Fiona (14 page)

Gareth's still not looking at me, but I can distinctly feel his awareness of me.

“She's really amazing, isn't she?” I say finally, trying to overcome the gap between us.

“Yes,” he says simply. Still not looking at me.

I sigh. I have to tell him about the photo and that Alice knows what happened. “Look, Gareth—”

“I have to go check on the other horses,” he says, cutting me off. “See you around, Fee.”

He walks away, and I watch him until he disappears into the stables.

Why did I have to ruin everything? Now Alice hates me and Gareth can't even look at me, leaving me with exactly zero real friends here.

I trudge back to the castle, practically kicking myself as I go. This place is growing darker and colder to me by the day. And I can only imagine it's the opposite for Blair.

I find him
in the library the next afternoon. Charlie stands at the window, his back to me, looking out at the manicured garden. I know he hears me come in, but he doesn't turn around. Something about his posture, the way his shoulders are set, makes me close the door behind me, sealing us off from the rest of the house. “Are you okay?” I ask softly.

“I have to meet with the family lawyer today,” he says after a small silence. “Make sure everything from the estate has been handled correctly.”

I stay pressed against the door of the room, but every part of me wants to go to him, wrap my arms around him, bury my head in his chest, comfort him as he confronts the pain and grief of his parents' death all over again.

He finally turns to face me. “All I want to do is hide from it
for a little while,” he says, his voice raw and honest. I don't ask him what “it” means, though I wonder if it might include Blair.

I move toward the piano and sit down at the bench without another glance at him. I close my eyes, breathe, and begin playing the only song that can fit this situation.

Liszt's transcription of “Ave Maria.” My mother was never much of a vocalist, but she used to sing this to me as a lullaby. For me, it's a song of comfort tinged with sadness, and it's overwhelmingly beautiful. It's a complicated piece that took me hours of practice in my high school's music room. But learning it was my way of remembering Mom, and I would play it until my wrists ached.

I'm nearing the end, building toward the climax, when the door bangs open. Blair stands in the threshold like a thunderstorm, her eyes flashing with lightning. I stop playing, and the notes hang in the air, unfinished and tangled. She looks from me, my hands still resting on the keys, to Charlie, who hasn't moved from the window. “What are you doing here?” she asks him, blinking. In that blink, the lightning fades from her eyes, as if it had never been there in the first place, leaving only concern and care. “The lawyer's been waiting for you for twenty minutes,” she says.

I feel the heat on my cheeks, as if she's caught us doing something wrong, interrupted something intimate.

Maybe she has.

But then Charlie saunters around the piano, stops at the doorway to kiss Blair's forehead, and walks past her and into the hallway without a word, leaving Blair alone with me.

She looks to me, and though her expression is calm and mild enough, I swear I see the lightning return to her eyes. I try to keep my face blank and unconcerned, but she still stares at me, as if hopeful that her gaze will be able to pierce through my skin and leave me bleeding. Finally, she turns and follows Charlie, and I'm left alone.

My hands tremble on the keys, and I clasp them together to still them. Stupid, stupid girl. To think something was happening between Charlie and me, when he's about to have a baby with Blair.

But maybe . . . maybe I'm not so stupid. He just opened up to me because he couldn't talk to her. He confided in me that he wanted to go somewhere and hide. That has to mean something. Even if it's not everything I want it to mean.

And I can still feel the thrill, the memory of his thumb resting on my lips that day in his office.

Maybe Blair has a reason to be threatened after all.

• • •

That night, I make my tea and head up to my room. But as soon as I open the door, I'm hit with it: Highland Heather, a scent
I haven't smelled in years. My mom's perfume. It was her one luxury, which she special ordered because it reminded her of her childhood. Smelling it here, now . . . it's like she's inside this very room, waiting for me. I stand, rooted in the doorway, my pulse racing as my eyes dart around the empty space.

A door creaks open down the hall, startling me so much that I jump back against the hallway wall, dropping my mug with a crash. Hot tea splashes my hand and splatters down my leg, and I gasp at the sting of the burn. Alice steps out of her room, her eyebrows raised.

“I—I just . . .” I begin, but then realize there's nothing to say that would make any of this make any sense.
I smell my mother's perfume?

But it doesn't matter. Alice isn't concerned about me; she brushes past me like I don't even exist.

I slump against the wall, sliding down until I'm sitting, and stare into my room. I know I need to go to bed, but my legs don't feel strong enough to hold me up anymore.

The smell is fading, or maybe I'm just getting used to it. Or maybe it's not even here at all.

I force myself up from the floor, pick up the broken pieces of my mug, and walk back to my room, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth as I settle into bed. Curling up beneath the covers, I try not to think about the fact that this
is the technique Mom used to use when she thought she might be spiraling down into one of her episodes.

But how many times can I brush aside these kinds of thoughts? How long can I keep telling myself it's nothing, that I'm still normal?

I need to sleep. So I do the only thing I can think of. I imagine my mother singing “Ave Maria” to me, and the soft, imaginary notes finally lull me into oblivion.

A couple of days later,
I leave Poppy with her homework to grab some carrots and hummus, her favorite afternoon snack. When I get back to her room, I find Blair there, sitting on the floor beside Poppy.

I nearly drop the bowl of carrots, and as I recover I have to stop myself from warning Poppy to get away from her, the girl who everyone else sees as harmless and sweet.

“Poppy was just telling me about this history test she's got coming up,” Blair says, smiling. I feel the air around me turning cold and tense.

We've been studying the Battle of Culloden Moor of 1746, when the Scottish Highlanders and their allies rebelled against the British crown in favor of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the grandson of a former Stuart king who'd been kicked off the throne
decades before. I've been trying to make it more engaging by including some facts I learned about her family from the old book in the library, that her branch of the Moffats was against the Jacobite side, many of them dying for King George II. There are so many names and maneuvers to memorize, though, that we're both going a bit cross-eyed.

“I could help, if you like,” Blair says, tossing a long swath of her dark hair over her shoulder. “I did pretty well with the Jacobite revolutions in school.”

“That's okay,” I say quickly. “We've got it under control. Right, Poppy?”

“I guess so,” she grumbles.

Blair rises slowly to her feet, smiling down at Poppy. “Well, I'll leave you two to it, then,” she says. But before she leaves, she stops in front of me.

“Are you sleeping well?” Blair asks, her mysterious blue eyes examining me. “You have bags under your eyes, poor thing.”

I resist the urge to run to the mirror, and stare straight ahead instead. “Just some noises that wake me up every now and then.”

“Mmm,” she murmurs. “The creaks of an old house.” She shrugs. “I meant to tell you the other day, you play the piano beautifully.”

“Thank you,” I say quietly.

“I can see why Charles seemed so enchanted by it.” She says it pleasantly enough, but I can hear barbs in her words.

I turn back to Poppy, ignoring the comment completely. “We should get back to the battle.”

Poppy sighs and opens her textbook. Blair finally leaves the room as Poppy begins to read out loud, and I shiver in the cold air she leaves behind.

• • •

The next day, Poppy and I are returning from her riding lesson when we run into a construction crew coming out of Charlie's room.

“They must be almost finished with the nursery!” Poppy exclaims, running to the open door.

I follow after her, my feet moving as if by their own accord. I can't help my curiosity; I've never seen inside Charlie's room.
Blair
and Charlie's room.

His suite is as big and expansive as his sister's, and the first thing I see is an entire wall of bookshelves, spanning from floor to ceiling. I'm tempted to park myself in front of it and trail my fingers along the spines of the books, finding out what merits a spot in his private collection. Positioned in front of the shelves is his desk, which is covered with several large computer screens and tablets. I know he's always on his laptop, but I had no idea he was this into computers.

But then my eyes move from the desk, past the couch and armchairs arranged in front of the large fireplace, and go straight to the bed. It's ordinary enough: big and broad and covered with a soft, fluffy dark green cover. But this is the bed that he shares with Blair. I've spent a fair amount of energy trying not to imagine the two of them together in bed, but I can't avoid it now.

Strangely enough, the thought of them simply sleeping there beside each other, vulnerable and trusting, hurts just as much as the thought of them . . . not sleeping.

Turning away, I follow Poppy through a doorway into another, slightly smaller room. The nursery.

I have to will myself not to stop in my tracks. I need to see this, even if I desperately don't want to.

The room is painted a beautiful stormy blue, like the color of Blair's eyes. The wooden crib is painted white, matching the rest of the furniture. In the corner is a set of picture books stacked next to the tiniest armchair I've ever seen, and scattered across the walls are framed prints of illustrated giraffes and elephants.

Seeing all these charming little details that Blair must have been working on for weeks, it hits me. This baby is coming. She's been preparing for it. Her baby. His.

As I stand here in this family suite, so obviously different from my room in the servants' wing, I feel the color drain from my face.

Blair, Charlie, Poppy, the baby—they're all family. I have no place here.

There are footsteps behind us, and I turn around to find Charlie walking into the room, and every muscle in my body tenses.

“Charlie, I love all the new details!” Poppy squeals. She spins in the room, her arms wide open, and for a moment, despite my aching awareness of Charlie, I can't help but smile. “It's going to be so fun to have a baby in the house,” she says, glowing, smiling widely at her brother.

He smiles, but his smile seems strained. “I'm glad you like it.”

She swoons over the soft blankets and tiny clothes hanging in the closet while I feel the weight of Charlie's eyes on me.

“Poppy, can you give Fiona and me a second alone?” he says.

I look up at him, letting his eyes trap mine.

“Sure,” she says, unconcerned. “I'm going to go get some snacks.”

“Okay,” I mumble, unable to break my gaze from Charlie's as she skips out the door.

“She's so much happier now,” he says.

“She's excited for the baby,” I say quickly.

“She's happier because of you, too,” he adds. “Thank you for that.”

I don't know what to say, so I keep my lips pressed firmly together.

“I hardly ever see you anymore,” he says softly.

There's nothing for me to say to that, so I change the subject. “Congratulations, again, on the baby.”

“Thank you,” he says, looking around the room. “It's starting to feel more real now.”

I can hear happiness, wonder, in his voice. He really wants this baby. He wants this family.

I like him more for it. Even as it pulls him further and further from me.

“Blair must be getting excited, too.” I try not to sound as tense as I feel.

He looks into my eyes then back at the crib. “She is. She never used to see herself as a mothering type. Her mum . . . wasn't much of a mum. But she's been reading all these parenting books and planning and . . . I think she's going to be a great mother.”

I remember what Poppy told me, that Charlie told his mother that Blair didn't talk to her family. That he was her family now. And she's his family. No wonder he's with her, no
wonder he clings to her. She's giving him a family, just when he's lost most of his.

I swallow, hard, and try to keep my expression neutral.

“I didn't know you were so technologically inclined,” I say, gesturing toward his desk in the other room.

He sighs. “It's always been a hobby. And if I could convince the board and find funding for it, I'd love to work on the newspaper's website. Make it accessible and more fast-paced, before it gets left behind. If we could hire more reporters, we could compete with breaking-news outlets, attract more readers. It could turn everything around. But no one wants to invest in newspapers now.”

“I know you can do it,” I say softly, and then he's looking back at me, and I can't meet his eyes. “Well, anyway, Poppy and I should get back to her homework,” I say, turning for the door before he can reply. I walk back through his bedroom and out into the hallway, leaving him there in the nursery. I force myself to look away from that bed, but every detail of it is imprinted in my mind.

Maybe that's how it should be. Maybe I should finally do what I've been telling myself to do for weeks: Let him go.

• • •

I try my best to follow my own advice and lose this silly crush on Charlie over the next week. But it's embedded so deeply in
me now. Any sleep I manage to catch is filled with dreams of him. I can't breathe when I run into him in the hallways, and when I come down for breakfast, all I can think about is seeing him in the dining room. I feel like my day doesn't start until the moment his eyes meet mine. When he leaves for another business trip to Glasgow, I don't know if I'm more disappointed or relieved.

The regional horse show is coming up, and Poppy spends more and more time with Copperfield, hardly focusing on her homework. Neither of us can talk of anything else, and when the Saturday of the competition finally comes, we're both twisted in knots of stress and hope.

Charlie promises to take the morning train back from Glasgow and meet us there, and when it's finally time to get Copperfield ready and go, Blair is waiting at the front door, wearing a white sheath dress and gray suede boots.

“I've decided to come along!” she declares cheerfully. “Everyone keeps talking about how phenomenal Poppy is, I have to see it for myself.”

Poppy beams back at Blair, but Blair's smile fades quickly when she turns her gaze to me. “You can take the rest of the day off, Fee,” she says. “You're not required this afternoon.”

I blink at her. “Oh no,” I protest. “I really want to come.”

“Stay home,” Blair orders sharply, though she covers it with
a smile. “My future sister-in-law and I need some bonding time. I'm sure you understand.”

Future sister-in-law?
The words hit me like piercing claws, raking my chest and leaving me bleeding. Has he proposed? Or is she just assuming? My throat dries, and I can't speak.

Poppy opens her mouth and starts to speak up for me, but Blair interrupts. “You won't deprive Fee of her time off, will you, Poppy? I'm sure she's tired of taking care of you all day.”

Poppy looks at me uncertainly. “You can stay home, Fee.”

Blair's lips curve upward, now that she knows she's won. I should insist that I want to see Poppy compete in this event that means so much to her, but I know Blair will never let me go, no matter what I say. So I put on the best smile I can muster and tell Poppy, “Good luck.”

Blair nearly pulls her out the door before she can respond, leaving me on the doorstep to watch as they drive off with Albert.