Page 71 of House of Hearts
OleanderLockwell came into Ana’s life like all devils did: with the face of an angel and the tongue of a serpent. He’d turn out to be every bit as poisonous as his namesake, but when she first met him, he was just some attractive stranger who looked like he might break her heart before putting it back together. She found that she was fine with that. More than anything, she really just wanted to kiss him, but you don’t kiss a man you don’t know, so she wanted to go home, stare at her ceiling, and pretend she kissed him instead.
She wanted to pretend she kissed him a lot.
He was Prince Charming in the flesh, the perfect embodiment of the escape she dreamt of. Anastasia was a girl of fairy tales and happily ever afters for those who suffered long enough. She felt she had suffered enough to earn one of her own.
Hers came in the form of her childhood, or rather her lack thereof. She attended “boarding school” in name only, her residence not in the dorms but trapped inside the miserable four walls of her family’s house. She and her sister lived and breathed under the militant supervision of their father, and even then, their treatment was considered lax in comparison to that of their mother. Her mother was a modern-day Persephone, withering under her father’s rage only to bloom again under the false promise of love. She wore her marriage in two separate rings: the diamond on her finger and the bruised spiral on her upper arm, hidden beneath her sleeve. Her husband’s fingertips twisted like a fairy circle and kept her eternally trapped in his domain.
So it only made sense for Ana to dream of salvation, but this boywas far from the knight in shining armor come to whisk her away. He might have been as dashing as one, his corded muscles on clear display as he rowed across the school lake, his face bright and his smile brighter. He might have been as sweet as one, his regard for her dizzying and utterly foreign. But beneath the princely facade, he was anything but.
Unaware of what lay beneath, Ana was smitten. She’d never had an actual suitor before. Her sister was beautiful enough to sway the most courageous men on campus, though their father’s temper reached well beyond their family home. As a headmaster, he was strict and short fused, which meant that the men daring enough to talk to Ana were few and far between.
If you asked her father about his distemper (which you would be very unwise to do), he openly blamed his anger on his lack of an heir. Two daughters but no son to carry on the family name and the school alongside it. He’d have to rely on a son-in-law to carry both the bloodline and the role as headmaster, which meant every boy who so much as approached his daughters was scrutinized not as a partner, but as a successor.
So yes, Ana wanted a prince, and her father wanted a capable, trustworthy replacement, but that’s not what Oleander was. He was the blighted apple, the gravestone, the cold burial dirt. He was hungry and ambitious and all consuming. When she led him into the maze of her heart, she found he knew the path well, for he had traversed many girls’ hearts. He’d learned their patterns so he could come and go as he pleased.
He knew how to set fire to a girl and leave only ash in his wake.
It was late one evening when Anastasia finally thought to ask the question.
The two of them had once again succeeded in sneaking past her father’s watchful eye. They lay together in the maze, Oleander’s arm hooked over her waist and Ana’s back to her own future grave.
He was typically so hasty to get dressed after their dalliances, lurching upright after the act was finished and checking his pocket watch as if the time was more important than her.
Today, however, he’d lingered beside her, brushing the hair behind her ear and peppering kisses along her jaw. “You seem thoughtful as of late.”
She was. Her mind was full of her sister’s worries, all the horrible, gruesome thoughts she painted her imagination with. She had wanted to ask him about his past for days now, but Oleander didn’t like when she pried. She could tell. His lip would curl, and he’d tell her that patience and trust were two traits he found most attractive in a woman.
She wanted to be beautiful for him, right?
Yes, she did, with every fiber of her being. And yet…
“There is something I would like to ask you.” The words were out too quickly to think better of them, and she could’ve cursed herself for her loose tongue.
This also wasn’t quite true. There were many things she wanted to ask: Did he really, truly love her? Did he ever look at Helen and wonder whether he chose the wrong sister? Would he marry her and take her away from this wretched, horrible place?
None of those questions left her lips. This time she asked what was really on her mind. “How did she die?”
He froze in her arms, his fingertips whitening against her waist. “Pardon?”
“Your…former fiancée,” she clarified, and he glowered openly at her.
His response was terse. “It was an accident, as you well know.”
“What sort?”
He gripped her chin, and the moment frightened her madly. His eyes were cold, compassionless, and for once she felt she saw through to the heart of him—or where his heart should have been. “You’d ask me to relive it?”
“I want to know,” she waged on. “It’s silly, but…I’d wondered if perhaps…”
“Perhaps what?”
She toyed with the hem on her skirt. “If perhaps you might’ve played a part. It’s nothing. Just mere speculation. My sister mentioned it.”
“Did she, now?” he growled, and his face was closer. He lorded over her with a cruel twist of his mouth. “I suppose she told you how Eliza died in a rather…unfortunate manner, mm? Right in the center of a hunting ground with a blade wedged deep in her chest. But who could possibly confuse poor Eliza with wild game? And if not an accident, then who could enjoy such a thing?”
He twisted her hair around his finger, three careful loops. “Oleander,” she mewled, eyes wet and splotchy. “You had nothing to do with it, right?”
The darkness receded from his gaze, and he rewarded her with a beaming smile. “Heavens, no. Your imagination is far too wild for your own good.”
