Читать книгу Imprisoned By The Greek's Ring - CAITLIN CREWS - Страница 10

CHAPTER THREE

LEXI WAS THE only one who had not dressed for dinner, which had the immediate effect of making her feel like a scullery maid. She tried to suck that in and bury it beneath her usual unflappably serene expression—the one she’d practiced in the mirror for years when she was younger—but as she stood in the family drawing room before dinner in her wilted office clothes while all around her swanned her cousins in the typical Worth family finery, she found it grated.

Or maybe it was that everything grated, suddenly, and her clothes were just a symptom.

She had no idea where the rest of her afternoon had gone.

Atlas had left the carriage house and she’d stood where he left her for a long, long time, as if she’d forgotten how to move. At some point she remembered, because she’d moved to the window near the polished stones she’d collected during the one beach holiday her parents had ever taken her on, and that was where she found herself as twilight began to fall over the estate. It was like a fugue state, and it left her no time to return to her flat, change into one of her few more formal dresses and then get back in time for dinner.

Maybe there was a part of her that had wanted it that way, she’d thought as she’d walked the twenty minutes across the park toward the manor house. Maybe something in her wanted to walk into one of Worth Manor’s famous formal dinners dressed like an office drone, every inch of her the obviously poor relation she’d been to these people since Uncle Richard had come to collect her at eight years old.

Except...if what Atlas had said to her was true, she’d never been the poor relation at all.

Did they all know it? Were they all a part of this, or did they all believe the same story Lexi always had?

Lexi couldn’t let herself think about it too closely. It was too much to pile on top of the lingering effects of Philippa’s murder and the greater worry of Atlas’s return. The fact that Atlas had gotten out of prison in the first place felt like entirely too much to handle, if she was honest. Much less that he’d come straight for her. The things he’d thrown out so cavalierly, as if they were simple little facts like the color of the walls instead of literally life-altering—well. How could she possibly process any of that? It was too much. He was too much.

Not to mention the things he’d said to her. Much less threatened.

“What are you doing here?” her cousin Harry asked her when she settled herself on the farthest settee in the drawing room, where she’d assumed she was least likely to attract notice or offend anyone with her presence. He was a tad too provoking for her tastes, but that was Harry. Red of face and shockingly ginger of hair, but nothing so attractive as the redheaded prince who shared his name. This Harry was always drunk and bitter. “Do you have something for Father to sign?”

And Lexi felt it then. That twisted, tangled, knotted thing inside her that she’d worked so hard all these years to ignore. To keep tucked away so nobody could possibly suspect it was lurking in there, the dark and forever angry little part of her that had always found the compulsory gratitude that was expected of her a little too hard to produce on cue.

Especially when she was treated like the lowliest member of the staff instead of family.

“I was invited,” she said, perhaps more coldly than necessary.

She didn’t say by whom. If Harry was surprised by that, or her chilly tone, he buried it in his back-to-back pre-dinner cocktails the way he always did. And by the time the whole of the family was gathered in the drawing room, Harry was well on his way to being entirely drunk. And the reckless way he ran his mouth when intoxicated was far more interesting to concentrate on than the reason everyone was standing there, speaking to each other in quietly appalled, obviously anxious tones.

As if that would make any difference. As if the quietness would save them, somehow, when Lexi felt certain that Atlas wouldn’t care if they screamed and shouted. In fact, he might prefer it that way.

He, of course, was late.

“You’d think the one thing a person might learn in prison was how to be on time,” her cousin Gerard muttered. His wife, the self-satisfied Lady Susan—who never missed an opportunity to flaunt the fact that she was both titled and had provided Gerard with an heir and two spares to cement her position in the family forever—tittered.

Lexi stayed where she was, on the settee tucked beneath the far window. She felt different, somehow, than she normally did when she found herself in the middle of the Worth family. As if the fact that Atlas was innocent had changed something in her, too.

Or as if the things he’d said to her today had made it impossible for her to view anything in the way she had before. As if he’d torn the veil from her eyes without her consent and it didn’t matter, anyway, because there was no going back now that she could see. Maybe that was why she found herself studying these people, her family, whom she’d spent most of her life wanting desperately to include her.

For twenty years now, all she’d wanted was to feel as if she was a part of this. Of them. And the truth was that she never had.

In those twenty years, only Philippa had ever treated Lexi as if she was something more than a charity case. Only Philippa had ever acted as if she cared—and that had been such a long time ago it was almost as if Lexi had made it up. Dreamed it, perhaps, a decade back when she’d still been so young and hopeful.

Only Philippa—and occasionally, back in those gleaming days before anything bad had happened, Atlas.

Lexi didn’t want to think about what Atlas had said to her earlier. And worse, if what he’d said was true, what that meant about everything she’d believed about her life all these years. She didn’t want to consider all the implications—but she couldn’t quite seem to help herself.

She concentrated on her uncle. Richard looked like exactly who he was and always had been. A very wealthy man indeed, whose consequence stretched back several centuries to a time when the first Worth merchants had emerged from the unwashed masses and dared to claim a place in British society. He was inordinately proud of the fact he still had a full head of leonine white hair and stood a bit above six feet. He ran a religious few miles every morning and swore by an evening constitutional around the grounds to digest his dinner. He was a careful man, Lexi would have said, despite his vanity—or perhaps because of it. He considered his every move deeply and dispassionately.

If he was disconcerted by Atlas’s return, he was the only one who didn’t show it. Richard stood in one of his quietly masterful suits at the mantel over the crackling fire. He hardly touched the drink he held. That he was irritated with Harry’s drunkenness was evident only in the faintest curl of his austere lips. That he had never had any particular use for Lady Susan was equally evident in the way he failed to look at her directly, no matter how she tittered and made a show of herself.

Lexi thought Gerard was Richard’s favorite, but tonight she wondered if that was true—or if Gerard was simply the only one who didn’t inspire his father to visibly fight the urge to roll his eyes. She tried to remember how he’d treated Philippa, but that had been so long ago. And Lexi had been so young and easily embarrassed herself that it was hard to remember what had really happened and what was simply her own potential overreaction to things.

Before tonight, Lexi had never considered the fact that her uncle’s complete lack of expression when he looked at her was a kind of blessing. It was neutral, anyway. She wondered if that put her higher in his estimation than Harry—or at least, drunken Harry. Or Lady Susan and her tittering.

Then again, perhaps his neutral expression when he looked at her was simply because Richard Worth didn’t stir himself to have visible reactions to anyone who wasn’t a member of his nuclear family.

Damn Atlas for making all of that seem nefarious.

Lexi was the first to hear the footsteps in the hall. She sat a little straighter, her gaze on the door, but no one else seemed to hear anything. The footsteps drew closer. Then closer still, that same dark-sounding tread that announced Atlas like the drums of war. It wasn’t until he was right outside the door that all the Worths tensed, and Lexi couldn’t tell if they’d been pretending not to hear him earlier or if they’d truly been oblivious. Either way, the drawing room fell silent.

And this time, when Atlas pushed through the door, he was smiling.

“How delightful,” Atlas murmured, stopping in the doorway again, as if he knew exactly what kind of entrance he made and wanted to make sure they gazed at him there—not in handcuffs, not in a courtroom, not on a television screen from across the sea—for as long as possible. “All together again, just as I asked.”

“Welcome home, Atlas,” Uncle Richard said, after only the faintest pause. He even lifted his glass.

Atlas’s smile seemed to get darker. Sharper. He moved farther into the tidy little drawing room decked out in its Victorian finery, his black glare sweeping from one wall to the next, then back. Lexi found herself holding her breath while her pulse went wild—and hated herself for her own reaction.

It was the same reaction she’d always had to him. Only tonight it was worse.

“And what a home it is,” Atlas was saying in that same too-dark approximation of joviality. “Imagine my delirious joy to find that every single improvement I suggested during my tenure as CEO has been implemented. Every. Single. One. I took a long tour of the house and grounds today, and it warms my convict heart. It truly does. What a visionary I was. Feel free to applaud at will.”

“Listen, you—” Harry started, all red and snarly, but he subsided with a single harsh look from his father.

“There’s no need for all this menacing scenery-chewing, surely,” Uncle Richard said into the tense silence, his voice bland. Much blander than the cold gleam in his eyes. “We’re all quite aware of the role you played in...well, everything.”

“To clarify, do you mean the fantasy evil villain role you cast me in that landed me in jail?” Atlas asked with soft menace. “Or are you referring to the actual reality of what I did here that lacked any murderous intent but did manage to transform the place from a crumbling old mausoleum into...all this?”

Lexi saw the muscles leap in her uncle’s cheek and knew he was clenching his jaw. Just as she was clenching hers. She made herself relax. A little.

“No one can change the past,” Uncle Richard said in a gravelly sort of way, somber and serious. “We can only move forward, I’m afraid.”

Atlas accepted a drink from the wide-eyed footman, but Lexi noticed he didn’t take a sip of it. He only played with it in his hand, swirling the amber liquid this way, then that, as if he was enjoying a relaxing evening surrounded by loved ones.

“To the future,” he said in that same mild tone with its darker edge, then lifted his tumbler toward the light.

It was the most awkward toast in history. The room was silent, but filled with tension. So much tension Lexi was half-afraid it would choke them all where they stood.

But no. Dutifully, helplessly, everyone lifted their glasses. Even Harry, though he still wore that same dark scowl on his face.

Even Lexi, though she knew better.

Atlas didn’t say another word. He simply stood there a scant inch or two in front of the door—almost as if he was blocking it. It felt as if he was. He was dark and commanding and entirely too enigmatic, especially when all he did was swirl his drink around and let his black, fulminating gaze land on whomever he chose.

As if he was taking mental notes, none of them flattering, and committing them to memory where he stood.