Flashes of the past shot straight into Seraphina’s mind, unbidden and unwelcome in their clarity. She could remember exactly how he used to look at her. How he used to touch her, like she was something he had decided to risk everything for, however briefly. They’d had a good time together once, until she ran. He’d told her himself about Margery, the truth arriving with all the grace of a man relieving his own conscience, just as she was working up the nerve to tell him something far more permanent than an affair.
She thought, sometimes, about what might have happened had she stayed instead of running. Not often, but often enough.
The hurt of leaving had been its own thing, contained and manageable. The hurt of returning months later, an infant in her arms, watching Margery Ravenstone take the baby into her arms instead, had been something else entirely. She had stood in that doorway and watched another woman become a mother to her child in the space of a single conversation, and she had let it happen because there was nothing else to do. She couldn’t have taken Luminița home. Home was the one place that would have undone everything she’d been trying to protect.
All of it arrived at once when his eyes found hers across the room, blue and stricken and unmistakably his.
She took another sip of wine, unhurried, before she allowed herself to move.
Sera crossed the floor with the grace of a woman who had spent her whole life learning to move through rooms without disturbing them, weaving between guests with eyes that tracked everything and settled on nothing for too long. She was looking for Margery. Some old instinct, some old guilt, scanning for the woman who had taken what Sera left behind and made it whole.
Margery was not there.
Instead her eyes caught on a girl standing near Thatcher. Dark hair. Dark eyes. A posture too perfect to be entirely natural, the kind of stillness that came from being told, repeatedly, exactly how to stand.
Seraphina’s mouth opened slightly, the wine glass forgotten in her hand. She bumped into someone’s shoulder, shaken at the sight of who the girl was.
Luminița.
The moment Thatcher realized where Seraphina was looking, his stomach dropped. Not at him, but at Alice. After nearly seventeen years, after vanishing without so much as a goodbye, that was where her gaze went. On the daughter she had left behind.
His jaw tightened. Absolutely not. This would not happen here, in front of everyone. Before he had consciously decided to move, he was already crossing the ballroom.
The party continued around him. Laughter, talking, music kept playing. The entire ballroom continued as though the ground beneath his feet had not just shifted.
"Seraphina." The name tasted strange on his tongue. A name he had barely spoken in the last seventeen years.
The sharp tone was a warning disguised as a greeting. His hand closed around her elbow, not hard enough to hurt., but firm enough to make his intentions clear.
Without a word, Thatcher moved with her through the crowd, weaving around guests and disappearing through a side door near the ballroom entrance. The hallway was empty, finally one thing going in his favor. The sounds of the gala dulled as they walked into the empty office.
The moment the door clicked shut behind them, Thatcher released her arm and then turned. For several seconds he stared, the resemblance to Alice was clear and astonishing.
Two letters. That was it, since the day she knocked on his door and handed over her… their child, he had received two letters with no explanation. His composure cracked first.
"Are you completely out of your mind?" The words came low and dangerous. "You send two letters after disappearing for seventeen years and then decide to attend a Ministry gala? Without warning. I spent six months wondering if someone was attempting to blackmail me after that night. Then I spent another six wondering if you were dead."
His eyes flashed with anger. His voice hardened again. "And now I find you staring at my daughter from across a ballroom."
For the first time since entering the room, Thatcher's expression shifted. Colder, something more protective. Whether it was to protect his family, his wife, his daughter or his name in society, remained to be seen.
"Tell me exactly what you're doing here, Seraphina. And for once in your life, don't disappear before I get an answer."
Thatcher’s voice speaking her name caused her to blink. When she refocused, her attention was on the man she had thought she loved years ago. He looked the same, just with some gray peppered in. He was still just as good looking as ever.
The tone of his voice was not pleasant. She did not smile. He took her by the elbow and led her away from the crowds, into an empty office, and shut the door. As he turned to face her, Sera was careful to keep her face still. She didn’t speak, only returned his stare.
As he began to speak, Sera didn’t move. She kept her mouth shut, and let him finish.
That was the first thing she had learned, long before she knew the reasons why it worked. Let them spend the anger and let it land. Responding before someone had emptied themselves of a thing only made them immediately fill it up again.
The silence settled then, and she looked at Thatcher with the calm of someone who had decided in advance how much of themselves they intended to give away.
Not much.
“You were never being blackmailed,” she said. “And as you can see, I am not dead.”
She didn’t feel sorry for the distress she’d caused the man. She hadn’t known that he was married when they started, it wasn’t until she was already pregnant that he bothered to tell her. She knew she couldn’t stay at that point. So she left.
Returning with the baby was the only option she had.
“I’m here on business. Legitimate business. I am not here to disrupt your life, Thatcher. I am not here for your wife, or your name, or anything you’ve built.”
Once upon a time she had wanted it. Before that dream was crushed with reality. She’d grown a lot since then.
“I saw the Prophet. I needed to know she was alright.”
Seraphina did not say that she needed to see the girl, nor did she say that she thought about her every day. She gave just the minimum of the truth, offered without messiness, the way she always worked.
She held his gaze and waited for him to decide what to do with it.
For several seconds, he stared at her. It was like looking at a ghost. Still the same beautiful women he knew eighteen years ago, touched by time as they all were.
"I saw the Prophet. I needed to know she was alright." A low dark laugh escaped him. Of-fucking-course she saw the Prophet. EVERYONE saw the bloody Prophet!
"You don't get to say that. You have no right. YOU walked away.”
His voice was quieter now. More dangerous. Taking on a dark sinister edge. "You walked away from me. You left her. Eighteen years later, you try to walk back into our lives and disrupt everything. No.”
Pointing his finger right in her face he said it again, ”NO.”
Some may see a father trying to protect his daughter. Keeping someone away that could cause her pain or distress.
Those people would be wrong.
Thatcher was only concerned with himself and how this scandal would affect him. Having Sera return, revealing the affair, revealing that Alice was not a Nordstrom, shining a light back on a family that was crawling back from the edge of social disgrace. She could ruin everything.
"You couldn't have chosen a worse time to reappear."
His mind was already moving three steps ahead. Who had seen them leave together? Had Alice noticed? Had anyone recognized Seraphina? How much damage had already been done?
His gaze narrowed. "So I'll ask you one time Sera. ONE time, who knows why you're here?"
Sera looked at the finger in her face and then back at him, unhurried, and with a slight smirk on her face. She was not scared of Thatcher Ravenstone; he could do nothing to hurt her. Perhaps it was giving up her daughter, or perhaps managing to pretend her mother’s death meant nothing to her, or just being someone who she was not her entire life, but a softness within Sera didn’t exist.
She’d been yelled at countless times in the past… this was nothing new.
The silence sat for a moment, her brown eyes on Thatcher as he attempted to regain his composure and gain control of the situation.
Sera knew he’d be rattled by her appearance, but this was much more than she could have hoped for.
“Nobody,” she said. “I came alone. As far as Ashcroft & Associates are concerned, I am here on assignment only. Nothing more.”
Seraphina tilted her head up slightly.
“You’re not worried about her.” It was a statement, not an accusation. It wasn’t unkind either. It was simply the truth stated by someone who could read the truth the moment he began moving through the crowd toward her.
“You’re worried about what I know and who I might tell it to.” After a pause. “You’re worried about your name. Which means you haven’t changed as much as the gray suggests.”
Seraphina smiled slightly, allowing herself the moment to take in his older appearance. He had always been good looking, but had not looked this angry the last time she’d been near him. She held his gaze.
“I didn’t come here to ruin you, Thatcher. I came because I saw two daughters listed in the Prophet and neither of them were the name I gave her.”
“You’re not worried about her. You’re worried about what I know and who I might tell it to. You’re worried about your name. Which means you haven’t changed as much as the gray suggests.”
Thatcher paced around the office, finding it hard to stand still. As he turned to face her, his eyes found hers showing a fiery rage. He could see his life crumbling before him, the catalyst standing before him in a deep blue velvet. The fabric made the color look black if the light was right. Fitting. A catastrophe in a beautiful package.
“I didn’t come here to ruin you, Thatcher. I came because I saw two daughters listed in the Prophet and neither of them were the name I gave her.”
His eyes showed just how skeptical he was. She could use all the pretty words she wanted. Declared her worry for the daughter she tossed into the hands of another woman, a stranger, and left without looking back, but he didn’t buy it for a second.
“Did you actually expect me to keep her name Luminita? Does that strike you as a name I would allow for my daughter?” he spit the name out with disdain, it tasting sour on his tongue.
The Ravenstone’s were a traditional family, the names simple and classic. The name Luminita would have painted a target on his daughter from day one. Questions would have been asked, the answers, he didn’t want to give.
“The Daily Prophet is full of lies. I would assume that was common knowledge." he said. The pacing stopped, Thatcher standing across from her, arms crossed, legs spread wide, anchoring him to the ground. His stance made him look imposing.
"Everleigh, our youngest, was kidnapped and brutally tortured. In doing so, the madman scrambled her brain. She has been suffering with this since the incident, only getting worse as time went on. She is thankfully getting the help she needs at St Mungo’s. It was a very distressing and traumatic time for our family, and the Daily Prophet twisted the narrative and tried to make money on her pain.”
Ok… he was laying it on pretty thick. His voice took on a tone filled with anger and desperation. Appropriate considering the situation. A lie coming out of his mouth.
“Alice has suffered. She is very close and protective of her sister. The last two years have been extremely distressing. You being here will only add to that. Sera, you need to leave. Leave London. Leave England. Go back to whatever cave you’ve been hiding in for the last eighteen years and leave us be.”
“Did you actually expect me to keep her name Luminita? Does that strike you as a name I would allow for my daughter?”
Seraphina didn’t let him see it, but his comment hit exactly the way he had intended it. She internally flinched at the way he spat Luminița, but outside she was still and unmoving.
“No,” she said, after a moment. “I didn’t expect you to keep it.”
She’d known that he wouldn’t. The second she handed the baby over to his wife, the name died. She’d hoped, hadn’t allowed herself to think of what name they may give the girl, but the name was the easiest thing to change and hide where she came from. She left anyway because the name hadn’t been for him.
Sera let that sit, watching as the man she’d fallen for paced. He was so familiar and yet such a stranger after all these years. What would things have been like had he not been married already when they got together? Would he be so bitter?
She watched him closely as he spoke about Everleigh and the troubles she had been struggling with. The kidnap, the torture… she’d read all of that in the papers. She would have thought that was her Luminița but the ages hadn’t matched up. She’d been thankful for that, while also sad for the affected child.
The desperation and anger in his voice seemed accurate on the surface, however she could detect some fiction woven into his words. Something that he said, or maybe how he said it, didn’t quite match what was underneath. She couldn’t tell what it was, or where it was placed.
“Alice has suffered. She is very close and protective of her sister. The last two years have been extremely distressing. You being here will only add to that. Sera, you need to leave. Leave London. Leave England. Go back to whatever cave you’ve been hiding in for the last eighteen years and leave us be.”
“Alice has suffered,” she repeated slowly. She wasn’t mocking him, just putting the words out there. She looked at them. “That is the first thing you have said that I believe completely.”
Sera didn’t move towards the door. She wouldn’t be leaving.
“I’m not going back to Romania, Thatcher.” Her voice was even and matter-of-fact. “You can be angry about that. You’re entitled to it. But I am going nowhere. You could have prevented this by responding to at least one owl.”
|
