need . . . Anything at all, let me know. I want to help however I can. I know people who may be able to help. Do you understand?”
“Oui.”
“Please be careful out there.”
The girl’s cheeks paled. Yanking her hand back, she bobbed a short curtsy and hurried out of the room like a frightened rabbit.
In the living room, Ellie stretched out on the couch with a dozen fashion magazines scattered around the cushions and an ashtray with two smoking cigarettes on the floor next to her. “I’m so bored.”
Kat swooped up the ashtray and stubbed out the burning sticks. “Setting the flat on fire isn’t the answer.”
“Smoking is my only release. And it annoys Eric. Anything that annoys him right now is fine by me.”
“Then maybe we should burn down the flat. Can’t think of anything to peeve him more.” She gathered the magazines and stacked them on the glass coffee table.
“Stop tidying. If I see you trying to organize one more thing, I’ll go crazy.” Ellie swung her bare feet off the couch and ran a hand through her hair. Usually coiffed to platinum perfection, each passing day had brought on a new round of laziness. Today it looked like it hadn’t seen a comb. “Five days we’ve been here. Trapped in my own home like a prisoner with the building surrounded by his guards. What does he think we’re going to do? Shimmy down the drainpipe?”
She leaped to her feet and fumbled in her satin robe pocket for a fresh cigarette. Lighting it, she paced around the coffee table. “Who does Eric think he is? My lord and master? My warden?”
“Yes and yes.” Kat pushed the edge of a magazine in line with the others as Ellie turned her back.
“I’m going to tell him I don’t like it one bit. He can’t treat me like this, not if he ever hopes to earn my affection again.” Gray smoke billowed around Ellie’s wiry hair. “If I even allow him to.”
Kat frowned. “After this week you’d still consider it?”
“No. I don’t know. I’m just so angry at him.” Puffing her cigarette, Ellie marched to the locked front door and banged on it. “Do you hear that? I’m angry, so the next time he comes to this door you can tell him to turn right around because there’s no welcome for him on this side.”
“I doubt the guards on the other side of that door understood you.”
Ellie added a kick for good measure. “Maybe not the words, but I’m more than sure they understood the tone.”
“It’s not the guards you need to yell at, it’s Eric. Tell him you’re done.”
“Easier said than done. Once he takes hold of something, it’s not easy for him to let go.”
“Ellie, you’re not some thing. You’re a grown woman, so stop acting like a child about this and end it.” Kat threw up her hands in exasperation. “What man professes that he cares for you and shows it by locking you in your room to think on the ways you’ve disappointed him?”
“This is what happens to people who defy him. Who dare to tell him no.”
“He locked us up because of that business with his wife. Whatever she propositioned, as your fellow prisoner I have a right to know. How else are we to ‘ruminate on our future for our own good’ when I don’t know what we’re intended to ruminate on?”
Ellie sank onto the cream upholstered wingback chair, dropping her face into her hand while her cigarette dangled from the other. “Stop yelling at me. Please.”
But Kat wasn’t done. Not by a long shot, and Ellie’s self-pitying did little to assuage the frustration too long bottled. “Why do you put up with this?”
“Because he takes care of me. He lets me be free. You know what it was like growing up back home. Every move and decision was dictated to us. If it didn’t have Father’s approval, it ended before it ever began.”
“Eric has proven no different. From one controlling man to another. For once in your spoiled life, stop and think about what you’re doing before it’s too late.”
“Eric loves me. Like no one ever has.”
“This isn’t love, Ellie.”
Ellie’s head snapped up, eyes bright with defense. “And how would you know?”
“Because I know what the absence of it feels like. The twisted ways it contorts itself into making you believe a lie that you wished so desperately were true.”
Marching to the window, Kat yanked back the gossamer curtains and threw up the sash.