No Ordinary Gentleman

Fucking Griffin. He likes to maintain he’s not family, yet he behaves like the perfect parody of the aristocratic second son harassing the maids. Like his father and his grandfather before him. The frilly aprons the servers are wearing certainly lend themselves to the comparison. I make a mental note to remind George to ensure the catering company doesn’t use them again.

“Thank you,” I murmur as McCain, my butler, exchanges my champagne glass for a fresh one.

“Your grace?” he questions, his gaze following mine.

“The girl. I don’t suppose you know who she is?” I ask as something begins to tug at the edges of my consciousness, though what I’m not sure. I feel unsettled, and it’s more than just annoyance at Griffin’s behaviour.

“I can ask the duty manager, if you’d like.”

“No, that won’t be necessary.” I consider the champagne in my hand, trying to push away the feeling. Was there something about the shape of the server’s departing silhouette that seemed familiar? Or perhaps it was in the sway of her hips.

I stifle a sigh, pondering how with each passing day, that night seems less and less real. She seems less and less real. Of course, I didn’t imagine it, but I have perhaps embellished the experience. Gilded the rose, so to speak, because she couldn’t have been all that I imagined. Her eyes couldn’t have been as mischievous as they seemed, and she was just a brunette, not a woman whose hair reminded me of autumn fields. No, it can’t all have been real. And maybe that’s why she haunts me in my dreams, coming to me, whispering promises only to make me wake as hard as a steel post and alone.

“If it helps, I do know she sounds American.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stand like pins.

No. I’m being ridiculous.

It can’t be her. It can’t be Holland.

Can it?

Pushing the glass back to McCain, I follow my brother out of the room.

9

Holly

“Hey, have you seen Mo?” Stopping in front of a girl dressed in an identical outfit, I effectively block her passage going the opposite way.

“Probs out by the van,” Dana replies as she skirts around me, expertly balancing the tray of empty champagne flutes she’s carrying up the stairs.

“Damn,” I mutter, grabbing the burnished bannister as I hurry into the bowels of one of the toniest houses I’ve ever been inside. And I’ve seen the inside of a lot of super fancy real estate in the past two months. This one is a multimillion-dollar Belgravia address, grand in every meaning of the word. Ceilings high enough to house giants with elaborate Georgian mouldings picked out with gold. Crystal chandeliers and walls covered in hand-painted silk, then hung with massive oil paintings that look hundreds of years old.

But there’s no time to admire any of that. I’ve got to find Mo. If she’s out by the van, she could be sneaking a couple of bottles of champagne into her duffle, which I’ve seen happen before. Maybe not Mo, but I’ve seen other managers on other shifts. Fingers crossed, she’s light-fingered too, because that could be my ticket to getting out early. Or at least she might let me hide in the van.

I hate serving, but I hate even more how private catering is a big swindle. Fancy-named companies charge their clients eye-watering amounts per head for nothing more than a glass of bubbles, a few pastries, and one or two limp-looking shrimp. In turn, the supervisor on shift smuggles out the good stuff (usually champagne) already charged to the client. Meanwhile, lower down the food chain, the waiting staff get paid minimum wage and don’t even collect tips.

Well, you can’t stop me from having one of these, I think, snatching up something I’m told to offer up as “a monkfish croquette with a pea velout”, which, turns out, tastes more like tinned tuna with a hint of grass.

My tray makes a hollow ting as I drop it to the commercial-grade kitchen countertop and head for the back door. A few more feet, and I’ll have made good on my escape.

“Hey, wait!”

A-hell-no. I’m not stopping. Not even for the kind of deep voice that’s haunted my dreams and disturbed my sleep these past few weeks.

I am so out of here.

I’m not even supposed to be here! And I mean that on so many levels.

Alexander. Goddammit, Alexander! In a city of eight million people, we are not supposed to see each other again, especially not while I’m wearing a frilly apron with pea velouté stains! I thought I’d made it out of the room before he’d seen me, even if I did squeak and almost drop my tray when I’d spied his magnificence across the room.

Squeaked, almost dropped my tray, and almost peed myself.

And to think these past few weeks I’ve been complaining that, as a server, I got looked through instead of at. Why tonight of all nights did that have to change?