Chapter 84

Sarah POV

After the break, we’re going to be talking with renowned pediatrician Emma Fleming to talk about how to keep you and your family safe during deer tick season, so don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back!

With Chloe and Grace sitting on either side of him, Zane hugged his daughters to his chest while Sarah turned off the TV.

“So, how did Daddy and Sarah do?” he asked.

“Mommy was beautiful!” Chloe said, smiling at me over her father’s shoulder.

“So was Daddy!” Grace said.

My phone chirped. I picked it up to read a message from Lainey: Excellent showing. People are raving. I’ll send you a summary in an hour.

I smiled as I put the phone down. Thank goodness she spelled things like a normal person. Someone had commented Tk abt HILF the other day, and I’d had to look it up.

Zane caught my smile and nodded at me. “Very professional job,” he said. “You’re becoming a real pro.”

I felt my smile freeze a bit. It was said nicely, but he might as well have kicked me in the stomach. The girls loved it, though, and started back up with their Madam Grace and Lady Chloe routine.

I laughed, but that night at bedtime I admit I had a little trouble getting through yet another reading of “The Nightingale.”

“And so the artificial bird had to sing again, and that was the thirty-fourth time that they listened to the same piece. For all they did not know it quite by heart, for it was so very difficult. And the Playmaster praised the bird particularly; yes, he declared that it was better than a Nightingale, not only with regard to its plumage, and the many beautiful diamonds, but inside as well.

“‘For you see, ladies and gentlemen, and above all, your Imperial Majesty, with a real Nightingale one can never calculate what is coming, but in this artificial bird every thing is settled. One can explain it; one can open it and make people understand where the waltzes come from, how they go, and how one follows upon another.’

“‘Those are quite our own ideas,’ they all said.

“And the speaker received permission to show the bird to the people on the next Sunday. The people were to hear it sing too, the Emperor commanded, and they did hear it, and were as much pleased as if they had all got tipsy upon tea, for that’s quite the Chinese fashion; and they all said ‘Oh!’ and held up their forefingers and nodded. But the poor Fisherman, who had heard the real Nightingale, said

“‘It sounds pretty enough and the melodies resemble each other, but there’s something wanting, and I know not what!’

“The real Nightingale was banished from the country and Empire. The artificial bird had its place on a silken cushion, close to the Emperor’s bed.”

I realized the girls were asleep and put the back of my hand to my eye to feel a little moisture there. Anderson really was a magnificent writer to make me feel so sad for a fictional little nightingale in China.

I decided to go to my room and read something else for a while, but my feet took me elsewhere. In the weeks I’d been living at the villa, as nice as the house was, I had completely fallen in love with the grounds. Walking confidently in the light of an almost-full moon, I turned down the path that led to the little manmade lake not far from Mavis’s poppy garden.

It was lovely, so calm and still. The yellow moon and white stars were reflected in the deep black of the lake. I breathed in the scents of water and grass and soil and wished I could breathe in that calmness as well.

What did Zane want from me, I wondered? This constant back-and-forth was exhausting me. One moment I was part of the family, the next a human toy “pro” playing pretend on television. My whole life, which used to revolve around just me and Chloe, now revolved around Chloe, Grace, Zane, and all the people in Zane’s world. Was I even in the clockwork anymore?

I took a step toward that dark, deep water as if I could ask it to give up its serene secrets.

“Sarah!” a voice shouted in my ear even as I was pulled so roughly back from the lake’s edge I stumbled and would have fallen if not for the strong arms that held me upright. “What do you think you’re doing?”

I looked up into Zane’s bewildered face, his blue eyes flashing with green in the moonlight. Instantly, I felt my body relax.

“Looking at the lake.” I looked over to where I had been standing, then looked back. “What? Did you think I was going to jump in for a swim?”

He didn’t let go of me. “I didn’t know what to think.”

“That makes two of us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, just what am I anymore? Am I your servant, someone on your staff, your friend, your family, or really no one at all? Did I stop existing the day you found Chloe? Was I just some sort of placeholder until you came back into her life?”

“Chloe loves you dearly,” he said.

“This isn’t about Chloe! This is about you! One minute I think we have some sort of connection, and the next, I don’t know!”

He was just looking at me, but his arms tightened.

“Tell me what you want from me, from us,” I pleaded. “I can’t just keep pretending everything’s fine while I’m living in this limbo. That damn contract—”

“The hell with the contract,” he growled, and then, thank the goddess, he finally kissed me.

The press of his lips to mine was firm and confident, and I felt a swell of heat that seeped deliciously through my body and out my arms and legs to the tips of my fingers and toes, like a warm bath, like the lake had actually given up her secrets, calming and exciting me at the same time. The whirlwind of my thoughts settled into an embrace, and I felt vaguely that I was floating.

He pulled back just slightly, and I protested, but he was just repositioning us, and I laughed slightly as his lips returned to mine. We kissed for long, sweet moments that seemed to channel the sunlight inside me, and when his right hand slid down I anticipated the way his fingers would cup around my hip, and then further down and back, and he did not disappoint.

He pressed us together, and I could feel he was as aroused as I was.

“Sarah,” he said with a thrilling reverence before pressing kisses to by chin and then my neck. My head instinctively leaned to the side, ready for him to bite me.

What, what?

We both realized where this was heading and pulled back just a bit, just enough to let some sanity in between us.

“Zane,” I murmured, barely knowing what I was saying and terrified this would end. “It’s OK if you want to.”

He laughed roughly and rested his forehead against mine. “What I want isn’t OK.”