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Home / Romance / CRAVING THE WRONG BLACKTHORNE BROTHER / Kabanata 151 - Kabanata 160

Lahat ng Kabanata ng CRAVING THE WRONG BLACKTHORNE BROTHER: Kabanata 151 - Kabanata 160

175 Kabanata

139

Levi and I stayed in the nursery. Not because we had decided to. Just because neither of us moved after Nate walked out, and not moving became staying, and staying became sitting — him in the chair by the window and me on the small sofa Hayes had someone bring in at some point during the night when it became clear nobody was going to be sensible about leaving. Eli was looking at the mobile. Mara was asleep. The morning came through the window in the unhurried way of mornings that have nowhere to be, and I looked at the garden below and watched Nate cross the path to where Victor was standing near the roses. They did not shake hands. They stood beside each other and looked at the roses, which were not particularly interesting roses, just the roses that had been along that wall since before Nate had lived here, and they stood there like two people who had arrived at the same place from very different directions and were taking a moment before they had to figure out what to do abo

140

Her name was Saoirse Roger. Twenty-three years old. Born in the northern territories to a woman named Dara Calloway who had been part of Victor’s network in the early years and had left it when the council started moving against him, taking her daughter with her and not looking back. Dara had died four years ago. Saoirse had been living in the northern territories since then, working, keeping quiet, carrying a name that was her mother’s and not her father’s because her mother had made a decision about that before Saoirse was old enough to have an opinion. She had found out about Victor two years ago. Going through her mother’s things, the way you go through things when someone is gone and the things are all that is left. Letters. Old ones, kept in a box that had been at the back of a wardrobe for twenty years. Letters from a man who signed himself only V and who wrote the way someone writes when they are still figuring out whether they are in love or in something more complicated,

141

Nobody came to the estate that day. No cars on the gravel. No calls from Marcus that required immediate attention. No council, no High Council, no rogue kings, no ex fiancés at the gate. Hayes came at eleven for the check she had scheduled and left at eleven thirty having confirmed that both twins were thriving and that all three adults looked like they needed more sleep than they were getting and that this was normal and expected and not going to improve for some time. She said it without apology, which was correct. Then she left. The estate settled into its morning and the morning settled into its afternoon and I sat on the sofa in the small sitting room with Mara on my chest and the windows open to the garden and listened to the estate being quiet and thought about nothing in particular, which was something I had not been able to do for so long that it felt like a skill I was relearning. Levi was in the garden. He had taken Eli out at ten in the wrapping Hayes had demonstrat

142

She came on a Tuesday. The gate camera picked her up at two in the afternoon, a small figure on foot coming through the front gate with a bag over her shoulder and looking at the drive ahead of her the way you look at something you have been imagining for a long time and are now checking against reality. Marcus told me before he told anyone else, which was not something I had asked for but which I appreciated. I went downstairs. Nate was in the study. Levi was in the nursery with the twins. I went to the entrance hall and waited. She knocked. I opened the door. She was smaller than I expected. Not short, just compact, the kind of person who took up less space than they occupied, and she had dark hair pulled back and eyes that were — I understood immediately what Victor had meant when he said Eli had Dara’s eyes — clear and grey-green and looking at me with the careful attention of someone who had been paying very close attention to everything for a very long time. She looke

143

Mara laughed on Wednesday. Not a real laugh, Hayes said when I told her. Too early for a real laugh. What I had heard was a reflex, an involuntary sound, the body doing things the mind had not yet signed off on. I had been there when it happened. I knew what I heard. Nate had been making a face at her — not a face he would ever make in a council chamber or in front of Marcus or in any room where anyone who knew him professionally might be watching — a face that was entirely undignified and entirely deliberate and which he had been experimenting with for three days in the specific methodical way he approached things he wanted to understand. And Mara had laughed. One sound. Short. Gone before it was properly there. Nate looked at her. Then he looked at me. “Hayes said it was a reflex,” I said. “Hayes was not in the room,” he said. “No,” I said. He looked back at Mara. Then he made the face again. Mara looked at him with the expression of someone who had made her point and

144

She called on a Monday. I was in the nursery with both twins, the particular midmorning hour when they were both awake and both alert and both interested in the world in their different ways, Mara watching the mobile with the expression of someone deciding whether to make an announcement about it and Eli conducting his latest inventory of the ceiling. My phone buzzed on the windowsill. I looked at the screen. Serena. I sat with it for a moment. Then I picked up. “Ella,” she said. “Serena,” I said. A pause on her end. The kind that meant she had planned what she was going to say and was now deciding whether the plan still fit. “The orphanage,” she said. “Yes,” I said. “I have been thinking about it since you offered it,” she said. “I want you to know it took me this long not because I was uncertain but because I wanted to be certain before I said yes.” She paused. “I do not want to say yes and then have it mean nothing.” I looked at Mara watching the mobile.

145

She came on a Saturday at eleven. Through the front gate this time without calling ahead, which told me she had decided that calling ahead was a formality that belonged to the first visit and not the ones after it. Marcus saw her on the camera and came to find me in the nursery and said simply: “Saoirse Roger is at the gate” and I said let her through and by the time I came downstairs she was already in the entrance hall looking at the space with the ease of someone returning to a place they have already mapped. She had a bag over her shoulder. Different from the first visit. Smaller. Just a small leather bag worn at the strap from use, and she held it in a way that suggested she was aware of it, aware of what was in it, which was different from how people held empty bags. She looked at me when I came down the stairs. “I brought something,” she said. “Come in,” I said. We went to the small sitting room. The one that faced the garden, the one that had no particular history at

146

The document arrived on a Thursday morning in a High Council envelope that Marcus put on the kitchen table beside Nate's coffee without comment because Marcus understood that some things did not require preamble.Nate read it while I ate breakfast.He read it twice.Then he put it down and picked up his coffee and looked at the table and said: "Sunday.""For the presentation," I said."Yes," he said. "The full pack. Assembly hall." He looked at the document. "All of them."Levi looked up from the window where he was standing with Eli in the wrap. "How many.""Four hundred," Nate said. "Give or take."Levi looked at Eli."Four hundred people," he said. "For him to assess.""He will manage," I said."He will love it," Levi said. "That is what concerns me."Nate looked at the document one more time. Then he looked at me and then at Levi and said: "Both of you beside me. On the platform. That is not negotiable and it is not a discussion.""I know," I said."We bring the twins," he said.I

147

Serena was already there when I arrived at nine.I had expected to find the building still settling into itself, staff making last adjustments, the particular nervous energy of a space that knows it is about to become something. Instead I found Serena in the main hall with a clipboard and three members of staff moving at her pace, which was fast, and the building already entirely itself.She looked up when I came through the door."The east dormitory," she said."Good morning," I said."The beds are too far apart," she said. "I flagged it last week and Marcus sent someone and they moved them but not far enough." She looked at the clipboard. "Children coming from difficult places do not want space between them at night. They want to know the person beside them is there.""How far apart are they now," I said."Still too far," she said. "I measured this morning."I looked at her.At the clipboard and the hair tied back without vanity and the expression of someone who had found the thing

148

She came the day before.Through the front gate, no call ahead, which told me that calling ahead had become a formality that belonged to the first visit and not the ones after it. She had a bag over her shoulder, the small leather one worn at the strap, and she came through the entrance hall and looked at the space with the ease of someone returning somewhere they had mapped.She put her bag in her room.She came to the kitchen.She sat at the table and I made tea and we did not talk about tomorrow because tomorrow was something she was carrying in its own compartment and would open when it was time and not before.We talked about the northern territories instead.About the winter she had described in letters and photographs, the specific quality of the cold up there, the way the light came off the snow in the morning. She talked about her mother's house, which she was keeping, which she had decided she was not ready to sell, which was the right decision and she knew it was the right

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