“But you spoke to Beryl Crowne.”
She sipped her champagne leisurely. “It’s our day, so we’re allowed to talk.”
Interesting. No one told me that.
I opened, then closed my mouth as the realization hit me. One day out of the year Josephine was allowed to talk? For over a decade she’d lived like this?
“Thank you,” I said. “Sincerely.”
Without her, I don’t know what would have happened.
She put up a hand like, it’s nothing.
Soft Christmas music like crushed velvet filled the hall and the smell of warm butter drenched the air as the servants prepped for dinner. Josephine lingered.
“Can…I…” I scratched my head, stumbling over the best way to ask a question when she’d already done so much.
Her lip tilted slightly. “You must be burning with questions.”
“Did you go through training?”
“I trained in Scotland. It had its moments; the songbirds were quite pretty.”
Songbirds. Had she trained in the very same building as me?
“What did they do to you?” I asked softly.
She was quiet for a long time, her gemstone green eyes off somewhere I couldn’t follow. When she spoke, it wasn’t to answer my question.
“It didn’t used to be this way,” she said softly. “People in our position used to stand next to kings, used to become queens, and they don’t ever want us to remember that, Storybook. Your uncle was always kind to me. I would have done anything for that man. I wish I could have saved you from this.”
My uncle?
“Do you know anything about…” I looked around. “Coins?”
She lowered her champagne, face dropping.
“You haven’t found it yet?” Josephine had always been airy and fairy-like, and now she was filled with terror and darkness, her voice wobbling. “You should have found it by now.”
Twenty
GRAY
My grandfather rolled his cigar between his knuckles. “So, where have you been??
??
Underneath my wife’s skirt while you fucking threatened her.
My grandfather looked between West and me. “What is the interesting story that teamed you both up, and pulled Grayson away from his family?”
I narrowed my eyes. My grandfather never opened presents with us—my only memory of him on Christmas morning was to make sure I knew Santa didn’t exist, so I knew who put those presents under the tree: not some “fat fucking socialist”—his hard work.
He didn’t give a shit where I was, he only wanted to know how I’d slipped my guards again.
“It’s an interesting story, isn’t it?” West looked to me, grinning wide like the cat that ate the fucking canary. I remembered the confusion on Story’s face as I’d left her with Josephine, obviously wondering why West wasn’t betraying us.
Truce.