Chandelier (Tarnished Crowns Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “It’s recent and I’m not ready to get involved at the moment.”

  He nods, takes a bite of his steak. “You were serious?”

  Yes. I was serious. Serious enough to kiss another man. Serious enough to be moved by another man. Serious enough that I couldn’t breathe when I thought about Ben never being in my bed again, or inside me, or looking at me from across room like I’m the only person there.

  “Pretty. It’s all very quiet. You know what the media’s like.”

  The door to the room opens and I expect to see our wait staff, but instead it’s someone I’m not expecting.

  Isaac is wearing a waistcoat and white shirt, curly hair neatly styled and he has glasses on, which I’ve never seen before.

  “I’m sorry for interrupting. Do you have a minute, William?” Isaac doesn’t move much further than the door.

  William places his napkin on the table and slides his chair back, briefly making eye contact before heading towards Isaac. I hear muttering, whispered conversations, see Isaac glancing over at me as I sip my wine. The sommelier comes over and tops it up and this time I let her.

  “I’m really sorry, Blair, but I have to go. We’ve had an emergency.” He picks up his suit jacket. “However, Isaac isn’t needed and he definitely needs dinner, so if you want company while you finish eating, he charges a reasonable rate.” It’s the first joke he’s made all evening.

  “I understand. I’ve lost count of the number of family meals we’ve had interrupted because there’s been an emergency somewhere.” I stand and walk round to him, leaning in to kiss his cheek.

  He lingers a little too long.

  “I’ll contact your office about the New York Open.”

  “That’d be good. I’ll check to see if my engagements can be moved around.” I’m lying through my teeth because I’m going to make sure they can’t.

  “Excellent.” He presses a kiss to my cheek again, a possessive one. A claim.

  Isaac sits down in Goldsmith’s empty seat, the plates cleared out of the way.

  “You survived.”

  “What was the emergency?” I take my time to sit.

  “Prevented terrorist attack in Coventry. William needs to be briefed and attend a committee meeting.”

  “Was everyone okay?”

  “Very much. Intelligence acted quickly and appropriately. They did well.”

  A waiter enters, carrying a huge burger and fries.

  “That wasn’t on the menu!” The menu is haute cuisine, small delicately presented portions. Isaac’s burger is more like something from a fast food outlet.

  I have food envy.

  “I know the chef. And he likes burgers.” Dark eyes glimmer. “You can share my fries though. I’m not due a cheat meal till weekend.”

  I help myself to his food and it feels disconcertingly intimate. Taking food from his plate, saying nothing as he eats ravenously. Another portion of fries appears and some onion rings.

  “The chef clearly owes you a favour.”

  Isaac wipes his hands. “Maybe. How was the Prime Minister?”

  “Kept at bay.”

  He nods. “He thinks you’re a repressed virgin.”

  I laugh. The sound is loud and echoes through the room. “Seriously?” I colour, remembering what Isaac saw.

  “He’s used to women falling over themselves for him. He thought you’d be the same.”

  I can see Isaac’s amusement. He’s reserved, a watcher, but there’s more behind those eyes that are studying me.

  “But you know different. Did you tell him about Ben?”

  He doesn’t respond, simply relaxes into his chair. “Do you want dessert?”

  “No. Did you tell him about Ben?”

  “What about Ben?”

  “Don’t play cute, Isaac.”

  He smiles to himself.

  “I didn’t tell William anything about Ben. As far as I know, there’s nothing to tell.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No reason to thank me. I’m opting for the New York Cheesecake. If you have something different can we share? The sweet’s the best part.”

  There’s something in his tone that brings me back down to earth and I breathe a little freer.

  “The Eton mess.” A concoction of cream and meringue and fruit. The sugar will hurt my teeth, but I need a little sweet.

  “Ask for two spoons.” His grin reminds me of a cheeky teenage boy with a glint that’s as dangerous as a sharpened knife.

  I can’t help but smile back.

  We order, maintaining the quiet, which is welcome. I’m tired with having to be so alert with Goldsmith, double thinking every word and I’m still sure I’ve said something that will come back to plague my dreams.

  “How well do you know Ben?”

  Isaac’s words wake me from my analytical daze.

  “I’ve known him since we were kids.”

  He nods.

  “What’s he about?”

  “He joined the army at nineteen and when he left, he joined on as security… why? Why are you asking?” Everything feels tight, claustrophobic. I don’t like where Isaac is trying to head this.

  “You haven’t known him for twelve, thirteen years. Who interviewed him for the position?”

  “My father. It was primarily for my security. Isaac, why’s this important?”

  He shrugs. “Sometimes we think we know someone well and we don’t actually know them at all. Here’s dessert.”

  He changes the subject while we eat, sharing desserts. He talks about national security, shares a couple of anonymised stories where someone was arrested whilst in a full BDSM outfit, complete with inserted butt plug and I remember the club in America. Those eyes.

  “I saw you in Seattle.”

  “Did you?” His face gives nothing away.

  “In a club. We weren’t ourselves.”

  “Who else would we be?”

  “Someone with far more freedom.”

  He nods and halves the last piece of cheesecake. “Being anonymous is quite freeing. Same as being a soldier. It becomes easy to hide.”

  He doesn’t eat his piece of cheesecake. He waits for me to finish mine and then offers it to me, on his fork.

  I accept, taking it slowing in my mouth, delicately. Letting him feed me. Just like he watched me being fed something else when we were both in Seattle.

  I leave with Franklyn, taking a light aircraft back home, back to my sanctuary of a room in a castle, where I feel more and more like Rapunzel, just a version who had cut off her own hair and made a ladder to get herself down from her tower.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The summer wraps us in a humid blanket, its warm nights smothering us in our sleep. August has broken all records for temperature in Scotland, a Saharan wind carrying temperatures that have soared too high.

  My father is uncomfortable. The heat has made him fractious and irritable, his treatment trying on him. On all of us. When I enter his room, he’s on a chaise situated near the open balcony doors, trying to entice any chance of a cool breeze from the loch. He’s pale, but he’s lost the drawn, pinched look he had when I returned from London to find my mother cradling him as he’d lay, collapsed, on the floor.

  “Is there a forecast for a storm yet?” He sounds stronger.

  “Not for another few days.”

  “Damn. We need the rain. I’ve never seen the Loch so low.”

  The waters are still. Barely a breeze fractures the surface. A boat sits on top, motionless.

  “The rain will come.” It always does.

  “And when it arrives you’ll stand outside in it, like you do when we have a summer storm.”

  I sit down next to him and he takes my hand, the thin flesh covering bony digits. These aren’t the same hands as that of the man who would throw me into the air and catch me, or tuck me in bed at night with tales of princesses who killed the dragon themselves.

  “How was London?”

  We haven’t sp
oken since I’ve returned. He’s been tired, needing rest. I’ve taken on some of his engagements, telling the press about his ‘exhaustion’.

  “London. I saw Goldsmith.”

  “I know. I heard someone say that he’d charmed you.”

  I narrowly avoid choking.

  “I’m assuming you weren’t charmed?”

  “Not by Goldsmith. He’s an acquired taste.”

  My father chuckles. “Keep him on side for Lennox’s sake, without selling yourself out. So who did charm you?”

  I think of Isaac, his dark curls and the glasses he’d worn that I hadn’t seen before. “What do you know of Isaac Everleigh?”

  There’s another chuckle. “The kingmaker? He has more charm than Goldsmith and he knows damn well how to use it. He’s intelligent and he listens, which makes him powerful. The only king he’ll make will be himself. He’s ambitious.”

  “He’s Goldsmith’s advisor.”

  “So Goldsmith has enough in the way of brain cells to keep his enemies close.”

  “Is Isaac his enemy?”

  “I don’t think they’re friends. You like Isaac?”

  “He interests me.”

  My father smiles. “It would be nice to see you with someone.”

  Automatically, my chest breaks open a little. I know my father is dying. We don’t know how long, and he and my mother have made the decision to try for more treatment in the hope it gives him more time.

  Time to see the seasons, once again.

  “Why did Ben get the job?”

  My father turns to look out of the window rather than at me.

  “He’s was the best candidate. And he already knew you.”

  How well do you know Ben?

  “Have you met his sister?”

  “No. But I know of her. Majken. We vetted all of his extended family. Ben’s from good people, Blair. You know that. You spent all your holidays with him when you were a teen and the summer he left to join the army, you didn’t smile.”

  I’m silent. My words have been stolen by my father’s knowledge.

  “Why appoint Ben if you knew…” I look away because now my father’s gaze is on me and I don’t know how to shield myself.

  “Because we knew he’d rather die himself than let anyone hurt you and that’s not me over-exaggerating.”

  I turn to meet his eyes, the same as my own. “He left and never came back.”

  “I think you can forgive him for why. Ben’s a good man, like his father. You can trust him.”

  “Lennox doesn’t.”

  “Lennox sees how Ben looks at you and he saw how he looked at you when you were younger. Let Lennox find his own happiness; you concentrate on yours.” He sits back further into the mass of cushions on the chaise, his eyes half-closed.

  My mother has told me that he exhausts easily, a tsunami of tiredness overcoming him, drowning.

  “I should let you rest.”

  He shakes his head, squeezes my hand. “Wait awhile.”

  I continue to sit, next to the chaise, holding my father’s hand and looking at the mountains that surround the loch.

  Tall and treacherous and full of secrets.

  I smell rain.

  There’s a point just before a storm after days of glorious dead summer heat where the rain that’s about to fall whets its way with a particular perfume. After days of mindless temperatures, I’m longing for the rain, so I’m outside, heading for a sanctuary where I can be when it starts to fall, seeing the green and blues and greys wash away the scorched browns of the land.

  August has murdered the leaves. It is the cruellest month; drying the lawns and draining the pools dry. The entrance to the maze always has an arch surrounded by ivy and climbing plants, clematis and passiflora, sometimes honeysuckle. Its greens have been stolen by the sun and the dryness has its own crinkled music.

  I walk through the pathways, seeing dry leaves deposited in corners and parched yellow grass on the ground. Summer’s massacre.

  But the rain is about to fall and everywhere can sense it. The birds have stopped their flights; only the swallows and swifts swoop low, grabbing their dinner and calling across the air.

  My feet barely make a sound as I walk, remembering the way to the centre of the maze as it’s engraved in me. Every turn takes me back to a place where Ben is, where Ben was. All those times, those years, of never knowing what we were to each other and we still don’t.

  He’s not just a fuck.

  And neither am I to him.

  The rain starts.

  The drops are sporadic, as if the clouds are testing to see what will happen when the rain lands. Heavy drops of cool rain that crack the heat fall heavy on the ground and on my skin.

  I don’t know where this obsession comes from, this need to be in the rain at the moment it starts, but when it happens, I forget what else there is.

  I reach the centre of the maze as the rain falls heavier. The oak in the centre in in full leaf, but the leaves are dropping because of the heat, yellowing early.

  I see the leaves first and Ben second, my chest fracturing as my heart pounds too hard.

  “Why are you here?”

  He’s leaning against the tree trunk, wearing combats and a black T-shirt that’s too tight to look at.

  “Because I wanted to see you.” His answer is curt.

  “Why? You’ve not wanted to for the last few days. In fact, I’d go as far as to say you’ve gone out of your way to avoid me.” I can feel my temper start to brew.

  “I did.”

  I want to walk up to him and beat his chest with my fists. I want to yell and cry and shout and make him hurt but some ounce of resolve stops me.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”

  “I know.”

  “Why are you here, Ben? Why the fuck do you want to see me? You’ve made it perfectly clear that this isn’t anything. That we can’t be anything.” My words fly out hard and fast.

  “We can’t be anything. I’m your fucking security detail. You’re a princess, daughter of a king. My father’s hoed your flower beds – life doesn’t work like that.”

  “Is that why you refused to take my virginity?”

  He doesn’t look away from me, maintain my gaze so it’s painful.

  “Yes. I wasn’t good enough.” He pauses. “Blair, I didn’t want to be that boy who ruined you. You were this feisty, gorgeous girl who I would’ve fucking given up everything for, but what did I have to give?”

  “You could’ve given me the choice and not made it for me.” I don’t know if the water on my cheeks is rain or tears.

  “I had a choice too.” He cracks his knuckles and I know he’s agitated. “I couldn’t be that person.”

  “So why have you been fucking me now?”

  He doesn’t flinch at the words.

  “Because I wanted you. Like I couldn’t have you back then.”

  “And you don’t anymore? Because it can’t go anywhere?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Who says you have to? I don’t want to hurt you…” I remember Isaac. The kiss, the meal, the way he could make me burn too. “I kissed Isaac.”

  “I know.”

  My mouth opens but no words come out. I want to apologise, I want to wrap my arms around him and touch, feel something from him, apart from the distance between us.

  “Blair, it’s okay. It’s a kiss.”

  “I was mad at you.”

  “You don’t have to explain.” He steps closer. “I’m not upset.”

  “I am. I want you to be. I don’t want you to be okay with me being with someone else, even if it’s just a kiss.”

  “It’s Isaac.”

  “You don’t care about me kissing him?”

  His hand stretches out and cups the back of my neck. “It was once. And maybe he’s better for you than me. He isn’t Goldsmith.”

  “I don’t want us to end. You’re sounding like this is it ending
.”

  He doesn’t answer. His lips meet mine and the kiss is sweet, taking me back to when we were younger and all we did was kiss and touch and feel. Somehow we end up under the tree, taking shelter from the worst of the rain that’s now pelting down on the ground.

  Our lips are fierce, taking what they can. As if this is the last time.

  It can’t be the last time.

  I push my hands under Ben’s T-shirt, remembering the first time I did this, how his body felt then. I feel him shudder as I run my hands over him, feeling smooth skin and muscle. He tenses, and I want to be able to smooth those knots and tell him that everything will be okay.

  Ben’s hands slide under my top, pulling it up, and we break the kiss while he strips me of my clothes, my nipples hardening as he exposes them to the cooling air and then his mouth.

  I dig my nails into his skin as he sucks and bites, moving from one breast to the others, taking his time. I’m wet already, skin and between my legs, and if he stripped me of the rest of my clothes he’d be able to enter me now. I know he wants to.

  We shift so I’m straddling him as he rests his back against the oak. We were here years before, this same place and position, him toying with my tits, my centre pushed up to his erection.

  He starts to push down my shorts; I shift so he can pull them down, along with my panties, his hand cupping my sex, then inserting a finger, adding another, his thumb playing with my clit.

  “I want to see you come.”

  I hold his shoulders and let myself go, wanting to give him his wish, and mine. His words tell me how I look, feel, how he could do this forever and I want to ask him to do this forever with me.

  Just us, in our maze.

  I come violently and loudly, sobbing out the orgasm. I’ve barely registered that I’m on my back with my legs spread when he’s over me and freeing his cock, pumping it a couple of times before he’s pushing into me.

  He’s slow at first, opening me up, giving me time to adjust. I see the control on his face and how his eyes are watching my every response.

  Every time we’ve slept together he’s made sure I’ve come, usually more than once; then he’s taken what he needs.

  “I don’t want to stop being inside you, Blair. I don’t want to stop coming inside you. But I can’t have you the way I want.”