She thought I was beneath her, hardly worthy of notice unless it was to call out my stupidity.
Embarrassment flamed through me.
It might have been odd, wanting to make a good first impression on the woman who had monopolized my father’s time, my mother’s rival, but I did. Lane had always spoken highly of his wife when I pressed for information about her, especially about how she had been back in the days when they’d first met and fallen in love.
She brought me peace, then, too, he’d said wistfully, holding me close. I think she became so obsessed with keeping that peace, she lost sight of what it once meant. Peace isn’t power and prestige. It’s about happiness. About protecting and cherishing our loved ones. Our world.
A shiver rippled through me and I realized I had been quiet too long. Fixing a crooked smile between my cheeks, I extended my hand to Caroline. “Hello, Mrs. Constantine. I’m sorry to have to meet you this way. I’m Bianca, a friend of Elias’ from school.”
Something flickered across the frozen pond of her eyes, then went flat. She looked at Elias with a slightly raised brow that didn’t indent her smooth forehead. She didn’t shake my hand, and finally, I dropped it. “This is the girl you told me about.”
Elias almost winced then nodded.
Caroline fixed me with her thousand-yard stare, eyes moving from my sweat-soaked hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail to the curves of my body tucked away in clinging spandex. She made me feel like the Texas white trash I hadn’t been in months.
“Bianca Belcante,” she confirmed finally.
“Yes, ma’am.”
A tremor whispered over her lips but I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or something meaner. “Please, do not call me ‘ma’am.’ I’m hardly ancient enough to warrant such a term, am I?”
Immediately, I shook my head. “No, not at all.”
A whisper of a smile crossed her face, slightly reptilian, like Tiernan’s when he was faking niceties.
“Elias tells me you are staying with the McTiernans.”
“Yes, they were kind enough to take in my brother and me after our mother died,” I explained, dashing at a cold bead of sweat as it rolled down my temple. Elias held my other hand, his thumb grazing my wrist as if to soothe me. It surprised me that it worked.
“You have an accent,” she said, but it was a question without a mark.
“Texan,” I explained, happy it wasn’t stronger because Caroline’s own voice was crisp and clean, a true blue blood American.
“Hey, this healed nicely,” Elias interrupted to note, his thumb touching the edge of my dove tattoo. “Looks good on you.”
Caroline followed his gaze, her nostrils flaring. I worried she didn’t like her nephew hanging around a poor backwoods orphan, but when she looked up at me again, there was a small smile on her face.
“An orphan, poor thing. We must have you over for tea sometime soon. Perhaps I can help you acclimatize to your new surroundings,” she offered magnanimously.
Elias started, brows furrowing as he stared at his aunt, but I beamed back at her. The idea of spending time with her was somehow like getting to spend time with my father. I wanted to learn to be as graceful and elegant as Caroline, a woman my father respected and loved. She had the class and refinery, the keen intelligence that Aida lacked and I was eager to soak it up in any way I could.
“I would love that,” I said honestly.
Elias stepped closer. “Bianca, I—”
“I’ll check my calendar. Elias, why don’t you get back in the car? We’ll be late to dinner if we linger any longer and we have so much to discuss.”
He grimaced, but didn’t move from my side as Caroline took her phone from her Chanel purse.
“I thought you didn’t mix with Caroline and her kids,” I murmured under my breath.
“Not by choice,” he agreed, squeezing my hand in his. “But Caroline feels everyone in the family has to answer to her and I’ve done some things she doesn’t…agree with.”
“Like hanging out with poor orphans?”
His laugh was sharp and hollow. “That’s the least of it, trust me. Don’t worry about me. Worry about why she’s interested in you.”
“Elias, the car,” Caroline interrupted with a perfectly arched brow,
She stared at him without blinking until he reluctantly let go of my hand after giving it another squeeze. When he had truculently slammed the car door behind him, Caroline stepped closer as she reached into her quilted purse and produced a business card. It was typed up on thick, expensive card stock I bet cost more than Aida, Brando, and I had spent on groceries in a month.
“I have an event next week that will keep me rather busy,” she explained as she handed me the card and closed the clasp on her bag with a pop. “After next weekend, my schedule opens up. I would be happy to take you to tea, talk about your plans for the future.”
“Wow,” I said, before I could curb the impulse, blushing badly at my gaucheness. “This is incredibly kind of you.”
Her smile was thin but beautiful. “Yes, well, anything for a…friend of the family.”
Without another word, she stepped away and moved around to the other side of the car. The driver got out to open the door for her, then shot me an apologetic look.
“Sorry about hitting you,” he muttered.
“Sorry about hitting your car,” I quipped, sliding off the hood, then giving it a little pat. “This thing is definitely worth more than I am.”
He made a funny face at me. “If Caroline Constantine just paid you the time of day, I wouldn’t underestimate your worth. At least to her.”
Before I could question his odd statement, he ducked back into the driver’s seat and took off, pulling the car through the gates and up the winding hill to the palatial oceanside mansion beyond.
I blinked at the Constantine Compound, the place my dad had bought and made his palace, a home suffused with his history and memories. I yearned to go inside, to touch the walls and stand in the same places he’d once stood.
Instead, I clutched Caroline’s card in my hand, put my fallen earbuds back in my ears and started a slow walk back to the gloomy, troubled halls of Lion Court.
Chapter Twelve
Bianca
It got dark quickly.
It was early November in New York now, the nights getting long, blackness falling like a shroud by five-thirty in the evening. There were old-fashioned iron lampposts dotting the streets of Bishop’s Landing, but they did little to orient me. Every block looked the same, big houses tucked behind great big fences like the rich were worried the outside world would contaminate their charmed lives.
I got lost.
Horribly so.
My phone had lost battery just after the crash at the Constantine Compound, so I couldn’t call Lion Court or look up directions. Instead, I wandered, hoping to bump into someone who could give me directions, but it seemed the entire town was locked up tight after dark. A cold wind blew off the ocean, briny and dense. I shivered in my skimpy workout clothes, unable to run to keep warm because I was too sore.
I was about to give up and buzz at one of the gates along the street to beg for directions or the use of a phone when the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Awareness prickled down my spine like needles through the flesh, digging straight to the bone.