Midnight in the Study

Natalie woke to the click of the clock in the hall and the soft hum of the house settling.

Not her room. Not hers, anyway. The suite had a sitting room with a fireplace that never seemed to get warm and a bed she had not earned.

She lay still and listened.

Voices. One low, one sharper. Past midnight, by the way the mansion held its breath around them.

Natalie slid from the bed, pulled on her sweater, and crossed the hall barefoot. The carpet muffled her steps. Light leaked from under the study door.

She stopped close enough to hear.

“—not one more property,” Arthur Vance said. “You’ve already made a spectacle of the restaurant.”

Damon’s voice came back flat. “The restaurant was a cover.”

“A cover for what? Your moods? Your private charity?”

“For abuse.”

There was a pause.

Then Arthur, lighter now. “The papers are already sniffing around Elena’s wing. The society column wants a human angle. A widow, a child, a hired girl. It reads badly.”

Natalie’s fingers tightened on the edge of her sleeve.

Damon said, “Say her name again and leave.”

Arthur laughed once. “You brought that waitress into my house and think no one notices? She’s looking around. She’ll find what you don’t want found.”

Natalie leaned closer.

The floor gave one small creak.

The voices stopped.

A second later, Damon spoke toward the door. “Go back to bed, Natalie.”

Her face went hot.

She should have stepped away. Instead she stayed there, one hand on the brass knob, the other curled at her side.

“I wasn’t listening,” she said.

“You were.”

The door opened. Damon stood in the dark wood frame, shirt sleeves rolled to his forearms, face unreadable. Behind him, Arthur Vance sat at the desk in a tuxedo jacket, tie loosened, his mouth tight as a wire.

Natalie looked from one to the other. “I heard enough.”

Arthur gave her a thin smile. “Then you know this arrangement is temporary.”

Damon did not glance at him. “No.”

Arthur’s jaw jumped. “You can’t keep a stranger under this roof and expect silence.”

“She’s not a stranger.”

Natalie folded her arms before she could stop herself. “That’s flattering. It’s also new to me.”

Damon’s eyes shifted to her shoes, the flour on her sleeve, the raw edge of her voice. Then back to Arthur.

“You’re done here,” he said.

Arthur rose halfway out of his chair. “You think sentiment makes you clean?”

“It makes me patient.”

That landed with a kind of weight.

Arthur stared at Natalie a beat too long, then looked at Damon again. “If she starts asking questions, you’ll wish you had left her in the restaurant.”

Natalie felt the words like a thumb pressed to a bruise.

Damon’s hand closed around the study door. “Too late.”

Arthur left first, shoulders hard, shoes sharp on the floor.

Natalie stayed in the hall while Damon shut the door behind him.

“What questions?” she asked.

His gaze held hers. “About Elena.”

And then she knew there was something buried in this house that had nothing to do with boardrooms or restaurants.

She drew one breath.

“Tell me,” she said.