Finally, she seemed to relax, rolling her eyes at him. “Oh, come off it. Walcott let me in and he wouldn’t have if you were doing any of your underground shenanigans. Now, are you going to introduce me?”
“Tilda is my cousin,” he called over his shoulder to us as he moved to where his shirt and phone lay on a stool.
“His favorite cousin,” she amended with a wide smile that made her pale, freckled face glow. She walked to the boxing ring and extended her hand through the ropes to me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Welcome to the family, I suppose.”
“Bianca,” I replied, accepting her hand, noticing it was smooth and perfumed unlike my calloused, chipped-polish fingers. “My brother over there with Ezra is Brandon.”
“Actually, now that you’re here, you might as well be useful,” Tiernan said blandly without looking up from his phone, fingers flying over the keys. From my angle, I could count the black tally marks marring the skin between his shoulders. Thirteen of them. I wondered with some apprehension what they might represent. “Take Bianca and Brando shopping for me, will you? Bianca starts school at Sacred Heart Academy on Monday and Brando is going to St Michael’s Prep.”
“Oh,” Tilda cried, clapping her hands. “Yes, of course, I can help! Are you ready to go now?” She seemed to realize I was wearing an oversized tee and Brando was wearing his Spiderman pajamas. “Well, obviously not. I’ll give you ten minutes to freshen up and Ezra can take us into the city. I have an appointment at four I cannot miss, so we better get cracking.”
I bugged my eyes out at her enthusiasm, but she was already turning around to chat to Ezra about the itinerary.
“I don’t need new clothes,” I told Tiernan, stalking over to him. “We don’t need anything more from you.”
“Don’t be pathetic, Bianca,” he tsked. “You have no money but mine. No house but this house. No family but my own. You’ll take what I give you and be happy.”
“I like my clothes,” I argued, somewhat childishly, but I didn’t care. Even if I stuck out like a sore thumb at some fancy school, at least I would be remaining true to myself.
A down-on-her-luck Belcante always held their head high no matter what.
Tiernan finally lifted his gaze from his phone to drop it slowly down my body. Heat seared my cheeks as I realized I hadn’t brushed my hair that morning, the heavy mass of it tangled around my head and shoulders, my shirt three times too big and holey at the hem. His eyes lingered on my bare legs, on the ends of my polished toenails as they curled into the mats with my effort not to squirm.
“I don’t like them,” he finally announced. “And what I think matters most.”
“What would you have me in, diamonds and fur?” I demanded. “That’s not me.”
Or, it hadn’t been in over five years.
His jaw clenched and I noticed he hadn’t shaved yet that morning, a dark pelt of short stubble shadowing his lower face, highlighting that incongruently full, beautifully shaped mouth.
“I’d have you in silk,” he murmured, low and intimate just for me to hear as the others talked elsewhere in the room. “The same texture as your skin. I’d have you in sapphires the color of your eyes and cashmere as soft as your hair.”
“Why?” I cleared my throat of the desire that was lodged there. “Why do you even care what I wear?”
“You represent this house now, and I will not have any possession of mine less than perfectly presented.” God, he was cold and hard. I wondered madly if he’d been made instead of born, some automaton stolen from a factory.
“Says the man with the disfiguring scar,” I quipped, almost immediately regretting my words because they were unfair and untrue.
The wicked, long-healed scar bisecting his lower left cheek from ear to chin puckered the skin into any angry line, but it in no way diminished the impact of his blatant handsomeness.
Somehow, it heightened it.
Besides, I didn’t care about his scars or anyone else’s. I knew too well that everyone bore their own wounds whether or not they were visible on the flesh or buried deep beneath it.
Tiernan moved just slightly, a tiny recoil someone else less in tune with his physicality might have missed. But I noticed it. And I knew my barbed words had landed.
“Scarred or not, I am the man in charge of your life,” he reminded me, sneering that beautiful mouth into an ugly, hateful expression. “Remember that when Tilda takes you into the city. If I find out you’ve said anything ugly to her, disrespected her or her authority in any way, you’ll think locking you in your room last night was merely child’s play.”
“You’re so obsessed with being in control, someone might think you were overcompensating for something,” I threw at him.
But he only laughed that long, low chuckle as dark as smoke. “Oh, Bianca, I’m happy to prove that statement false anytime you’d like. For now, do not play games with me you have no hope of winning. Be a good little thing for Tilda and I may just give you that silly locket back.”
* * *
Tilda McTiernan wasn’t a thing like her cousin.
Case and point, she laughed when I told her exactly that.
“Well, Tiernan hasn’t had it easy,” she admitted as she tossed yet another dress onto the pile of garments in the arms of the shop employee following us around Bloomingdales in New York City. “I think that should do it for now.”
Dutifully, I followed Tilda to the back of the store where the changing rooms were. Ezra had taken Brando to FAO Schwarz to buy some new toys so that Tilda and I could “take our time” picking out the right outfits for me. The first one she thrust at me was a floor-length gown made of shimmering oyster silk and feathers.
“When am I ever going to wear this?”
She smiled, waving a hand through the air. “Oh, this and that. You never know. Tiernan isn’t exactly Mr. Social, but you might be called to represent the family at some gathering or other. Everyone is expected at Thanksgiving, the Christmas Ball, Bryant’s birthday party, and the like too.”
“And it’s acceptable to wear feathers to some of these occasions?” I asked weakly as one of the feathers tickled my nose, making me sneeze.
Tilda laughed lightly. “Definitely. Trust me, I have an eye for these things. You’ll look like a dove in it. Innocent and beautiful.”
My reluctance evaporated in light of her comment. There was no one left to call me “dove” or “dovey,” now that Aida was gone, but the bird and its symbolism would always mean everything to me.
My father had given me the nickname when I was four. I could still remember him telling me I was his dove not because I was fragile and innocent, but because I brought him peace.
As I slipped into the changing room, Tilda continued to chatter away.
“Of course, Tiernan hates to attend any of our gatherings and you can’t really blame the man. None of his immediate family even talk to him, outside of his parents, and they’re…well, everyone knows what they’re like.”
“I don’t. What do you mean?”
It was too good an opportunity to pass up, prying sweet and pretty Tilda for more information about the guardian who seemed more like my captor at that point. I wanted answers to any of the innumerable mysteries he presented. Maybe if I understood him more, I would be less fascinated with the enigma of him.