If someone had asked me what I would have felt to see Delphine Dansey like this—grimy and grotty and blank—I would’ve said that I would feel pity, and maybe disdain. Maybe a distant sort of compassion, in the global Buddhist sense of the word.
But that’s not what I felt looking at her.
I felt fear.
Fear so powerful it climbed up my throat. Fear like I hadn’t felt since the first night Daddy and I stayed in London without Ma, in a brand-new flat without furniture or food or plants or both my parents.
“Stay there,” I told her—pointlessly, because she obviously wasn’t moving under her own willpower. Then I walked to the kitchen and gestured for Auden to follow me.
“What’s happening?” I asked him once we got there. “The trial’s over, isn’t it? Shouldn’t she be relieved? Happy?”
Auden rubbed his face with a hand. His other hand hadn’t stopped clutching his phone since the moment he came up the stairs.
“She’s not doing well,” said Auden quietly. “I’ve been staying with her when I can—it’s technically against the rules—but everyone at the Grange has been letting it slide, considering the circumstances. She’s been seeing a therapist here in London once a week, she’s been able to make most of her classes. And at the trial—she rallied, didn’t she? She was so focused. So sharp. Which is why when Mum took ill, I thought I could come down—” He broke off, guilt twisting at his mouth.
I touched his shoulder. “Your mother isn’t well?”
“Pneumonia,” Auden said without emotion. “Aspirated her own sick after drinking too much. She was managing, but things have gotten worse. They’re moving her to critical care.”
“Auden.”
“It doesn’t look . . . The doctors have suggested I stay near her, you see.” His voice almost broke then, but he managed to keep it steady. “Just in case.”
“Auden.”
He ignored me. I wasn’t rebuffed by it; I would have done the same had someone tried to comfort me while I was explaining something so painful.
“So I decided I should run up to Cambridge to get a few things, since I’d be staying in London longer than I’d planned,” he continued. “I’d only been gone four days, and I’d talked with Delly on the phone twice a day during that time. I thought . . . You have to understand, she sounded like herself.” He looked at me pleadingly. “I thought she was doing okay without me, I swear I did.”
I looked past him to the beautiful girl staring out my window like she’d never seen a window before. “And then you got to Cambridge and found her like this,” I surmised.
“It was always the plan to check on her, but I thought—I really thought she was coping on her own.”
“Where are her parents?” I asked, suddenly feeling protective of her. “Why haven’t they been checking in with their daughter?”
“They went to the Maldives after the trial. Freddie had some meeting there. They tried to make Delphine come too, but she didn’t want to miss school. They’ve been calling her every day too, but—”
“She’s fooled them as well.”
“Yes, I think so. Because if they knew she was like this, they’d be home as fast as they could get here. My guess is that she didn’t want to disrupt her father’s work. She doesn’t want to be a bother.”
I studied the girl across the room. Even in her depression, she looked like money, like a future bride for an earl or a businessman with a private jet. And yet, we had this in common.
I understood utterly what it was to tiptoe around a father’s work, to want to be easy for one’s parents.
“I didn’t know what to do, Rebecca—I don’t think she’s eaten, I couldn’t get her to eat. So I did the only thing I could think of and called her therapist here.”
“And?”
“We just met. She was—well, evaluated is the word they used. I had to lie and pretend to be her boyfriend.”
I switched my gaze back to him, dropping my hand from his shoulder. “Is that a lie?”
He nodded, then scrunched his nose. “I don’t want it to be, but it’s more important that I be here when she needs me, however she needs me. The rest should wait.”
I privately agreed. “And what did the therapist say? After the evaluation?”
Auden looked like he was reciting from a carefully recorded memory. “She’s not ideating self-harm. She’s not catatonic. She concedes a need to care for herself and has agreed to try. But her affect is flat, and clearly she’s struggling to care for herself, so she’s close to needing inpatient treatment.”
I was more relieved than I could say that Delphine wasn’t thinking about hurting herself. But worry still gnawed me. “Jesus. What happens now?”
“She has to see Dr. Joy every day, at least for the next week, until she can determine Delphine’s getting better on an outpatient basis. She has an appointment with her psychiatrist tomorrow morning to discuss calibrating her medicine. And she—”
Even in the city gloaming, his hazel eyes were bright and vivid as he gazed pleadingly at me. “She can’t be alone, Rebecca.”
The dilemma assembled itself immediately. “And you need to be with your mother.”
“I’ve called Freddie and Daisy. They’re trying to get a flight back as soon as possible, but it’s the rainy season, and all the flights for the next few days have been cancelled, and so . . . ”
I let out a long breath. I’d excelled at maths always. My father liked to say that I could multiply before I could read, that I knew the counting words in three languages before I was two years old. It was probably a father’s boasting, but still, I’d always solved any mathematical problem set before me. And this problem only had one solution.
“Go be with your mother,” I told him. “I’ll work from home, and stay with her until her parents can get back.”
He slumped, but the relief in his face was short-lived.
Of course it was. His mother was dying.
“Go,” I repeated. “I’ve got this.”
“I have some of her things,” he said, swallowing and nodding. “A holdall in my car. I didn’t know what she would like, but you know, some knickers and clothes and things. Her phone and phone charger.”
“Drop it in the hall, and then go to your mum. When you have a free minute, text me the appointment times and I’ll make sure she’s there.”
Auden came close, pulled me abruptly into an embrace so tight I could hardly breathe. I sensed it was more for him than for me. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I know she’s not your favorite person.”
I hugged him back. “You know me better than anyone, Auden Guest. Do you truly think I’d let her or you suffer when I could help?”
He pulled back to look at my face. “No,” he said after a minute. “No, I know you wouldn’t. But this is also a heavy thing to lay at your feet, and I want you to know I’m grateful.”
“You’re family, Auden. This is what families do.” Families take in the people who need help, they take in siblings and niblings and cousins and the cousins of cousins. They care for their old, their sick, the ones who need a favor and the ones who’ve used up all their favors already.
I considered Auden my family, and that meant my help, my home, and my time were his to ask for.
I gave him a final squeeze and then I made a shooing motion that was so much Ma’s it actually alarmed me for a moment. One person to take care of, and suddenly I was my mother, ready to flutter around and mutter half-prayers, half-grumbles to myself.
“Go get the bag,” I told him. “Then go to the hospital. I’ll take care of everything else.”
It started with a glass of water.
The thing was, I was no more qualified to watch over another human being than I was performing brain surgery or flying a helicopter. My only experience caring for other people was within the paradigm of kink, where the rules were clear and the limits even clearer.
Kink and Delphine had one thing in common though: the consequences for fucking up were d
ire.
I did not want to fuck up. Not only because I was Rebecca Quartey and I didn’t do fuckups, and not only because it was important for me to help Auden—but because the thought of Delphine not getting better, the thought of her slowly leaking away through invisible punctures I couldn’t patch, twisted my belly and flooded my mouth with metallic-tasting panic. She had to get better. She had to have the sun in her face once again. I’d make sure of it.
Pretend she’s a sub in your care, Rebecca. Where would you start?
I examined her, automatically running through the metrics I use during and after a scene. Hydration, blood sugar, temperature, comfort, mood.
The truth was, I’d never had a sub who seemed to be failing every single metric, and anxiety nibbled at my thoughts. What if I couldn’t help her? What if I failed?
I took a deep breath and then another one after that. Start at the beginning, Miss Genius. What metric needs addressed first?
Her lips were chapped.
Okay.
Chapped lips were a problem I could solve.
I filled a glass of cool water, found some no-nonsense lip balm, and then walked over to the sofa.
It took her some time to look up at me, and when she did, what I saw in her eyes stole my breath away.
Or rather, it was what I didn’t see that scared me, because her eyes were empty.
Normally a light, halcyon honey-gold, they were the color of dust today. The color of cracked and lifeless earth.
I’d meant to be gentle, to coax her. Maybe I’d thought I’d reason with her, to use the looming reality of inpatient treatment to stir her into agency again.
But the panic took me so hard in that moment that I defaulted to instinct. I defaulted to the only way I knew to care for someone else.
“Drink this,” I ordered brusquely, extending the glass. “Take breaks, but finish it all.”
For a moment, my words seemed to hang in the hair, and I wished I could yank them back into myself. What in God’s name was wrong with me, talking like this? Giving explicit instructions like she was my submissive for the night?
I was about to qualify it, about to add more words to try to make it less a command and more an invitation, when she took the glass and tipped it obediently to her lips.
And when she did—a flash in her eyes.
Not quite gold again, not quite honey. But something like it.
I thought about this as she finished the glass as I’d instructed her to—with breaks, but in one sitting.
Was it so aberrant to think of her as a sub? It was no replacement for professional care, of course not, but she would be getting that anyway, so was it so strange to think that maybe here with me, I could give her aftercare or something like it?
This wasn’t maths. It was science.
So I decided to test my hypothesis.
“When you’re finished,” I said, when she had only a little water left in the glass, “you will take a shower. You will wash your hair and you will brush your teeth, and then apply this lip balm after. I’ll set aside clothes for you on my bed. Is this acceptable?”
I watched her face as she nodded and took the offered lip balm in her hand. There was something moving in her eyes again.
“Delphine, while you’re here, I need you to answer me aloud so I know you’re comfortable doing what I’ve asked. When I ask you a question, you can answer with ‘yes, Rebecca’ or ‘no, Rebecca.’ You can even ask me questions yourself or disagree—but it must be out loud. Are you okay with this?”
“Yes, Rebecca,” murmured Delphine.
She finished her water and I held my hand out for the glass, which she handed to me.
“The shower is that way. There is spare shampoo and conditioner for guests in the vanity.” I hoped it wasn’t obvious that my guests were all of the fucking variety, but I supposed she’d deduce that soon enough from the individually wrapped toothbrushes and the half-empty condom box.
“Yes, Rebecca,” said Delphine obediently, and she went to the bathroom as I’d asked. I watched her walk, thinking for a moment.
“May I check on you? While you’re showering?”
She stopped and looked back at me. There was no affront in her eyes, no bristling or defensiveness. I wouldn’t have been offended if she said no. It would be an invasion of privacy, a witness to nakedness. A tacit admission that I didn’t trust her for too long by herself.
But something like relief seemed to pull at her mouth, and there was almost a smile on her lips when she ducked her eyes to the floor and said, “Yes, Rebecca.”
Auden had not done a bad job packing for her. He had taken comfortable clothes, plenty of knickers and comfy socks, plenty of bras, and even her makeup bag and hairbrush. For a man whose life was crumbling, he had maintained an admirable attention to detail. I set out things for her on my bed, and popped my head through the door once, just to make sure she was getting on okay. Then I came back out and waited for her to finish her shower. And waited.
And waited.
It was my first introduction to the Delphine Shower, which is long enough to empty rivers and drain lakes. If I’d known then how much she liked to play in the shower—how delighted she gets when I push her against the tile and seal my mouth over hers—then it would have been much, much harder to wait.
As it was, I was mostly thinking about the water bill and whether or not I’d left her enough towels.
I eventually gave up waiting and went back to my wine and work, finishing up the most urgent of it, and sending out emails to let the office know I’d be working from home for the next few days, due to a personal emergency. My father replied instantly to the one I sent him; I didn’t realize I was clenching my jaw as I read it until I held the wineglass to my lips and had to drink.
As a Quartey, you are part of this company’s essential operations, he had written back. You are not permitted personal emergencies.
The rest of his email was just as brusque, a few more lines indicating that he expected me to produce as much work from home as I would at the office, and that being the daughter of the company’s founder did not mean I was exempt from following company policy regarding leave.
Nothing I did was ever good enough, was it? I could festoon my walls with diplomas, my shelves with professional awards, I could bring in contracts that would make every other London firm salivate, and it still wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough that I worked constantly, tirelessly, that the only thing I had outside the Workshop was the occasional stolen night of kinky sex—
“Rebecca?” Delphine called from the doorway to the bathroom. “I’m coming out now.”
She was wearing nothing but a towel, her skin flushed and pink, and her hair was in wet waves around her shoulders, clinging to her skin. The towel was short and her hips spread the bottom of it open the tiniest bit. When she walked to the bed, I could see the tempting curves of her backside.
Tempting? Delphine Dansey?
What was wrong with me?
I shook it off, closing my laptop and determined to finish out this day as efficiently as humanly possible. After Delphine emerged from the bathroom a second time—dressed in her fresh clothes—I asked her how she felt.
“The same,” she said after a minute. “I feel the same.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“When’s the last time you’ve eaten?”
“I don’t remember.”
It was important for me to know how long she’d been without food, but I decided not to push. “Could you eat now?”
That earned me a shrug, which earned her me crossing my arms. “Out loud please.”
Her eyes lifted to mine, dark in the nighttime glow of the loft. “I could, Rebecca.”
That settled it. I asked her then if there was anything she felt like eating and anything she couldn’t eat—no and no, were the answers—and so I got her another glass of water and thought for a moment.
My experience feeding subs stoppe
d at giving them bananas or chocolate to help with blood sugar drops after a scene. Maybe the occasional “help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge” if they spent the night and I needed to leave for work before they were dressed and ready to go. But that she needed to eat was apparent to me.
Fuck it.
I’d feed her what Ma would feed me—what she made whenever I was sick or stressed or sad. I picked up my phone and called my favorite Ghanaian restaurant.
“Black Stars,” the voice answered promptly.
“Auntie, it’s Rebecca,” I said, walking into the kitchen. “Can I get light soup and fufu delivered, please?”
“It’s late,” Auntie Yaa says, even though I know they’ll be open for hours yet to serve the hungry clubgoers after they’re done drinking and dancing. “You should be eating dinner earlier than now. Is your father working you too hard again?”
I smiled tiredly into the phone. “When isn’t he?”
“And is this just for you, Rebecca?” Her voice was businesslike, but not businesslike enough that I knew my answer wouldn’t be logged away as potential gossip.
“No, Auntie, it’s for two.”
She made a low mmmm noise. “Who is he? Does he have a good job? What is his family like?”
He. I sometimes forgot how they always assumed he.
“It’s just a friend, Auntie.”
“You young people. Always the same. ‘Just a friend.’ ‘Just hooking up.’ ‘Just hanging out.’ You need to marry. Settle down. Make little babies for Auntie Yaa to feed fufu to.” I could hear her moving around on her end, I could hear the ring of the till, the congenial shout of voices in the kitchen. The music of Black Stars.
“I’ll send Kofi with the fufu,” she said. “Have fun with your friend.”
A lifetime of aunties had taught me when it was wisest to be a submissive. When arguing will only earn you more pain—even if that pain was just the hassle of being scolded on the phone. “Thank you, Auntie. I will.”
We hung up then. She had my card on file along with my address, and I knew the food would either be here in twenty minutes or it would be here in an hour and twenty minutes, and so there was no sense in asking when to expect it.
Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3) Page 35