Page 30

“I have no complaints at the moment. How could you tell?” Monique needed to work on her poker face, apparently.

“You’ve been smiling these past few days. You don’t show it much, but when you do smile, we can tell.”

“We?”

Sybil stole a page of the newspaper. “Of course. We’ve all noticed. You’re acting like a teenage girl.” She had yet to touch her banana. “Wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with that lady you’ve been inviting over, eh?”

Monique leaned back in her chair and held up her newspaper. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” There was a headline about a plane crash in South America. For some reason,Monique didn’t feel compelled to compare her situation to that of a hundred people dead. “I haven’t been seeing any lady.”

“You can’t hide it from us. Chelsea was the one who noticed, because the woman is one of her patron’s friends. And she was right... since that lady was last here, you’ve been like a different person. Subtly, of course.” Yes, because God forbid Monique show grand expressions outside of the bedroom.Or so some would say.

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She drank coffee, ate her grapefruit, and perused the business news, trying to guess what the clients would be talking about that night.Stock prices, as always. Some company buying out another. The best brand of brandy.All Monique wanted to think about was her Helen.

She was away on business, supposedly only a phone call away but too busy to talk to Monique most of the time. Something about Austria or Switzerland. The time difference was too inconvenient for them both. Text messages and emails littered their phones, some of them sweet, and others scorching.“Strip, lie down, and imagine me fucking you,”was one message Monique received the night before. She did as told.I’d rather she be here with me.They had a date in another week, assuming work didn’t come up, but another week was much too far away.

Monique wanted to talk to her. She wanted to hear Helen’s voice, that tone that said she was thinking of Monique fondly and lasciviously. She wanted more than anything else to have Helen there with her, holding her, kissing her until it was time to take out the collar.

I’m falling in love.It was scary to think. At the same time, it was liberating to free herself from the shackles of her past.

Sybil didn’t press the issue. After breakfast, they went to their usual routines, Sybil going over her appointments for theevening and Monique checking in on the kitchen and other staff who might need help that night. It was going to be a busy one.

“Mail!” someone in the front hall called as Monique approached the grand staircase. “What do you say, Madam?”

Since she was there, Monique approached the doorman and the maid signing for the mail. There were the usual packages, bills, and letters from patrons to employees, but also an unidentified letter for Monique.

The envelope was thin and light. Monique flipped it over, looking for a return address, but all she saw was her name.

After making sure the rest of the mail was taken care of, Monique stood in the middle of her vast estate and opened the letter she assumed was from Helen.

However, her smile faded within the first few words she read… written in a familiar, elegant handwriting she hadn’t seen for a good many months.

“I know where you are. I know what you’re doing. I know that bitch you’re whoring yourself out to.”

That’s all it said. It was enough to shake Monique where she stood.

“Ma’am?” called the doorman only a few yards away. “Is something the matter?”

Monique rushed to the door, pushing it open before her staff could do it for her. Out on the concrete stairs, she found the mailman, still finishing up his paperwork before hopping back in his truck and heading off.

“You!” She approached him, each step more forceful than the last. “Who gave you this letter to deliver?” It shook beneath the man’s nose.

He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “I have no idea where it originated from, ma’am. You get a lot of letters like that. I just know where to deliver it. Now, excuse me.” He closed his tablet and stalked off toward his truck. So much for that help.

Monique wasn’t convinced. She looked around the front lot of the Manoir, into the trees of the surrounding woods, and even into the neighboring valley in between mountains. Still not convinced, she ran back inside, up the stairs, and burst through the balcony doors to see who was in the garden.

Grace, reading a book. June, sunbathing in the middle of the labyrinth. The gardener trimming the hedges and trying not to get distracted by half-naked June.

It didn’t matter that Monique didn’t seethat womananywhere. It didn’t matter that the staff knew to turn her away should she even come within a mile of the Manoir.

It doesn’t matter, so why am I so…?

The letter shook in her hand. Jacqueline Love’s words had never cut her so deep.

She needed Helen. Now, and for as long as that other woman breathed down her neck.

I don’t want to be alone.Monique clasped her hand over her mouth and turned away before anyone in the garden saw her shaking.Yet I never am alone.