Page 47 of The Beautiful Ones

The gesture was innocent. No glove touched mine. Yet I felt the promise of contact like warmth held near cold skin.

Before I could accept, Elin stepped from the pillar and placed herself between Adrian and the bench.

“Madame Lebon requested that Miss Cécile remain near the terrace this morning,” she said. Her accent sharpened each word. “The sun is already high, and she has a tendency to wilt in the heat. Perhaps you could walk inside the house. There are many rooms you have not seen.”

I stared at her.

My mother had made no such request. She had been delighted to see me dressed for the garden and had inspected my reflection twice before allowing me downstairs.

Elin knew that I knew she was lying.

Adrian’s dark eyes rested upon her. For one brief instant, the courtesy left his face. Something ancient and empty looked through him, regarding Elin not as an obstacle but as a small mortal thing whose resistance had already been measured.

Then he smiled.

“Of course, Miss Andersdotter. We must respect the wishes of the house.”

He bowed to me. “Until luncheon, Miss Lebon.”

He turned toward the French doors.

The moment his back was to us, eighteen years of humiliation caught fire inside me.

Every physician who had pressed a spoon against my tongue stood behind Elin. Every tutor who had repeated a word until it lost all meaning looked out through her pale, anxious face. My mother’s fingers were beneath my chin again, turning me toward the light and telling me to make an effort. Elin had become all of them simply by stepping between me and the first person who had made me feel whole.

“How dare you?”

The words rang through the arcade.

Adrian stopped but did not turn.

Elin’s face went still.

I rose from the bench. “How dare you speak for me? My mother said no such thing, and you know it. You lied to a guest because you have decided that your fear matters more than my wishes.”

Each sentence came faster than the one before it. No sound caught. No syllable closed around my throat.

“You hold my parasol. You fetch my tea. You help me dress because my mother pays for your service. That does not give you the right to govern me.”

Color drained from Elin’s face.

Some part of me saw the injury land. Some part wanted to stop. But the words were pouring out clean and bright, and I had wanted that freedom too long to surrender it merely because the first use I made of it was ugly.

“I am sick of you standing behind me like a jailer,” I continued. “I am sick of being watched, managed and protected until there is nothing left of me but everyone else’s caution. He was speaking to me. He was looking at me. And you ruined it because you cannot bear that I might no longer need you.”

The final sentence struck harder than I intended.

Elin did not defend herself. She stood beside the pillar holding my parasol in one hand and my shawl in the other, every inch the servant I had accused her of being.

The garden fell silent.

Only then did I understand what had happened.

I touched my throat.

There had been no stutter. No cruel pause while listeners pretended not to listen. The words had flown from me as swiftly as the birds in my mind, each one arriving whole and exactly when I called it.

Joy rose so violently that it nearly erased my shame.