Now that I’d sunk all my money into Longbourne, I was no longer appealing. I wasn’t even mad about it. Those girls could never be my person. It seemed impossible to think my person could ever exist in that sphere.
Maisie flitted through my mind, as she so often did. God, how I wished I were anyone else, just for a chance to know her. I’d been unable to shake my incessant wondering over what could have been and the frustration that came along with it. I hated not having answers, hated walking away without even trying. I hated not having a choice, and I hated the loss of possibility.
I hated that I couldn’t just sneak around and do it anyway. That was what Luke would have done.
A book whistled toward me, hitting me square in the cheek with a smack when I turned to the sound.
“What the fuck, Luke?” I snapped, snatching the book and chucking it back at him.
He caught it like a jerk. “What? You weren’t listening.”
“Giving me a black eye before I have to represent our goddamn inheritance won’t help any of us.”
“Nah, but it sure would be funny.”
I would have whipped another book at him had one been within reach.
“What were you even thinking about? I thought your eyebrows were going to merge into one big super-brow.”
I weighed my words carefully, weighed the burden on my mind, and found a gray enough answer to say aloud. “How’d you do it? Date without any expectations. No attachments.”
Luke’s face quirked. “That is not what I expected you to say.”
I laid an unamused look on him.
He sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. Partly, I think I just wanted to eat the whole world, see it all, experience it all. You know?”
“I don’t.”
A chuckle. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. It’s … I don’t know how to explain it,” he started, pausing to think. “It’s like … a hungry sort of search. Like I couldn’t stop looking, couldn’t slow down, but I was hunting a ghost, chasing a thing I couldn’t name. I had to try everything, collect experiences. Find the one thing that would satisfy my insatiable thirst.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was, but it was fun too. Point is, I never wanted to settle down, not really. Not until Tess.” The earnestness from my cavalier brother disarmed me, his eyes soft and voice prone. “So, really, if you don’t want to be casual, you won’t. And when you find the right girl, you can’t.”
I sighed. “That wasn’t particularly helpful, but thank you.”
“You’re welcome. But I want to know why you asked.”
“I bet you do.”
“Oh, come on, Marcus. I answered your question. My turn.”
“I didn’t agree on an exchange.”
He held up the book like a gun, closing one eye as if he were looking down a sight. “I can give you that black eye if you really want it.”
I huffed, knowing he would. “Because I’m too busy to date,” I lied.
“And you’re looooonely,” he cooed.
“This is why I didn’t tell you,” I said coolly as I stood, buttoning my suit coat.
“Too bad the garden club girls are off the table,” he lamented. “Those girls are easy and convenient.”
“Please, I was off the table the second my money was no longer liquid. And if I’m not careful, what’s left will potentially end up in Evelyn Bower’s hands. I doubt she’d take kindly to any of her cronies consorting with the enemy.”
Especially not the crony I wanted to consort with.
“But see, that’s what makes them so perfect—you wouldn’t want to settle down with any of them.”
I rolled my eyes.
“God, you’re such a baby. Just get on Bumble like everybody else.”
“Thank you, Luke,” I said pointedly as I walked past.
“Anytime. Let me know if you need any help setting up an account,” he called after me as I exited the study.
I trotted down the stairs and into the kitchen where my mother hadn’t even put the kettle on in an obvious attempt to stall. So I gave her a temporary stay of execution by postponing our preparations until after dinner. You’d think I’d told her she’d actually been acquitted of a murder sentence, as relieved as she was. And with a kiss on her cheek, I left.
The day was crisp, the trees finally budding after a long, bare winter. It was one of those days where a jacket was only needed until the sun peeked out, but I’d forgone it, shoving my hands in my pockets to keep them warm on the short walk to my place.
My brownstone was just down Bleecker, next to Blanche’s, the coffee shop with featherlight donuts and pastries that my siblings and I had practically grown up in. The upside was that my house always smelled sweet—not enough to be cloying. Just enough that a delicate, sugary scent hung in the air, welcoming me home.
I dropped my keys in the dish next to the door, heading for my room. I hadn’t seen the value of paying someone money to help me furnish my own home, so instead, I’d spent a long time browsing the internet to build a repository of furnishings. Curtains and couches, dressers and sideboards, everything had a purpose and a place. It was neat and tidy, cleaned and dusted weekly by a maid simply because I didn’t have the time to do it myself. Especially not now that the fate of our family rested firmly on my shoulders.
Familiar fear rose in my chest at the thought of my failure. We would lose it all if I made a single misstep. For all my planning and all my organization, I had precious little control. And there was only one way out.
Through.
So I’d do what I always did. I’d rise to that challenge and look my fear in the eye. And then I’d beat it before it could beat me. There was no other choice. In the battle of fight and flight, I would go down swinging every single time before exposing my back to the thing, to leave a target for a knife.
Again, Maisie flittered into my thoughts, the thing I couldn’t fight for. The only thing I couldn’t look in the eye and conquer. I couldn’t even try. Instead, I ran. And oh, how I hated to run.
Maybe one day, I’d forget I had to.
But I doubted it.
8
Snares
MAISIE
Tess glared at my mother’s lawyer with the fire of a thousand suns. That look was so hot, I was surprised steam wasn’t climbing from his collar. But he was cool as a cucumber. Or a snake, more like, with predatory eyes and body coiled in preparatory stillness to strike.
“And would you say that Rosemary Bennet was reliable?”
“How exactly do you mean?” she asked, her voice tight and angry.
“In your general opinion, would Rosemary Bennet ever be described as reliable?”
“In my definition of the word, yes.”
“Merriam-Webster states, Consistently in good quality or performance. Would you say that Rosemary Bennet was consistently in good performance?”
“Yes, I would.” Tess swallowed, belying her confidence.
And the lawyer knew it.
“What about on the twelfth of March when she failed to open the shop at its appointed time?”