Page 25 of The Bargain

Remember what you’re doing this for, I tell myself firmly. Remember what you’re here to achieve.

This isn’t about having a beautiful rich girl on my lap; this is about getting out from under Pearson’s boot. It would be easy enough to forget, but the article I was interviewed for comes out later this month.

That will be the reminder I need.

“What’s all this, then?” Blaise says, eyes on Desdemona. “Making new friends, D?”

Desdemona shrugs. “It’s not illegal, is it?”

She sets her plate next to mine, pours us both a drink, hands me mine. I take the glass from her, our fingers brushing, almost accidental.

“Illegal, no,” Blaise says. “Unexpected, rather.”

“I’m Mira.” One of Desdemona’s friends reaches over to give me her hand.

She doesn’t need to introduce herself: Mira Rajahn is the queen bee of Spearcrest. Everyone here either wants to be around her, with her, or be her. She’s the opposite of Desdemona—slight and sweet and soft, with dark, liquid eyes, impossibly long eyelashes.

“Enchanted,” I say, shaking her hand like I was taught to do years ago by my social workers. “Elias.”

When I let go, I settle my palm, without meaning to, on the low of Desdemona’s back, and I feel her stiffening. A tiny, almost imperceptible reaction that tells me she’s not so indifferent to my touch as she thinks she is.

Interesting.

“I know who you are,” Mira is saying, eyes sparkling warmly.

“Everyone knows who he is,” mutters Desdemona’s other friend. She also needs no introduction: the rust-red hair and sneering eyes tell me this is Emerald Carver—when the United Kingdom gets its next female prime minister, it’s going to be her.

A scary thought, if you ask me.

“And yet I don’t think we’ve ever met,” I say, meeting her gaze. “Emily, is it?”

“Emerald,” she says, but even as she rolls her eyes, she’s trying to suppress a smirk of amusement.

“I don’t get it,” Mira says, glancing from me to Desdemona. “Are you two an item?”

Desdemona’s eyelashes flutter ever so slightly, but she continues to eat calmly. She does so neatly and generously: she neither skips the meat, nor the vegetables, nor the gravy. But she slices all her food into tidy bites, cuts off gristle from the steak, leaves behind the pointy edges of bean stalks.

Delicate little princess, I think—but I stare a little too long at the way her fork is spotlessly clean every time it leaves her mouth.

“He’s not her type,” Emerald tells Mira in a dry tone.

That brings my attention back into focus.

“No?” I say, keeping my tone open and curious. “What is her type?”

“She likes them pretty, rich and dumb,” Blaise interjects in a mischievous tone. “Isn’t that right, Julian?”

Desdemona throws him a sharp look. He shrugs. Blaise is the future Lord Blackwood, so he’s someone I could do with having on my side, too, but I keep my eyes on Emerald.

A hunter is more likely to catch rabbits if he hunts them one at a time, rather than all at once—right?

“You think I’m like him?” I ask her, without naming Julian or looking at him.

I don’t need to; we can all feel the red dot of his glare like an angry sniper trying to decide who to shoot first. Me, presumably.

“You’re neither pretty, nor rich, not dumb,” says Emerald.

And from the glance she throws Julian, I immediately realise she doesn’t like him.