“Yes.”
“Everything I’ve read about him says that he was a… demanding man.”
I snort. “Well, that’s certainly true. Complicated and brilliant.”
“Is it true that he had five mistresses?”
I wrap an arm around her waist and meet the gruff eyes of my grandfather over her heat. “Possibly. I don’t know the exact number.”
“I feel bad for your grandmother.”
“Don’t,” I say. “She was a viper. They were a well-suited pair, in many ways.”
“You don’t think they loved each other?”
“I know they didn’t,” I say. Their marriage had been forged out of convenience and ambition, my grandmother’s just of a different sort than my grandfather’s. They’d succeeded, too. Together they’d made the Winter Corporation what it is today.
I turn us toward the door. “Come on, there are more rooms to explore.”
“If every room is like this, we’ll be here all night,” she says.
“Well, were you planning on going back to yours later?”
Her smile widens. “I might have packed a toothbrush.”
“Good,” I say, “because I have no intention of letting you go.”
Watching her in my space, in the family’s space, is a peculiar thing. Like seeing a part of your new self meet with the old. The past with the future. Sophia wanders into the dining room and pauses by the twelve-seater table. The walls are spectacular, with wainscoting and custom wallpaper, and from the ceiling hangs a century-old chandelier.
“Oh,” she breathes. “This is… wow.”
“I eat in here most nights.”
“You do?”
“Absolutely not.”
She gives me a playful smile. “I could almost imagine you doing that. Sitting dignified at one end and wishing you could ask someone to pass the salt.”
“That’s what you think of me?”
“Yes,” she says, and wraps her arms around my neck. Her body is a sinuous line, lithe beneath the dress and graceful even in stillness. “How often do you entertain in here?”
“Entertain what?” I say. “Indecent thoughts? All the time, lately.”
She rolls her eyes. “No, you flatterer. Guests.”
“Oh,guests.”
“Yes.”
I fit my hands to the soft swell of her hips. “Almost never.”
“Not even business associates?”
“Sometimes,” I say. “These rooms have a certain…”
“Gravitas?” she says. “Pomposity? Legacy?”