Then I realized I didn’t really have a plan. Who was I going to call? Officially, I was not talking to my father (was he even talking to me?), Poppy was probably long gone back to London, I’d put Pope in enough trouble by showing up plastered on his watch, and Vaughn—not that he had a shred of humanity in his entire ripped body—cared as much about my wellbeing as he did about the cobwebs under my bed now that we were over.
Whatever we had been.
Christ, I was good at making a mess of my personal life. I wish I could do that for a living.
Somehow, I scraped my door open. Another basket full of chocolate, brownies, and two cold bottles of water awaited me, along with a steaming cup of coffee that looked fresh.
I managed a smile, even through the headache. Poppy.
Dragging the basket inside and unscrewing a water bottle took immense effort, but after a few sips and the sugar rush of a brownie, I wobbled to my feet and hauled myself to the showers. Papa and the senior staff had plush bedrooms, with showers and built-in closets, and at times like this, I longed for Papa’s private bathroom, but of course, not at the price of accepting a truce.
I couldn’t look at his face without imagining Arabella lying beneath him, purring like a cat, and it scared me to think our relationship was irreparable. I still hadn’t spoken to Poppy about it, but I knew she deserved to know, and that she’d be just as broken as I was, if not more.
After emerging from the showers, downing more coffee, and helping myself to another heavenly brownie, I uncovered my work in progress and stared at it, holding its dead gaze. It had taken a familiar shape, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Something about the frown of the sculpture made my heart squeeze in pain. I continued working on it all day without taking as much as a bathroom break, until someone knocked on my door.
“Who is it?”
It was probably Rafferty, checking in on me. I’d turned to the door and started walking when a voice boomed behind it, grave and serious.
“It’s your father.”
I froze in my spot, like a statue carved from ice. It took me a second to recompose.
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Frankly, that’s exactly why we should be having a conversation right now.”
Frankly, you’re a fifty-nine-year-old perv, and I carry your DNA. I wish I could scrub myself clean of my association with you.
I turned around and made my way back to the statue, picking up the needle and thread for the fabric I’d stitched to its shoulders.
I didn’t expect him to barge into my room.
I didn’t expect him to fling the door so hard it put a dent in the wall.
Edgar sucked in a shocked breath behind me. “Whoa.”
At first, I thought it was because I looked like something that had crawled out of a sewer. But I turned around and noticed it wasn’t me Papa was looking at.
It was my assemblage sculpture.
“You did this?” he gasped, his eyes wide and exploring.
I snorted out a chuckle. Now he was impressed with my work? How bloody convenient. And unlikely.
I returned to the stitching, ignoring his words.
“Lenny, that is…”
“Brilliant? That’s quite a coincidence, considering you didn’t give me the internship I’ve been dreaming of since I was five, and this comes less than a full day after I publicly called you a pig. Are you trying to make amends, or are you trying to cover your arse so I won’t go around telling people what kind of person you are? Because rest assured, Papa…” I spat out the word. “I don’t want people to find out the extent of how corrupted you are.”
Strong words, but time, I found, had two opposite effects. Either it made the pain dull and evaporated the anger or it allowed you to stew in your fury, multiplying your rage. The more I thought about my encounter with Arabella yesterday morning, paired with the two occasions where she’d slipped from his room, the more I was livid with my father. She’d confessed the affair to me, and Vaughn had confirmed it. In fact, according to Arabella, Vaughn had caught them in the act. It couldn’t get any clearer than that.
Papa put his hand on my shoulder, twisting me around to face him. I swatted his hand away.
“Touch me again, and I’m calling the police.”
He stared at me, confused and hurt, the creases around his eyes deeper than I remembered them yesterday. He had dark circles under his eyes. He was tired. Sleepless. Pale as the ghosts of his castle. Bet it was Arabella who kept him up at night, not the showdown with me.
“Darling, what is this about? You are worrying me to death. It is unlike you to get irrationally upset. And it is definitely unlike you to lash out. What happened yesterday?” His voice was tender, crisp as an autumn leaf. My father was not an unkind person, but he was busy, impatient—a gentle giant.