Page 34 of Prince of Masks (Hearts of Bluestone #2)
The jet engines are smooth through the clouds. I hardly feel the flight beyond the pressure against my ears, that odd muffled noise.
Distantly, I’m aware of Father’s cross voice, more clipped than usual. It’s across the jet, and so I’m safe from it for now, but since he speaks so sharply outside of my immediate presence, I am guessing that I will be in for it once he has me alone.
At the front of the jet, Mother is quiet.
She hasn’t spoken a word to me since the ball.
To say my parents aren’t happy about the things they heard is an understatement. Whispers of their daughter running through the gardens in a muddied dress, soaked skirt, and in tears.
Gods forbid they ask if I’m alright.
But they won’t.
Not only because they couldn’t care less in the face of cracked decorum, but because I am convinced Oliver told them everything.
Knocked me out with a potion, put me on the bed, then locked me in the room. His first stop will have been our parents.
Neither of them will consider an engagement between me and Dray to be a sad thing. There will be no pity spared on me.
Instead, I get their silent treatment. Their turned cheeks. Their lifted noses. Their dark glares.
The reprieve from my parents comes at the back of the jet, on my preferred seat.
But it’s not enough, not nearly enough, because that leaves my company to the worst of the worst.
Oliver is sat at the other window with Grandmother Ethel; and Dray sits across from me.
The jet has only been in the sky for some minutes, but it feels like a lifetime too long as I wait for the attendant to find her way to us.
She can’t even get the question out, to ask after my order, before I say, “Bacon sandwich, cake, and a double espresso.”
Out the corner of my eye, Dray arches his brow. “It’s a one-hour flight.”
I swerve a snarling look at him. “I’m hungry.”
I’ve been starved for a month, now. My weight dropped for the dress, for the ball, and now it’s about to go back up to its happy size.
Dray’s stare levels with mine. “You know there are no bacon sandwiches and cakes on an hour-long flight.”
Grandmother angles her sharp chin our way.
Oliver tugs out his earbuds, slow, careful.
“I know I didn’t ask you ,” I snap back at him. “So mind your business.” I turn my glare up at the attendant. “What do you have?”
Her nerves betray her in the thinning of her mouth before she forces a polite smile. “Biscuits and scones, ma’am.”
Grandmother Ethel reaches over the arm of her chair—and closes her spidery fingers around her cane.
The dark look I spare that cane is quick to turn into a flinch.
She’s fast. Too fast.
In a blur, she’s leaning over her seat to strike at me.
The strike doesn’t connect.
There should be screaming pain on my thigh, a welt growing beneath my black slacks.
Instead, I blink on the cane—and the hand that took the hit, fingers clasped tight around the smooth blackwood, wrist turned.
I blink on the hand before I trace it to Dray.
He’s tilted out of his chair, his cheek turned to me, and his gaze on Grandmother Ethel’s fierce glare.
Slowly, his hand slips from the cane. “Respectfully, of course.”
Grandmother lifts her pointed chin.
Their gazes are locked, hooked like the antlers of beasts in battle.
And I just blink at them, as stunned as Oliver, motionless in his leather lounge.
My upper lip curls at the sight of my brother.
The look he returns to me is a soft sort of grimness, a dance between ‘ I’m sorry ’ and ‘ I had to, so get over it .’
My attention is swerved away from him at the shadows of movement.
Dray sinks back into his chair; Grandmother Ethel returns her cane to her side.
My jaw rolls.
I’m not dense. I know Dray stopped the cane from hitting me, and pulled out some hierarchal cards in a silent battle with Grandmother Ethel.
But the why is clanging through my bones.
I find the answer in a fresh memory of Landon.
It’s not care. It’s not protection.
It’s territory.
I am his.
It’s just that simple.
It’s just that shallow.
I loosen a breath and turn my gaze up at the attendant, her flushed cheeks, the awkward pinch of her mouth. New, she must be.
I doubt she’ll last long.
“Scones,” I order. “A double espresso. And a dozen biscuits.”
She dips her head, then bustles off down the aisle.
Grandmother huffs a quiet sound. The disapproval is blatant in that alone, so she really doesn’t need to look me over like I’m a filthy rag before she turns to look out the window. But she does.
Oliver puts his earbuds back in.
Dray reclines in his seat, lounged. His stare flickers over me, sweeping the collar of my Ralph Lauren sweater, the plain diamond earrings needled into my lobes, the puffiness of my face exposed by all my hair gathered into a ponytail atop my head.
For a while, he just considers me.
I sag in my seat, only looking away from the window when the attendant returns with my order.
Even then, I don’t meet his gaze.
There is nothing calculative in the way he watches me; it’s one of those looks of his that mostly comes without harm. He considers me and matters outside of me. His mind drifts from the present.
That is good—for me, at least.
Because it means Dray hasn’t yet learned the truth, that I know. He hasn’t been informed of that revelation.
Father might want to keep it hush.
There has been too much of a plot to keep it from me. All this time, all over the break, no one breathed a fucking word about Dray and my contracts.
Whatever reason is behind that, it’s the same reason my family haven’t told Dray that I know of our betrothal now.
His ignorance of that must have him believing my vitriol towards him today is generic backtalk from me, the usual, or seasoned by the push into the fountain.
That’s if he even thinks about it.
It’s all I think about.
The whole ride back to England, to the airport, I am scheming. I must scheme, I must plot.
There is no other way for me to endure this.
If I do nothing, two things will happen this year.
I will graduate The Academy of Bluestone for the Education of Exceptional and Elite Society. I will marry Dray Sinclair.
I stew on one thought for the rest of the jet ride:
Not if I can help it.
end of book two