Chapter 5
The iron gates of Ashbourne Manor part like the jaws of a beast.
The car ride from Manhattan bleeds into memory. Rain. Silence. The crushing realization of what I have just signed away. The estate looms at the end of a winding driveway, carved from dark stone and dripping with ivy.
Mrs. Wexley meets me in the grand foyer.
She wears a severe navy dress. Her silver hair is pinned back so tightly it looks painful. Her eyes—two chips of winter sky—drag over my face. I wait for a gasp. A flinch. Anything.
She gives me nothing.
"Miss Marlowe," she says. Her British accent is clipped and unyielding. "Follow me."
We move through the cavernous house. My heels sink into plush Persian runners. The air is thick with the scent of beeswax, old wood, and dead roses. High above, generations of Ashbournes stare down from oil portraits.
Mrs. Wexley stops at the end of the east corridor. Her hand rests on a carved mahogany door.
"This is her room." Her gaze is sharp as a scalpel. "Starting tonight, it is yours."
She opens the door. I force my legs to move.
The room is a mausoleum. Impeccably preserved. The heavy, powdery scent of Chanel No. 22 hangs in the air like a ghost. A copy of The Great Gatsby sits on the nightstand, a silk ribbon marking the halfway point.
I open the closet. A forest of fabric. Silk dresses. Furs. Designer heels lined up in mathematical precision. Four hundred pieces of a dead woman's life.
"Miss Ashbourne’s things are catalogued," Mrs. Wexley says from the doorway. A silent threat. "You are to wear them, but you will not alter them."
"Understood." My throat is tight.
The door clicks shut. I am completely alone.
I strip off my black dress and pull a white silk robe from the wardrobe. The cold fabric clings to my skin. I sit on the edge of the perfectly made bed, my pulse thudding against my ribs.
My eyes catch the edge of the vanity drawer.
I shouldn't open it. I know I shouldn't.
I pull the brass handle.
Photographs. Dozens of them, tossed in a careless pile. I reach for one, my fingers trembling.
It’s Ondine and Thorne on a yacht. Sunlight explodes off the Mediterranean water. Her arms are wrapped around his neck. His face is pressed to hers.
He is smiling.
A brutal, physical ache punches through my chest. I have tracked Thorne Ashbourne through newspapers and shadows for ten years. I have memorized his cold, ruthless public mask.
I have never seen him smile like this. Open. Devoted. Completely unguarded.
I pick up another. Thorne cupping Ondine's cheek, his thumb brushing her jaw—right over the small mole beneath her ear. The tenderness in his eyes is devastating.
Heat pools in my stomach. A dark, toxic wave of jealousy rises in my throat. I am jealous of a dead woman. I am jealous of the face staring back at me in the mirror.
I shove the photos back into the drawer and slam it shut.
....
Midnight.
The estate is dead quiet. I lie in Ondine's bed, staring at the ceiling. The silk sheets are suffocating.
Then, I hear it.
A sound drifts up through the floorboards. Delicate. Precise.
Piano notes.
I freeze. My breath snags in my lungs.
It’s Chopin. Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2.
I push the covers back. I step onto the freezing hardwood floor, my bare feet completely silent. I pad out into the dark hallway, drawn toward the sound like a sleepwalker.
As I creep down the grand staircase, the music grows louder. More insistent.
I know this recording. I know the exact fraction of a second where the left pedal drops. I know the slight, almost imperceptible hesitation in the twenty-third bar.
It is my recording.
La Veilée. I reach the bottom of the stairs. A sliver of amber light spills from the cracked door of the study.
I press my back against the wall and peer through the gap.
Thorne sits behind a massive oak desk. The room is dark except for a single desk lamp. A heavy crystal glass of scotch sits untouched at his elbow.
He is leaning back in his leather chair, his head tilted up, his eyes completely closed.
The ruthless billionaire. The man who nearly crushed my throat yesterday. The man who banned me from ever touching a piano.
He is listening to my soul.
He looks exhausted. Stripped of his armor. The music washes over him, and I can see the profound, agonizing grief carving lines into his face. He is using my music to keep himself from shattering.
My nails bite into my palms. I bite my lower lip so hard I taste copper.
He doesn't know. He will never know. He forbade me from playing, not realizing that the woman whose voice comforts him in the dark is standing right outside his door.
Tears prick my eyes. Hot and humiliating. I am a ghost haunting my own life. To survive in this house, to be near him, I have to bury Celeste Marlowe forever.
I take a slow, trembling step back. I need to get back to the bedroom.
Inside the study, the final chord of the nocturne fades into silence.
Then, the sharp scrape of a chair pushing back.
My heart stops.
"Who's there?" Thorne's voice cuts through the dark hallway. Low. Lethal.
I turn to run.
But the heavy study door swings wide open, and the shadow of Thorne Ashbourne falls directly over me.
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