CHAPTER 24
DEVON
Belle made good on her promise not to return home that night.
Which made me, in turn, call Louisa on my way to work the next morning.
Lou was staying at the Four Seasons, spending her days shopping and hoping I would get my head out of my arse.
The good news for her was that my head was inching away from said arse little by little.
Louisa answered on the first ring, sounding breathless.
“Hello? Devon?”
“Is this a bad time?” I rounded a street corner in my Bentley, looking for parking on the street. Underground parking seemed like a ridiculous idea. People had no business going under the ground when they were still alive.
“Absolutely not, it’s a perfect time.”
I heard the soft thud of a towel being dropped and the whine of a door opening as a fitness trainer in the background instructed, “Now back to downward dog position …”
“Hi. Hey. Hello.” Louisa laughed a little at her own awkwardness. I slipped into a parking space on the street and reversed.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
It was about to be.
It was time to choose a person who chose me.
“I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner tonight.”
“Sure. Should I book reservations for us?” Louisa asked sweetly. “There’s an amazing Italian restaurant on Salem Street that I’ve been wanting to try, although I’m happy to cater to any of your diet restrictions.”
My father’s words haunted me.
Love marriages are for the great unwashed masses. People born to follow society’s thankless rules. You shall not desire your wife, Devon. Her purpose is to serve you, sire children, and look lovely.
There was a point to be made. The Whitehall family had existed for so many years, had so many traditions. Who was he to dictate the end of that line? I would not allow the man to rob me out of my rightful inheritance.
“No.” I exited the car and galloped toward the front door of my office. “I was thinking we could dine in your hotel room. I have a few matters to discuss with you.”
“Is everything okay?” she asked, worried.
“Yes.” I took the stairs up to my office. “Everything’s perfect. I just had an epiphany of sorts.”
“I like epiphanies.”
You’re going to love this one.
“Devon …” she hesitated.
I pushed the glass door to my office open. Joanne was already waiting with printouts of my daily agenda and a fresh cup of coffee. I plucked them from her hand.
“Yes, Lou?”
“You haven’t called me Lou in a long time. Not for decades.”
Another pause.
“Should I … should I wear my finest silks?”
I could practically hear Louisa biting down on her lower lip.
I took a sip of my coffee, smiling grimly.
“Better yet, darling, don’t wear anything under your dress at all.”
My mother called me several times that day, skirting around the subject of Louisa without actually talking about her.
She asked about Emmabelle, if we still lived together. When I said we were, she sounded considerably less cheery.
“If Louisa and I are to have a future, the baby and Emmabelle would be a big part of my life,” I said curtly.
“But you wouldn’t move back to England,” Mum responded. “She’d chain you to Boston forever.”
“I love Boston.” I truly did. “It’s my home now.”
Whitehall Court Castle had never been more than walls full of bad memories.
During my lunch break, I went and picked a 1.50 carat cushion-cut engagement ring from Tiffany & Co.
When I got back to the office, I instructed Joanne to purchase a large bouquet of flowers and spare no expense on the task.
“You finally gonna woo that Penrose girl, my lord, sir?” Joanne couldn’t help but blurt out from behind her computer screen, munching on a celery stick that signified her fifth attempt at Weight Watchers that month. “It’s high time. A child should have a stable home, you know. A mother and a father. That’s how it was done when I was growing up, Your Highness.”
Joanne insisted on referring to me royally, even though she had no idea what to call me. She also thought the flowers were for Emmabelle. Why shouldn’t she? She had booked Sweven’s weekly OB-GYN appointments and sent cabs with me in them to pick up Belle.
“It’s not the Penrose girl,” I said shortly, blazing into my office.
Joanne darted up and followed me, her short legs moving with force I hadn’t seen from her since she had to take half a day off when her daughter went into labor.
“What do you mean it’s not the Penrose girl?” she demanded.
I settled behind my desk, powering up my laptop. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m courting another woman.”
“Courting another … Devon, is that how you folks do it in England? Because here, bigamy is illegal.”
Devon? Whatever happened to His Royal Highness lord sir?
“Belle and I aren’t married.” I waved her away.
“Only because you haven’t asked!” she boomed.
“She is uninterested.”
It was easier to admit this to a sixty-year-old woman with five kids and seven grandchildren who thought Ferrero Rocher was the height of sophistication than to do so in the ears of my mates and their wives.
“Make her interested.”
I chuckled darkly. “I tried, trust me.” In my own way, at least.
“If she wasn’t interested, she wouldn’t have let you put a baby in her, honey. Of course she’s interested. You just need to give her a little push. If you go out with someone else, you’re going to kill any chance you have with the girl, even if the relationship falls apart. And it will fall apart.”
“Louisa is an absolute gem. Lovely, well-kept and extremely stylish.”
“Those are good traits for a couch, my lord. Not a woman.”
“In a wife, too.”
I was being purposefully difficult. For some reason, I deeply wanted to catch shite for what I was about to do and knew Joanne would give it to me straight.
Heaven knows I deserved being yelled at.
Two splotches of red colored her cheeks, and she reared her head back as if I’d physically struck her.
“Wait a minute.” Jo held up a hand. “Did you just say … wife?”
“Yes.”
“But … you love Emmabelle.”
“Gawd, you Americans do love to throw this word around a lot.” I took out a rollie from a tin and tucked it into my mouth. “I, at the very most, want her companionship. But she is unavailable to me. I need to move on.”
“If you marry someone else, Your Highness, I’m afraid I’ll have to quit.”
“On what grounds?”
“Well … that you’re a turd and a half.”
Hearing Joanne use blasphemy to describe me—or anyone else in the universe, for that matter—cemented the fact that I was, indeed, a flaming piece of shite.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Get those flowers ready and go back to work, Joanne. And if you want to quit, leave a resignation letter on my desk.”
She turned around and stomped away, muttering under her breath.
For the rest of the day, she did not try to engage me in small talk whenever I left my office, nor attack me with new pictures of her grandchildren, nor give me a snack she’d packed especially for me from home—usually in the form of a healthy peanut butter and granola cookie.
At six o’clock, when I exited my office, a large bouquet with white roses, peonies, and ranunculus waited on her desk with a note.
Mr. Whitehall,
You’re about to lose everything for nothing. Congratulations!
P.S. Consider this my official resignation letter. I quit.
—J
Throwing the note in the bin, I grabbed the flowers and headed downstairs.
My phone began ringing in my front pocket with an incoming call. Mum.
It was outrageously late in England. Or extremely early, depending how you looked at it.
I picked it up on a whim, knowing that I shouldn’t.
“What now?” I growled.
“Devvie!” she cried in delight. “Sorry. I won’t take a lot of your time. I would love to throw an engagement party for you. The spring is a lovely time for celebration. Is there any way you could take a weekend off and hop on a plane with Lou?”
It didn’t sit well with me. The fact that Ursula naturally assumed Louisa and I were already engaged.
Additionally, the thought of being in a closed space with the Butchart brothers and a few dozen more stuck-up royals made me want to seek asylum on another planet.
“Work is hectic right now.”
“You only get married once,” she argued.
“Not necessarily in the twenty-first century.”
“I hope it’s not about that dreadful woman again. If she gets into trouble, it’s on her, not on you.”
That dreadful woman had a name, and frankly, my mother didn’t deserve to utter it out loud. But something struck me.
No. Don’t go there. There is simply no way.
“Why would she get into trouble?” I asked, throwing open the driver’s door to my Bentley before slipping inside. I put the phone on speaker and tossed it to the central console. “What do you know?”
What if she was the one who was harassing Sweven?
She had all the discriminatory characteristics: a motive, a grudge, and an end game.
She knew where I lived, which meant that she knew where Belle lived.
And whatever information she was missing could be filled in by a private investigator.
But was she really capable of such a thing?
“I know nothing,” my mother gasped, trying to sound offended. “I just said it because you told me she was a stripper. They tend to get into hot water. Your life choices say a lot about you. Why, what are you insinuating?”
“What are you hiding?” I countered.
“I’m not hiding anything. But I know you, and you are a caregiver by nature. I don’t want you to give up on things because of her.”
“I’m starting to think you know more than you let on.”
This made her blow out a sharp breath.
“You’re becoming extremely paranoid. I’m worried about you. You’re losing it. Coming back home would do you good. Please think about it.”
Dinner was, as expected, perfect.
The setting, the room, the meal, and the woman. All five stars.
Louisa sat across from me in the grand suite she was housed in, clad in a black evening dress, flawless for the occasion.
We dined on roasted lobster with red potatoes.
The french doors of her balcony were open, the spring breeze wafting inside carrying with it the scent of blossom.
It reminded me of Europe. Of lazy summer breaks on the shore in the South of France.
Of unprocessed meats and cheese so smelly it would make our eyes water, and bronzed skin, and chateaus I’d get lost in.
And I realized I missed home.
To a point where it started to hurt.
“You know, I tried to move on from you. I even succeeded, for a little while,” Louisa admitted, running the pad of her finger over the rim of her wine glass. “Frederick was an incredible man. He taught me how to believe, a power I didn’t think I had anymore. I used to walk around with this godawful sense of failure. After all, my entire purpose in this life was to marry you, and I’d managed to somehow scare you away.”
“Lou,” I groaned, feeling terrible, because in a sense, she was still doing just that. Trying to win me.
“No, wait. I want to finish.” She shook her head. “When I met him, he spent an entire year just peeling away my insecurities, layer after layer, to try and find out who I was. It was hard … and it was a long process. He had no idea what made me the way I was. Why my wounds had refused to close. But he was patient and sweet.”
I fractured the lobster with the cracker, feeling kinship to the dead animal. And for Frederick, who sounded like a good man, who deserved better.
And also a weird sense of revelation. Frederick had the ability and endurance to stick around for Lou when she was impenetrable to him—why couldn’t I do so with Emmabelle?
“At first, when I was with him, I had dreams about you coming back and me flaunting my new relationship. My perfect man. But after a while, I stopped thinking about you. He was enough. Actually …” she hesitated. “He wasn’t just enough. He was everything. And it hurt so bad to lose him. At that point, I realized I might be cursed.” Louisa smiled, propping her chin on her knuckles.
I looked into her eyes and saw sorrow. So much sorrow. Here we were, about to become engaged to be married, and we were still pining for other people.
The only difference was, the person I wanted was still alive.
And Louisa saw me as a replacement. A consolation prize.
“You’re not the only one who’d been scarred by this experience, sweets. I felt terrible about what I did to you. How I left you high and dry. I vowed to never marry anyone else. Clearly, I kept that promise,” I said, pushing the lobster away. I’d lost my appetite. “I never had a serious girlfriend. My relationships, like my milk, had an expiration date of less than one month. I figured if I ruined things for you, it was only fair I’d do the same for me.”
She reached across the round table, taking my hands in hers.
“We have a chance now, Devvie. Let’s make up for lost time. It is not too late. Nothing’s stopping us.”
One thing was. “I’m about to become a father.”
“We can do this together. You said you’ll have joint custody, right? I can move here. Ursula would prefer it if you moved back, but I’m sure we’ll still get her blessing. I can help you raise the child. We can have children of our own. I bear no hostility toward Emmabelle. I simply don’t think she’s a good fit for you. I’ll be who you need me to be, Devvie. You know that.”
She was saying all the right things.
Making all the right points.
“You’ll need to be good to that child,” I warned, my tone turning icy. “I wanted the baby as much as Emmabelle. We had a pact.”
“I’ll treat this child as if it were my own.”
Louisa brought my hand to her mouth, leaning her cheek against my palm.
“I promise. You know I never break my promise.”
I didn’t remember standing up, but at some point I did. Louisa was up on her feet too, her body flushed with mine, her mouth moving over my own.
My hands skimmed the length of her back. We were kissing.
Belle didn’t want me, my family was on the verge of bankruptcy, and really, would it be so awful to have someone to grow old with? Someone who had my back?
But at the end of the day, I didn’t enjoy it.
Not the kisses. Not the way her body folded around mine possessively.
I was completely soft, my cock refusing to find a logical reason for this union with Louisa appealing.
The softer I was, the more Louisa tried to coax me into arousal, kissing me harder, deeper, rawer. Cupping my cock through my slacks and squeezing teasingly, flipping her head back and forth.
Bile hit the back of my throat.
Not good.
I took a step back in order to stop it, to buy time. Maybe produce the engagement ring I’d come here with. Put it on her finger.
But I couldn’t, for the fucking life of me, take the ring out of my pocket. Make the final move. Ask her the question I couldn’t take back.
I don’t want perfect with Louisa. I want a big, hot mess with Belle.
Meanwhile, Louisa perceived my step back as an invitation to get undressed. She slipped out of her black frock to reveal shapely legs and a well-kept body that screamed five Pilates sessions a week.
Her dark eyes traveled to my groin, her brow furrowing when she realized there was still no detectable bulge.
“Buggers. Well, what’s a little hurdle—”
“Do not say little.”
She giggled, moving toward me again, resuming our kisses.
Swallowing back the sour taste of vomit, I tried to concentrate on the task at hand.
She was a beautiful woman. No less pretty than the women I usually took to bed.
“Maybe, I can …” Louisa slipped her hand inside my briefs through my clothes and rubbed, her fingers cold and bony. The distant sound of my father’s taunting laughter echoed in my ears.
“Is that okay?”
“Great,” I hissed, softer than a bloody Pillsbury roll. “Fantastic.”
But I felt nothing, other than great frustration as her lips moved desperately against mine. She was doing such a thorough job rubbing my cock I was surprised a genie didn’t materialize from behind my zipper.
“Wait,” I groaned into her mouth. I pushed her away gently. She latched against me harder.
“I’ll suck your cock,” she offered. Louisa dropped down to her knees, completely naked now, fumbling with the first button of my slacks.
I stepped aside, worried the engagement ring was going to slip from my pocket.
“Don’t, darling.” I caressed her face while simultaneously moving it away from my crotch.
It occurred to me, rather miserably, that I couldn’t have sex with Louisa. No matter how much I wanted to—and I did.
I wanted to get over Emmabelle. To move on. But it wasn’t happening.
“Is your stomach a bit dodgy? Must be the lobster.”
She hurried to stand up, rushing to the bathroom and coming back in a crème satin robe. “Seafood can be suspect if you don’t know the place.”
This was the Four Seasons, not a shack on a remote island.
I gave her a doubtful smile. “I better head home.”
And I’m taking my soft pig-in-a-blanket with me.
“Oh.” Her face fell.
“Lou,” I said gently.
“It’s just that … she’ll be there.”
“Comes with the territory of her living there.”
“Is it something I said?” she asked.
I thought about what she said about Frederick. About the sort of man he was. And couldn’t deny her the truth.
“Yes. When you told me about Frederick, I realized I could never offer you what he made you take for granted. I need to sort through things in my head.”
I slipped my hand over her waist and pulled her into me, kissing her lips.
“Take care now, Lou.”
“You too, Devvie.”
My head was still spinning when I got back home. My limbs heavy with the realization that I was apparently immune to all women in the world other than the one who didn’t want me.
I stomped my way upstairs, cursing myself for the millionth time that week that I couldn’t use the lift like a logical human being.
Once I was done detesting myself for my claustrophobia, I began despising myself for having a traitorous body. What on earth was wrong with it? In the past, I’d been able to get it up whenever the faint scent of a woman’s perfume wafted through the air. Now, my cock decided it had principles, feelings, and morals. Did it not get the memo that it was, in fact, a COCK? The least sophisticated organ in the human body, apart from the anus.
I shoved past the entrance door to a darkened, vast living room, kicking the fencing equipment by the door aside.
If Emmabelle was out again, working until late or being entertained by a male friend, I was going to … going to …
Do bloody nothing about it. I had no power over her.
Hope that month of shagging her was worth it, mate. Because this is your future.
Moving across the living room, I passed by her bedroom before retiring to my own bed.
Her door was ajar. To my great embarrassment, my entire body slackened with relief when I noticed the light inside was on.
Unable to resist myself, I stopped by the sliver of space separating both of us and watched her.
She was standing in front of an imperial full-length mirror.
Her hoodie was bunched up around her chest. Her stomach was bare. She cradled it in front of her reflection, staring at it in wonder.
My eyes trekked downward, doing the same.
For the first time, it was truly and undeniably obvious that Emmabelle Penrose was pregnant.
The hard, round shape of her belly could not be mistaken. It looked magnificent. So smooth and warm and full of a baby that belonged to us.
She was showing.
I closed my eyes, pressing my head against the wooden doorframe, drawing a breath.
“You’re so fucking gorgeous, sometimes I want to devour you just to make sure no one else will have you.”
The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
She turned around to the sound of my voice.
The love and wonder in her expression melted, replaced by a sly smile.
“I’m surprised Louisa let you off the leash tonight. Trouble in purgatory?”
Guess it was her version of the word paradise for us.
“Stop it,” I clipped.
“Stop what?” she cooed.
“Stop acting like a brat. Stop pushing me away. Stop ruining a perfectly good moment because you’re so scared of men you simply must torment them if they threaten to put a crack in your perfectly constructed wall.”
“All right, then.” Belle let her hoodie drop over her stomach.
“No.” I pushed myself off the doorframe and made my way to her, my stroll unhurried. “I want to see.”
Emmabelle opened her mouth—probably to tell me to go make a baby with Louisa if I was so interested in seeing a pregnant belly—but I managed to put a finger to her mouth before the words came out.
“It’s my child too.”
Silently, she pulled the hoodie up to her breasts.
I stood in front of her, gazing at the wonder that was her pregnant stomach.
“Can I touch?” My voice was unrecognizable to my own ears.
“Yeah.” Hers, I noticed, shook too. The air around us stood still, as if holding its breath too.
The tips of my fingers circled her stomach from both sides. It was hard as stone. We both looked down at her belly like we were waiting for something. A minute passed. Then two. Then five.
“I don’t want to let go,” I said.
“I don’t want you to let go,” she said quietly. We weren’t talking about her stomach anymore.
My eyes rode up to meet her gaze through our reflection in the mirror. “Then why are you doing everything in your power to drive me away?”
She shrugged, a helpless smile on her face. “That’s the way I’m wired.”
“It’s bullshit.”
“It’s still true.”
“Tell me what happened to you,” I demanded, for the millionth time, thinking about Frederick, the way he had peeled Louisa’s layers. Was I even close to shedding the first coat? How many more to go? And what in the bloody hell happened to this woman?
Even my mates, who were by no stretch of the imagination considered good guys, never left a woman quite so broken.
She took a step forward, erasing all the space between us.
I was hard as a rock and about to rip the clothes off of this woman.
“Stop butting into my business, Devon. You’ve already sampled my bag of tricks. There’s nothing more to see here.”
“You’re more than a ditzy party girl, no matter how hard you try to market yourself this way. False advertising.”
“Ha,” she said dryly. “You just haven’t read the fine print.”
A mean smirk tugged at my lips. “You’re fantastic, and thorny, and worth everything you put me through.”
“No!” She pushed me, her palms slamming into my chest. She was angry now, scared. I pushed a button. “I’m not. Stop saying that. I’m the bad crop. The unweddable harlot.”
“You’re fucking amazing,” I drawled in her face, laughing lowly. “Brilliant. One of a kind. The smartest woman I know.”
She pushed me again. I got harder. “I’m no good.”
“No. Not good. Fucking terrific.”
“I’m going to be a terrible mother.”
The last sentence was said in a rush of exasperation.
She fell to her knees at my feet, her head hanging low. “Jesus. What was I thinking? I can’t do this. I’m not Persy. I’m not Sailor. This is not my life.”
I lowered myself to be on her eye level, scooping her face in my palms.
My pulse rabbited. Bollocks, I was going to have a heart attack, wasn’t I? Well, it’s been a pleasure. Literally.
“Look at me now, Sweven.”
She tilted her head up, blinking back at me, her eyes shiny with unshed tears.
“I only choose the best for myself. Suits, cars, properties, restaurants. That’s the way I’m wired. Trust me when I say I was not lighthearted when I chose you as the mother of my child. You’re clever, independent, shrewd, creative, funny, and, so help me god, a bit of a nutter. But you are also responsible, stable, strong and levelheaded. You’re going to be an amazing mother. The best to walk upon this earth.”
Her chest heaved, and she looked like she was on the brink of a sob.
“What’s wrong now, darling?”
“You forgot pretty,” she moaned.
We both started laughing. She lost her balance, falling backward. Not wanting her to hit the carpeted floor, I pulled her with me and fell down to the carpet myself, using my body as a cushion for her. Our legs laced together.
“Sorry, darling, but you’re far from pretty.”
She pretended to throw a jab at my chest. I caught her wrist and gave it a soft bite.
“Gorgeous, however—”
Her lips were on mine in no time, hot and wet and demanding. Her tongue slipped through mine playfully, stroking and teasing.
I tore at her clothes, ripping her hoodie from the collar, careful not to hurt her.
Her hands were all over me. Her mouth too. I didn’t want to draw a breath. To give her time to change her mind.
She was undressed before she could blink. I was still fully clothed when I propped her back against the bed base, my tongue sliding along the back of her knee, up toward her inner thigh, teasing a sensitive spot that made her entire body shiver violently.
My lips found the sweet flower between her legs, and I sucked and bit and blew on it until she came, shoving my tongue into her to feel her muscles clenching it greedily. She hissed, her eyes widening, like she remembered something. I thought it was peculiar. The way she reacted. But then she shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. “Continue.”
Moving up to kissing her belly, I pressed hot kisses on both her tits, nibbling my way up her throat, to her lips.
“Devon. Please. Fuck me.”
“All in good time, Sweven.”
She reached to undo my trousers. I could feel the pearl of precum gluing my cock to the cloth of my briefs.
Belle freed my cock from the confines of my clothes and mumbled into our dirty kiss, “Say that again.”
“Say what?” I asked, sliding into her, there on the floor, finding her wet and ready for me.
“My nickname. Call me that.”
She matched the rhythm of my thrusts.
“Sweven.” I kissed her lips.
Thrust.
“Again.”
“Sweven.”
Thrust.
“Sweven. Sweven. Sweven.”
Thrust. Thrust. Thrust.
I plastered my forehead to hers as I drove into her faster and harder.
“I’m going to come.”
“Come inside me.” She clawed her nails into my skin, marking me, making sure Louisa knew. “I want to feel all of you.”
My grip on her tightened. Her muscles quaked as I felt my hot cum sliding into her.
We were both sweaty and spent when I rolled off of her, breathing hard and staring at the ceiling.
She was the first one to talk. “I was abused when I was a kid. To this day, nobody knows.”
My whole body tensed.
I grabbed her hand instinctively, even before I turned to look at her. I waited for more.
She continued staring at the ceiling, avoiding my gaze.
When it was obvious she wasn’t in the mood to share more than the bare bones, I tentatively asked, “Who was it?”
She smiled grimly. “The usual suspect.”
“How long did it go for?”
“I don’t remember. I was too … I don’t know, deep in denial.”
“Why’d you keep it a secret?” I propped up on my elbows. I knew before she even told me her family and friends weren’t aware of the situation.
I thought back to her awkward conversation with her father and chanted in my head, No way, no way, no bloody way. Her father did not abuse her. Because if he did, I’d have to kill him, and I was not built for prison life.
“Shit, I can’t believe I’m telling you.” She sniffed, the first tear falling down her cheek, sliding toward her ear.
I held my breath and, for the first time in my life, prayed to God. That she wouldn’t stop. That she would step out from behind those high walls she surrounded herself with, open the door, and let me in.
“I was always the tomboy, the troublemaker. I didn’t want to be the cause of yet another problem. Dumb, I know, but I was tired of being the bearer of bad news. The one who always got everyone into trouble. But at the same time, confronting him meant running the risk of everyone finding out. So I just … bottled it in. For a while, I mean. And then another thing happened …” She stopped, closing her eyes again, trying to swallow the lump in her throat and failing.
Belle wasn’t like other women. She was the type of girl who’d take her secrets to her grave. But this, already, was enough. It meant the world to me that she chose to tell me.
“The two men I trusted and loved the most turned their backs on me, each of them in his own way. This no-trusting, no-getting-attached vibe you’re getting? That’s my fuck-you to your gender, Devon. If I decide to trust again and get hurt, it’d be the end of me. This is why I keep resisting you every step of the way. Whatever you’re feeling, I feel it ten times over. But it’s not worth it for me. Either I kill my feelings or my feelings kill me.”
I brushed a thumb over her sunshine hair, tucking it behind her ear. “Darling Sweven, what’s a little death in the grand scheme of things?”
This unbearable, infuriating woman truly understood me. My quirks, my eccentric ways. Mostly, our time together was frustrating and bad. But when it was good, when the walls came down—it was the best I’d ever had.
Emmabelle turned to look at me for the first time since she started telling me her story. “Enough about me. So what made you claustrophobic, Dev? A truth for a truth. You promised to share when I gained your trust, and I think I’m there. Tell me what happened.”
And so I did.
Past.
The dumbwaiter was the size of a bookcase when I was first shoved into it, at age four.
Like a baby in the womb, it was spacious enough for me to move my limbs, but still small enough that I needed to crouch.
By age ten, my legs were too long, my arms too gangly to fit into it properly.
And at fourteen, it felt like being shoved into a sardine tin with fifteen more Devons. I could barely breathe.
The trouble was, I kept on growing and the dumbwaiter stayed the exact same size. A small measly hole.
I didn’t always hate it.
At first, as a wee boy, I even learned to appreciate it.
Spent my time thinking. About what I wanted to be when I grew up (fireman). And later on, about girls I liked and tricks I’d learned at fencing lessons, and what it would feel like to be a bug, or an umbrella, or a teacup.
It all went to hell one day, when I was eleven.
I’d done something particularly nasty to upset my father. Snuck into his office and stole his poker then used it as a sword to fight with a tree.
That poker was vintage and cost more than my life, my father had explained when he caught me with the thing broken in half (the tree had obviously won).
I was thrown into the dumbwaiter for the evening.
Mummy and Cecilia were away, visiting relatives up in Yorkshire. I wanted to go with them (I never wanted to stay all by myself with Papa), but Mummy said I couldn’t miss an entire weekend’s worth of fencing sessions with my sabreur.
“Plus, you haven’t been spending enough time with Papa. A bit of bonding time for you two is just what the doctor ordered.”
So there I was, in the dumbwaiter, thinking about what it must feel like to be a bottle carrying a letter at sea, or cracked pavement, or a coffee mug in a busy London café.
That should have been it.
Another night in the dumbwaiter, followed by a morning drenched with silence and frequent trips to the loo to make up for the time I had to hold it in when I was caged.
Only it wasn’t.
Because on that particular day came a storm so big and so terrible, it knocked out the electricity.
My father rushed to the servants’ cottages, where the power was still on, to spend the night and perhaps be entertained by one of the maids, something I knew he did when Mummy wasn’t home.
He forgot one thing.
Me.
I noticed the leak in the dumbwaiter when a persistent trickle of water kept falling on my face, interrupting my sleep.
I was all mangled inside myself, pressed against all four walls. I ached to move, to stretch, to crane my neck.
When I woke up in a flurry, the water had already reached my waist.
I began banging on the door. Crying, screaming, raking my fingernails over the wooden thing to try and pry it open.
I broke my fingernails and tore my own flesh trying to get out of there.
And the worst part was, I knew I stood no chance.
My family wasn’t in the house.
My father left me for dead. Deliberately or not, I didn’t know, and at that point couldn’t care less.
If I died, they could try for another. My father would finally have the son he always wanted. Strong and tough as nails and never scared.
The water came all the way to my neck when I heard thudding across the hallway. Footsteps.
By that time, I was almost drunk with exhaustion and already came to peace with my fate. All I wanted was for death to be quick about it.
But this gave me new hope. I banged and I screamed and splashed, trying to draw attention to myself, swallowing water in the process.
“Devon! Devon!”
The voice was muffled by the water. My head was going under, but I could still hear it.
Finally, the dumbwaiter door pushed open. Gallons of water poured out of it—and so did I.
I fell down like a brick at the legs of the person who was now my savior. The saint who gave me mercy. I choked and flailed, like a fish out of water. Relief made me pee my pants, but I didn’t think anyone could tell.
Looking up, I saw Louisa.
“Lou,” I choked.
My voice was so hoarse, you could hardly hear it.
“Oh, Devvie. Oh, God. We were meant to meet up, don’t you remember? You never showed up at the barn, so I sent for you. But the driver didn’t want to leave the car, so I asked him to drive me here. The front doors were locked, but then I remembered you told me where the spare keys were …”
She fell to her knees, pulling me into her arms. Her voice hovered over my head like a cloud as I drifted in and out of consciousness.
“I promised I would always have your back,” I heard her say. “I’m so glad I got to you in time.”
We hugged on the floor. I slackened against her, my body so much heavier than hers—and still, she handled my weight without complaint. Thudding came from the stairs, and in the darkened hallway loomed the shadow of my father, big and bad and imposing.
“What did you do, you stupid girl?” he growled, seething. “He was supposed to die.”
Sweven was crying.
She didn’t even try to hide it for a change.
Tears ran down her cheeks, some slipping into her mouth, others rolling down her neck.
“I can’t believe the bastard put you through that. No wonder you ran away and refused to do what he wanted you to. Jesus. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Her whole body was quaking, back and forth. “You looked death in the eye, Devon.”
“Without blinking.” I pressed her knuckles over my lips, relishing the privilege of touching her. “You told me what made a hole in your heart, and this is why I have one in mine. This is why I’ve never gotten married. Why I hadn’t started a family. Something inside me knew that getting all the things I prevented Lou from having was just … wrong. I owe her my life.”
“She did what any decent person would do.”
“Is that so?” I asked idly. “Perhaps I haven’t met many decent people in my life.”
“Not wanting to be alone is not a sin.”
“Then why’d you give yourself the exact same fate?” I murmured into her hand.
She drew back, making a snow angel on the carpeted floor. Pouting and struggling to keep her sniffles to a minimum, she looked half-girl, half-woman.
A pregnant vision stuck in limbo between two worlds.
Too wise for her years and too scared to fall in love.
“Look what you’ve done. Now I can’t even hate her properly,” Belle sighed. “She saved you, after all.” She used that fake, exaggerated British accent she put on to hide her feelings when she was hurting.
I laughed, rolling over her, kissing her face, licking those salty tears away, my knee prying her legs open as I flicked my thumb along her nipple.
It was just like me to fall in love with the craziest woman on the planet.