Page 36 of Love and Loathing

God! Her father!He wanted…he didn’t know what. But if he could be assured that Evie would never have to hear her own father talk about her like she was trash in front of another man, that would go a long way towards improving his mood.“How is this…choice…meant to reassure me of your competency?”And Evie, who would fight for the rights of a goddamned pigeon, standing there, saying nothing, telling him she was used to it! He ground his teeth, enraged in much the same way he suspected Evie often was: a surging, inchoate rage, impossible to salve because it was due to one of those ancient, unfixable wrongs: bad men doing bad things.

“Sorry,” she said now, slightly out of breath. He realised how quickly he was walking and slowed his pace.

“What for?”

“Saying that stuff up there. You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like. Being in love like that.”

He took a moment to think up a reply. Discarded them all and settled for: “I’m not angry with you.”

“Really?”

Her obvious surprise made him smile ruefully.

“No more than usual, at least.”

He looked at her—pale face catching the setting sun, gold painted on her cheeks, sparking off the blue of her wide-open eyes—and suddenly he wanted to laugh. Maddening woman. He barely knew himself around her, wondered if this was what madness felt like, all the sudden surges in mood, the flashes of impulse, because as tight with fury as he had been a moment before, his heart suddenly now soared, like coming up onto that view all over again, everything spreading out vast and open. Breathtaking…

“I’m not angry with you, Evie,” he said again. And he took her hand, although the house was still far distant, and surely no one was watching, and pulled her into a run down the hill.

Aubrey dressed slowly. Black-tie tonight. A formal dinner, to do respect to the first of the season’s birds. Bizarre, brutal countryside traditions. Or perhaps it just belonged to this house. Perhaps it was just George continuing his English Country Estate theme park act for Domnall’s benefit.

He didn’t really care. There was a certain comfort in knowing exactly what clothes to wear. A sort of persona he could put on at the same time as the starched, thick white shirt, and the black vest, the tie, the tailed coat. He could look the part and play the part and it would be a million miles away from windswept hill tops and the horror of speaking one’s mind.

It was dark enough outside for the window at his side to act as a second mirror to the one he stood before. He glanced at his more distorted reflection, wondering whether Evie would betwenties beauty or sleek assassin. What would she wear? He left his room, walked down the hall, and knocked on her door.

“Come in.”

She was sitting at her dressing table and looked up in surprise when he walked in.

“I thought you’d be Amy.”

“Sadly not.”

“I’m nearly ready.”

“Don’t rush.”

He sat on the end of her bed and watched her—both the real-life back of her, and the reflected front. She was in scarlet tonight. Dressed for murder. Dressed to kill. The back of the dress was low, showing her long neck, the line of her spine, her short hair pinned up. She caught his eye in the mirror, swept lipstick onto already-perfect lips. She blotted, sprayed perfume, then stood, and he saw what the low back of her chair had been hiding: the zip of her dress open to the base of her spine.

“Would you?”

“Of course.”

They both knew he didn’t need to. It was only a short zip—closed the dress up to the nip of her waist, the rest of her back left bare in a deep V. But they had both put on personas now, were for once apparently playing the same game.

He went over, stood behind her, his eyes on hers in the mirror for a moment before he dropped his gaze to the zip, the expanse of smooth pale skin. No bra. She didn’t need one. Just this slip of red between him and her. He took the zip, pulled it slowly up, knuckle brushing her spine. He lingered for the barest moment, fighting a dozen impossible urges, then stepped back.

She looked at him in the reflection again, smiling slightly, then turned, real eyes on his now, real mouth, suddenly very close.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

They heard the door, Amy bundled into the room, shoes in one hand, hair brush in another. “I’m here to help you— Oh. Sorry.”

“It’s OK,” Aubrey said. “I was just leaving. See you downstairs.”

It didn’t really surprise him that Liv was waiting for him at the base of the stairs, pretending to study a picture. A depressed horse. Or just bored. Only Evie knew the difference.

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