Accountancy and Diamonds

The woman's diamonds caught the chandelier light as she leaned in, and her smile never wavered. "And your family, Miss Hartley? What is it they do?"

"Accountancy," I said. "Both parents. Very thrilling dinner-table talk."

"Accountancy." She repeated it the way you'd repeat a diagnosis. Her gaze travelled down the custom gown Mr. Kingsley's manager had released for me, then back up to my face. "How enterprising. Though I imagine a girl of your… proportions finds these occasions rather a trial. One must be so careful with silhouettes." She sipped her champagne. "My daughter was considered for William, you know. The families discussed it. Beauty, breeding, and a waist that photographs well — those things matter in this world, whatever the modern magazines tell you."

I was still deciding which of those I wanted to set fire to first when a hand settled flat against my lower back.

"Character photographs better," William said, from just behind my shoulder. His voice was quiet and lethal. "It doesn't fade. It doesn't need a corset. And Miss Hartley belongs exactly where she's standing — beside me. Lady Ashworth, you'll excuse us."

He steered me away without waiting for her reply, and I let him, because my legs had gone strange and my heart was doing something undignified.

Outside, the night was cold and smelled of rain on paving stones. I gulped air like a swimmer surfacing — and then I heard it. A thin, horrible whistling sound from the direction of the terrace benches.

A boy of about six was clawing at his throat, face scarlet, eyes streaming. A woman beside him was screaming his name and doing nothing. I kicked off my heels and ran.

"Let me." I dropped to my knees. "I've got first aid training. What's his name?"

"Oliver—"

"Oliver, I'm Nicole. I'm going to help you." I turned him to face away from me, wrapped my arms around his middle, fist above the navel, and drove upward into his diaphragm. Nothing. Again. Harder.

On the third thrust, something left his airway with a wet pop and hit the paving stones — a boiled sweet, slick and glistening. Oliver dragged in a shrieking breath, then burst into tears, and his mother fell on him, sobbing.

I sat back on the cold stone, shaking so hard my teeth chattered. I hadn't done it to be watched. There had been no room in my head for being watched. But when I looked up, half the terrace had drifted out to see what the noise was.

Vanessa found me before I'd got my heels back on. "Miss Lynn — how fortunate you remained calm. Since the auction needs a lift, perhaps the Kingsley family would enjoy a talent? You play, I understand. There's a piano in the ballroom."

"Does she?" William said quietly.

I could have said no. Every instinct I own said no. But the terrace was full of faces, and Vanessa's smile had a hook in it, and I have never in my life been able to walk away from an audience I thought was laughing at me.

"I'll play," I said.

It was a piece I'd written at seventeen in my mother's front room, the one nobody had ever heard except a stranger on the internet who used to fall asleep to it on a voice note. The opening notes went out across the ballroom and I heard the whispers start.

What is that? She's just hitting keys. That's not music, that's a cat on a piano.

I kept playing. I closed my eyes so I couldn't see their faces and played it for the one person who'd ever told me it was beautiful, and when I finished, the applause was scattered and polite and dreadful.

I was halfway to the door when the doors at the far end opened and an older couple came in — an elegant woman with Isabella's eyes and a tall man with William's jaw. They crossed the floor to me, and the woman took both my hands.

"You're the young lady who saved our Oliver," she said. "Our grandson. We are in your debt, and this house will treat you as an honoured guest from tonight. Whatever you need, you ask for it. Do you understand me?"

I nodded, because my throat had closed.

Then William was there, and before I could object he'd lifted me off my feet and carried me through the middle of the ballroom, past every staring face, and I hissed, "Everyone is watching."

"Let them," he said against my hair. "Let every one of them watch." He was quiet for a moment. "I liked the piece you played. Don't let them tell you what it was."

He said it the way he'd said it once before, in a message at two in the morning, to a girl called Luna.

I turned my face into his shoulder so he wouldn't see what that did to me — because it was Luna he had heard up there, and Nicole he was carrying, and one day he would learn those were the same woman and hate me for the lie. The warmth of him soaked through the silk of my dress. I have never wanted so badly to be caught and been so terrified of it.

*Was Nicole's rescue of Oliver genuine kindness — or did some small part of her know the room was watching?*