Page 55 of Prince of Masks
Mother presses, “Will she not join us, at least on the yacht tomorrow?”
Dray shakes his head slightly. “She’s at the Barlows’ for the rest of the week.”
“Ah.” Mother nods, firm. Her gaze cuts to me, fleeting, before she adds, “I suppose it’s a healthy thing for some couples, to maintain a… distance.”
Amelia bites down on a smile. She’s quick to lift her glass and bring it to her mouth, but doesn’t sip, the gesture is exclusively to hide her smile.
Dray lets a small smirk of his own take root. “Sometimes the more space the better.”
I hope my fiancé never speaks about me like that.
Just announce it, why don’t you, how little you love her, Dray. So fucked up, at least pretend.
We are all pretending.
Even here, now, I sit beside him, I pretend to tolerate his existence when all I really want is to bury him alive.
“How is Landon?” Amelia asks.
Harold, who has shotted back a half-bottle of scotch already, scoffs. “That boy will ruin the Barlows.”
My brows raise.
I wait… I wait for more.
No more comes but silence around the table.
I lunge on it. “How so?”
I ignore the glare Oliver flings at me.
Harder to ignore Dray’s glance, a mere frown, on my other side.
“That one is nothing more than chaos.” Harold swishes his drink—and meets my gaze. He actually looks me right in the eye andspeaksto me. “Gambling, debts, rumours of his promiscuity. I give it a year after his graduation before he’s besmirched his name, his marital union, and made the Barlows a fallen family.”
“Perhaps Landon isn’t, um,” I hesitate under Harold’s stare, like I have stage fright now that I’m spoken to by one of the fathers, like I matter for a moment. “His conquests, I mean,” I add with a lame shrug. “That could be said in rumour about so many aristos men.”
Dray’s tone is as dark as the side-look he gives me, “Discretion, Olivia. It matters.”
Then why the fuck have you had Melody Green on your lap in the middle of a witching pub?
I almost ask it.
But I don’t, because I think I know the difference.
Melody isn’t James.
I can’t quite determine if they know or not, or it’s just that Landon has a reputation that’s a little on the sloppy side. Ormaybe people mistake his friendship with Mildred… and that is the crux of the sneers.
I don’t know.
Oliver slumps in his chair and throws his arm over the back of mine. “The problem with Landon is that he’s known to have enjoyed the company of made ones, perhaps even somekrums. That can be an ill reflection of a family barely holding onto grace as it is.”
Oh.
It isn’t because he’s fucking James.
It’s because he’s fucking krums.
