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I’D PACKED UP, I’d not wasted a second doing it either and hauled my case down the eight flights of stairs. The surroundings seemed to clunk and creak and groan like they knew how I felt but as much as you’ll think I’ve been a wimp much of the time, I was strong enough now to know that unless someone loved me completely, unless what we wanted matched, I deserved more.
Sophie had given me that, she’d helped me see I wasn’t ugly. She’d somehow made me forget I really even had a prosthesis. The whir was like I’d always heard it. Shit, she even made me feel sexy because of it.
I nodded to Michela’s suit of armour and thanked her quietly then headed out of the main entrance down the driveway. The mist thickened to the point I couldn’t see anything. Forget lights or a hand in front of my face, it felt like the mist was purposely stopping me going anywhere.
“I don’t really want to go,” I snapped at it. “Can’t you see? I love the place and I love her.” I stomped onward, somehow instinctively knowing where I was going. “I love even you,” I told the mist. “You hear me? I love you.”
Yes, we were at the point of neurosis once again. Yes, I know shouting at the mist was ridiculous and so was taking a broadsword to my heart instead of begging to stay and take what I could get. I know that, I’m trying to be brave here, quit heckling.
I sighed and trundled on, gravel crunching and jamming in the wheels of my case. I yanked it harder, then the handle snapped and it clunked to a halt behind me like even the fucking suitcase was trying to stop me.
“Fine. I’ll buy other clothes,” I yelled at it, only it sounded growly for me. “I’m doing what’s right. I am. I deserve to be respected.”
Wow it was echoing.
“I agree,” Sophie whispered in my ear.
I turned and glared up into her eyes. “Stop doing that!”
Now that was a roar.
“Never.” She smiled a dangerous smile. “Get back to the manor before I carry you there.”
“Excuse me?” I hardened my gaze. She could smile all she liked, even if it was too tempting for words. “What about Eugenie?”
“She is part of this place, of the family I head, but she is not the kind of woman who wishes for any such bind that you wish me to hold out to you.” Sophie gripped my face in her hands. “You will be expected to produce children, to run my household with me, the estate with me, you will be expected to appear at events, shake strangers’ hands, ensure every person you serve is as safe and content as you can provide; to defend the estate, to honour its history, to know that to be a Haye, a De Breton, you uphold your duty to those entrusted to you even when it tears at your own scars. It is a role you take on for life . . . but the most difficult task is that you must love me even when others cannot see beyond the mist which surrounds me.” She bored into my eyes. “You wish for this?”
I stumbled closer, gazing up at her. My heart pounded in my breast. “I . . .”
“You belong here and you belong with me.” She gripped me by the shoulders. “The fierce ice lies in a puddle at your feet and I, the people I serve, and every blade of grass demands you reconsider abandoning us and take the position you secured the moment you set foot upon this soil.”
I needed a second to take that in. Her charcoal eyes were blazing, smouldering, beckoning. “Abandon you?”
There was the wounded look at full capacity. “Yes, to withdraw your affection now would be to leave us adrift . . . and I fear I will never recover from it.”
Her eyes glistened.
Exhale, pause; exhale; pause.
“I . . .” I searched her eyes, her face, her beautiful juicy lips which glistened in an odd eerie, white-blue glow.
“Stay,” she whispered to me, almost a purr that rumbled into my chest.
Exhale, pause; exhale; pause.
The mist swirled around us as I slid my hands over her shoulders, and I smiled in a way I knew echoed hers in victory. “Very well.”