Chandelier (Tarnished Crowns Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Chandelier

  Tarnished Crowns Trilogy - Book One

  Annie Dyer

  Copyright © 2020 by Annie Dyer

  All rights reserved.

  Apart from any permitted use under UK copyright law, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any former by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

  Chandelier is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

  Please note this book contains material aimed at an adult audience.

  Editing by Suzanne Nelson

  Cover design by Najla Qamber Designs

  Cover image copyright ©2020

  Imprint: Independently published

  Created with Vellum

  Also by Annie Dyer

  The Callaghan Green Series

  Engagement Rate

  White Knight

  Compromising Agreements

  Between Cases

  Changing Spaces

  Mythical Creatures

  Callaghan Green Novels (Spin offs)

  Heat

  Severton Search and Rescue

  Sleighed

  Stirred

  Smoldered

  Standalone Romance

  Endless Blue Seas

  Tarnished Crowns Trilogy

  Chandelier

  Grenade

  Emeralds

  Crime Fiction

  We Were Never Alone

  How Far Away the Stars (Novella)

  Contents

  Introduction

  Prologue

  I. June

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  II. July

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  III. August

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  IV. September

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  BOOK TWO IN THE TARNISHED CROWNS TRILOGY

  ANNIE DYER’S CALLAGHAN GREEN

  SEVERTON SEARCH AND RESCUE

  A note from Annie

  Introduction

  Tarnished Crowns is set in an alternate United Kingdom, where Scotland has become independent from England and has its own monarchy. Some of the political situation is taken from other times; the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Brexit, the various legends about Britain’s kings and queens.

  Chandelier, Grenade and Emeralds were my way of playing a political game, where more than a tarnished crown is at stake.

  I hope you enjoy Blair, Ben and Isaac, their games and the war which they fight.

  I promise you a happy ending.

  Annie xo

  Prologue

  September – Present day

  I am still on my knees when the gunshot ruptures the noise outside.

  It doesn’t occur to me to stand, to move away from Ben, to conceal what sin we’ve just prayed at the altar of. Mainly because Isaac’s hand is still holding my hair, his fingers massaging my scalp as if he’s praising me for what I’ve just done.

  If we were at war, I would’ve taken cover. Proper war, like what we were taught in history lessons, not this continual threat that’s an axe over our heads. But I’m in my hotel room, protected, two men my bomb shelter.

  But this isn’t a bomb.

  There are screams outside. Shouting. The sharp screech of tyres against the asphalt. Nothing unusual for a big city, but this isn’t a usual day and something in the air has changed, switched. Particles have stilled, the city has become a paused movie, waiting for the thunder. Then there’s a knock at my door from the adjoining room next door and my name is being said.

  It isn’t a prayer. It’s agitated, just like it was said when I was a small child and then a teenager, sneaking in from parties where I should never had been. The voice of the man who has been my guardian since I was a tiny child.

  Isaac’s hand leaves my head and Ben yanks up his trousers. He’s in a suit today, trying to blend into this world that I know he hates because he is the desert or the arctic or the seas, not a rally in a northern English city with the royalty he’s never understood.

  “Blair, we need to get you safe.” Franklyn sounds just the same as he did when I was fifteen and we had an intruder. He doesn’t even blink at what was going on in the room.

  Isaac’s hands pull me up off my knees and he guides me out of our bedroom through rooms and suites and corridors, Ben next to me, the three of us and Franklyn who’s still not judging. There are hotel rooms, all empty, all booked out for the few people staying in this large building swept for bombs and bugs, every member of staff screened along with their grandmothers and relations they never knew existed. I’ve been here before as a child with my parents, then for a tour of the university – where I was never going to go – and again as a woman without my parents knowing. Just Franklyn. It’s an old building, historic. It’s seen much more than what I’ve just done, lived more than I ever will. He opens a door to a room I never knew existed, one that is windowless but with the door open, the noise from outside can still be heard, even if it’s just a cacophony of whispers.

  I can feel the roar from outside and it feels red, a commotion that I don’t know the reason for, and then a door closes and the silence becomes overwhelming.

  “What’s happened?”

  Franklyn shakes his head, his glasses balancing on the end of his long nose. He is ageless, never changing. If I believed in such things, I’d imagine he was an eternal creature.

  Isaac is at the door, looking at Ben. He might be trying to communicate something, but even though we’ve just shared an act that is more intimate than most, I know they haven’t developed the art of telepathy yet. I’m not sure if they ever will.

  “I won’t let anything happen to her.” Ben is quiet, his words a muted cold blue. Any closeness that there was minutes ago has evaporated, water in the sun.

  Butterflies on the breeze.

  “I can send…”

  “I’m not a thing.” My voice is calm, steel that will never move. A tone I taught myself when I needed something other than my chime.

  Ben turns me to him, his hands on my hips now. “That was a gunshot.”

  “Could’ve been friendly fire.”

  We all know it wasn’t.

  There’s nothing friendly about today. Or this place. We shouldn’t have come. Should’ve let Lennox come here alone with his entourage and speak his pretty words to people who thinks he’s either a god or a devil.

  I turn to Isaac, seeing his hands in his pockets. I’ve known him three months. Known Ben fifteen years. Known myself even less.

  I don’t know this girl who gets on her knees for one man, while another holds her hair and whispers sweet dirty words to her.

  “Where’s my brother? What was his schedule?”

  There’s no real reason for Isaac to know, except that he knows everything.

  “He gave his speech in the square and then he was heading into the Town Hall.” It’s Ben who answers. He will have memorized the itinerary.

  But I’m not thinking about how he recalls ev
erything he’s read, can recall details that the average human wouldn’t even have noticed. I’m thinking about my brother with his enthusiasm and vigour and passion; his desire to somehow unify our country with this one through trade agreements and free movement of people. Desires that others don’t share. Desires that others will kill to extinguish.

  Before I can say my brother’s name there’s a piercing ring and Franklyn moves to the corner of the lightless room with his phone in his hand. We all watch him, the bare bulb making us all appear as strangers.

  Franklyn says nothing, but when he looks up at me I know.

  The bullet fired found a new home.

  My brother is dead.

  My brother is dead and I am now the heir to a tarnished crown.

  Everything has changed.

  June

  three months before

  I know well that the June rains just fall - Onitsura

  Chapter One

  Someone chose blue. A dark - almost black - blue. It’s silk and it feels cool against my skin that has been buffed and polished by hands that aren’t paid enough. In the mirror I see the reflection of a woman who doesn’t look much more than a girl, maybe too thin, too pale, too innocent. Everything is too.

  Too much.

  Alina is my make-up artist, because despite being twenty-nine, I apparently can’t paint my own face. I sit in rooms being prepped and coloured in, any desirable feature enhanced, any blemish erased temporarily. But I’m not allowed to do it myself.

  I sit and smile, close my eyes, feel the kohl being applied, open them, see the dress that will cling to my breasts, illuminate the slightness of my waist. Bring out the blue of my eyes.

  “You’re going to look beautiful in that dress.” Alina sees me staring at the fabric, following my eyes to the gown.

  She’s probably right. Because I’m being made to. I’m being prepared to look beautiful in the dress because tonight that’s my role: the pretty princess who will speak intelligently and gracefully with the representatives who are here from England trying to deliver something called peace.

  I’ve forgotten what peace is. There are fairy tales about when we used to be one country, back in some long forgotten time. Now we are in a ‘peace process’, trying to agree the terms between Scotland and England. There is nothing peaceful about it. When the union between the countries was broken, back when my Grandfather was around, it was decided that Scotland should be ruled by a monarchy, like it used to be. For the history and the pomp and the circumstance. And the crown.

  Alina stands back and lets me step to the dress, a hanging headless corpse decorating a wardrobe. The material is heavier than it looks, the decadent skirt decorated with gems sewn in by calloused fingers, strained eyes seeking minute details. Somewhere there will be a speck of blood from a needle, the sewer not able to fall asleep.

  “I think we should leave your hair down.”

  I turn to the doorway and see my mother, already made up with her hair in an elaborate style. She has left the grey alone, allowing it to filter through the light brown locks that she’s never touched. Her accent is softer when we’re alone, alone apart from our staff. Here she isn’t on display or duty.

  “Really?” Usually, for formal occasions such as these, it would be up, tidy. In keeping with the agenda.

  She shrugs. “It’s a change. It will suit the dress. Lennox matches with his tie.”

  “He’s my brother. Dressing us the same makes us look like we’re together.”

  There’s a laugh, bells tinkle. “Or twins.”

  Which was probably her aim. I’d been a twin. My sister was stillborn. Rayne. Rayne and Blair we were named; two little princesses. Rayne: just like the tears I know my mother still sheds for her baby she never got to hold.

  “Is Lennox taking a date?”

  I feel my shoulders tense enough to be almost painful. Elise is my best friend, allegedly, and I know she’s seeking the company of an heir to a throne. I know she’s had the company in her room already.

  My brother can be a fool.

  “Not as far as I know, but it’s Lennox. You know what Lennox is like.”

  Three years older, a future king, allowed to choose his own suits and shirts and bed mates. That was what Lennox was like.

  I’d never had those privileges. It wasn’t my job.

  My robe is discarded to the floor, leaving me in just plain black underwear, my pale skin illuminated under the sharp light. This room is my dressing area, the place where clothes that have been selected for me, or gifted, are kept and my public face is applied.

  It’s both me and not. Blair is a ghost in this room and the princess takes over. Has to. I’m her as well as the person I want to be where my body’s my own and I don’t have a set of rules and expectations to follow.

  Alina helps me slip the dress on. It fits perfectly, exposing just the right amount of skin, completely acceptable for a delegates’ dinner, where we’re polite and converse about matters of interest in the hope that a stronger friendship will mean we can agree how we trade between our countries or how people can move between them.

  The material of the dress is soft and weighted, the lining helps it flow. I catch sight in the mirror and as usual don’t recognise myself. The woman who reads and writes and laughs and cries isn’t what I see. Instead there is a princess.

  “You look beautiful.”

  And that is my role.

  The castle has been entertaining both friends and enemies for a thousand years. Within its stone walls are a million stories and a million more lies, all cemented within a thousand promises and a hundred truths. There is a bar, laden with gins and whiskeys, all Scottish in origin or European. Nothing English, even though the majority of people here tonight are English.

  Traitors or heroes? Who knows.

  The banqueting hall has been laid out by the staff I’ve known since I first walked through these castle corridors. My father’s kept a loyal team, treating them like a family from the kitchen porters to the gardeners, to the housekeepers and cleaners. Marian is in the banqueting hall, adjusting the place settings, adding detail. She looks up as I enter and glares, the same glare she’s given me since the first time I stole cakes from her kitchen.

  “Shouldn’t you be in the Kinney room?”

  I should. She’s right. I’m meant to be there to welcome the guests once our butlers have shown them to their rooms for the night and they’ve changed for the evening. But there’s time yet and I love this part of a formal evening: the secrets and the planning, making sure that none of the guests truly know what went on to provide a night that appeared so easy.

  “I wanted to see the room.” Before it was spoiled with noise. There would be the usual whispered promises about policies and votes. My father would address the room with a speech that promoted peace between us and England and then one of the English politicians or advisors would respond with words that will be little more than a flirtatious tease. We haven’t agreed terms and all talks have been going on for a decade.

  The night would be polluted with impossibilities and the dance would continue into a thousandth night, or so it felt. It was probably more.

  “Well, while you’re seeing it, grab that tray, lady, and put out the soup spoons. You remember how they go?”

  A memory of being ten and being allowed to walk around the banqueting hall, carrying a silver tray laden with polished cutlery strikes me and I am a girl again, the one with braided hair and freckles that my brother poked fun at.

  I take the tray and begin to circle the table, laying out the spoons, ensuring the distance between them and the forks is correct. Marian doesn’t check what I’m doing; instead she talks to Warren, one of the security team and an extension of our immediate family because we can’t breathe without one of them being present.

  Peace talks are anything but peaceful.

  “You should mingle with the guests.” Marian takes the tray away without warning. “It’ll be over soon enough.�
�� Her accent is thick and full of the Highlands, soothing, soft.

  I should mingle with the guests. Tonight is another round of forming acquaintances with a new English government that is as calm as the Lochs in a storm, the dark waters filled with mythical beasts that smile with sharp teeth.

  The corridor between the banqueting hall and the Kinney room is long and dark, the mahogany panels original features that were found beneath brick when the castle was resurrected from its banishment once my grandfather became king. The carpet is thick and tartan, greens and whites and creams. Portraits watch me with eyes that have seen too much already, but I stopped caring when I was twelve and I realised that they were oil and canvas and nothing more. There was no magic here, just the promise of storms and a quiet sun.

  My hand trails along the panels as I walk, feeling the wood like braille, reading its stories. Before he died, my grandfather told me tales of kings and queens, of treachery and traitors and those heroes that had slain our enemies instead of dragons.

  My father would have us believe that there were dragons here tonight, but Lennox, my brother, merely sees dogs hungry for scraps. He also sees the possibility of making his own mark on history as the heir to the throne and maybe the one to finally negotiate the much-needed deals.