“Well, I hope so.” I look around, making sure no one else is in earshot. You never know who is listening.
“I mean it,” she says. “He needs someone—”
“To keep him on his toes,” I finish.
“No,” she says. “To talk to and to listen to. I don’t know, maybe I’m too young and I don’t know what I’m talking about—that’s what I’m told anyway. But I think all people are looking for is someone to talk to and someone they want to listen to. It sounds so simple but it’s actually really hard to find both.”
Huh. That’s definitely food for thought.
“I’ll be right back,” she says to me, touching my arm briefly. “Cristina looks like she’s about to get into an argument.”
I laugh and watch as Mari hurries across the floor to her oldest sister who is yelling at someone about something. Then I decide I should probably go to the bathroom while I have a chance.
I pick up the ends of my long silk dress and make my way across to the bathroom, but it’s locked. I see signs that there’s another one upstairs. I really don’t want to make my way up them since the heels I’m wearing are stilettos and the steps are all granite and my feet are already killing me, but I do so anyway.
Upstairs I find the other set of bathrooms, completely deserted, as well as a wing of the museum. I quickly go pee but when I get out, I decide to snoop a bit.
It’s an art gallery with a few sculptures scattered here and there. There are a few lights in each exhibit illuminating the paintings, but for the most part it’s dark.
And creepy.
In fact, the longer I stand here staring at the paintings in the dim light, the more I think they’re actually looking at me.
I shudder and turn around.
And almost run right into another person.
Thankfully my scream chokes in my throat.
“I’m sorry,” I apologize, giggling nervously at almost losing my shit.
The person I bumped into is a red-headed woman in a pink tulle gown. She’s about my age, very pale and skinny, with a wide mouth and dark eyes. Her hair is long and parted on one side, this deep red with a tinge of orange, the kind that’s so vibrant you can’t be sure if it’s real or fake.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she says with a very big smile, the kind of smile that doesn’t match her eyes. “It’s pretty dark in here.”
She’s so chipper that it puts me on edge. She’s also speaking English to me with a very refined accent, so she obviously knows who I am.
“Yeah,” I say, looking around so I don’t have to be sucked into the strangeness of her eyes. They’re both wild and vacant. “I would have thought they would have sectioned this all off.”
“I suppose they trust the people that come to this sort of thing to have a certain level of class, don’t you think?” She tilts her head and purses her Lana Del Rey lips.
For some reason I feel like that was a dig at me. I mean, I don’t pull out my status card very often, but I am a freaking princess.
“I guess they know what they’re doing,” I tell her with a quick smile and then move on past her.
“You know he loves me, right?”
I stop dead in my tracks and slowly turn around. “What?”
What the hell is this girl talking about?
“With all due respect, Princess,” she says, slowly coming toward me, “he’s always loved me. I don’t even know where the hell you came from, but it’s time you backed the fuck off.”
I let out a huff of air and I think my eyebrows are on the ten-foot ceilings. “Excuse me, but I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I have no idea who you are.”
She rolls her eyes and examines her nails like she’s playing the part of bitchy sorority girl number three in a movie. “She says she has no idea who I am,” she says to no one. Her eyes go to mine. “Likely story.”
I try and think. The girl seems to be a bit unhinged and she knows who I am and I guess she’s talking about Magnus, so…
“Are you one of his ex-girlfriends?” I ask carefully.
“Oh, that’s real funny,” she says. “Ex-girlfriend? I was his ex-everything. We were supposed to be together until everything got fucked up. It’s not my fault that my phone was hacked.”
Oh my god. Is this the prime minister’s daughter?
What the hell do I do?
I clear my throat. “I’m sorry but I really think whatever you guys had is over. Maybe you just need to move on.”
Her eyes flash. “Move on?” she says in an eerie hiss. “I’m not moving on because I know about your sham marriage.”
“Sham marriage?” I repeat nervously.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know English,” she says, walking over, approaching me like she’s sizing me up for dinner. “I saw him, just a few weeks ago. At his apartment. Did he tell you about that? Or had you not been invented yet?”
She then saunters past me to the stairs and starts going down them. She says over her shoulder, her long red waves cascading down her back, “Ask him about it.”
And then she’s gone.
Ask him about it? Oh I fucking will.
Seventeen
Ella
I’m too angry to head back downstairs to the gala though I do feel like running after that red-headed twat and pushing her down the stairs, which means I should probably wait to calm down. I’m not quick-tempered—at least I never thought I was—but ever since I’ve been thrust into Magnus’s life, I find myself wanting to boil over at least once a day.
What the hell was she talking about? A few weeks before we met? After we met? Had Magnus been seeing this girl when he was leaving the estate at night? He said he was going to Harold’s but was that just a lie?
Then his mother’s words are slicing through my head, razor sharp and leaving wounds.
Surely you’ve seen him take interest in one thing and drop it the next?
Has he already started? Does till death do us part mean anything if it started under a lie? I might be marrying him but where is the guarantee that he’ll be faithful? At this point, how could I expect him to be?
“Ella?”
I don’t know how long I’ve been stewing in the dark, staring absently at a Monet, but suddenly Magnus is here.
I turn around, feeling the fire roll through me again as he strides toward me, looking like a rough and rugged James Bond with his scruff and his wild hair and his massive frame that seems like it can barely be contained.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, his pace slowing when he sees the expression on my face.
“Did you run into her on the steps?” I ask. My voice is cold.
He frowns. “Run into who?”
“Don’t play stupid,” I tell him. “You’re so good at that.”
He stops and raises his palms. “Hey now, I like you nasty but not without reason. What’s going on?”
“I saw her. That girl you fucked!”
He raises his brows, and I know he’s thinking, that could be anyone.
“Who, specifically? There are a lot.”
“You’re such an asshole.”
“Why, because it seems like I’ve had sex with everyone but you?”
I feel like my head is about to explode. “What?!”
He narrows his eyes at me. “If you don’t fight fair, I won’t either. But, hell, I’d sure like to know just what the fuck we’re fighting about. Who did you see?”
“That girl! The prime minister’s daughter.”
“Oh god.” He runs his hand over his eyes and then gives me a cagey look. “She’s here? Heidi?”
“Yeah, she’s here. She ran into me up here after I came out of the bathroom. Like she was stalking me.”
“That’s what she does.”
“I didn’t know who she was, she was just babbling on about how you still love her.”
“You didn’t know who she was? Didn’t you recognize her from the sex tape? I mean, she made sure that camera was getting all her best angles.”
“I never watched that stupid video! And nice way to gloss over the fact that she said you still love her.”
He sighs heavily. “Because that’s her. That’s a thing she would say, just like stalking you to the bathroom is too. Ella, she’s nuts. And not in a good way.”
“She says she saw you at your apartment a few weeks ago,” I say, wishing my heart wasn’t racing so fast. I need to keep it together. “Is that a lie too?”
Magnus shakes his head. “Yeah, I saw her. Outside of my apartment. She’d never been there before but somehow she found out where I lived. Ella, she leaped out of the bushes at me. Einar was there, he can back me up.”
I cross my arms, still on edge. “When was this?”
“A few days after we first met. The night before you came back and told us you wanted two weeks.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“Why would I have?” He looks confused.
“Because it’s important.”
“But it really isn’t,” he says. “I’m sorry that she got to you tonight but you have to take everything she said as a fabrication. I’m not in love with her and she was never in my apartment. She’s nothing.”
“She’s not nothing! It was her sex tape with you that got you into this mess with me!”
He frowns, his jaw tensing as he stares at me. “Right. This mess.”
“You know what I mean, don’t twist it around.”
“I just don’t know what your problem is. She’s nothing, okay? Yeah I had a few nights of fun with her and yeah I made one hell of a stupid mistake with her filming us, but that’s all done now. I’m moving on. With you.”
“I suppose I should enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Fuck, Ella,” he snarls at me, coming over and grabbing my arm. “What is going on? I mean, what’s really going on here? You’re usually so logical and rational and I’m supposed to be the one flying off the handle with crazy thoughts.”