CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE- Dressing the Part
She stared at her reflection in the mirror, taking a single curl and pinning it up slowly, as though entranced, a small, uncertain smile flitting over her lips. Behind her, Lucia straightened the dress she'd found for her friend and offered encouragement in vague, dreamy phrases, floating to Gen's ears like heavenly advice.
Curl after curl, pin after pin, and Gen felt her heart both lift and sink with the preparations.
She would have this one thing, just for tonight. She'd gotten so good at pretenses, so good at hiding. She'd been hiding behind herself for so long, for tonight she just wanted to hide behind someone else.
~~~
He sat behind the huge desk in his father's study, the folio full of money poised between his trembling hands. A dish of broken cigarettes and the occasional cigarette butt sat beside him, the broken ones deposited there when he'd managed to convince himself not to smoke, the butts deposited there when he'd been unable to fight the craving.
He'd waited all night long for his father to return home, his mother's voice playing and replaying in his head as he grew more jittery, more restless, and less certain.
Drake Mallory wasn't surprised his father was late, and he wouldn't be surprised if he'd been double-crossed. Suspicion borne of years of experience had nagged him through the night and well into Friday morning, when the devil himself had strode through the doors of Mallory Manor, a black leather folio slung carelessly over his fingers as though it contained no more than ashes. He'd handed it to his son and had shaken hands-shaken hands-as though it had been some sort of transaction. Thankfully, he'd left after that, back to his own world and his own environs, back to the demons he undoubtedly held council with.
And now, hours later, Drake held the case and trembled, wondering what to do with the money and video inside.
He started with the video, studiously ignoring the money beneath it and tearing the magnetic tape from its black plastic case, his fingers feeling dirty and clammy as he thought of what was contained in the micro-thin strip of plastic.
Once he'd torn it all out, he balled it up and threw it into the ashtray, lighting the cigarettes around it and watching it shrivel into a hard, black ball.
May my heart do the same, he wished fervently, and heard his mother in his head once more.
You'd sell her for it?
~~~
The cool, regal young woman looking back at her from the mirror was not her, Gen thought, for Genevieve Wesley had never looked so sure of herself. Genevieve Wesley had never looked so beautiful.
Gen Wesley had never looked like anything other than a pauper, but it was not a pauper who looked back at her.
"It seems we did a satisfactory job," Lucia considered, fervently hoping she'd managed to lighten Gen's heart in any way she could. When the redhead stood and beamed at her, however, everything smiled except for her eyes, where there was a wary sort of knowledge, the knowledge that she was running on the last dregs of her energy, that things were about to come crashing around her.
Lucia hoped Genevieve found herself before that happened.
~~~
Drake took stack after stack of money out of the bag, arranging it carefully, deliberately on the desk before him, counting the bundles precisely before placing them on the desk.
He intended to make certain every last pound was there.
~~~
She affixed the mask to her face, glad for how it surrounded her eyes, set them off, took them out of context of the misery of her face.
Genevieve was more than happy to hide, this one last time, before she went back to being herself, with no secrets and no life.
With no love.
"I'm ready," she whispered.
~~~
At Hogwarts, an exhausted headmaster fabricated one last scenario for the world he'd put together and watched his clock, counting down to midnight.
~~~
**Suggested listening: "Midnight Garden" by Bond**
Layers of gauzy material floated down from the ceiling of the school's assembly hall, pastel colors layering over colors in great, sweeping swathes that reached the floor, obscured the door, turned the huge mahogany-paneled room into a mystery, into a place of intrigue and romance. Stringed music reached her ears before she came to the hall, coming alone as she had insisted.
With one hand, her nails tipped in shimmering silver polish, the young woman who had before been only Gen Wesley with a brief, shining interlude as someone's lover, parted the gauze curtains and stepped into the room, raising her head to take in the sight of the resplendence.
Her hair was piled atop her head, the fire of it undimmed even on this night, a jeweled tiara nestled cozily among the myriad curls. The pale gray of her floor-length dress gleamed in the muted light of the room, and she split the crowd like a moonbeam crossing the floor. An elaborate silvery mask formed intricate patterns around her eyes, making her tears look like diamonds.
Before, she had been the pauper.
Tonight, Genevieve Wesley was the princess.
~~~
Five hundred thousand.
He placed the last stack of money strategically, squaring off the edges, buying himself just a moment to think.
Finally, he stood, placed the now overflowing ashtray in the center of the desk with another object, and turned and walked away.
With the confidence of a man long used to others taking care of his belongings for him, Drake Mallory took out his watch, checked the time, and never once looked back at the money as he exited the study.
~~~
"Nice dress, Wesley," Melissa Bulfinch snickered as Gen walked by, her head held high. The sallow, flat-faced girl was nearly beside herself with envy at the figure Genevieve was cutting, but she certainly wasn't about to let on. "Did you have to sacrifice your drapes for that?"
She nearly flinched when Gen turned, surveyed her with cool eyes, and smiled thinly. "Not quite," she said, and her voice was gracious, nearly condescending. "What a lovely costume, Melissa." She would not stoop, not for tonight. Stooping to this girl's level was what had gotten her in trouble in the first place.
Don't think of that, she told herself, and she let herself get lost in the music, in the strings and the swell of a song she'd once known but forgotten, a new song in an old way, or an old song in a new way. It didn't matter which, it only mattered that it fit.
She wrapped her arms around herself, hands clasped to elbows as she tried not to imagine him here with her, holding her, and trying to pretend he hated the whole thing.
You were the wrong one at the wrong time, she told the Drake in her dreams, and she sought out Connor to dance.
It took too long to get his arms situated, his hands positioned properly, and even then, Genevieve felt awkward. Connor was a good friend, a lovely bloke… but she didn't fit in his arms. She didn't belong with him, nor he with her. She didn't belong to him.
They danced stiffly for the first few bars of the song, and he was just offering her a stilted, numb-lipped compliment when someone touched her arm, cutting into the dance.
All motion stopped cold, the dance momentarily paused, time stopped as she looked at the man who was requesting her hand for a dance.
He was dressed like the poorest of the London streets, like a pauper, his trousers shabby and oft-patched, his shirt torn at the cuffs and stained. This man wore no mask but instead a threadbare tweed hat pulled low over his eyes, platinum hair peeking out beneath the edges here and there.
And instead of looking at her forthrightly, giving her that challenging glance he'd so often given her, the pauper held out one gloved hand, the fingers long since cut or worn out, and bowed, his other hand scraping low to the ground, his fingers skimming the glitter-strewn floor.
In her heart, she leaped. In her mind, she trembled. In reality, the princess looked down at the pauper, executed a deep, graceful curtsy, then turned to walk away from him. One strong hand grasped her arm, and it was on the tip of her tongue to scream at him, rail at him, ask him what he was doing, ask him if he was all right, then tell him she didn't give a damn.
But though he had one hand on her arm, his head was still bowed, his eyes still obscured by his hat.
"We can at least end as we began," she heard him say, and though the masque couldn't have been more different than the club he'd first taken her to, she felt the heat, the sheen of sweat, the importance of the movement, and she allowed him to draw her close, unable and unwilling as she had been before to say no. How could she say no?
Just one last dance. That's fair, isn't it? Like a fairy tale.
She closed her eyes as one arm slid around her waist, feeling as though she'd come home, so many things to say, no way to say it at all, and he put his lips to her ear.
"I'm sorry," Drake said to her, inhaling deeply, scenting her, knowing it could be- likely would be-his last time doing so. "What I'm doing is going to make things harder for you."
The laugh she returned to him was deeper than usual, somehow edgier than usual. Royalty, he thought, addressing her ranks.
He deserved at least that for what he was about to do.
"Harder for me? I don't think you could make things any harder for me if you honestly tried." She wanted to meet his eyes as she said it, but he wouldn't let her. "And did you?" she asked, the thought creeping in and refusing to leave, the suspicion. "Did you try to make my life so hard, Drake?"
He could feel her pulling away, almost violently tugging as the song was about to end, but he kept her close to him by sheer force, trying to remember the decision he'd made, trying to remember why he'd made it, trying to protect her and keep her at the same time.
He had to be selfish. He couldn't bear not to.
"Let go," Genevieve said through her teeth, her pride now leaping to the forefront, the idea of her evening-her evening, the time she'd given herself to prove her existence didn't depend on him-spurring her on. When he didn't comply-and had she really expected him to?-she shoved him with all her might, watched him stumble back in the open, torn shoes he wore, and her heart gave a horrible, stomach-turning wrench at the sight. Neither of them saw the people around them, the people who stopped what they were doing to watch Genevieve fight Drake. It wasn't anything they hadn't seen before; they just hadn't seen it in costume. They did not listen to the words the couple shared, and none but Collin felt the heat arcing between them, the sheer sparks thrown by things none of them had known were happening.
"You," she said, her breath shaking, the feelings she'd held back for the better part of a week finally spilling to the forefront, making her eyes shine and her skin flush the bright, hot red of the mortally humiliated. "You tell me it's over and that you can't be seen in public with me, then you have the nerve to show up here. Does that costume make it better? Is that supposed to be some sort of joke? Some mockery of my social status?" She ripped the tiara from her hair in a fit of pique and threw it at him, hitting him in the chest. "There. It suits you better, anyway. You're the one who decided this joke, this sick, twisted joke of yours was over. It was over before it started."
He picked up her tiara, brushed it off, and held onto it, then pulled his hat from his head, looking her squarely in the eye. His own eyes, she saw now, were bloodshot, the dark circles under them making him look younger, more vulnerable.
Don't you feel sorry for him, she warned herself, edging away from him and into Connor. Why doesn't someone make him go? Why doesn't someone do something?
But the only someone was her, and no one else moved.
"This is only over," Drake said, raking a hand through his hair and thinking of his father's study desk, of the carefully arranged money. "If you look me in the eye and tell me it's over."
~~~
Lucas Mallory was a happy man.
After all, he had a subservient son, a clean reputation, and a spare copy of a very titillating video, if ever the need for it arose.
A happy man, no matter how black and bleak his happiness is, is not an observant man.
Lucas never noticed the servants rushing about the house, his wife standing in the shadows, the inspector standing in the doorway of his study. He noticed none of it until he was upon it, and they upon him.
"Is there something I can help you with?" he asked snidely, choosing his favorite view and looking down his nose at the shabbily-clad inspector.
And then he looked inside his study.
~~~
She couldn't track what was happening, couldn't make things fall in a nice, logical order.
What had happened in the space of a song?
He had broken her heart only days before with his snobbery. She had asserted her independence only hours before with her appearance.
And only moments before, he'd brought it all crashing down on her head once more, offering himself to her when she most wanted him, when she least wanted to want him.
"I don't need you, damn it!" Genevieve insisted loudly, sending gasps willy-nilly through the crowd.
"Tell me it's over," Drake demanded, his own voice now growing edgy with desperation, one hand held out to her. "Damn it, Gen, just do it."
"I don't need you," she repeated, but she could not bring herself to say it was over, could not make her lips form any other words than the only ones that were true. She wavered, her mind throwing her body into weakness, and he stepped to her, his arms banded around her tightly, and he spoke three words that made her want to scream, three words that brought into clear, surreal relief what exactly the last five days had been about.
"My father knows."
~~~
His desk was obscured by a pile of wet, smoldering paper, or some such rot, and Lucas shoved into the study before anyone could divert or address him.
"What in bloody hell?" he asked, his cold eyes tracing the piles of char.
A few numbers here, a few recognizable pictures there, and Lucas roared in disbelief.
Surely that wasn't money, surely there weren't five hundred thousand pounds burned to uselessness on his study desk.
Crazed, pushed past the point of caring, Lucas swept his arm over the desk, heard both the lighter, now blackened, and the glass ashtray fall to the hardwood floor in a flurry of burned money, and then he heard nothing but the blood rushing to his head, filling his ears, making him see everything through a thin haze of red.
FUCK YOU, his desk read, the letters burned into the desk, marked by money and lighter fuel.
His son had reneged on his offer.
~~~
Fear was her first emotion, followed by disgust, confusion, a thousand other things. But none of them were as strong as the pity. That man, that horrible, insulting, empty man. And here stood his son, dressed as that which Lucas Mallory most despised, offering himself beneath himself.
She curled her hands into fists to hit him, to drive him away, but they fell ineffectually on his chest and Gen laid her head to his shoulder, feeling only the pity now, and the feelings which she'd tried to deny all along.
"Say it's over," he repeated, but he stroked a hand over her hair and clung despite the watchful, incredulous eyes around them. He'd missed this, this small thing, the feel of her hair against his fingertips. Mindlessly, he edged off one glove and buried his hand in her hair so he could feel every strand, every curl.
"I don't need you," she whispered for the third time, and raised her eyes to him.
"What does that mean, Wesley?" he asked, tightening his fingers just slightly, drawing her head back so she would look him in the eye. "You're the smart one, you have to tell me." Desperate, so desperate for her to say something, anything other than what she was saying.
"I don't want to want you," she admitted, and restraint made her voice hoarse, strained. "Or love you."
She took off the mask and let it fall to the floor, and he laid his forehead to hers, his eyes meeting hers without obstruction.
And the world around them began to fall away, only hours before midnight.