West slid his hand from my waist, down to the curve of my ass. He dipped his head down, so he could whisper against my ear.
“Where were you, Angel?” He slid his palm lower, under the curve of my ass. “What has your skin so hot?”
When you’re with him, you’re cheating on me.
My gut flipped, eyes on Grayson.
I stepped back. “I-I need a drink.”
West’s laughter followed me to the mimosa tower.
Josephine stood next to the tower, one hand on her arm, the other holding her sparkling drink. I grabbed a water.
“I’m Story,” I said, realizing we hadn’t talked. I don’t think I’d seen anyone talk to her.
“I’m Josephine.” She smiled. “You’ll have to forgive me. I would have introduced myself earlier, but I’m not allowed to speak unless spoken to.” She shrugged as if it was the simplest thing to say that.
I blinked. “What?”
“You’re the servant girl, right?” she asked. “Story?”
She hadn’t said it with derision as everyone else had, so I nodded.
“I’m sure there’s a lot you don’t know about this world. There was a lot I didn’t know.” She grew wistful, then smiled again, and moved to leave.
“Wait. What don’t I know?”
She studied me beneath her thick, black lashes, maybe wondering if she could trust me. Then she kept walking.
“Please.” I stepped in her path. “No one talks to me either…what don’t I know?”
“That’s a very long conversation.”
“Then just tell me, why can’t you speak unless spoken to?”
Josephine cast a furtive, sideline glance to her left. Tansy Crowne was watching us.
“Being a mistress isn’t cheating with some guy’s husband. It isn’t like the world you know. It’s a title. It’s a sentence. When you become a mistress, you give up the life you know. We do get one thing. The mistress always gets the holidays.”
“Why do it?” I whispered.
“It was either that or die. I had triplets to worry about. I’d already lost one child to them.”
I covered my stomach with my palm, and her eyes dropped to that. “They tried to kill you?”
“The Crownes do not abide bastards.” She took a sip of champagne. “But really, anything that would destroy their way of life. You don’t get…this…”—she waved to the enormous ballroom—“by allowing people like us to change things.”
My heart cracked. “Grayson could help. I’m sure he doesn’t want his siblings—”
“Grayson Crowne and my children are not siblings, Story. He, along with his real siblings, have never spoken a word to them.”
I blinked. That couldn’t be true. I tried to remember past Holidays, a time when I’d seen Grayson speak with the bastard Crownes.
I came up blank.
“Is it also forbidden? Is that why they’re not here?”
She shook her head. “They’ll be here soon, and they’ll be ignored like me. If you manage to have your baby—”