Page 41 of The Billionaire’s Nanny

"There's a cardigan over the chair in her study. Green. It's been there since before the funeral." Carrington kept her eyes on her own cuff. "I sat down and leaned back against it, but I didn't move it."

Lucy didn't answer.

"The agent called me while I was sitting there. I told her to take the house off the market." Carrington rolled the husk once more and let it drop. "She asked me for a reason. But I don't have one. Not one that makes sense anyway."

The back of her neck had gone hot under her collar. She stayed where she was and did not touch it.

"That's okay," Lucy said, and moved her foot under the blanket until it was against Carrington's hip and left it there.

"The chair is still set low," Carrington said. "She was three inches shorter than me, so it makes sense. I just have never sat in her desk chair before."

Lucy laid the book down on the covers, face up, and lost her page.

"Have you eaten anything since lunch?" Lucy asked.

"No."

"I'll make you eggs in a minute." Lucy pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. "You didn't bring it home with you."

"No."

"I'm glad."

"Why?"

"Because it's still her chair," Lucy said. Then: "What happens to Clara's house now?"

"Nothing. It sits there and I keep paying for it."

"That's allowed," Lucy said.

"Is it?"

"People do it for years," Lucy said. "Nobody makes you explain it."

Neither of them said anything. Out in the courtyard, the path lights were on and the sky above the hedge had not gone fully dark. Every window in the kitchen wing was black.

Carrington turned her cuff over and looked at the rest of the seed dust caught in it, then folded the cuff under so it did not show.

"You stood up when I came into the kitchen on Tuesday," Carrington said. "You did it again yesterday morning, with a dish towel in your hand."

Lucy looked at her. "Did I?"

"Both times."

"It's a house I work in," Lucy said. "I'll stop."

"You could stop calling me Ms. Cole in the daytime, too."

"No, I couldn't," Lucy said.

16

LUCY

It took a second and a half to hurt. Lucy had reached across the pan for the salt and laid the inside of her forearm down along the edge of it. For the first few seconds, she felt nothing at all. Then it hit her all at once, and there was a pink stripe two inches long on the inside of her arm.

She ran it under the cold tap for a slow count of sixty while the butter burned on the stove. She poured it into the sink, wiped the pan, and started over. She cracked four eggs into the pan and scrambled them. Carrington hadn't eaten since lunch, and she had said it so flippantly, like it didn’t matter.