Page 4
CHAPTER 4
SCARLET
“Orlando, don’t do it.”
He looks over my head with a frown, eyes glassy. I wrap my fingers around his wrist to strengthen my plea.
At fifteen, he’s taller than me, but he has yet to grow into his frame. He swipes at his eyes while peering over my head, no doubt searching for his father, the man he reveres.
Uncle Alessio rambles, head down, with my aunt. In mourning, the monster appears human. His children love him, as one does with parents, but only because they have yet to see behind the mask.
“There’s no choice.” Orlando wrenches his arm away, and under his breath adds, “You of all people know that.”
“There’s always a choice.” As the words leave my mouth, I taste the hypocrisy. “For you, there can be. You don’t have to commit. You’re young. Wait a year. Your sister just?—”
“Don’t say it.” His Adam’s apple shifts below two scraggly black hairs he must have missed this morning when shaving. It feels like yesterday Willow and I ran our fingers down his baby-soft skin after his first-ever shave. “I’m choosing my family.” Dark brown eyes, so different from his sister’s vibrant blue, flash a warning. “You should, too.”
With that, he departs, head down, and I watch his sad retreat.
The tall, too-thin woman dressed in clothes that swallow her joins me at the foot of Willow’s casket. “It was a beautiful service,” she says.
The woman, introduced earlier as Lina Ivanov, inches closer.
I’ve been told someone will come along and fill the hole with dirt after we’re gone. The scent of damp earth permeates the air, and the mostly bare tree limbs add gloom to the graveyard. Scattered flowers, roses, and a dozen willow branches litter the stainless-steel outer casket, which will keep her remains dry for over a century. Inside the waterproof shield lies an elegant mahogany coffin. I never glimpsed the interior of the coffin, as my aunt and uncle chose a closed casket service. The wreck and river disfigured Leo and Willow beyond recognition.
I don’t wish to think of that, yet the insidious thought settles into crevices of my psyche and chips away at my heart until it aches. I’ve never seen a waterlogged dead body, yet my twisted mind fills in images that I hope aren’t correct.
Lina’s heels sink into the soft soil, and leaves crinkle as she shifts, seeking firmer ground.
I wish to be left alone, but I can’t easily tell this stranger to leave. It’s just as well. I’ll return later. There are things I want to say to Willow, unsaid things that should’ve been said, and I wouldn’t say those things with family milling about.
“Did the preacher know her well?” Lina asks, breaking the silence.
“Father Francisco has been at our church for as long as I can remember.”
Did Willow go to confession and share her darkest secrets with the elderly man? Doubtful. Did she ever have any meaningful interactions with Father Francisco? Again, doubtful. But he serves the famiglia .
“Good. I can’t stand it when the minister knows nothing about the person and the service becomes a religious lecture.”
I have no idea what Father Francisco said during the service. My mind wandered, lost in a haze of sorrow.
“Did you spend time with Willow?” I ask, shifting the conversation away from the service.
Willow talked little about Nick and his sister, but she called me not too many weeks ago, panicked, wondering what to do to help someone who had lost consciousness from drug use. Lina, Nikolai Ivanov’s sister, had been the one she needed to assist. Poor judgment aside, I sensed Willow liked Lina.
“I loved visiting her in London. She was a good match for Leo.” Lina glances over her shoulder, and my gaze follows hers.
The group is dispersing. My uncle and Nikolai are conversing. My gaze connects with Nikolai’s, and the perimeter fades. A heightened sense of awareness strikes. My skin tingles and my eyes burn, and I find myself locked in a trance.
“My brother fancies you.”
I blink, breaking the hypnotic state, and focus on her words. Nikolai and I share a common goal, but it’s an aspiration that may culminate with a death knell. I’ll pay any price to put an end to the cycle.
“Are you feeling the same?” Her teasing tone strikes me as out of place standing next to two coffins.
“I assure you, there’s no fancying going on.”
“Oh, no. He’s a dozen years older than me, but I know my brother inside and out.”
An argument brews somewhere deep inside, but I lack the energy to bring it forward. With one last glance at the pair of flower-strewn coffins, I turn.
My mother stands awkwardly, hands clasped, disapproval etched on her face.
“If you’ll excuse me, I should bid farewell to my mother,” I say, but my heels remain rooted to the damp earth. Too often, I don’t wish to do what I should.
“Are you staying?”
There’s a spritely happiness to her tone that couldn’t be more inappropriate.
“I am.”
“Brilliant.” She clasps her hands together. “We can go to London. Lunch. Shop. You’ll want to go through Willow’s things in the flat, yes? She had trunks of clothes. I’m not even sure she finished unpacking.”
I place a hand on Lina’s forearm. She’s making my head hurt.
“I’ll be back,” I say.
The leaves crunch underfoot, and my heels sink into the soft sod with each step, forcing me to put the weight on the pads of my black leather Louboutins.
Like a good daughter, I hug my mother. Her ice-blue eyes are frigid, but the lipstick she’s chosen is a warm rose.
“It’s not proper for you to remain behind,” she says in Italian. “Please don’t do this.”
My mother has spent almost two decades as a widow. The proper action in our circle would have been for her to remarry. But in our world, proper is best used as a tool to instruct others how to live.
“Do not worry yourself,” I respond in our native tongue. “I’ll be back under your watchful eye before you know it.”
Her gaze bypasses me, looking over my shoulder. I don’t follow her gaze, as it’s quite unnecessary. I sense his approach. Heat travels up my spine, emanating across my rib cage.
“It doesn’t look good,” she says under her breath. “He’s not married.”
I fail to suppress my snort of derision. “It’s too late for my reputation, Mama.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Yes. Whose fault is that?”
Surprise widens the whites of her eyes. I’ve never placed the blame at her feet before, but she’s never implied I’m at fault either. I welcome the anger surging in my veins. It’s much more productive than sorrow. I’m taller than my mother, and I lengthen my spine, rising inches above her crown. How dare she?
“Catarina, come. It’s been an emotional day,” my uncle says, seemingly oblivious to the ratcheting tension.
He doesn’t wait for her but continues on the path to his wife and son.
“Better not let them wait. It wouldn’t be proper .”
Anger flashes in my mother’s eyes. I thrust my chin upwards and glower, daring her to make a scene.
Nikolai and Lina step forward, flanking me.
“Return soon,” she says in Italian. “Be good.”
“Did she just tell you to be good?” Lina asks when the car door closes behind my mother.
The three of us stand in a line, waiting for the limousine to drive away. The tinted windows prevent us from seeing inside.
“Do you know Italian?” I ask.
“I dabble. She did, didn’t she? She’s like my brother here, treating you like a child.”
“Not a child,” I say. “An asset.”
Given Nikolai’s blank expression, I doubt he’s listening to us, but Lina leers at her brother. I should’ve kept my thoughts to myself.
“Is there anything else we need to do?” I ask.
“The caretaker will be here shortly,” Nikolai answers. “Would you like to remain behind? Would you like some time alone?”
While I do wish for privacy, I don’t care to witness a piece of machinery drop buckets of dirt into the holes. All the same, his thoughtfulness is unexpected.
“No, thank you. I’m good. For now.”
“Thank god,” Lina says. “I swear the temperature is dropping. Do we need to go back to the Savoy to retrieve your luggage? We can be on the way in?—”
“She has her luggage,” Nikolai says. “And after an emotional day, I imagine Scarlet would enjoy a night by the fire.”
A misty fog blankets the horizon, and the damp chill penetrates my funeral attire. “A fire sounds heavenly,” I admit.
Nikolai studies me with an intimate intensity. I’m not sure what it is about those judgmental, stormy eyes, but I swear his gaze lasers every inch of skin he peruses.
Lina looks between us, still grinning, and leaves us, humming a silly tune.
“Tomorrow, the weather should be a touch warmer. You can return any time you wish.”
He’s perceptive. And, I suppose, kind when it suits. “Thank you.”
Nikolai gives a polite, dismissive nod, and heads in the opposite direction to the two vehicles parked further down the lane. A man in a black overcoat leans against a black four-door Audi. He might be security or a driver. He didn’t attend the service.
“Are you not coming with us?” I call after Nikolai.
Should I follow him? Or his sister?
“I’ll catch up,” he says without turning around.
His sister it is. Upon catching up to Lina, I ask, “How far is it to the house?”
We flew to Nikolai’s estate in a helicopter this morning. I saw the property from the air, but my bearings were off. We were whisked away into an awaiting processional of limousines, and we drove to the church and then to the graveyard.
“It’s about a fifteen-minute walk. Five-minute drive. Would you rather drive?”
“Isn’t Nikolai taking the car?”
“Nick. Don’t call him Nikolai. He hates it.” She taps into her phone, and the black limousine pulls forward, leaving Nikolai and the man with the black overcoat. “On second thought, do. Always call him Nikolai.”
She grins like the devil. There’s a balled-up tissue in her hand, but that’s the only sign she’s straight off a funeral.
“Will Nikolai walk?” She looks victorious at my use of his name, but I don’t know him well enough to apply a nickname.
“No need to fret. He won’t be long.”
I’m hardly fretting. “Do you always take limousines?”
“That would be pretentious, don’t you think? Nick thought your family would appreciate a traditional funeral procession.”
“So, he rented them?”
“Well, he doesn’t own one.”
Interesting. Nikolai performs the same as my mother.
“But we have hired drivers, so let’s take advantage, shall we? I’m cold, and my feet hurt.”
Lina scrolls on her phone for the duration of the short ride to the stone mansion. The expansive, manicured lawn, even when coated in fall’s yellows and browns, impresses. A fountain in front splatters water over four tiers of stone. Small pebbles in alabaster tones adorn the circular area around the fountain, and cobblestone graces the drive and the courtyard.
“You have a beautiful home,” I say.
The uniformed driver’s eyes meet mine in the rearview, but he quickly averts his gaze.
“It’s not mine,” Lina says.
“Do you not live here?”
“Of late, I do. Not by choice.”
The limousine parks in front of the house, and Lina opens the door, not waiting for the driver. I scramble out, sliding across the seat to exit through her door.
“What do you mean?” I ask, following her up the stone steps.
The windows of the first and second floors line up symmetrically, but the third floor is styled differently with many small windows, and I can’t ascertain if it’s an attic or if it’s the location of the servants’ quarters.
There’s a formality to the architecture of the house, and I expect a butler to open the door, but Lina twists the handle and swings the heavy oak door open.
“How long has this house been in your family?” I ask, with one last glance at the third-floor eaves.
“Ask questions like that, and everyone will know you’re clueless.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a country estate. The kind that stays in families for generations. Nick bought this, oh, maybe ten years ago. The heir couldn’t afford the taxes and sought to sell it to a hotelier. Nick swooped in. Bought it sight unseen and furnished.”
The front door opens into a foyer with a grand marble staircase and a polished mahogany railing. The same gleaming banister wraps around the upstairs balcony.
“The house is a Robert Adams, but it’s been renovated so many times it’s lost the mystique. Or, perhaps, the renovations spanning nearly two hundred years give it the proper countryside mystique. I don’t know and don’t care. It’s stuffy and boring. Give me the city, any city, over the countryside.”
She may not care for it, but it is beautiful. There are homes in Italy that are equally as grand, although the most sought-after homes in our area have stunning Mediterranean vistas.
“It’s beautiful, but it’s not what I expected Nikolai to inhabit.” She ignores my comment.
The wood floor shows its age, but a mammoth Oriental rug covers all but the outside edges of the foyer. To each side of the entryway are rooms with quaint antique furniture befitting a museum and ten-foot doors that presumably lead into formal rooms.
I follow Lina’s lead and remove my shoes, but rather than kick them up against the wall, I dangle my heels from one hand.
“This Nikolai business. Where’d you get that? Did someone introduce him to you as Nikolai? Not Leo. Leo called him Nick.”
On the day of Leo and Willow’s wedding, when he arrived in a tuxedo with a garment bag slung over one arm and a velvet pouch, I don’t believe anyone introduced us, but I heard Leo call him Nick. My uncle calls him Nikolai. And Lina did just instruct me to call him Nikolai, didn’t she?
Lina looks at me inquisitively, wanting an answer. “I’m not certain we were introduced. I don’t know your brother well.”
“Eh, well, that’ll change.” She pauses at a painted door. “I wonder where he’ll put you. I should’ve asked.” She snaps her fingers. “I’ll call him.”
She lifts a mobile to her ear, and I step forward to the window and look out over the courtyard at the gray day. Off in the distance, a man with shears thrown over a shoulder strolls past a line of trimmed bushes. There’s nothing in this landscape that’s remotely colorful. Even the greens feel muted.
“All right. I got the answer. You want to change those clothes? Your things are in your room.”
“Sure.”
I follow her down a musty-scented hall and up a back staircase to another hall with a room that looks out on the side of the property. The lawn extends beyond the shrubbery to a mix of evergreens and hardwoods.
“How big is the property?”
“All told, around two thousand acres. This one was only twelve hundred, but he bought the place next door, too. It was farmland, some dairy cows. The farmer still works the land, only Nick now owns it. Pays the taxes. Win-win for the farmer.”
“Why does he want so much land?”
“Country estates are all the rage. Didn’t you know?” She laughs, but it’s not a carefree sound. No, it’s slightly demented. “Give it time, is what he tells me. I’ve been trapped here for months, and it blows balls. But”—she snaps her fingers and grins—“now you’re here, and we’ve got business in London.”
“You wish to live in London?”
“You’ve been, yes?”
“I woke this morning in the Savoy.”
“Well, yes, but before?”
“No. My mother and aunt like Paris, Madrid, Barcelona. Obviously, Rome. They’ve talked about London, but…I was supposed to visit Willow.” Why the hell didn’t I make that happen? I’d been busy, but that hadn’t been my true reason. I hadn’t wanted to know if she’d married a monster. I hadn’t wanted to discover if she’d been hiding the truth about her situation like I had for years. And for that, I missed witnessing her happiness.
“You look so sad.” She fingers her lower lip, the long glossy nail scratching the corner. “I suppose it is the day of the funeral. I’ll leave you to change, and if you want the fire on in here, just flip this switch. All the upstairs fireplaces are gas. Switches are by the mantle. When you’re up for it, maybe tomorrow or the next day, we’ll go to London, and I’ll show you around. There’s so much energy. I’ll go plan… See what reservations we can get.”
She bends her head to peer at her mobile and shuts the door, closing me in.
The furniture in the room, like the furniture downstairs, is ornate and delicate. I have little knowledge of furniture, but I assume the pieces are antiques. A four-poster bed resides between the two windows on the opposing wall. There’s a doorway into a bathroom that is almost as large as the bedroom. I suspect the adjacent room was originally a bedroom, but it’s been divided into a walk-in closet and a luxurious bathroom. A clawfoot tub rests in front of one window overlooking the grounds. My suitcase sits in the walk-in closet.
I could take a bath and forget this day, but I’m in a stranger’s home, and it would be rude to disappear. Instead, I unzip my suitcase and change out of my black business skirt suit. There’s a chilly draft, so I leave my tights on and pull on a sweaterdress. I don’t own many warm items. If the temperature in the house falls overnight, I may need to borrow some clothes from Lina or go shopping.
Willow, did you spend time here? You mentioned this place. Which room did you stay in? Do you have warm clothes packed away in your flat in London? This is so wrong. You should be here. Are you somewhere up above, watching?
After resting beneath a blanket on the bed for what feels like hours, drifting in and out of a light sleep, I leave the room and wander through the still halls. I find my way to the stairs and head down. There must be a more lived-in section of the house.
If these walls could talk, I imagine they would speak of years of life with servants buzzing around lit candles and fireplaces roaring in every room. Perhaps there were balls or the family that built this house had the good fortune to host royalty, possibly the queen. The faint musty smell lingering along the halls must stem from the building’s age, or perhaps it’s the worn, faded Oriental carpets underfoot. I suspect the gilded framed portraits hanging along the walls are original to the home and probably remain in these back hallways because no one cared enough to replace them.
If I lived here, I’d have comfortable rooms somewhere, and I imagine, like my uncle’s homes, those casual rooms would be in the rear of the house, so I turn in that direction at the bottom of the stairs. Further down the hall, an enticing, warm light glows from the crack between two stained doors. As I draw closer, I hear murmurs. Someone speaking, muttering, I think. But when I press my ear to the door, the sound stops abruptly, replaced with a loud bam.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4 (Reading here)
- Page 5
- Page 6
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- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
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- Page 20
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