Unraveled by Her (5 page)

Chapter Five

I'm white as a sheet, dumbstruck.

“Pour the silly goose a shot of whiskey,” Georgiana orders Tamara, who rushes to get me one.

Then Georgiana turns to me.

“It's very simple, my dear. Unless you ghost my autobiography to the very best of your considerable abilities, you will never see the light of day again.”

“I'd rather die than be your ghostwriter,” I say.

“That can easily be arranged,” she says, and I'm reminded how dangerous she is. Not to mention Tamara.

Then she gives me her glittering Lady Georgiana smile.

“But let's not go there, shall we? Far better for us to remain good friends, don't you agree?”

I gawp at her in disbelief.

“Let's rise above all our differences and focus instead on our goals: producing an autobiography that will tell the real and heartwarming truth about me. The truth about my deprived childhood, the setbacks I faced throughout life, and—most important of all—how forces beyond my control conspired against me and on pain of death forced me to blackmail Robert,” she says.

I am so shocked that I am suddenly unable to silence an unwelcome voice from the past:
When in doubt, say nothing.

“Very well, if that's the way you want it,” she says when I fail to react to her words, shrugging her elegant shoulders.

“Let me make this plain to you: I expect you to craft my autobiography in such a way that when Robert reads it, he'll understand exactly who I am, what I am, why there was no alternative for me but to do what I did; that I deeply regret my actions; and that I want to make it all up to him. Then he'll fall in love with me again, much deeper than before, and I'll get him back,” she says.

“But what about me? Robert loves me!” I scream.

“You, my little lamb? You will be far too far away from him, and for far too long, for him to care about you anymore,” she says.

She plans to make me ghost her autobiography, and then when I'm done, she'll kill me!

“So why not get it over with and kill me right here and now?” I say.

“Because you haven't even begun to outlive your usefulness to me yet,” she says.

While I digest her latest threat, she jumps up and gets a silver hairbrush from the dresser.

“You look a trifle wan, Miranda, and your hair is frightfully matted,” she says, then proceeds to brush my hair, in long, slow, hypnotic strokes. I sit there and battle hard with myself not to rip the hairbrush out of her hand and stuff it down her throat.

I tense all over. At the same time, I can't help but notice the initials
GH
engraved on the handle and grip my whiskey glass so hard that I'm surprised it doesn't shatter.

I thought I'd far transcended my jealousy of Georgiana, after Robert told me the shocking truth about her. But the emotion I'm experiencing now is far worse than jealousy. For I'm not torturing myself about his imaginary passion for Georgiana anymore, but about a stark reality: she is married to him and she now wants to win him back.

But surely she doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of achieving her crackpot goal? Robert will never take her back, not in a million years. Unless, of course, he actually believes the lying words of that monstrous letter, the letter in which I was forced to confess to him that I am a cheat and that I never loved him at all.

I feel myself plunge into despair.

“In any event, cupcake, writing my autobiography will be enormous fun. For both of us,” she says, and I want to scream in anger and frustration.

Fun? How in hell can it be fun for me to be forced to ghost an autobiography for my worst enemy, an enemy who wants to use that autobiography as a weapon, a weapon that could lure Robert back to her again?

The truth is that I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I ghost her autobiography with my customary passion and dedication, there's a strong chance that Robert will read it and be captivated by her all over again, just as she dreams he will.

My mind is reeling at the same time that my heart is breaking.

“But given that this is our first day working together on my book, I've made the decision to allow you a short respite before we start in earnest. In a few moments, I shall be showing you an important movie that will provide you with a sense of the rationale behind the prologue with which I wish you to commence my autobiography,” she says. Not for the first time, I wish that the bitch could speak in plain American. Because I really don't know what the fuck she means.

I soon find out.

I can't believe this isn't a dream—well, a nightmare. I'm sitting on a couch, my left leg chained to it, with Georgiana and Tamara on either side of me, their bodies pressed uncomfortably close to mine, and we are about to watch a movie together.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

“This is the best movie in the universe, Miranda, and the perfect example of how I expect you to begin my autobiography. An anatomy of love at first sight,” Georgiana declares.

Love at first sight? Is she kidding herself? She and Robert met at Le Château, and her only motive was to rob him of his fortune. I guess she's even more cuckoo than I first thought she was.

“By rights, you ought to enjoy a romantic French movie, but I do hope that your enjoyment of this one won't be tarnished upon hearing the dialogue spoken in Gigi's tongue now that you know the part she played in your undoing. However, the main thing is that you understand the parallels between the movie's story and my own with Robert,” she says.

“But she oughta like it, because she's got that off-the-wall French nickname, ‘SeeElle' or something,” Tamara cuts in helpfully, and I have to force myself not to grab the silver hairbrush and hit her over the head with it.

But much as I'd love to, I know that even if I did manage to attack one witch, the other would still be alive and cackling.

Aside from that, I still don't have a clue how to get out of here, off the island and to safety. For the millionth time, I wish to God that I knew how to swim.

But I don't. So I lean back on the couch and try to resign myself to my residency in a lunatic asylum. The only sane one in the place is Pluto, who seems to have taken to me and is now curled up on my feet.

Then the movie starts. Long as it is, and in French with English subtitles, I quickly lose myself in the whole romance of the story, and temporarily forget all about my terrifying circumstances.

And Now My Love,
directed by Claude Lelouch, explores the universal phenomenon of love at first sight through the saga of three generations of the girl's family, and ends with the achingly romantic moment when fate finally brings her and the boy with whom all the centuries have prepared her to fall in love at first sight together at last.

The movie is so heartbreakingly romantic that the entire way through it, all I can do is think of Robert, how we were born to meet and fall in love with each other, but how we are now parted, perhaps forever. During the last ten minutes of the movie, I fight to choke back my tears.

When the movie is over, Georgiana turns to me, her voice full of emotion.

“I knew that if you saw it, you would finally comprehend my decision that the central theme of my autobiography must surely be that the destiny of two lovers is set in stone generations before either of them ever met, just like it was with me and Robert, sweetie,” she says, an angelic smile on her face.

I don't think I'm going to survive this unless I scratch her eyes out or crack up myself!

While I bite my lip to keep my temper in check, she takes a sip of tea, lounges on the couch, and announces, “This, my dear, is where I most firmly suggest that you commence the prologue: In 1650, when my ancestor Lady Veronica Lacely married and gave birth to seven children. Centuries later, one of the descendants of those children, my distant great-uncle, Lord Tremaine, went on to amass a fortune and then commissioned a castle to be built for himself on Long Island, New York.

“And it was at Tremaine Castle that I spent every single summer staying with his son—my godfather—and his family, the Tremaines, and was permitted access to all areas of the castle and grounds, to run wild and explore there to my heart's content.

“Sadly, just before my seventeenth birthday, my father convinced Lord Tremaine to go into business with him and then defrauded him. Consequently, Lord Tremaine was forced to sell the castle that was his family seat for over eighty years, and where I spent such happy and carefree summers, at a knockdown price.

“The name of the buyer? Robert Hartwell.”

I hate from the bottom of my soul that Georgiana shares a history with Robert, a history with the castle.

A history with the castle . . .

So that's how she seems to know all about the secret passages that must run under Hartwell Lake and Hartwell Island. Which explains how she was able to go out this morning and come back to the island with her clothes still dry. There's no way she swam the lake, champion swimmer or not.

Then why did she bring me here by boat?

Obviously because the secret passage that leads to Hartwell Island doesn't lead to the castle at all but heads out of the estate entirely. So at least I've now managed to unearth a small amount of information that might help me come up with a plan to escape the prison I'm in.

No opportunity to focus on that now, though, as Georgiana is in full flowery flow again. “So now you can understand why we saw
And Now My Love.
So that you would fully comprehend my point that the centuries, my family history, and the fascinating fabric of fate destined me to marry Robert and live in the very castle that was once owned by a distant branch of my family. And that, my little cupcake, is the prologue to my autobiography!” she says. I can't help but grudgingly admit to myself that, much as I loathe her, she has nailed down the prologue as well as I might have done myself.

“I know it's early days so far, but I can't believe how much I'm enjoying our work together!” she says, her eyes dancing.

Then she drops her voice, and her mood becomes earnest once more, “Now, for the first and second chapters. As far as Robert is concerned, I firmly believe that if he learns the extent and depth of the dramatic financial deprivation I suffered so early on in life, he will eventually come to understand exactly why my actions toward him were so often motivated by a deep-seated fear of poverty,” she says. I expect her to burst into a soulful rendition of “Sister, Can You Spare a Dime?” any second now.

“You can't imagine, Miranda, can't know what it's like to grow up so pampered, so privileged, with nannies, maids, butlers, gardeners, chauffeurs all at your beck and call, as well as an opulent summer paradise, a fairy-tale American castle like no other, and then, in the blink of an eyelash, everything is gone, you have nothing, and, consequently, you are no one.”

Much as I'm trying to disarm her, I find I can't quite bring myself to react to her ramblings with the sympathy she clearly craves.