Thank God for Mindy, our cook. Without her, I wouldn’t have a single ally in this awful house.
I ate half of the sandwich slowly, wrapping up the rest and putting it in my mini fridge with my bottled water. I’d need it later. Then I went back out to my bedroom and got undressed for bed, crawling under the covers of my four poster bed.
Into my mind’s eye swam the image of Lucien as I’d seen him at his soldier’s funeral. He was a tall man and he’d looked larger still dressed in a crisp black suit and an overcoat. He’d kept his face turned away, deliberately ignoring me. The only thing I could see was his hand hanging at his side. Fine, square, made of angles and bronzed skin. A shiver had gone up my spine as I thought about that hand and how someday I would be his wife and he would touch me with it.
Sunday came before I knew it. I went to mass at noon with my parents and when we returned home, there was a stylist and a makeup artist from the salon. I almost rolled my eyes at the sight, but forced myself to be polite and cheerful to them. After all, it wasn’t their fault that my mother was horrible.
They followed me up to my bedroom and began setting up their things. I went to my closet and took out the dress my mother had set back for me. She always bought my clothes and they were always more revealing than I liked, but I wasn’t allowed to say anything against them. I’d learned that lesson early.
I put on a matching, beige set of lace panties and a bra. Over it, I slipped the cream dress and stepped to the side to look at myself on the mirror on the back of my closet door. The dress was short, coming to the middle of my thigh, with a lace and chiffon skirt and a gathered waist. The sleeves were long and sat off my shoulder, leaving the flesh just below my collarbone and up my throat completely bare. The matching cream pumps completed the look and when I saw it all together, I realized my mother had done it again. Separately the dress and heels were modest enough, but together I was nothing but naked shoulders and miles of bare leg.
I sat down and let the stylist brush out my hair and straighten it until it was a curtain of dark satin. As they put the finishing touches on my makeup, I heard the doorbell ring from far below and my heart flipped in my chest.
Lucien was here.
I cocked my head, listening hard. I could make out my father’s voice and then there were footsteps that I tracked to the study just off the hall. My father and Lucien were probably talking business in private before dinner while my mother harassed the cook over the menu.
When the makeup artist and stylist had left, I sat quietly in the chair by the window, afraid to move in case I spoiled my appearance. I didn’t need to witness one of my mother’s tantrums because my lipstick was smeared or my hair out of place. It was easier just to bend to her will than deal with the aftermath.
After almost thirty minutes of silence throughout the house, I detected my brother’s tread in the hallway and then there was a tap on the door. I rose and opened it and found my brother standing awkwardly in the hall with his hands pushed in his pockets.
“Dad says he wants you to meet Lucien at the front door. He wants to walk you around the yard,” he said.
“Walk me around the yard? Are we in a Jane Austen novel?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Sorry, sis.”
My brother and I weren’t as close as we had been growing up, but we still cared for one another. I could tell it bothered him to watch me groomed and forced into marriage with a man I scarcely knew. But until our father’s death or retirement, Cosimo didn’t have a say in what happened to me any more than I did. We were both trapped.
“It’s fine,” I said, stepping into the hallway and shutting my door. “Let’s go. I need you to help me down the stairs so I don’t fall on my face and ruin my makeup. Mom would have a heart attack.”
“Did mom pick out that outfit?” he asked, frowning. “If you lean over, your whole ass is going to be out. Are you sure you don’t want to change?”
That rang an alarm bell in my head. My mother always dressed me like this and no one ever said anything, but something about Lucien was bringing out my brother’s protective side. His mouth pressed together in a thin line and his forehead creased.
“I can’t change, mom picked it out,” I said. “Why?”
We started down the stairs. I clung to Cosimo’s forearm as we made our way to the bottom, hoping I wouldn’t topple and roll all the way down.
“Lucien gives me the creeps,” he said. “You look at his eyes and it’s just…nothing.”
A shiver skittered up my spine and I stiffened as we got to the bottom and I saw Lucien at the end of the hall, waiting for me. He had his head lowered as he flipped through something on his phone. Cosimo sent me an apologetic look and stepped back, heading toward the study, and I knew I was on my own.
Taking a deep breath, I moved as confidently as possible down the hall toward my future husband. My heels clicked, my palms clenched, and my heart thumped in my ears. Lucien looked up from his phone, slipping in the pocket of his dress pants, and straightened, putting his hands behind his back.
Even if there was nothing but ice in his eyes, at least he was stunningly handsome. His body was broad, but slender and tapered at the waist where his white shirt met the strip of his black belt. He had taken off his jacket and the arm it hung across was thick with muscle, visible through the fabric of his shirt.
His hair was dark brown and slicked back over his head. His face was somehow sharp and soft all at once. His square jaw was brushed with faint traces of stubble and the curve of his mouth was surprisingly soft, almost sensual. If it wasn’t for the light hazel eyes, blank and cold like ice, I might have imagined his mouth could be almost tender…perhaps gentle. A shiver went through me again, but this time it wasn’t out of fear.
He inclined his head stiffly as I drew near. “How are you, Olivia?”
“Good, thank you,” I said. The way he moved, the way he said my name, felt incredibly formal.
Under his gaze, a chill went through my body and I was filled with the overwhelming feeling of being alone in the cold, standing on frozen ground, the world encased in ice and snow around me. The more I looked into those eyes, the more I wondered if I would ever feel warm again.
“Shall we walk?” he said.
“Yes,” I said, my voice breaking.