Page 56 of Prince of Masks
Even Melody Green, while she’s gentry, isn’t anything less than an elite. Her bloodline is ancient.
Dray would never climb into the bed of a made one just as he would never fuck a krum.
“The recklessness,” Dray says, “is obnoxious, sloppy and overt. If the behaviour continues, those who are connected to him in business will be tainted by default.”
“The friend of my enemy,” Father says, “is my enemy.”
“He chooses gentry company over aristos constantly,” Harold adds, and Mildred flashes in my mind, Landon’s obviously favourite person in all of Bluestone… but yes, very much a gentry. “And with all of those poor choices, one doesn’t need the print to see that Landon will wander from his marriage, as he wanders from aristos for gentry, as he wanders from witches to krums… If a man cannot be loyal to his wife, of all people, thecoreof his family,” Harold lifts his hands in awhat-gesture, “how can he be trusted to be loyal in business?”
I almost feel bad for him, for what is coming his way.
I see Landon Barlow, and I see a friend among friends. But then graduation day comes, life shifts into another phase, and Landon might lag.
He will be left behind if he does.
His own best friends, lifelong, will walk away—and never look back.
This world is cutthroat.
Oh!
Dessert menus.
I wave away the menu that the waiter makes to slip in front of me. I already know what I want.
“Father,” I lean over the edge of the table. “The gilded chocolate pudding, please.”
“Oh, that is lovely,” Amelia says, but her gaze says otherwise as it drops to the fit of my blue dress around my middle. It’s not a tight fit, just a tight dress, something that would haverockedin the 50s and 60s; it needs the figure to fill it out.
Mother suggests, “Perhaps the best dessert might be a simple sorbet.”
My mouth thins.
Father orders me the caramelised pears with a side of lemon sorbet.
I sag and drop my gaze to the table as my mostly untouched salad is taken away.
Beside me, Dray hands his menu to the waiter, and he orders for himself, “Gold chocolate pudding.”
Prick.
The side-glower I give him doesn’t go unnoticed.
Dray returns my stare, unfazed.
The fine shape of his nose is illuminated by the chandeliers, the same light dancing over his high cheekbones. A natural contour slashes across his cheek, just above the defined line of his jaw.
I have the urge to stick a knife in him.
Arm still slung over the back of my chair, Oliver leans to grin around my pinned curls. “How much are you prepared to lose tonight?”
Dray scoffs, then reclines further in his chair, and I am suddenly in the way of two friends who don’t want me here. “Everything and my dignity.”
“Did you ever have that,” I murmur.
His eyes flash on me, searing into my cheek.
I just say a little prayer of thanks that none of our parents heard me.
