Chapter 3 The Night He Called Her Name

I was at the top of the grand staircase, one hand on the banister, when I heard Julian's voice drifting up from the hall below.

It was low and clipped, the voice he used in boardrooms. "I told you I would handle it myself."

A second voice answered. I could not see its owner, only a shadow thrown against the marble by the chandelier light. The words were soft and unhurried, and they chilled me more than any shout could have.

"Whatever happens tonight, make sure he drinks it."

I stopped breathing.

Before I could lean closer, the conversation broke off. Footsteps retreated. A door closed somewhere beneath me. Then Julian stepped into view at the foot of the stairs, tipping his head back, and his voice was warm again.

"Elise? Are you ready?"

◆

"Coming," I said, and my voice sounded almost normal.

I descended slowly, my heart tripping against my ribs. The pale-blue silk whispered around my ankles. At the bottom, Julian looked up at me, and for a moment his whole expression went still.

"You've been crying," he said.

"I'm just tired. It's been a long day."

He studied me for a beat longer than was comfortable. I waited for him to press, and I did not know what I would say if he did. Then he let it go, though I saw that he did it reluctantly.

"That dress," he said instead, and cleared his throat. "You look beautiful, Elise."

Heat crawled up my neck. "Thank you."

I wanted to ask who had been in the hall. I wanted to ask whether the words had meant what they sounded like. But the doors to the east ballroom opened, music poured out, and the moment slipped away from me.

The graduation dinner I had been promised was gone. In its place stood a masquerade. Chandeliers blazed over a floor of dark marble, and hundreds of guests drifted through the room in velvet and silk, their faces hidden behind masks of gold, silver and black feathers. A string orchestra played something slow. Servers moved through the crowd with trays of champagne.

"Surprise," Julian murmured. He handed me a silver mask edged with pale-blue crystals. "My mother's idea. She wanted to give you a night you'd remember."

I tied it on and felt strangely safer. Behind it, no one could tell who I was.

Julian wore black, with a plain mask that covered only the upper half of his face. He moved through the room as if he owned the air, which in a sense he did. Guests turned toward him like flowers toward the sun. I followed one step behind, as I always did, until he stopped, offered me his arm and said, "Dance with me."

◆

I had imagined this a thousand times. It was nothing like the imagining.

His hand rested at my waist, warm through the silk, and he guided me across the floor with the effortless ease of someone who had been taught to lead before he could read. I tried to think of something clever to say. I came up with nothing.

"You're quiet," he said.

"I was just thinking." I made myself look up. "Will you miss me, when I leave home?"

I had meant it lightly. It came out like a confession.

Julian blinked, then smiled the way he did when something simple amused him. "Of course I will. But you're talking about getting your own place someday, aren't you? That's normal. Distance won't change anything between us, Elise. You'll always be family."

Family.

I smiled back and kept dancing, and every step felt like walking on glass. He did not know that I was already leaving, or that the word he had just offered me like a gift was the one I could least bear.

The song ended. A cluster of guests swallowed him almost at once, hands clapping his shoulder, voices demanding congratulations about the Singapore deal. He threw me an apologetic glance over their heads. I nodded to show it was fine.

◆

I drifted to the edge of the room and watched a server pass with a tray of glasses. I thought about the voice in the hall. Make sure he drinks it.

It could have meant anything. A toast, a gift, a business favor. I told myself that, firmly, three times. Then I looked across the ballroom and saw Julian lift a glass from a passing tray, thank the server with a nod and take a long swallow.

A chill ran through me. I started toward him, then stopped. What would I say? I overheard something I probably misunderstood? He would laugh kindly and tell me not to worry.

So I watched him instead. For ten minutes he was exactly himself. Then a woman asked him a question, and he stared at her for a moment too long before answering. His next sentence trailed off. He pressed two fingers to his temple.

I was moving before I had decided to.

"Julian?"

"I'm fine." His voice was slurred at the edges. "It's hot in here."

"Julian, look at me."

He turned toward me, and his eyes would not hold still. He took one step and his knee buckled. I caught his arm, and the weight of him nearly pulled me down.

"Elise," he said, in a small, confused voice, as though he were trying to remember where he knew me from.

"Someone help," I called, and my own voice rang across the marble. "Please. Something is wrong."

◆

The next minutes passed in fragments. A butler's startled face. Julian's weight against my shoulder as two staff members helped me guide him through a side door. A guest laughing, "Too much champagne, poor man," and me turning to say, in a voice I did not recognize, "He had one glass. Call a doctor. Now."

We reached a private sitting room, and they lowered him onto the sofa. A physician arrived within minutes, a grey-haired man who lifted Julian's eyelids, checked his pulse and frowned. "I suspect something was added to his drink," he said quietly. "He needs to be watched. Keep him calm."

Make sure he drinks it.

I pressed my knuckles against my lips. Julian stirred, and I sat beside him because there was nowhere else to be.

"Stay," he mumbled. His fingers found my wrist and closed over the little silver key. "Don't leave."

My heart did something painful and hopeful. I bent closer. "I'm here. What is it?"

His eyes opened, glassy and unfocused. He looked directly at me and did not see me.

"Vanessa," he murmured.

The room went very still.

"Vanessa. Don't go."

I sat there with his hand still around my wrist, and I felt the last of something small and bright go out inside me. Even now, even like this, he was reaching for her.

"I'll find her," I said softly, and my voice did not shake. "I'll call her for you."

I made the call from the corridor. It rang until it went to voicemail. When I asked the housekeeper if she knew where Miss Laurent was, the woman told me, with a sort of hesitant pity, that Vanessa had left for the airport that afternoon.

When I returned, Julian had slipped into a restless sleep. I took the chair beside him. The doctor spoke in low tones to a staff member. My mother's emerald dress flashed briefly in the doorway and then vanished.

I thought about the keys in my handbag. I thought about how few days remained before I would stop being someone he could reach for in the dark. I thought, shamefully, about how easy it would be to stay when he asked me to.

But he was not asking me. He was asking for someone he thought I was not.

I stayed anyway. I stayed because he was safe in my sight, and nothing else mattered more. Not my pride. Not my broken, stubborn heart.

When the doctor left to take a call, I stepped into the corridor for air, my eyes stinging, my wrist still warm where he had held it.

A member of the household staff was waiting there, pale and out of breath. She looked over her shoulder before she spoke.

"Miss Marlowe, there's something you need to see. The person who brought Mr. Ashford that drink has disappeared."