(Blood and Bone, #2) Sin and Swoon (14 page)

“It’s so nice to meet you, sir.” I step out as he gets the door and offer him my hand. He gives Dash a strange look and smiles wide like he knows a secret I don’t.

Dash blushes. Clearly I didn’t have the right response.

“Young Master Benjamin has spoken very highly of you, miss.”

He said
master
? Did he, or did I mishear because of the accent?

Dash slides an arm behind my back, leading me to the large front steps. “Oh, Nichols, you old charmer.” I notice there is a difference in Dash’s tone and accent. He speaks differently here. There’s an affect in his words he doesn’t have in the North.

He leads me up the stairs, leaving our bags in the car. I glance back, and the poor old man is lifting them from the trunk. I pull from Dash’s arm but am whisked back in. “You will let the poor man do his job, Jane. He’ll think you think he can’t do it.”

I snarl under my breath and pull my cell phone from my pocket, sending the message I had typed out to Nancy, the secretary whom I consider my favorite. “Mr. Nichols, can you leave my bags, please? I’m staying at the inn in Middleton, actually.”

“You mean Middleburg, miss? Am I to understand you have made prior arrangements?” He asks like he might chuckle.

Dash’s hand tightens on my waist, making me nearly jump, but I breathe through it. I will not let him see me cry because he may or may not have lied about his entire fucking childhood. When he said
country-club rich
, he knew I thought he meant I might have to drink a martini and smile when they told weird stories about their trips abroad. I might have to wear argyle. He lied. When he said
affluent
he meant
blue blood
. When he said
hoity-toity
he meant something I don’t think I have a measurement for.

I am fuming, which is almost refreshing since my brain desperately wants to solve the murder and vicious torture of eleven women. But that’s cool, we can hang here and they can all laugh and wear sweaters and make me drinks I don’t like.

“Will the young lady be staying here, sir?” poor Nichols asks softly.

“Oh, you’ve arrived!” someone says from the top of the stairs.

My head snaps back from the driver to a blonde woman more intimidating than I have ever seen. “Staying here? Of course you both will be. Right, darling, please come in.” She’s also English, so I don’t know if she’s his mother or another form of modern-day slavery.

“She’ll be staying here,” Dash says calmly to the serf and then turns his head to the woman in front of us. “Mother!”

His mother is British? Does that make him British?

I feel like that’s something people in a relationship would have talked about by now. How could he not tell me he’s British? My brain whispers that it might be one of those
I don’t share so he doesn’t share
things. Not to mention, I don’t really ask. I wish I had now.

I wish she just carried a knife or a gun so I could treat her appropriately, like a threat. But she doesn’t. She has a slightly sharp canine like Dash and is so beautiful I don’t know whether to kiss her or ask for the person who does her makeup for my next spy assignment when I leave the mind running behind.

She grabs my shoulders, squeezing slightly, and pretends to kiss my cheek. I gulp, actually out loud, and freeze as she brushes our cheeks, acting like she’s kissing, but instead saying the word
kiss
as she does it. She’s so tall I feel like a dwarf next to her and Dash both.

It’s confusing and overwhelming, but she isn’t alone.

There’s a man who looks like he might be an actor. He’s tanned and golden like Dash, tall and broad like Dash, but he’s wearing a double-breasted suit. He smiles, and a dimple puckers in his right cheek. His eyes are dazzling blue, and his teeth are so white I press my lips together, looking like I have to pee instead of smiling. My coffee-stained teeth will make him wince; I feel like we both know that at this point. He grabs his son and shakes his hand, awkward also.

The mother has the very same green eyes as Dash—ones that reveal too much. Her disapproval or surprise in me is obvious. I didn’t expect his parents to be as old as I suspect they are. But even with her age, she is handsome. Pretty but older in a way that you would use the word
handsome
. And agile. She moves with such grace and manners, making everything I do feel robotic.

My phone vibrates, causing me to glance down at it. It’s another text from Angie. You are a superspy! It makes me smile, a real smile, and is followed by a nervous laugh. That lifts the lips of his parents when they look at me.

“You are so much more—well, more than we expected.” His mother gushes and looks at Dash. “You never told us she was Asian.” She leans in, speaking louder. “Is English your first language?” Her eyes narrow. “Oh, how charming. Your eyes are different colors. Is that a contact? Like a fad you young people are doing?”

I give him a look. He knows what it means but laughs it off a little nervously. “Jane’s family is Irish and Scottish. Not Asian, Mother. And her eyes are naturally that way.”

“Right, of course they are. It’s a birth defect. My cousin had it. Died early.” Dash’s father gives me an appraising stare. “You do look quite Asian for an Irish girl.” His father is English as well and possibly a bigger asshole than his mom. So that makes me excited. Not only do they hate the Irish, they loathe the Scottish, and they think I’m Asian. Adding to all of that the fact I have a birth defect, which may or may not kill me early on. I just smile, forcing silence.

Dash grips my arm. His eyes are worried, intensely worried. Nichols strolls past us with my bags. I quickly skirt the parents as they turn their focus to their son and start the millions of questions. I walk with Nichols. “Sir, I need my bags.”

He turns, shaking his head so subtly I nearly miss it.

I nod, reaching for them. His eyes dart to the family, but I insist and snatch my bag. “I have a reservation.” He winces as I say it.

“Jane, dearest, you must stay here.” She tries to force the issue.

I suspect Dash’s mother is a special woman, and I will end up feeling a special fondness for her, but to avoid that specialness getting out of hand or becoming something negative, I turn and shake my head. “I am so sorry, but I was raised Catholic by some very stringent nuns, and they would never have heard of me staying in a gentleman’s home when we are unwed.” I feel like an idiot, but I don’t want to talk like the heathen I am while trying to convince them I have some fucking boundaries . . .

His mother’s jaw drops. “Catholic?” I can nearly hear her dying inside. It’s point one for Jane, and I am not giving it up. Not even when his green eyes turn to me, flashing disappointment. I could stab him in the eye for the lies he’s told to get me here.

I carry my bag back to the car. “I was just coming in to say hello and then getting Das—Benjamin to take me to my hotel—inn. It’s an inn.”

His mother nods her head in my direction. “We have a guesthouse for just these sorts of situations. Now surely nuns wouldn’t shun you, such a devout Catholic girl, for staying in a guesthouse? The rooms are quite sizable and you will find the general splendor of the guest house more to your liking, I believe.”

I open my mouth and snap my jaw shut. A point for Mrs. Dash.

Nichols snatches my bag back and hustles inside before I attempt to do his job again.

Dash grabs my hand and pulls me along, all the while still chatting with his father about something to do with golf.

His mother loops her arm in mine, placing a perfectly manicured hand on my arm. “Benjamin did mention that you were orphaned during a terrible car accident when you were a young girl. How tragic.”

The sweating starts again. I don’t understand why she’s touching me. I don’t touch people I don’t know, ever. It’s weird to go sharing yourself so easily.

She leans in, her words turning to a full whisper: “We are grateful to be able to offer you our family as a replacement for your own. We only hope we are able to help you fit in.” She pats my arm and walks gracefully inside, floating as if steered by the giant carrot in her ass. “I have laid out some dresses for you, something more suitable for tonight.”

I want to stab Dash, but I remind myself repeatedly that he isn’t at fault. It doesn’t work because, in my mind, he is completely at fault. He lied. He lied and he knows it.

But meeting them confirms exactly why he lied.

I never would have come.

A girl in a maid’s uniform, and not the naughty Halloween kind, slinks up next to me and curtseys. Dash’s mother nods at the girl. “Evangeline will show you to your room.”

“Please, come with me.” The maid holds a soft hand out for me, guiding me in another direction. I sigh the moment we are out of range of their prying eyes.

“Tell me you aren’t as stuffy as they are.”

She gives me a coy grin. “I try not to be, but they prefer we all have the same set of manners, opinions, and habits.”

“Can you not curtsey and act stuffy when it’s just us?”

She nods. “If that is what you wish.” She winks animatedly, giving the exact opposite effect a wink is meant to. Instead of it feeling like she is joking, I feel like she is laughing at me. But she does seem to relax a bit when she speaks again. “They just stopped making the staff line up on the stairs in formation when they arrived home. Apparently they still have to do it in Europe, but here in Virginia everyone finds it antiquated, so they have told us we no longer have to.”

Good God.
“Where are you from?” I ask, glancing around the vast hallways and huge rooms as my stomach balls into knots I am certain will never heal.

She pauses, giving me a look. “What do you mean? Here, of course.”

I roll my eyes as she leads me to a set of doors. “You were bred in captivity?”

She lifts a brow. “No, Canada, actually. I’m from the East Coast, but I have worked here for five years. Since I turned eighteen.” She opens the back doors to a terrace that takes my breath away. It’s ridiculous, like the house. We walk under a long pergola next to a huge pool with a water slide and a hot tub. I stop. “What’s with the two pools? Is one heated?”

She pauses too. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“The pool out front and this one—is the one out front the cold pool? Like in Mexico?”

She giggles, as if she were ten years old. “No, it’s part of the garden, part of the fountain. That’s not a swimming pool out front. This is the only pool.”

I don’t even say the things floating around in my mind, and change the subject. “How big is the house?”

“Twenty-four thousand square feet for the main house, a thousand square feet for the pool house, and two thousand square feet in the guesthouse.” She holds a hand out to the small house that’s actually a regular-sized house in the real world. We walk beneath purple flowers and vines growing on the top of the pergola. They smell like lilacs but aren’t bushes. I’ve never seen them this way. It really is beautiful. Even if it’s more of a retreat than a personal home.

When we get inside of the guesthouse I sigh. It’s cozy and large, a perfect space. The small kitchen is a bar, really, and the sitting area has a huge fireplace and three oversized sofas. There are windows all around the house, letting in tons of natural light.

“There are three bedrooms, all with en suites, for you to choose from.” She bows slightly, like she forgot but remembered last minute. “I hope you will be comfortable and let me know if you require anything at all.”

I smile and watch her walk away. Dash passes her, looking spicy, so I quickly close the door and head for the bedrooms. He bursts through the door, instantly shouting in a lowered but not less angry tone, “Jane!”

I close the door to a bedroom and pause there, hoping he will just give up and go back to his kind in the house that’s the size of an urban high school.

But he doesn’t.

He rushes through this door as well, just as I’m pretending to admire the general splendor of the oversized rooms. And looking for things to knock him out with so I can make my escape.

“This is the guesthouse for people with children. It’s not suitable for my fiancée.” His face is red and weird.

I back up slowly, lifting a finger. “You lied! You are a liar! Mr. Perfect Doctor is a liar! Who knew?” It isn’t even strong enough or what I am feeling, but I don’t know how to get it all out. I feel like I might explode, but if I do he might end up dead.

He slumps, and my Dash comes sailing back in. “You never would have come. And I desperately needed you to come. Why can’t you see that? You aren’t easy to introduce because you like your routine and you hate everyone.”

“What! I don’t hate everyone.”
He’s blaming me?
I fling my arms, suddenly angrier than I have ever been. He’s blaming me, which infuriates me, but I am far more pissed because he’s admitted to lying, which is petty since we both already knew he was. “You are an asshole!
You
—”

“Stop shouting, please.”

I lean in, not shouting but my tone getting much sharper. “You lied. You said your family was country-club wealthy. This is something else. She mocked my eyes, and your dad said I might die early from it. And the whole Asian thing was weird. It was like being with Angie during one of her Klan moments. Here in Virginia, I actually believe there still are some Klan.”

He starts to make a motion toward me but stops himself, maybe realizing where it will get him.

“Your mother hates me. She called me an orphan and told me she would help me fit in! Who even says that?” I stomp to my bed and lift the silk and fluffy gowns from the bed. “She left these here for me—
picked my clothes for me!
This one doesn’t even have a back. Maybe I’ll wear that one, and we can talk about my scars all night long.” I am on the verge of tears.

He lifts his hands like he might choke me and walks toward me. He doesn’t choke me but takes the dresses and tosses them into the pile of fluff and lace and silk. “Baby, she means well. I swear. They aren’t racist. You do look a little ethnic in some lights, but I like that about you. You’re beautiful. I love every scar and flaw on you. And your eyes make you look unique.”