“You mean it,” he stated quietly, something weird in his voice. Something that sounded like surprise and maybe affront.
She didn’t reply. She just nodded.
He stared at her a moment before asking in soft, awful voice, “You’re telling me you think what happened last night was all an act so I could best my f**king brother?”
The way he said it made it sound ludicrous.
Then again, it was.
“Wasn’t it?” she enquired and went on even though his face now held an expression that made him look like he’d been struck and hard and it hurt her to say what she said next but she did it anyway, (self-defence, as it were). “You should feel proud, James. You did a bang up job. I’d convinced myself you were half in love with me.”
At that, he let her go and took a step back. He did this so swiftly she swayed for a moment without his arms around her.
She righted herself even as she felt that maybe, just maybe, she’d made a colossal mistake.
She stared at him for one hopeful second, trying to read his face.
It was hard and it was cold.
“You want to go, Belle?” he asked, she kept quiet and he finished, “Then go.”
Belle studied him, suddenly unsure. He was holding his body stiffly as if he was stopping himself from doing something, what, she couldn’t imagine.
She looked into his eyes, usually warm and gentle or soft and amused, now they were blank.
She waited for a sign, any sign, that she hadn’t misread her lucky stars.
He gave her none.
Nothing.
Just stared at her, his face hard, his eyes blank.
That was it then. He was done.
Challenge accepted, mission accomplished and he was through.
She swallowed the lump that formed suddenly in her throat and turned. She reached down to grab her bag and walked to the door. She felt his eyes on her but she didn’t look back even as she hoped she’d feel his hand on her wrist, his arm hooking about her waist, making an effort, any effort, to stop her.
She opened the door and walked through.
James (as far as she could tell), didn’t move.
Joy and Yasmin were in the hall but they weren’t far away. Miles had disappeared. There were others there, people she’d met at the party, just a few of them likely woken by the shouting, moving slowly down the hall, pretending to be on their way somewhere but looking curious.
She ignored them and kept walking even as both Joy and Yasmin called her name.
She just kept going, head bowed, eyes to the floor. She moved as swiftly as she could down the stairs, across the massive hall, through the huge, studded wooden doors that it took all her strength to shift even a few feet so she could slide through.
The taxi was waiting and only when she saw it did she start running.
* * * * *
Lewis and Myrtle
At the top window of the eastern-most turret, two children, a black-headed boy and a fair-haired girl, stood holding hands and looking out the window at the pretty woman wearing jeans, a man’s shirt that was way too big on her and funny-looking shoes that weren’t really shoes but they also were. They were something they heard people in these times call “flip-flops” which they both thought was very funny and they’d made a game of the words. Hiding themselves, closing their eyes and one calling “flip” and the other calling “flop” until they found themselves again.
They watched as she ran to the black taxi shining in the sun like a rabid dog was close at her heels.