Page 14 of Prince of Masks (Hearts of Bluestone #2)

Dinner at the hotel is tradition on our first night.

Amelia’s favourite dish on the menu is never allowed to be changed. If a chef even suggested such a crime, they wouldn’t be fired. She would probably hang them.

Her favourite dish is pizza.

I know.

But this pizza…

Well, the dough alone takes a week to rise and settle. The darling size of it, I could fit in my hands joined at the thumbs and fingertips. As for the flavour, three types of caviar darken the white truffle brie and the imported Norwegian lobster.

It’s ok.

It’s not my favourite.

And though the menu does not have the prices printed, I am certain it cost more than ￡10,000. That is a lot of money to spend on a seafood pizza that tries too hard.

I have always been more partial to the meals like burgers and fries; buttered, salty lobster; deep-fried and battered chicken. Wedged, seasoned potatoes drenched in sauces and topping. Starchy, you know?

I force myself to go for the second best, the one that makes me feel better, the salads, the fruits, the smoothies. The stuff that keeps my mother and Amelia off my back.

But there was no point in wasting my energy considering the menu, since Father takes no requests before he orders for us, me and Mother—and for me he chooses a fucking punishment.

Lobster salad with a side of escargot, peppered with gold flakes.

I am so over the edible gold thing. Such a gimmick.

And I don’t want to know how long that metal —because that is what it is—sits in my stomach. The only time it’s acceptable is when it’s with dessert, chocolate , because only then is it so incredibly pretty.

But Father orders a salad, and I suspect Mother has been in his ear. So much for my drooling plan to order the gold-coated mud-chocolate pudding for dessert.

The meals are quick to come out.

I am unenthused about the bowl set down in front of me. I stab at the salad with my fork but swing my gaze around all the other dinners.

Beside me, Dray’s plate is drizzled delicately with a beige sauce over two slender strips of duck breast.

On the other side of me, Oliver cuts his kobe beef.

Both Amelia and Harold ordered the gross seafood pizza, while Mother and Father have the salmon.

A waiter inches around to Mother to refill her dom.

“Will you be seeing Asta often over the holidays?” Mother asks, looking at Dray beside me.

I turn a frown on him.

If he thinks anything peculiar of the question, he doesn’t show it. He’s slightly reclined in his chair, mostly abandoned his duck, and taps his finger on the rim of his glass to order a refill.

“The Stroms are invited to Thornbury Park for Rugby Sunday,” he says, but that isn’t for another few days. “The veils keep a distance.”

True. It would take a veil to reach Nice, then hours in the car to arrive in Monte Carlo. It’s exhausting travel, and the jet makes it easier, but the jet can’t be used on a whim to visit a fiancé across the pond.

Mother presses, “Will she not join us, at least on the yacht tomorrow?”

Dray shakes his head slightly. “She’s at the Barlows’ for the rest of the week.”

“Ah.” Mother nods, firm. Her gaze cuts to me, fleeting, before she adds, “I suppose it’s a healthy thing for some couples, to maintain a… distance.”

Amelia bites down on a smile. She’s quick to lift her glass and bring it to her mouth, but doesn’t sip, the gesture is exclusively to hide her smile.

Dray lets a small smirk of his own take root. “Sometimes the more space the better.”

I hope my fiancé never speaks about me like that.

Just announce it, why don’t you, how little you love her, Dray. So fucked up, at least pretend.

We are all pretending.

Even here, now, I sit beside him, I pretend to tolerate his existence when all I really want is to bury him alive.

“How is Landon?” Amelia asks.

Harold, who has shotted back a half-bottle of scotch already, scoffs. “That boy will ruin the Barlows.”

My brows raise.

I wait… I wait for more.

No more comes but silence around the table.

I lunge on it. “How so?”

I ignore the glare Oliver flings at me.

Harder to ignore Dray’s glance, a mere frown, on my other side.

“That one is nothing more than chaos.” Harold swishes his drink—and meets my gaze.

He actually looks me right in the eye and speaks to me.

“Gambling, debts, rumours of his promiscuity. I give it a year after his graduation before he’s besmirched his name, his marital union, and made the Barlows a fallen family. ”

“Perhaps Landon isn’t, um,” I hesitate under Harold’s stare, like I have stage fright now that I’m spoken to by one of the fathers, like I matter for a moment. “His conquests, I mean,” I add with a lame shrug. “That could be said in rumour about so many aristos men.”

Dray’s tone is as dark as the side-look he gives me, “Discretion, Olivia. It matters.”

Then why the fuck have you had Melody Green on your lap in the middle of a witching pub?

I almost ask it.

But I don’t, because I think I know the difference.

Melody isn’t James.

I can’t quite determine if they know or not, or it’s just that Landon has a reputation that’s a little on the sloppy side. Or maybe people mistake his friendship with Mildred… and that is the crux of the sneers.

I don’t know.

Oliver slumps in his chair and throws his arm over the back of mine. “The problem with Landon is that he’s known to have enjoyed the company of made ones, perhaps even some krums . That can be an ill reflection of a family barely holding onto grace as it is.”

Oh.

It isn’t because he’s fucking James.

It’s because he’s fucking krums.

Even Melody Green, while she’s gentry, isn’t anything less than an elite. Her bloodline is ancient.

Dray would never climb into the bed of a made one just as he would never fuck a krum.

“The recklessness,” Dray says, “is obnoxious, sloppy and overt. If the behaviour continues, those who are connected to him in business will be tainted by default.”

“The friend of my enemy,” Father says, “is my enemy.”

“He chooses gentry company over aristos constantly,” Harold adds, and Mildred flashes in my mind, Landon’s obviously favourite person in all of Bluestone…

but yes, very much a gentry. “And with all of those poor choices, one doesn’t need the print to see that Landon will wander from his marriage, as he wanders from aristos for gentry, as he wanders from witches to krums…

If a man cannot be loyal to his wife, of all people, the core of his family,” Harold lifts his hands in a what -gesture, “how can he be trusted to be loyal in business?”

I almost feel bad for him, for what is coming his way.

I see Landon Barlow, and I see a friend among friends. But then graduation day comes, life shifts into another phase, and Landon might lag.

He will be left behind if he does.

His own best friends, lifelong, will walk away—and never look back.

This world is cutthroat.

Oh!

Dessert menus.

I wave away the menu that the waiter makes to slip in front of me. I already know what I want.

“Father,” I lean over the edge of the table. “The gilded chocolate pudding, please.”

“Oh, that is lovely,” Amelia says, but her gaze says otherwise as it drops to the fit of my blue dress around my middle. It’s not a tight fit, just a tight dress, something that would have rocked in the 50s and 60s; it needs the figure to fill it out.

Mother suggests, “Perhaps the best dessert might be a simple sorbet.”

My mouth thins.

Father orders me the caramelised pears with a side of lemon sorbet.

I sag and drop my gaze to the table as my mostly untouched salad is taken away.

Beside me, Dray hands his menu to the waiter, and he orders for himself, “Gold chocolate pudding.”

Prick.

The side-glower I give him doesn’t go unnoticed.

Dray returns my stare, unfazed.

The fine shape of his nose is illuminated by the chandeliers, the same light dancing over his high cheekbones. A natural contour slashes across his cheek, just above the defined line of his jaw.

I have the urge to stick a knife in him.

Arm still slung over the back of my chair, Oliver leans to grin around my pinned curls. “How much are you prepared to lose tonight?”

Dray scoffs, then reclines further in his chair, and I am suddenly in the way of two friends who don’t want me here. “Everything and my dignity.”

“Did you ever have that,” I murmur.

His eyes flash on me, searing into my cheek.

I just say a little prayer of thanks that none of our parents heard me.

Oliver scoffs. “Someone’s grouchy she can’t come to the casino.”

I pick at the table. “It’s not fair.”

“Hm?” Mother asks, “What isn’t fair?”

I suck my lips inwards.

Oliver’s grin widens. He releases my chair and braces his forearm on the table instead. “Liv doesn’t like that she isn’t invited tonight.”

“Not just tonight,” I say, and frown at Father, at his blank stare. “Any night you go to the casino, I’m not allowed.”

“You want…” Amelia hesitates. “You want to go…”

She just can’t get the words out.

I help her out. “Yes. Father, can I come?”

Father’s lashes flutter with the surprise.

Oliver chokes on a laugh that he makes no effort to hide.

Amelia just stares at me.

And Dray smiles into the rim of his crystal tumbler, his cheeks heating into a faint pinkish hue.

I never get to play poker. Such a boys club thing.

I’m always dragged to the baths or the salon or, in this case, sent off to bed. Not that I don’t love all those things, I do, but sometimes I would like to smoke a cigar in a dark room and see if I can clear out Dray’s bank account.

Or even just be allowed to come watch.

Might be boring, might not.

Harold sighs and sets down his tumbler. He says nothing, but I sense the disproval—and perhaps I’ll wait another twenty-two years before he speaks to me again.

“No.” Father’s firm voice sheds my gaze. I look down. “It isn’t proper. Shame for asking, Olivia. You know that.”

I feel no shame for asking.

I feel a rising flicker of flames in my chest.

Still, I just huff and fall back into my chair, mute.

The desserts save me. A flurry of colour, bustling overhead, wobbling on platters, glittering.

The glint of gold lures in my gaze.

Gold-coated, it’s no lie. That chocolate pudding is painted, it’s gilded and beautiful. And it’s set down in front of Dray a moment before I get caramelised fucking pears and a sorbet.

I don’t even like sorbet.

Stupid.

Stupid fucking rules.

In protest, I ignore the bowls in front of me.

I turn my cheek to them and frown at Oliver as he scoops up a hunk of cheesecake. “Would you let your wife come to the casino with you?”

His jaw ticks before he cuts me a side-glance.

I asked quiet enough that Father won’t hear me over Harold’s humming murmur, and that Mother won’t perk up now that’s she’s whispering—definitely gossiping—with Amelia. Probably about me.

Oliver hesitates. He lowers the spoon a little, then looks over my head.

I trace his stare to Dray.

His eyes are on us, listening, as he reaches for a side plate, then sets it down beside me.

His gaze drops to me, shavings of diamonds. “Which side do you want?”

“Huh?” I glance down at the small plate, then at his dessert, and I understand. He means to cut me a slice of his chocolate cake.

I turn my cheek. “I’m stuffed.”

It doesn’t stop him. He still prepares me a small plate of the dessert I wanted.

Amelia notices, but she says nothing. Father, too.

Mother purses her mouth.

But no one intervenes.

So I steal a spoon, and I taste a little.

“Would you?” I look at Oliver. “Let Serena come?”

Beside me, Dray pours me a healthy serve of dom to go with the cake.

“I wouldn’t,” Oliver says, “and maybe that’s why she’s not speaking to me right now.”

“Because you won’t let her come to the casino?”

“Because there will come a time,” he says with a gentle breath, “where I will have to make those decisions—and that changes things between us. Dynamics will shift, and that includes ours.”

That silences me. And I stay silent for the rest of the meal.

It isn’t long before the men leave for the casino.

I go to bed.