I mustered a pathetic smile. Tried to think of something to say to her.
Thankfully she was on the case, smiling at me as if this wasn’t potentially excruciating. “It’s so lovely to meet you at last. Caspian has told me almost nothing about you.”
I should have been all out of hurt for one evening. But, apparently, I wasn’t. Though, this little sting was at least familiar. An old friend. “I guess he wouldn’t have,” I managed, at last.
“I raised two extraordinarily secretive children. Caspian, in particular, holds the people he values most very close indeed.”
Oh God. My heart gave a desperate a lurch. I wanted to believe her. To take the reassurance she was offering me. Take it, grab it. Squeeze it like a small child with a teddy bear. “R-really?”
“Yes. And I can see why he likes you.” Her eyes had more green in them than Ellery’s did but the shape was similar. I couldn’t, however, imagine Ellery looking at anyone with such gentleness.
“I was worried you’d be mad at me for messing up your charity auction.”
She tilted her head quizzically. “How so?”
“Well, I accidentally made Caspian buy all the art.”
“Oh, I did wonder about that. It was a rather fine collection, but I was somewhat startled by his enthusiasm for it. Did you like the pieces?”
Great. Now I’d made her think he’d bought an exhibition for me as some kind of passionate love gesture. “I didn’t get much chance to look around. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, but I didn’t want to get in the way of a good cause.”
“So he assuaged your concerns?”
“He assuaged them excessively.”
She laughed—and there was something about its timbre that reminded me a little bit of Ellery. If Ellery ever let herself laugh so freely. “My son is more of a romantic than I realized.”
“I think he’d say he was being very practical.”
“Of course he would. In any case, Arden, you made a young artist an overnight success and raised a lot of money for malaria prevention.”
I cringed from approval I didn’t deserve. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Nevertheless, good is good.” She smiled at me with unabashed sweetness. “And I hope you’ll ask Caspian to show you the pieces. They’re by an Icelandic painter called Ragnar Vilhjálmsson. The collection is called Let Us Compare Mythologies.”
“Is that…is that a Leonard Cohen reference?”
She nodded. “You know, if it wouldn’t be the…” For the first time, her grace faltered, a delicate flush brushing the fine arch of her cheekbones. “The uncoolest thing in the world, would you like to come to lunch with me someday?”
“I’d love to.”
“Wonderful.” She leaned in and kissed me once on each cheek. It was effortless—a level of confidence and sophistication I could never imagine attaining—and it was only by holding very still that I managed not to Bork the whole thing up. “I’m already looking forward to it.”
Then, with a final smile and a little wave, she was gone.
And I was left terrifyingly alone at a grand social occasion.
Snagging some champagne from a passing waiter, I scurried into a corner. Stared at the glass—the rise and fall of the little golden bubbles—so I didn’t have to stare at the party. Which was nothing but strangers, and spaces Caspian wasn’t.
I was already starting to give up on him coming back.
He’d just…abandoned me. And I had no idea why.
Except that Nathaniel had called his name. And Caspian had gone.
Suddenly: a click and a whirr. And a voice drawling out, “Smile, poppet. Butterflies make poor wallflowers.”
I glanced up into another click and nearly dropped my champagne when I realized I was being photographed. And by George Chase no less. “Oh my God, don’t. I probably have eight chins or red eye or something.”
The photographer raised a perfectly arched and devastating eyebrow. “Most people get to know me before they insult me.”
“No, no, I didn’t mean you, I meant me—”
She silenced me with a single finger—the nail, I couldn’t help noticing painted dark green—and stepped up close, turning the camera so I could see the screen. Sure enough, there was me, half in shadow, my gaze downcast, looking kind of feral and kind of fragile at the same time, with the butterfly mask a bright splash across my face.
Definitely no red eye.
Definitely only one chin.
Even my hair was behaving itself.
It was honestly best picture of me anyone had ever taken. So good, in fact, it was hard to believe it was me.
I couldn’t help feeling a little bit flattered. I’d been on the verge of dying of nobodyness. And yet someone had seen me and found something…worth seeing. Something beautiful.
“Oh wow,” I said. “That’s…you’ve made me look amazing.”
“Well, of course I have. I have two talents. Sex and art. And this one happens to be my job.”
She raised the camera and snapped another picture. “Besides, you’re such a pretty little thing.”
“I’m not—”
“Shush, now. I don’t like being contradicted.”
I shushed. Mainly so I could decide whether I was annoyed or not.
A flurry of fresh clicks.
“And you like being told what to do.” It wasn’t even a question.
“Yes.” My chin came up. “But that doesn’t mean I like you doing it.”
“Keep telling yourself that, poppet.” George lowered the camera again and smirked at me. And, just for a moment, I allowed myself to notice she was hot. In an arrogant sort of way. With those Marlene Dietrich eyes, all mockery and smolder.
She was probably about as tall as Caspian, even in flats, and her high-waisted, satin-seamed trousers made her legs look about a million miles long. No mask. No jacket. Only a cummerbund and a formal shirt with enough buttons undone to reveal the pale, upper curves of her breasts and an edge of black lace.
Okay. Upgrade to really hot.
“Are you going to keep calling me that?” I asked. By way of a distraction tactic.
“Maaaaaaaaybe.”
I knew this game. “You’re not, are you?”
“No.”
“Gosh”—I gave my head a coquettish flick—“how dare you demean me in this fashion.”
Her eyes flared with barely banked wickedness. “Having fun?”
I…I guess I was. Like when you passed your hand through a Bunsen burner flame trying to figure out how close to the blue you had to go to feel it. And then to make it hurt. “I’m with Caspian,” I squeaked.
“I know you are. But he’s foolishly left you all alone.” She lifted her camera, catching what I hoped was a look of flustered outrage and nothing more revealing than that.
I actually enjoyed flirting—even if (maybe especially if?) it came with an edge of danger. Except Caspian probably wouldn’t like it. “Please don’t.”
She put a hand flat to the wall close to my head and leaned in. I got a waft of cedar and sandalwood, spicy and rich. “Am I scaring you?”
“Not in a bad way.” I tried not to look at all the interesting ways her shirt was gaping. “But I don’t want to hurt Caspian.”
She stared down at me for a moment. And then she murmured, in a tone both dulcet and ironic, “Sweet, loyal little butterfly.”
I tried to laugh it off and blushed instead.
She shook her head. “Where on earth did he find you?” Thankfully, my three years at a world-renowned institution of higher education had taught me to recognize a rhetorical question so I kept quiet, and she went on, “In any case, I’m not going to leave you here, looking all lovelorn. Come along, poppet. You’re going to be my assistant until Caspian wants you back.”
“Am I?” It was a mild protest, mainly for the sake of my pride. Though, truthfully, I was relieved.
It was about time someone rescued me.
And, in practice, being George’s assistant wasn’t very demanding. I held lenses, passed her the occasional glass of champagne, watched and listened. She introduced me to nearly everyone—some of them were, in fact, viscounts—but nobody was awful and I did my best to be charming. I just wished it’d been for Caspian. That he could have stood at my side and been proud to be with me.
Sometimes George set up particular shots, moving people into position with terrifying efficiency, keeping up a constant flow of instructions, praise, and promises: heads together please, turn this way, give me a smile, you’re gorgeous, oh yes, show me those eyes, this is going to be perfect…But mainly she waited, patient as a cat in the moonlight, or prowled the edges of the room, camera in hand.
“What do you look for?” I asked.
“The thing nobody else sees.” She propped her hip casually against a piece of furniture I didn't have a name for—something ornate and impressive, probably a credenza or vitrine or whatever. “Society photography comes down to one very simple principle. Anyone can take pictures of Kate Middleton and Lady Gaga. The trick is getting a picture of Kate Middleton with Lady Gaga.”
“And have you?”
“Not yet. But I’m a long way from dead, and hopefully so are they.”
I laughed. In a strange way, she reminded me a little bit of Caspian. The same conviction, the same merciless drive, although focused and expressed very differently.
I guess it was becoming pretty apparent I had a type.
But mainly I was grateful. Now, when I looked across the room, I met smiles. Flashes of recognition in other people’s eyes. I knew faces and names. I could have joined some of the conversations. Instead of drifting around pathetically.
Still no sign of Ellery, though. I was starting to wonder if she’d blown off her own birthday party. Which, admittedly, had a certain punkish panache. But since Caspian was still MIA with Nathaniel, if it hadn’t been for Trudy none of the family would have been present at all. My mum would have skinned me alive—well, no, she would have been disappointed and Hazel would have skinned me alive—if I’d invited people to my house and either not turned up or just fucked off. I guess the rules were different for the rich. As usual.
“Um, is Mrs. Hart with Lancaster Steyne?” I tried to sound casual, which was tricky considering I’d launched myself into a total non sequitur. But clearly Caspian was never going to tell me anything ever so if I wanted to be a useful partner to him, it was going to have to be by stealth and cunning. And if I had to speculate wildly about the sort of tensions that might exist between a mother, her son, and her deceased husband’s business partner, then the Hamlet Dynamic seemed a reasonable starting point.
George glanced across the room to where they were standing together. “I very much doubt it. She’s a sparrow and he’s no sparrow hawk.”
“What’s does that mean?”
“It means he’s a predator who only preys on predators.”
She said it matter-of-factly but I shuddered at the memory of his soft voice, slipping words into the conversation as precisely as the strokes of a razor. But before I could say anything else, we were suddenly dropped into darkness, and in the startled silence, a clock began to strike the hour.
Oxford had been full of bells, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard an actual clock do the donnnnng thing. It was such an old-fashioned sound. Eerie, and so Edgar Allan Poe–ish that I half expected there to come a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping…
Instead, when the twelfth chime had shed its bronzy echo, a pale light illuminated a figure at the top of the stairs. It took me a second or so to recognize Ellery, partly because of the drama of her entrance but mainly because I’d never seen her dressed like that before. She was wearing a scarlet, floor-length evening gown, lace over satin, with a mermaid train. Intricate trails of sequins and beads shattered any light that touched them into bloody fragments. Her arms were bare and her hair was down, her lips the same color as her dress.
She was monstrous. And glorious. The only red in the room.
And then she lifted the violin she was carrying to her shoulder and began to play.
The first note fell upon the air as tenderly as tears. Ellery’s eyes were half closed, the bow moving almost languorously upon the strings, while the fingers of her other hand flexed and flickered with what seemed like impossible dexterity.
My mouth had fallen open. Maybe just to get more music inside me because my ears couldn’t cope with the flood of loveliness trying to flow through them.
I had no idea what I was hearing but the intensity of it never let up, the beauty becoming savage, as sharp as teeth. And Ellery played without mercy, her expression as lost, as wild as the music. Sometimes she seemed almost at war with her instrument, her hand moving upon its neck like a lover seeking one last surrender.
She could have been playing for five minutes or five hours but, somewhere in the middle of that exquisite storm, I felt a body pressed to my back. Inhaled the familiar scent of Caspian’s cologne. And then his arms were around me and I was leaning into his embrace—almost drunk on the sheer relief of being his again. Safe from strangers and violins and a world I wasn’t used to.
From somewhere nearby I heard the click of George’s camera but I didn’t care. And, from the way he clung to me and kissed the side of my neck, neither did Caspian.
I could have stood there forever now, nestled into my lover, letting the music tear my heart open, but the piece was sufficiently demanding that I had no idea how Ellery hadn’t collapsed already. Pure will and ferocity, probably.
When she was done, the silence she left behind seemed to clamor. And then came an explosion of applause—which she ignored, vanishing upstairs, almost immediately after the final note was done.