“
So … you scream like a girl who sees a rat?”
“
I wish,” he said, looking a little deflated. “I get the dry heaves really bad. I’ve even thrown up a couple of times.”
“
Wow, that is bad.”
“
Yeah, pretty much.”
“
So what do you use then?” Grace tried to sound sensitive.
“
I use watermelon body wash.”
Grace pulled her lips in between her teeth to keep from laughing. Despite the fruity scent, his solution didn’t make it sound so bad. When she was certain she wouldn’t laugh, she said, “At least you found a way to deal with it. I’m doomed. I’ve contemplated carrying around tweezers and an eyebrow brush, but I don’t think that’ll work.”
At that, they had another good laugh. Minutes later, Zeke stood. “I need to get home. I have homework. Give me a call if you need anything.” She agreed, and listened as he closed the front door behind him.
Quentin finally came in after dinner. “How are you feeling?”
“
Pretty good. I still have a little goose egg.” Tentatively going over the sensitive spot with the tips of her fingers, she grimaced from the pain. “It still hurts.”
“
You’ll be a hundred percent in the morning.”
“
We’ll see,” Grace said.
“
You feel well enough to go on a tour?”
“
A tour? Where?”
“
Here. I have something I’d like to show you,” he said.
“
Um, okay.” She rose from the sofa and followed him out of the family room.
Quentin paused, turning back to her. “Go get Pandora and bring her with you.”
Grace’s eyebrows rose in question, but he remained quiet. “Okay, be right back.” She hurried as fast as her painful body would allow her up the stairs, grabbed Pandora from under her bed, and met Quentin back in the foyer.
They walked down the large, open hallway lined with oil paintings of her ancestors and family photos toward her grandfather’s office. “Quentin, were any of these men Chosen?” Grace asked, pausing to peer up at the faces.
Quentin turned around and stood by Grace’s side. “They all were.”
“
All of them?”
“
Every single one.”
Quietly, she scanned the faces of the twenty-five men who had come before her and her grandfather. She wondered about the lives they’d led, if they’d found solace in marriage, and if they were happy with the responsibility forced on them. “Did any of them marry?” Grace asked.
“
They all did. You and Christophe would never have been born if they hadn’t.”
She hadn’t thought about it like that. “Do you think they were scared?”
“
Oh yeah, they were.” A smile touched his lips.
Watching him, she regarded his smile. “You talk as if you knew some of them.”
Quentin turned to her. “I knew all of them.”
“
You’re kidding me, right?” she asked with an uncomfortable chuckle. “You’d be like, seriously old.”
His mouth turned up in a smile that reached his eyes. “I
am
seriously old.” Turning back around, he continued toward the study.
Like a barking Chihuahua nipping at his heels, Grace fired continuous questions his way. “Really? How old are you, Quentin? You don’t look that old.” Before he could get any closer to the office, she briefly touched his arm and stopped walking. “Seriously, how old are you?”
His shoulders reflexively rose as he breathed in deeply, before turning toward her. “I’ve been here since before man.”
Confused, she cocked her head sideways. “What does that mean?”
Quentin’s gaze met hers. His right hand rubbed at the edge of his shirtsleeve. “It means, I’ve been around since time began.”
Grace’s eyes bugged. “But you don’t even look older than twenty-three. How is that possible?”
Quentin ran a hand through his hair, holding on to the back of his neck. “Because I don’t age.” She was about to ask another question, but then he sighed, which stopped her. “Come on, Grace.”
Thoughts of more questions seized when they came to the office door. She’d only been in her grandfather’s office once since his passing. It had been unbelievably tough. Since then, she’d had no intention of ever returning. “Do we really need to go in there?” she asked softly, clutching the backpack to her chest.
With key in hand, Quentin swiveled around to face Grace. “I’m sorry you’re still hurting. One thing I’ve learned in my old age…” His face lit up with a joking smile meant to lift her spirits. Something she appreciated about him. “Time eases all pain. You’ll never forget him, or how much you loved him, but you’ll welcome his memory instead of shy away from the pain of it.”
As Quentin turned the key and opened the door, Grace was stricken with the threatening prick of tears but managed to blink them away. Her feet felt glued to the floor in the open doorway; she couldn’t move…didn’t want to move. She wanted to be anywhere else in the house other than here. Her gaze roamed over the desk and the shelves behind it, the couch she’d laid on talking about her day while her grandfather worked, and finally rested on the fireplace he’d loved so much. God, she missed him.
Quentin stood patiently in the bathroom doorway, hands braced on either side of the frame, leaning into the office.
“
Okay, I’m here. What do you need to show me?”
He let his hands fall to his sides, and nodded his head. “In here.”
Grace stayed where she was, crossing her arms over her chest. “The bathroom?”
He held his hand out to her. “Trust me.”
It took everything she had, but she managed to force her heavy feet forward, stopping a few inches outside the bathroom door. Grace eyed his hand, but didn’t touch it. Quentin let it fall back to his side, obviously realizing she wouldn’t take it. An emotion flickered across his features, but disappeared quickly. Grace wondered if she imagined it since it was there one second and gone a nanosecond later.
Curiously, she watched Quentin open the door to the linen closet, then slide aside the towels resting on the shelves inside. She heard a click, felt a draft of cold air, and stared wide-eyed as the shelves swung backward and he walked through the dark opening that appeared.
“
Come,” he said. She was surprised to hear his voice echo.
Scrambling, her feet moved fast to catch up. Once inside, the door closed behind them and sealed shut. Unable to see, she didn’t move. “Quentin?” Her voice sounded hushed in the velvet darkness. “Where are you? I can’t see.”
Lights on either side of the narrow hallway clicked on in domino fashion, two by two, revealing Quentin several yards away, rounding the bend of the hallway that stretched before her. “Come on, Grace.” His demand echoed and swirled about her. Again, she forced her feet forward, and almost fell down the flight of stairs she didn’t realize was there. She breathed a sigh of relief, glancing down at the bag in her hand. It would be her luck to be the first Chosen to break what she was supposed to protect.
Before her foot even stepped off the bottom step, her head had begun to swivel back and forth as she took in the ornate gold sconces set in recesses in the intricate stone walls. When she looked closer, she realized that the sconces were formed like angels. Her eyes widened in wonder. Like a kid in a candy store, she wanted to caress every angel, tuck a finger in every crevice, run her hand across each flat surface. In the back of her mind, she knew she should be angry. This was another huge secret. But she had never seen anything like this, and was flabbergasted that it had been here all along…right under her nose.
Once she rounded the corner, two hallways branched off the main corridor, left and right. She wouldn’t have known if she should go left, right, or continue forward if Quentin hadn’t been patiently waiting next to a door straight ahead. Settling next to Quentin against the wall, Grace smiled.
“
Pretty great, isn’t it?”
“
Great?” she repeated in amazement. “Try un-freakin’-believable.” Quentin’s laughter echoed and bounced from side to side against the walls, swirling around the angels as it traveled away from them. Grace smiled. “Where do the other hallways go?”
With his foot, he pushed off the wall, turning his body so he was standing in front of her. “One way leads to the linen closet of your old house. The other leads to the back of an apartment I own downtown.”
“
Really?” Her jaw dropped and she stared at him wide-eyed. “This is under my house too?”
Quentin used the key that opened all the rooms in the house. “Yes, this is under the other house too.”
“
But how?” she asked in frozen wonderment.
He turned and rested his shoulder against the door frame, staring deeply into her eyes. Even in the dim light, Grace could see the instant his gaze switched from playful to intense. Down there in the closed confines of the underground, it became more than just a stare. It seemed like the stare sucked the air right out of the hallway, because she suddenly couldn’t breathe. Her heart rate spiked simultaneously, making it that much harder to gasp for the depleted oxygen quietly. Grace took a step backward and her shoulder blades pressed into the wall. She held the bag against her chest, hoping to seem at ease, even though his gaze made her want to squirm.
Slowly, Quentin folded his arms over his chest as well and crossed one foot over the other, never taking his eyes from hers. A devilish grin turned the edges of his mouth up like horns, and she couldn’t take it anymore. “What?”
“
Nothing,” he replied, turning his head and smirking at the wall. When he pushed himself away from the door frame, the hole-boring intensity was gone. “Relax.” Right, she sighed mentally.
The seneschal band peeked out from the bottom of his sleeve, and Grace glared at it. She was beginning to dislike it. She didn’t like him knowing how she was feeling—always—while she was left guessing about what was going on inside him. Unless, of course, she touched him. And after what had just happened, touching in any way would be asking for trouble. She had to work on setting up those boundaries between them, and soon.
Quentin disappeared through the doorway, talking as he went. “Your grandfather designed all of this down here and had it constructed. The hallway extends beneath all the houses on Belmont for a few blocks to your other house—” Still caught up in the intensity from a minute earlier, Grace remained leaning against the wall. “Hey, you alright?” Quentin asked as he leaned out into the hallway from the door.
“
Uh yeah, sorry.” She shook her head. “What were you saying?” Grace waited for her heart rate to stabilize and then followed Quentin through the door. Again, he was unfazed and she was a ball of nerves. He continued as if nothing had just happened. “If you go in the other direction, the hallway continues underneath all of the houses heading west to my apartment, which is across the street from the bank.”
She noticed another door , but wasn’t sure what the rest of the room was. Quentin unlocked the other door and stepped aside so she could enter first. Inside was a large, fully furnished living room awash in artificial light. There was a small kitchen, and a bar.
Grace stood in the middle of the room, pondering the point of everything down there. “What’s through there?” She pointed at a door.
“
A bedroom and bathroom. Come.”
The bedroom was the size of a jail cell, and the bathroom was about as comfortable-looking as a port-a-potty. To the left of the bedroom door was another door.
Quentin opened it and motioned for her to follow. It was a walk-in closet, a large walk-in closet—way bigger than the bedroom and bath. Clothes hung on hangers along the left and right sides of the wall. Shelves and drawers were strategically placed in columns throughout.
“
This is the most important room of the entire estate.” His face was serious.
“
The closet,” she asked incredulously. “Why?”
“
This,” he said. Walking to the far back wall, Quentin separated two shelves, revealing a steel door behind it. “Give me your hand.”
Trying to avoid skin-to-skin contact with Quentin, she stayed put. “I’m okay to walk through myself.”