Page 9 of The Beautiful Ones

I understood most of the sentence, although the final image confused me.

“Who will spin the house?”

Dinah stared at me for half a second before her expression softened.

“Nobody. It only means she’ll have everyone running.”

“Oh.”

Cécile smiled.

I smiled too, though heat rose into my face. English was full of words that claimed to mean one thing while secretly meaning another. Wealthy people seemed to speak in much the same way.

A bell sounded outside, followed by the rumble of wheels upon the front drive.

“They’re early,” I said.

Dinah listened.

“That ain’t the Dewey carriage.”

“How can you tell?”

“I know their wheels.”

We went to the window. A single black carriage traveled slowly between the rows of oaks. There was no family crest upon its door and no baggage secured behind it.

The driver stopped beneath the front portico.

A man stepped down, carrying a leather dispatch case.

Even from the upper window, I could see the dust upon his coat and the urgency in his movements. Monsieur Lebon appeared below and hurried down the steps to meet him.

The stranger removed a letter from his case.

Monsieur took one look at the seal and went pale.

Beside me, Cécile made a small, wounded sound.

Her fingers closed around the curtain.

Then she hurried to the writing table, seized the pencil and wrote a name beneath the Swedish word she had copied only moments before.

Nathaniel Vale.

CHAPTER TWO

ELIN

Below, Monsieur Lebon had barely reached the bottom of the steps.

Beside me, Cécile held the pencil so tightly I feared it would break.

I looked from her to the dust-covered man standing beneath the portico. He had removed his hat and was reaching inside a leather dispatch case while Monsieur waited before him.

Cécile drew back so quickly that the curtain rings rattled against the rod.

Dinah caught her by the arm and pulled her farther from the window.