I went back out with a tray and a face I'd practiced.
Every rich person looks the same from the elbows down. Rings, watches, hands that never fixed anything.
Seraphine: Runner. Someone spilled on the fourth-floor landing.
I took the service stairs two at a time, glad of the quiet.
The landing was empty. No spill.
Bramwell: Miss Kerr. You're harder to find than a first edition.
Bramwell Tarr stood by the rail, signet ring catching the light, silver hair combed back.
Darcy: I'm working. Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying.
Bramwell: No. You're what's being sold. That's the difference.
He came down two steps and stopped close enough that I could smell whiskey and money.
Bramwell: You embarrassed me at dinner. I let that go.
Bramwell: Then you dropped my ring in a glass.
Darcy: It wasn't cheap. That champagne was forty quid a glass.
My mouth has never once asked me first.
Bramwell: Funny. Your father won't be.
He took my wrist. Not hard enough to bruise where people would see. Just enough.
Bramwell: Friday came and went. Your name is still on my papers.
Darcy: Take it off them.
Bramwell: Then the bank calls the police about the fund your father pledged.
Bramwell: Fraud. Six figures. Fifty-eight is old to start a prison sentence, wouldn't you say?
Bramwell: Or nobody calls anyone. A man visits him tonight, breaks a few fingers, and then I call.
Bramwell: Either way, sweetheart, the Kerr name pays what it owes.
My throat closed up. This was the trap, and I'd walked into it in a staff shirt.
Then the shadows below the stairs moved.
Lachlan, half turned, dark suit, no tie.
I don't know which part of me moved. The scared part. The hot part.
I got my wrist free and put both palms on that iron rail.
Darcy: I'm pregnant.
The quartet downstairs played one more bar before somebody killed the music.
Darcy: It's Lachlan Crowe's.
Four hundred people looked up at me at once.
Darcy: So take your papers and your ring and your men and shove them. I'm not yours.
Bramwell's face did something I'd never seen on it. It went old.
Bramwell: You lying little bitch.
Bramwell: Crowe wouldn't touch a bindery girl with a pole.
Then Lachlan was on the stairs, and the crowd opened for him like water.
He stopped one step below me and looked up, and I watched him decide something.
Lachlan: Say it to me.
Darcy: I'm pregnant. It's yours.
My voice cracked on the last word, which was honest, at least.
His hand came down on the rail beside mine. He didn't touch me.
Seraphine stood at the bottom of the stairs in pale pink, and her smile had come off and stayed off.
Seraphine: Lachlan. Tell them she's lying.
He didn't look at her. He was still looking at me.
Somewhere behind me Bramwell was still holding his papers, and the shame was queuing up to hit me.
But for one whole breath, every person in that room had to look at me. I put myself there.
Darcy: Well? Somebody say congratulations.
My heart was banging so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
I had told one lie in front of four hundred people, and Lachlan Crowe had not said no yet.