Page 86 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
I hurt the girl who’s holding my heart in her delicate hands after it jumped out of my chest.
As she goes to walk over to the bar, I quickly grab her wrist.
She whips around, sheepish.
“Do you wanna do something?” I ask, panicking. “Dinner?”
Her smile sticks for a few seconds but then it’s almost as if she’s registered what I’ve offered and it falls.
“I can’t, Arthur. I’m sorry.”
“Why not?”
She says nothing.
“Why do you keep running, Phoebs? Every time I lend you a bit of string you cut it.”
Her perfect pale face cracks, all her pretty features falling to the floor.
“Digby?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“What is it then?” I plead. “Whatever it is, we can fix it.”
“Not this,” she says softly, sniffs. “No one can fix this.”
And then she waggles her wrist free from my hold and walks off.
There’s nothing unfixable, I don’t think, because if there were, it would’ve been me from the ages of thirteen to eighteen.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lady Phoebe
It’s a photo of Astrid and Arthur from that debutante ball we attended a few weeks back. He looks happy, I realise, although, it is for the camera so who can really say if he is or not? I don’t think he is, not properly. The smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes the way it used to.
But then, I do want him to be happy. I want his smile to reach his eyes when he’s with her otherwise, it never will. I need the reassurance that he’ll be okay without me.
Digby walks into the room holding up a bag from Laudurée.
“Croissants, macarons, lattes and a ispahan.”
I smile, grab the bag from him and tear it open.
He sits on the foot of the bed, unties his running trainers, faces me. “You should do something today, go shopping or something.”
I frown, my mouth occupied by a raspberry macaron.
“Come on,” he smiles, nudges my foot under the duvet. “You haven’t left the house in two days.”
That isn’t a lot, I think. I know someone who once spent almost four weeks chained to their bed because it was the only comfort they felt in a world where comfort is essentially nonexistent. It’s me, I’m the person I knew. But to somebody like Digby who is now finished with their exams and believes the world is their oyster, spending two days in bed feels more like two years.
“I’m going to the gym in a minute, why don’t you come? Go to the spa?” He offers with a sorry look on his face.
I don’t know if he feels sorry for me because I haven’t left the house or if he feels sorry because of the reason why I haven’t leftthe house. He’s the sort of person that if his entire world crashed around him, he still wouldn’t just lay in bed all day.
I shake my head. “I’d rather go shopping than step foot in a gym.”
