Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

I lifted my head, my gaze flitting from one icy stare to the next, and raised my voice. “Do you think I want to be here?”

Everyone stared at me a moment longer, then went back to what they’d been doing. Eating pastries, talking, looking at their phones.

With the time allotted to me for breakfast, I could have gone out of Crowne Hall and gotten something in Crowne Point, but I had so little time with my uncle, so instead I went to him.

“Uncle?” I asked softly as I opened the door, in case he wasn’t awake.

“Sabrina?”

I paused at my mother’s name. I hadn’t heard it in years. He always used your mother or my sister.

“It’s me…Story.”

He sank into his pillows, eyes closed, and nodded.

“I was wondering if you had time for a poetry reading?”

“Tomorrow.” He opened one eye, locked on me, then closed it. “I’ll have energy tomorrow. Promise you’ll come back?”

“Promise.”

I closed the door quietly, but I stared at the wood. I wanted to press him, to beg him, beg my tired uncle who is dying of cancer to just please read me poetry, but Barn’s voice tore through the moment like ripping paper.

“What are you doing?”

I turned, finding her scowl. “I was…”

“Mrs. Grayson Crowne needs her tea.”

I looked at my uncle’s door, and she tilted her head, eyes slimming. “Of course.”

I would quickly give Lottie her tea—Lottie liked jasmine tea made with a flowering bud—and come back down to see Uncle before the afternoon.

I dreaded my walk to Grayson’s wing.

Or…their wing.

I knew as Lottie’s girl I would have to see him, see them.

I knocked softly on the door, pushing it open with the tea tray. Lottie was already sitting up, but she looked as though she hadn’t slept much.

“I brought your tea, Mrs. du—Mrs. Crowne,” I quickly corrected. I set down her tray in the spiny silence, arranging the porcelain as I’d done for Miss Abigail. Lottie was wrapped in a silk robe, her hair still in a bonnet, the circles under her eyes dark.

I looked around as I set the tea out.

“He’s not here,” she said.

“I—I wasn’t…”

“Do you know where he is?” She picked up the steaming tea, taking a sip. I finished setting out the items and stood up, eyes on the ground. “He’s getting a postnuptial agreement drawn up. I’ll get everything. If he so much as puts a finger inside of you, I get everything.”

I focused harder on my black leather flats.

I heard the sound of Lottie setting down the tea, the clink of the porcelain on the wooden tray.

“Grayson and I are going to Asheville to visit my family. I need my things packed. Get started.”

Asheville? Uncle and I had a poetry reading. I’d barely seen him this morning. The entire fucking point of this hell was to spend as much time with him as possible.