Page 57 of The Beautiful Ones

Mother smiled as if I had presented her with a jewel.

Around us, Le Champ des Fleurs glowed beneath the flattering gloom of its crimson curtains. Footmen carried iced tea through shafts of red light. Augusta Dewey reclined beneath the new ceiling fan and pretended not to watch Octavia. Philip George laughed too loudly at something Nicholas had said. Warren hovered near Elin’s abandoned place by the oak doors, though Elin herself was gone.

I had seen her leave.

I had also chosen not to follow.

The knowledge rested beneath my happiness like a small stone in a satin slipper—easy to ignore while seated, painful the moment I tried to stand.

“You have lost your audience,” Octavia observed.

She reclined upon the velvet chaise, immaculate in cream silk. Her painted fan moved in a slow, measured rhythm. Gardenias opened and closed across its ivory leaves.

“I have hardly lost anyone,” I replied.

“Not anyone.” Her dark gaze drifted toward the empty doorway. “Someone.”

Heat climbed my neck. I turned away before she could see that the little barb had found its mark.

My father stood near the drinks table with Judge Dewey and Reuben George. The three men were no longer pretending friendship. Reuben’s mouth moved rapidly while the judge kept one hand clamped around his elbow. Father glanced first at Adrian and then toward the hall.

Adrian did not appear to notice.

He had moved to the far windows, where he listened to Lucien describe some disastrous foxhunt with Nicholas. Yet when Father led the other men from the parlor, Adrian’s fingers tapped once against the glass.

The clock upon the mantel answered with a single chime.

No hour had passed.

Curiosity stirred, but it was not my newfound voice that made me rise. It was Commander Vale’s name, spoken that morning on the porch, and the memory of my father flinching from Adrian’s hand.

I crossed the parlor slowly, pausing to answer Lavinia George when she praised my playing. My reply was graceful enough to make Mother beam from across the room. Then I passed through the oak doors and entered the central hall.

The air beyond the parlor was several degrees colder.

The long passage lay empty beneath portraits of dead Lebons. Men in high collars and women with narrow mouths stared down from silver frames, each face painted with the confidence of someone who believed the house would remember only what flattered them. Beneath their watch, I followed the runner toward my father’s private study.

The three men had stopped before my father’s private study. Father pulled the handle once, then again.

“Why is this locked?” he demanded.

Reuben George looked over his shoulder. Judge Dewey tried the handle himself, as though the door might respect his authority more than it respected my father’s.

“Use the other key,” he said.

I retreated into the bend of the corridor before they could discover me. Metal scraped within the lock. The hinges complained, three sets of footsteps entered and the door closed again.

I waited until a key turned from the other side.

I should have returned to the parlor.

Instead, I pressed my ear to the cold mahogany.

“Fairhaven named the Sea Nymph,” Reuben said. His voice carried clearly through the panel. “He asked whether she found the inlet difficult last November. How could he know that?”

“Keep your voice down,” Father snapped.

“Five hundred souls in a year, Étienne. Five hundred. Vale recorded every one of them.”