older couple Alexander had been speaking to excused themselves, and I had him all to myself.
Instantly, I pouted.
His trademark small smile tipped the left side of his mouth and cut a crease into his cheek. “Poor bored little mouse. What am I going to do with you?”
“At this point, anything but another tedious conversation would do,” I admitted.
His smile hitched higher.
“Why don’t we dance,” he said, instead of questioned, already leading me to the dance floor where couples were setting up for the next number.
“I don’t know how,” I hissed at him as he found space for us on the floor. “I don’t even know the music.”
“You don’t need to,” he informed as the first strains began, and he whisked me into his arms. “You just need to follow your Master.”
After a few moments of stiff fingers curled into the fine fabric of his jacket and feet that clamoured helpless to move in the right direction, I relaxed enough to trust him.
“That’s it, my beauty,” he said, then drew my earlobe into his mouth. “Relax in my arms and show everyone what I lucky man I am tonight.”
I melted further into his embrace, my body like wax against his as I molded to his shape and adapted to his steps. We spun across the marble hall as the London Orchestra played an elaborate piece music that soared into the vaulted ceilings and swirled beneath my dress.
“Are you happy now?” Alexander asked me, and I got that sense he had meant to joke with me, but his tone arrived too somber.
“Do you care?” I asked, as I dipped my head back on my shoulders to see the colours of the mural above mix like an artist’s palette as we revolved around the other couples.
When I looked back at Alexander, he was frowning at me as if I’d offended him.
“Yes,” he admitted, “Yes, I do.”
“Then, yes. I’m happy,” I told him. “For now.”
And now was all it would ever be.
“I have to use the toilet,” I told him, wrenching out of his arms so quickly that he didn’t have time to grab me. “I’ll be back.”
I picked up the slide train of my form-fitting dress and dashed as elegantly and quickly as I could through the crowds to the sweeping staircase where a manservant attended at the bottom.
I asked him for directions, and he led me to the powder room at the top of the stairs to the left. Instantly, I emptied my queasy stomach in the toilet, retching so hard tears came to my eyes. I rested my cheek across my arm over the porcelain for a moment to regain my breath as my tummy flipped then settled.
I wasn’t sure if I was pregnant or not, but the sudden onslaught of nausea was reason enough to be worried. The same doctor who had administered my physical in Italy, attended me every three months at Pearl Hall to check on me and give me the birth control shot.
I should have been covered, my risk of pregnancy completely improbable.
But I wasn’t sure about these things. I hadn’t even been the one to choose the form of birth control.
My face was damp with nervous sweat when I looked at myself in the mirror, but otherwise my hair and make-up remained perfectly intact.
“Don’t fall in love with him, Cosima Ruth Lombardi,” I told my reflection sternly. “You’re hormonal and crazy, and you are absolutely not falling in love with the man who bought you.”
My pep talk completed, I splashed cold water on my wrists and pushed outside in the hall. The orchestra was playing something more rigorous now, something with a bite and snap like hounds nipping at the heels of a fox on the chase.
I paused at the top of the stairs to watch the colourful, diamond bright festivities for a moment, feeling homesickness for the urine yellow plainness of Napoli pang in my heart.
Unconsciously, my eyes searched the room for Alexander, and I found him already looking up at me, frowning as he peered across the long room.
I lifted my foot to begin my descent, preoccup
ied with thoughts of explaining my hasty departure to Alexander and how I was going to ask Mrs. White—now that she already suspected—to buy me a pregnancy test at the pharmacy.
So I was completely unprepared when two hands came from behind me and shoved me with brutal force down the two-story staircase.
There was no time to recover, to grab at the slick marble railing or steady myself on my towering heels.
I could only fall.
My body went limp after I struck the stairs the first time, the back of my head cracking against the stone so hard the sound echoed in my ears the entire way down the staircase, as I fell head over feet again and again until I finally reached the bottom.
There was a ringing in my ears, but I couldn’t open my eyes to check if it was the orchestra still playing or the continued ricochet of my head impacting with the ground repeatedly. Something wet slid down my face, but I couldn’t figure out how to make my hand work to feel if it was blood or tears.
Crippling pain snapped through my abdomen like cracking plastic, so excruciating that I curled my bruised body in on itself trying to lessen its severity.
Suddenly, there was the smell of cedar and pine in my nose and gentle pressure on the side of my head as someone tried to speak to me through the encroaching darkness of my mind.
“Xan,” I thought I mumbled before I passed out. “Make sure you save our baby.”
When I woke up, someone was shouting.
The decibel slammed into my temples like stakes driven into the earth.
I tried to open my mouth to complain, but my voice died like a flailing butterfly in my throat.
And then the noise filtered through the fog of slumber and pain to truly penetrate.
It was Xan, and he was screaming at someone.
“Who the fuck put you up to it?”
With enormous effort, I peeled my eyes open and squinted through the bright light that assailed my vision even in the dark room.
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