THE SEVEN DIALS QUESTION
A BATTLE ROYAL Novelette & Second Epilogue
Copyright Lucy Parker 2021
Three nights ago, Sylvie had been lying on Dominic’s chest amidst crumpled sheets, dividing nibbles between the strong, flexing tendon in his neck and a plate of fractionally imperfect, unsellable chocolates from his kitchens. As she’d flickered the tip of her tongue over his left nipple, trailing the tiniest of kisses through a dusting of body hair, his long, hard torso had shifted beneath her, his calloused fingertips drifting down her naked back.
Having just completed major event contracts—a global aviation conference for De Vere’s and a film premiere for Sugar Fair—they’d taken the evening off to wallow in mutual exhaustion, eat Thai food and reject-bin truffles in Dominic’s bed, and sleepily grope each other while they missed most of a murder mystery rerun.
Unlike the philandering village doctor who’d just been decapitated with a pair of oversized, novelty scissors, she was winning at life right now.
Their attention had briefly returned to the TV when the village baker made his entrance and rapid exit, Dominic turning his tousled head from the curve of her neck to watch.
The heat in his dark eyes had sharpened into a scowl. “Is he using a piping bag or milking a fucking cow?”
The doomed baker had still been very energetically icing his cupcakes, even as he hissed threats at an unseen presence. Never a wise move to start shouting insults when strains of ominous music were trickling in. A+ way to end up as man jam in the sad-looking Victoria sponge behind him.
Pushing up on her elbow, Sylvie had studied the actor’s very jerky frosting technique.
“Clearly never been in a commercial kitchen in his life,” she’d agreed cheerfully, stroking a silvering lock of black hair away from Dom’s creased brow. She hadn’t been able to resist a little tug of his earlobe. He was just so delightfully stroppy when his critic switch was flipped. “On the other hand, you’ve clearly never been on a farm. If that’s your cow-milking method, enjoy having your testicles kicked into your throat.” She’d hummed low in her throat, flicking a glance upward through lowered lashes. “And considering the amount of whinging just because of the teeniest tap from a hoof made of cake…”
His teeth had lightly nipped her own ear, and she’d grinned.
Pulling her gaze from the amused light in his own, she’d inclined her head toward the screen, where the piping was becoming increasingly vigorous and ineffectual. “I would call that technique more along the lines of…”
“Yes?” Dominic’s attention had returned to her body, deliciously tickly kisses travelling up her throat.
She’d shrugged, her breath catching. “Angry wank?”
When he’d moved to kiss her mouth, laughter ran deep and warm in his eyes and lips and chest.
Thirty seconds later, over his freckled shoulder, the baker had suffocated to death in an enormous vat of buttercream, at the hands of a perpetrator who’d turned out to be his own wife.
As Sylvie stood now in her own commercial kitchen, she was starting to see where the woman was coming from. She glanced at the new blackbird clock on the wall. Four-forty in the afternoon, well into their sixth hour on this final stage of an extremely stressful joint bake.
She arched her neck in a futile attempt to stretch the cramped muscles there, keeping the spray gun in her hand hovering over the countertop. The nozzle was starting to leak and this particular food colouring was an absolute bitch to scrub off floor tiles. The gun was an aging troublemaker that needed replacing, but Dominic had zeroed in and pinched her best one with unerring instinct, and her team were using the others for their assigned jobs.
“It is straight.” She was enormously impressed with herself that the words emerged so levelly.
She admired, desired, and adored this man. All the way down to his abrupt, grouchy, golden soul. If a wrathful former Operation Cake contestant burst into Sugar Fair right now and tried to drown him in a bucket of icing, she would stand between him and mortal harm. She wanted to spend every night for the rest of her life with her feet tucked between his hairy calves.
She’d also temporarily forgotten exactly how irritating he could be as a colleague.
Dominic crouched and examined the line of lavender dye she’d just meticulously faded into encroaching grey. His eyes narrowed very slightly.
Without looking away from him, Sylvie reached out and opened the drawer under the central island. Feeling for and extracting an item, she dangled it delicately at arm’s length. She could feel the silent sarcasm seeping from her pores.
Expressionlessly, he looked at the magnifying glass in her hand. He stood in a swift movement, ignoring it and her. “It is straight.”
“I know it’s straight.” A little less level that time. Several of her confectioners were working nearby to fulfil a truffle order; in her peripheral vision, she saw Halley wince. “This is like the eighteenth birthday cake I’ve done this week.”
And as this cake was for Pet, who was liable to walk through the kitchens at De Vere’s at any given time, this collaboration was taking place in Sylvie’s territory, which drastically reduced her tolerance with Dominic’s professional bossiness.
“The flame tier is too far to the right.” He was staring at the cake with cold criticism again, one hand propped against the counter.
The man was seriously lucky he possessed those forearms, because sometimes--
Actually, he was right. The flame tier was fractionally too far to the right. Each level of the cake was situated on an electronic turning wheel; when completed and spun at speed, every tiny detail blurring into motion would give the effect of shimmering movement across the entire structure. From the gorgeous blue and purple flames of Hades’s seductive underworld, rising to the swirling fog and lamplit romanticism of Persephone’s alternate-universe period London. The steampunk-inspired romance was Pet’s favorite show on the West End right now.
If any detail was even slightly out of place, the illusion skewed.
Carefully, Sylvie bent and adjusted the lower tiers. “How’s—” A single glistening sugar pearl fell from the whispering suggestion of a silken gown and skittered across the bench. They both reached out instinctively to catch it. Dominic was still holding the tiny, razor-sharp knife he’d used to neaten the dramatic lines of Hades’s inner lair; an extremely rare safety error on his part, not to have sheathed it immediately. Sylvie hissed as their hands collided and the blade scored her index finger.
She clutched her hand, then calmly examined the damage. Little more than a scratch, a tiny bit of blood, and a minor sting. The two great passions of her life were Dom and sugar craft. She handled molten sugar on a daily basis; her hands were a lost battlefield of scars and callouses. Short of a severed limb, she wasn’t concerned about a cut.
She was turning dismissively toward the first aid cabinet when Dominic broke free of his momentary, taut-muscled stasis. He set the knife in the nearest sink and put his hands around her waist, his thumbs moving in a single sweep over her lower ribs. Before she could say a word, she was being propelled backward through the corner alcove, into the room beyond, and lifted to sit on the edge of her drafting table. Sheets of paper covered with scrawled diagrams and measurements crinkled beneath her butt. She blinked away her surprise.
One look at his rigid face, and she lifted the hand that didn’t have the negligible scratch to cup his stubbled jaw. The bone there shifted as he looked down at her injured finger, cradled on his palm.
“If you’d given yourself this cut,” she said bluntly, “you’d barely have noticed. It’s nothing. And it’s unlike you to overreact. Next series of Operation Cake, you’ve just lost the right to roll your eyes at contestant theatrics for at least three episodes.”
He was not diverted. “I didn’t cut myself. I cut you.” He looked furious with himself, but he couldn’t have held her any more gently. His thumb was rubbing gently above the scratch now, as if trying to soothe the hurt. “Because I was being bloody careless, making totally unnecessary adjustments to that ridiculous, garish cake that—”
“That is going to send your sister orbiting around the moon.” As she slipped her hand down to rub comfortingly against his chest, Sylvie let the stress and tension of the day slide from her muscles. She was feeling light and relaxed—and just really, really in love. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss between his ribs. “If you just iced a plain sheet cake with your own hands, Pet would adore every crumb. But a five-tier, four-flavour spin-cake that took you twelve hours on the mechanical plans alone, even though you aesthetically despise it to the core of your being?” She smiled at him. “Major big brother points.”
After a moment, Dominic exhaled, rolling his neck to try to ease the strain. “It’s the first time I’ve actually been around for her birthday. She hasn’t had so much as a card from family since our mother died. I just want her to—”
“I know,” she said softly. She pushed off the table, her body pressing against his in a rasp of crisp cotton and underlying warmth. Circling both arms around his neck, she held him in a brief hug.
He cupped her head in his palm and nuzzled his lips under the curve of her jaw, tracing shivery little mini-kisses to her ear.
And then he recommenced overreacting to the world’s smallest injury and went to get the first aid kit. Under his uncompromising surveillance, she was securing a plaster on her finger when a familiar voice echoed through from the kitchens. Dominic swore under his breath, and she nudged his foot with the tip of her trainer, stifling a laugh at his expression.
“Do you know how many people would trip over themselves to be able to call Zack in for a fancy dress party?” she murmured.
The Operation Cake makeup artist was a special-effects maestro, with a social media following now edging into high six figures. He was out there hugging all the confectioners before he came to transform and torment Grumpus here. Sylvie could hear a lot of giggling and flirting.
“‘Dress: steampunk chic or witchcraft wondrousness.’” Dominic quoted Pet’s gorgeous calligraphy-and-wax-seal invitation with all the joie de vivre of Eeyore. “If it were anyone else’s birthday, nobody in their right mind would actually RSVP yes to this party.”
As it was, half of London would probably pack into the venue tonight. Pet was easy to love and she had a lot of friends. Most of whom would fully embrace the chance to slip on a pair of metal goggles and explore a historic home in Seven Dials that was rumoured to be a veritable bastion of spirits. Of both the ghostly and alcoholic variety.
Since it was, you know, cool as fuck, to those who’d escaped the inexplicably sexy, crabby misanthrope gene.
“I would say to be careful, that one day the wind will change and you’ll be stuck with that expression, but clearly that ship has sailed,” Zack said cheerfully from the doorway. He was heavily loaded down, with garment bags slung over his broad shoulder and the handles of shopping bags threaded through his sparkly-tipped fingers. He cradled his professional kit under one arm like a baby. “Hi, lovely—” a smiling aside to Sylvie as he kissed her cheek, “—how are my very favorite unlikely loved-ups? Ready for me to work my magic?”
“A few more tweaks to the cake before Dominic’s sous-chef escorts it over to Seven Dials, and we’re all yours.” Sylvie could sense Dominic’s internal groan, but he kept silent.
Setting down the bags, Zack lowered his makeup case to the worktable with care and caution worthy of the Crown Jewels. He fixed his attention on the topmost sketch amongst her papers. “Do you already have your own idea in mind for the look? Because—” His hand shot to his throat and his appalled gaze turned on Dominic. “Oh, honey, no.”
Dominic’s brows lifted, and Sylvie arched on her tiptoes to see over Zack’s shoulder. She snorted. “Yeah, that would be my breakfast brainstorming for Cory Ball’s sixth birthday cake. I realize it’s not entirely temperamentally inapt, but Dominic is not attending Pet’s steampunk gala dressed as a grumpy cartoon duck. Feel free to exhale.”
She then got a serious case of the giggles, which brought a reluctant curve to Dominic’s mouth.
By the time they left the fairy-lit exterior of Sugar Fair and stepped out into a dark and drizzly night, however, any inclination toward amusement had been swallowed by sheer, unadulterated lust.
Mostly for him. A little bit for herself.
Dominic held a large umbrella over their heads as he opened the door of the black cab for her. The driver barely glanced at them. Apparently on a Friday night in London, giving a lift to the embodiment of fantastical evils didn’t warrant distraction from a meatball sub.
Which, to be fair, smelled fantastic.
As the car began its slow progress through the packed streets toward Seven Dials, Sylvie curled in her corner of the dimly lit cab to blatantly stare. She wouldn’t be surprised if she were currently exuding little floating love-hearts and coils of pink smoke like an infatuated cartoon.
Zack was a gold-plated genius, but he’d also had a lot to work with when he’d transformed Dominic into a sort of piratical steampunk Time God. Her gaze wandered up past black trousers that would make Bowie’s Jareth jealous and a white shirt that wasn’t so much concealing as revealing his upper body—including the intricate series of working cogs Zack had imbedded down his left arm via silicone putty and a hell of a lot of detail work. The cogs continued across Dom’s muscular shoulder and chest, where they opened at his pec to reveal a clockwork heart. Quite literally, a clock, the hands ticking in a gentle rhythmic pulse, to which she kept aligning her breaths without conscious choice.
Zack’s clever hands and brush had swept dark shadows up the chiseled planes of Dominic’s face, sculpting out even harder angles and an aura of menace. The contact lens in his left eye was etched with another clock dial, roman numerals circling an artificially pinpoint pupil. He wore a golden monocle, fixed to the worn leather strap encircling his head, and digital numbers constantly appeared and disappeared on its surface. He was…unearthly, resonating with danger and sex. If they were characters in the play Pet adored, he’d be a transparent villain, devoted only to his own interests and his lover.
The only softness in his entire body at this moment was the rakish fall of hair over his forehead, the silver strands prominent in the streetlight, and the look in his untouched right eye as he studied her from head to toe in return.
And he should be struck speechless with sparkling desire right now, because she was very much feeling her own alter persona, as well.
Zack had declared the look “Clockwork Ghost Sorceress.” "First glance: alluring and dreamy. Second glance: deadly. If you’re still breathing by then."
With scary amounts of energy, he’d gone to town on her face and body with every muted, gloomy tone in his palette. From her silvery wig to the pure-white, satiny silk that clung to her torso and swirled around her legs, she looked like a photographic negative. Almost angelic, until somebody noticed the curving black claws that tipped her fingers, the faintest suggestion of metallic fangs when her lips parted, the very subtle red dots in her black, dilated contacts—and the clockwork heart when the wispy straps of her dress parted. It was identical to the one in Dominic’s artificial chest cavity, the hand ticking perfectly in time with his own.
Even Mr. Cynical “Dressing Up is for Children, Theme Park Performers, and Every Pomeranian with a SW1 Postcode” had looked at her in unblinking silence and added an eyewatering bonus to Zack’s fee.
He reached out a hand now, and she slipped her fingers into his, careful to keep her claws away from his skin. She caught her breath in a startled laugh when he smoothly transferred her to his lap. They both swung a quick glance at the driver’s back, but the man’s attention was still divided between the traffic standstill and the remnants of his dinner.
With the side of her finger, Sylvie traced the edge of the metal cogs in Dominic’s “heart”. The surrounding painted putty blended so seamlessly into his own skin that the join was almost imperceptible.
“Zack is so wasted at Operation Cake,” she murmured into the quiet darkness, as she enjoyed the familiarity of his body and breath and presence, and the subsequent fizzy feeling in her middle.
“Yes, he is.”
She swallowed as his own fingertips touched her so lightly, a butterfly-soft stroke down the line of her grey throat to where her own heart-clock ticked in a far steadier rhythm than the human beat beneath.
“But in this case—” As he kept a millimeter between their skin to preserve each painstaking brushstroke, his breath was like a physical caress in the hollow of her throat; his head moved and tilted, their lips just barely meeting. The very tip of his tongue touched her lower lip and she met it with her own in the most fleeting contact—the outline, the blueprint of a kiss. She couldn’t help a soft sound, and his chest moved with a deep inhale as he vocalized one of her own thoughts. “He had a fairly spectacular canvas to work with.”
Sylvie leaned her head into his—and then, given that they were in a public taxi, it was probably fortunate that she couldn’t entirely smother a sudden giggle. “I one-hundred-percent thought you were going to say something like ‘really solid base ingredients’ there.”
Dominic snorted, shifting position carefully. The already legendary black trousers didn’t exactly…conceal much.
“I mean, your idea of a compliment on my Valentine’s Day dress did involve the words ‘stiff peaks’,” she said, putting up her hand to cover a tiny yawn.
She was excited about this party—tickets to Horcliff House were like hen’s teeth, and Pet’s connections were apparently endless and daunting—but fatigue was catching up with her. It made her so happy that Dominic had asked her to collaborate on his sister’s cake, but it had been a lot more work than either of them had expected, and Sugar Fair was bidding for three contracts this week.
He reached up to adjust the strap over his ear. The numbers swimming to the surface on the glass monocle lens were oddly hypnotic. “I did not say it looked like meringue—”
“I distinctly heard the word pavlova.”
“I was referring to the ballerina.”
“Nice try.”
Their hands linked again, Dominic looking down and playing with her fingers as she watched the lights from passing cars dancing over his cheek.
“Any word on the contract tenders yet?” he asked after a moment, and she shook her head.
“Almost certain we’ll get the Schyler deal. Hopeful for the Wolford Hotel and King George gigs, but we probably won’t hear anything before Monday.”
His glance sideways was shrewd. “It’s the King George you want most.”
“Yes.” She allowed herself a moment to imagine a positive outcome there. An exclusive contract to cater every launch party for the West End theatre, theming to each new show. Financially lucrative, yes, but more so just the artistry side of it. Yes, she wanted it.
“I was speaking to Joseph Warren today,” Dominic said, and her mind returned with laser sharpness to the present reality.
“You didn’t—” she began, a hint of warning in her tone, and he gave their entwined fingers a gentle little shake.
“No, I didn’t coerce him into putting in a good word for you, or whatever accusation was hurtling this way. I steered a brief side topic around the issue and gleaned that the shortlist is Sugar Fair and Hunter’s. No more. You unquestionably have the advantage. Hunter’s hits the mark about fifty-percent of the time, and their ingenuity is lacking since they lost their head confectioner.” With an edge of coolness, he added, “We’ve already established that I do not hold some sort of mafia influence over the London food scene.”
“Not mafia,” she said consideringly. “More like the Michelangelo of sweets. Plenty of jealous rivals and nasty comments, but people still recognize the mastery and end up doing what you say.”
Ah, one of those highly satisfying moments when she caught him completely off-guard and turned the tips of his ears crimson. Perfect way to start the party.
After a weighted second of silence, he said extremely drily, “I can’t say I’ve noticed that phenomenon in present company.”
Her response was airy. “I’m exempt. I’m the Leonardo. Just chilling over here with my sketchbooks and dreams.” She tilted her head. “Also, arguably the superior Ninja Turtle.”
As happy as she knew she made him, it was still too rare that he fully, properly laughed—and it was like a shot of pure… belonging, straight into her heart every time.
* * *
As the extremely irritating and very beautiful love of his life would attest, Dominic did not entertain fanciful ideas. He also didn’t live under a rock, so he was aware of the centuries-strong rumours surrounding the old Horcliff House property. Originally built by some eccentric twat from the House of Lords in the eighteenth-century, it had been left derelict until an enterprising millionaire had started marketing it as a party hotspot. From what he’d heard, it had been cleverly tarted up with special effects and just enough structural refurbishment that it wouldn’t actually crumble around their ears, but he didn’t believe for a moment it was haunted by anything other than expensive overheads. Its standard clientele expected to be scared, were actively looking for eerie atmosphere, and usually pissed to the gills. Small wonder the tales of mysterious happenings continued.
However, it was right up the street of both Sylvie and Pet, and—Christ, he’d do a lot more than dress up as the fucking Dread Pirate Rolex and spend fifty minutes in traffic getting to Seven Dials if it meant seeing those smiles.
Despite the throng of outlandishly dressed guests milling into and around the property, most of whom were masked and heavily disguised, his sister found them within five minutes of their entry into the central function room.
“Oh my god.” Pet was a picture-perfect steampunk aviator, with a pair of goggles perched on her head that he looked at twice and strongly suspected had been temporarily purloined from a museum. He endeavored to know as little as possible of his baby sister’s love life, but she remained on good terms with many of her former boyfriends, and he seemed to recall a curator amongst them. “Look at you two. You look amazing. Wait.”
She whipped out her phone and situated them in her camera lens. “On the count of three, let’s have a smile on the left and praying for swift death on the right.” Snap. “Nailed it.”
“Happy birthday, Pet,” Sylvie said, laughing as she hugged her. She held out Pet’s arm, admiring her costume. “And wow. Likewise.”
At some point in her imaginary backstory, Pet’s costume persona had taken a curse blast—glittering metal radiated out from an entry point on her torso, and her body was rapidly turning into crystal. In jagged, creeping lines, thousands of tiny glittering jewels covered her skin beneath the torn fabric of her shirt and waistcoat, spreading down one arm, up her neck, just edging onto her lower lip.
“How long did it take to get those crystals on?” Sylvie asked, running her fingers over the sparkling scales on Pet’s hand.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know. I wasn’t even allowed to go pee.” Pet hugged her again, bubbling over with excitement and likely a fair whack of champagne; then she turned back to Dominic with another smile. And beneath the frothiness, there was something in her eyes that seemed to flick another tiny missing piece back into his heart. “Thanks for coming.”
“Of course we came.” For just a moment, old instincts and shadowed thoughts attempted to swipe at him, but he stepped forward firmly and pulled her into his arms for a quick hug. She immediately squeezed him tight. “Happy birthday. Don’t sneak into the kitchen and try to cop an early look at your cake.”
She pulled back and rolled her eyes at him. “As if I would. I like surprises.”
“A love unfortunately outweighed by engrained nosiness.”
Her small nose lifted with a sniff. “I changed my mind. Older brothers are highly overrated.”
Before she was called away to greet another group of arrivals, Pet paused and looked up at him. “Mink.”
He barely heard her over the increasing noise of the band, but his mind jolted.
A sudden flash of vivid memory. Pet as a baby, in a room his memories had faded to misty grey now; she was the only part worth remembering. Barely able to speak, she’d been so young, then; just a couple of words. One of them— “Mink,” his sister said again now. “Mum once told me I used to call you that. But somehow…somehow I remember anyway.”
And then she was gone, flitting away to enjoy her night, amidst a crowd where even the most superficial of acquaintances appreciated her more than the people who’d raised her.
He stood for a moment. The lights started to dim as the music picked up, cleverly placed spotlights picking out sinister sculptural details on the shadowed walls. In the last series of Operation Cake, they’d shot an episode at Middlethorpe Grange, a mass of Gothic conceit and gargoyles that prided itself on a certain mystique. In genuine atmosphere, to give credit where it was due, Horcliff House made the Grange look like a kids’ haunted house at a village fête.
He almost--almost—jolted when Sylvie’s hand slipped through the crook of his arm. She wasn’t smiling, her eyes searching as she studied his face.
Always looking out for him.
Turning swiftly, he cupped her gorgeous, ghostly face in his hands and kissed her pale grey lips. What he’d intended to be a peck escalated like he’d set a match to a pool of gasoline.
All around them, couples were starting to move into each other’s arms.
However, the majority of those people were dancing, not drowning in the wet, silken sensation of a mouth that could steal the breath from his body and drive him out of his mind. When Sylvie’s hips started to instinctively arch and rub against his, they broke away simultaneously, still holding onto each other’s arms as they cleared their throats, also in unison. Her cheeks were showing a little pink through the paint.
“Um.” Sylvie darted her tongue in a tiny lick over one of her baby fangs, an action that had zero business kicking another jolt of undiluted lust into his gut.
Considering his work schedule, it had been an extremely inconvenient discovery that when physical desire was entwined with love, it acted like an accelerant on his sex drive.
And since his inclination was equally strong to just wrap around her in bed watching shite TV or sit and watch her draw out yet another over-the-top, fantastical creation in her sketchbooks, the work/life balance had definitely, irrevocably shifted.
He closed one hand over the clock in his chest, feeling the rhythm of the ticking through his palm. With his other thumb, he nudged aside the silken strap of her dress to study the identical thrum of the dial over her breast.
The passing of time seemed irrelevant at that moment. Dominic moved his thumbs, temporarily stopping the movement of both clock hands. The way he felt about her, his gratitude that he could feel like this, was a fixed and immoveable thing.
She was watching him solemnly; then suddenly, she leaned forward and spoke directly into his ear, just a hushed breath of sound.
“Always.”
Yes.
Always.
She exhaled again, looking into his eyes, and she smiled.
That unexpected, brilliant smile that had, to his intense irritation, literally stopped him in his tracks the first day they’d met on set.
“Before we end up doing something on this dancefloor that will scar your sister for life, let’s go find some ghosts. This seems like an opportune time.” She inclined her head toward the terrace doors on the far side of the room, where guests were gathering in a giggly, sweaty cluster to watch a pyrotechnic light display. Pet’s friends had adopted the “go big or go home” mindset when it came to party-planning. “Less of a crowd upstairs. If the legendary Terror of London decides to sidle up behind me and whisper things in my ear, I want to be able to hear it.”
“At the absolute outer limit, I’m prepared to accept that certain places and properties retain a lingering atmosphere and energy. However, if it comes in the form of a functioning larynx and lips—”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Sylvie assured him cheerfully, looping her arm through his as they headed for the grand staircase. “I was talking about you.”
Although Horcliff House was decrepit and brutally ugly, and therefore atmospheric in its entirety, most of the haunted rumours centered around the infamous library. It took up a large percentage of the second floor, the rest of the space occupied by the so-called “storybook rooms”, a literary-themed special effects display that Pet had been wanting to experience for months. He hoped the night was living up to her dreamy-eyed expectations.
The library itself had been largely left alone by the property’s developer. It was eerie enough on its own merits, according to various media write-ups, without the assistance of hidden speakers and projectors. Dominic was extremely skeptical on that point.
When they reached the head of the stairwell and found the imposing wooden doors to the library, a couple of giggling girls in pseudo-period costume came tumbling out and tottered past them. He caught the door before it could close and held it open for Sylvie.
She flashed a teasing glimpse of fang at him as she passed through into the dimly lit chamber. “Don’t worry. If any dwellers of the underworld take a fancy to you, they’ll have to go through me first.”
“I feel suitably reassured.”
They appeared to be the only guests in the large, sprawling space now. He suspected that had more to do with the temperature than any potential fright factor.
Sylvie shivered. “I take it back. If there’s any portal to Hades’s lair in here, I’m a starter. I’m pretty sure he has at least one fireplace down there.”
Their footsteps echoed along the stone floor as they studied their surroundings. Draped tapestries, arching beams, dusty chandeliers, and a general air of mustiness and neglect. Rows of bookcases led off in all directions, becoming a veritable labyrinth as they turned a corner, the already scarce light ebbing as they walked.
Idly, Sylvie reached out to touch a cobweb, draped artfully over the spine of a faded volume. “Do you think they scatter these around every ni—” Her light query turned into a screech as the source of the web appeared and almost ran over her fingers.
Lightning-fast, she shot around Dominic’s body and clutched his waist.
He exchanged a glance with the petrified spider, before turning to look over his shoulder. “Just so we’re clear, then: in the event of imminent attack by ghoul or zombie, you’ll protect me at all costs. However, if it’s a spider larger than a 10p coin, I’m on my own.”
“Maybe 5p,” she said against his back.
“I thought you liked spiders.”
“I do. I admire and respect all spiders that stay at least ten feet away from me at all times.”
She peeked around his arm and looked up at him, her smile growing as he dropped a kiss on her upturned mouth.
As soon as their lips touched, the sound of footsteps drummed through the darkness to both their left and right, and he lifted his head.
A faint susurration drifted on the air, a sound difficult to describe—a whisper entwined around rustling silk, was the closest he could get. It was admittedly effective in the deserted gloom. Just subtle enough to add to the atmosphere without going full fairground Haunted House.
As he’d thought, there was little chance that somebody who’d spent hundreds of thousands of pounds installing a miniature theme park experience down the hall would be able to resist at least a few taped squeaks and sighs in this space.
“As much as I love libraries, haunted and otherwise, I’m turning blue. Do you think we—” Before Sylvie could finish speaking, an enormous bang echoed through the room, with enough force that the nearest bookshelf wobbled, and they both jumped.
More voices and footsteps followed, this time clearly not originating from a recording—and at least one of them had a ring of familiarity.
With an unexpected clank of metal, a small group of fellow guests rounded the corner into their aisle. A couple holding hands came first, flanked by a walking tank in steampunk combat gear, heavily embellished weaponry strapped to his thick thighs and massive chest. A top hat was pulled low over his eyes, a mask covering everything but an uncompromising mouth. His extremely asymmetrical features were hidden tonight, but by his sheer build, disguise was all but impossible for Matthias Vaughn.
And this environment must be the bodyguard’s worst nightmare. An old building full of twists and turns, populated by a riotous number of people with their identities hidden, their inhibitions down, and their limbs laden with makeshift weapons.
However, if he hadn’t immediately identified their personal protection officer, Dominic would never have recognized the couple over whom Matthias hovered with every line of his body taut, sober and alert.
Her Royal Highness Princess Rose of Albany and John Marchmont, royalty of the British realm and Pet’s new bosses, were dressed as iron dragons. Full metal dragon costumes with visible bolts and joinery and sweeping tails. They creaked as their entwined claws swung.
“They totally already had those at home,” Sylvie whispered on a laugh, shaking off her surprise as she sketched an awkward semblance of a curtsey.
A snort echoed from the smaller dragon, before Rosie lifted a claw and tipped back her headpiece to reveal a makeup-free, amused face. “Sylvie. You’re curtseying at a slightly rusty, scrapheap dragon. Shall we all just take a really good look at our lives right now?” The princess studied their own attire with that typically penetrating stare. “Brilliant costumes. You both look wonderful.”
And she herself looked content, at least for now. Considering that photos of the most painful part of her private life and vicious commentary about her relationship were still circling the tabloids 24/7, Dominic was glad to see that the princess appeared genuinely relaxed and rested tonight.
Johnny, hapless, devoted, and incurably well-meaning, had also flipped up his razor-sharp snout. He was wincing. “S-sorry for the clash and cl-clatter, folks. There’s a sort of pop-up zombie affair in the rear stacks. Gave me a hell of a fright, and I managed to trip over a paving stone. Knocked over a full shelving unit. Sometimes feels like I’ve got at least eight left feet.” His cheeks had turned slightly pink. “I’ll find out who I need to p-pay for any damages.”
“You’re not clumsy,” Rosie said, immediately fiercely loyal. If not entirely accurate, in this instance. “That paving stone was dangerously loose.”
Matthias had been standing in habitual silence, but he spoke now in his deep, curt voice. “Several paving stones are loose. The banister on the central stairwell isn’t secure, I doubt if the lighting downstairs meets industrial standards, and the pyrotechnic displays are a fire hazard. Any guest here tonight could have had a similar accident. The owners are failing to meet numerous health and safety obligations.”
Johnny had visibly brightened during that grim recitation. “Profit over people,” he said sagely, and Matthias inclined his head.
Silently, Rosie looked from one to the other, before she turned back to Dominic and Sylvie. “Clearly, I need to get this lot home before the party spirit just rages completely out of control. We’ll go downstairs and see if we can track down the birthday girl.”
“Glad she seems to be enjoying her night,” Johnny said with renewed cheer. “Guys b-buzzing around her like b-bees on pollen last I saw.”
Just fractionally, in the dark hollows of his mask, Matthias’s eyes narrowed.
Setting her metal claws on Sylvie’s arm, Rosie drew her aside and spoke very quietly. The hushed words reached Dominic’s ears, but he doubted if the other men heard. “Matthias is on duty with Johnny tonight, but Pet did invite him as a guest, and he slipped a present onto the gift table when we arrived. He’s got the most gorgeous manners under all that stiff professionalism and all he said is that it’s ‘what you do’, but I saw what was in the bag. A little antique gold compact, circa 1920. Straight out of a flapper’s handbag. So pretty you could cry. It must have cost at least a hundred pounds. And he didn't even write his name on the gift tag.”
The clanking dragon and the ghost sorceress then exchanged a very meaningful look—the subtext of which Dominic was going to soundly ignore. It clearly edged into the realms of Pet’s personal life. If his sister ever appeared to be remotely in danger in that area, emotionally or physically, he would come down on the other party or parties involved like a ton of bricks. Otherwise—as long as she was happy, none of his business.
Although, beneath her devotion to her job and her sunny smiles for everyone she met, he suspected Pet wasn't all that happy where Matthias was concerned. She clearly thought the brutal-looking bodyguard walked on water and was doing her damndest to make him her new best friend, but apparently he was just as determined to keep her at a distance.
Rosie straightened and returned to Johnny’s side, ignoring his guileless, enquiring look and Matthias’s slightly suspicious stare.
They left the library as a group. Sylvie was starting to shiver harder under Dominic’s arm, and he had no great desire to see Johnny’s “zombie affair”.
Outside in the hallway, Rosie murmured, “Time for us to say our goodbyes and slip out before anyone else recognizes us, but we’ll be in touch.” She shot Sylvie a quick smile. “Make sure you check out the storybook rooms down the hall. They’re fab; and as the main brain behind Sugar Fair, they’ll probably be right up your street.”
The trio departed, Matthias herding the couple toward the staircase, where three more figures with very official-looking posture slipped out of the shadows and joined the entourage.
Sylvie slipped her hand into Dominic’s, and he linked their fingers. “All right,” she said, “we’ve got another hour before the cake comes out. Let’s see what gobs of unearned millions buys you in the world of special effects.”
As they walked down the corridor and passed a beveled window, he could see the neon flash of the technicoloured lighting display in the paved courtyard below. There was a lot of shrieking and laughter floating upward.
“It sounds like people are having a good time.” Her thumb moved playfully against his.
“It sounds like people are absolutely shitfaced.” He watched as bright pink light glanced across her cheekbone, then a skittering of blue and green. She was so much more Sylvie in rainbow hues than in the greyscale of her makeup. “And most of the endless stream of admirers who’ve been traipsing into De Vere’s to see my sister these past months, using my bathrooms and buying a single token chocolate, are irritating enough when they’re stone-cold sober.”
“Happy birthday to you…” Sylvie ended in cheerful singsong, the light of amusement in her eyes widening into a full smile. Her arms twined back around his waist. “You’re such a buzzkill.” She sounded very satisfactorily proprietary. “You could form some sort of club with Matthias and Johnny. Imagine all the fun you could have writing up your official safety handbook.”
She laughed when his hand moved in threatening tickling distance of the sensitive spot on her ribs.
There were three of the storybook rooms, and they found an unoccupied one on their second try.
Inside, it was gaudy, ornate, and looked as if someone had vomited the contents of an Enid Blyton book into physical interior design. Sylvie’s hold tightened on his torso as she leaned into him. He expected a stream of enraptured commentary to be whispered across his skin at any moment.
The lights were low, spotlights illuminating a path of glittering golden bricks that wound toward three central pedestals, each containing a large, heavily prop-looking book.
Fifty quid said whoever had been contracted to design this spectacle had furnished at least one Vegas casino.
Without hesitation, Sylvie reached forward to open the first book, Alice in Wonderland. Dominic winced as jaunty music exploded from hidden speakers and just about blew out his eardrums. In a swirl of shimmering light, figures emerged, seeming to pass through their bodies as Alice chased the White Rabbit across projector screens.
They both had to adjust their stance quickly as the scene whipped into a void, tipping all of them down the rabbit hole, their feet giving a solid illusion of dropping out from beneath them.
The Mad Hatter had just appeared on the scene in a spinning whirl of teacups, holographic cakes, and chronological inaccuracy when Sylvie reached out and shut the book.
Quiet and sanity abruptly restored.
He raised a brow at her, and she wrinkled her nose.
“I’m starting to feel carsick. And this is impressive, really impressive, but it’s also kind of—”
“A completely soulless cash splash?”
“Yeah.” She ran her fingers down the next book. Odysseus. He feared to imagine. “Sugar Fair has…heart. Home. It’s not just gimmicks.”
Slowly, almost peeking, she lifted the leather cover—and immediately the ground under their feet shuddered and a roaring Cyclops lunged forward in the carefully slanted surrounding screens.
“Uh, nope.”
Another book slammed shut.
Before her completionist soul could reach out to the third and final volume, Sylvie touched the small silk bag she wore and dug into it for her phone. He could see the screen lit up with a text. She looked at it for several seconds, then wordlessly put it away.
Her eyes were unfocused on the closest book pedestal. She slowly exhaled, then straightened her shoulders.
Dominic would never know all of Sylvie. She possessed chaotic depths of the utterly unfathomable, and he’d never realized that love could be so…kinetic. Infinite. That his love for someone could take on another facet from one second to the next; she could say something utterly absurd, or do something entirely unexpected yet so naturally kind, and suddenly he loved her just a little differently. Just that much more.
She was the rock in his life, the centre point on which everything else turned, but he doubted there would ever be a steady familiarity in their relationship.
Sylvie was far too unpredictable, and he was apparently endlessly fascinated.
However, he knew that particular look.
“Contract bid?”
She nodded, catching her lip between her teeth.
He frowned. “The King George?”
She was stoic, already mentally travelling forward—it was futile to dwell in this business; opportunities moved quickly—but she didn’t hide her disappointment from him.
“Yeah. That was Jay.” Her best friend and business partner was holding the fort at Sugar Fair tonight. Pet had invited Jay, and they got on well enough, but he didn’t approve of forfeiting the income from three Dark Forest sessions for a party. Bluntly, although things were healing in their own way and time, he also still preferred not to spend unnecessary time in Dominic’s company. Sylvie blew out another breath. “They went with Hunter’s.”
“I know at least one board member at the King George is an unapologetic fuckwit, but apparently they barely have a single functioning brain cell amongst them.” He spoke levelly, but also made no attempt to sugar-coat his reaction.
Her gaze flicked up to his, the light of a small smile appearing there. After a moment, without a word, she went up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
“It’s not pacifying bias,” he said with icy crispness, and that glimmer of a smile widened, lifting her lips into a soft, distracting curve. “Hunter’s is inconsistent and unreliable, and they’ll run into problems by the second function. Every element of the theatre’s requirements dovetailed impeccably with Sugar Fair. It’s a poor decision that they’ll live to regret.”
Her irrepressible dimple had appeared. She was still looking into his eyes, the expression in her own slightly enigmatic again.
Scowling at her, he lowered his head to drop a whisper-soft kiss on her dimple. A lingering one on her neck, the tiny spot beneath her ear that always sped up her breathing. “I’m sorry.”
Sylvie took his chin between thumb and forefinger, inviting his mouth to hers. She hummed quietly into the kiss, reaching to entwine their fingers again, then pulled back so abruptly that their lips parted with a slight popping sound. “I love you.”
His eyes narrowed. “And I love you. But it’s still bullshit.”
“Yeah. But there’ll be other contracts.” She reached with her free hand to idly trace over the cover of the third prop book. Treasure Island. “After the pirate ship debacle on set last year, I’m almost afraid to look at this one.”
She flicked it open, and immediately the room dimmed to a cool darkness. Thousands and thousands of the tiniest lights drifted through the air around them like glittering dust particles, as the screens and surrounding audio plunged them into an underwater cavern. It was again cleverly done, convincingly three-dimensional and intricately detailed, from the silvery splash of a school of fish to the glint of gold in a sunken chest.
A flicker of movement to his left, the darting of a long iridescent tail and the glimpse of long silky hair. A pale hand reached through the blue-tinged, starry gloom, moving in a delicate, melancholic glide, as if stroking over their faces.
From the hidden speakers came the first eerie crash of a breaking wave, a creaking boat, a rhythmic drumbeat—and the haunting harmony of almost inhumanly beautiful singing voices. The strains of My Jolly Sailor Bold, somehow circling behind them, entwining around their bodies, drawing them together and trying to tug them forward.
Sylvie didn’t close the book immediately this time. She squeezed his hand, and they stood in silence until the voices finally drifted away and they were returned to the surface, the scene transforming into a peaceful night sky, just the quiet sound of the waves remaining.
“Suddenly, I get why you’d be drawn in by a Siren.” Sylvie tilted her head back, looking up at the simulated stars. “I like this one. Unsettling, but beautiful.” Her gaze slid sideways, and she smiled at him. “You know, sometimes it still blows my mind that we’re here. I think it always will, a little.”
“In the Horcliff House of Horrors?” His words were sardonic, but he lightly stroked his fingers around her hip.
“Just…anywhere. Everywhere. Together.” She spread her fingers against his chest, then fisted them in his shirt, tugging him back down. She spoke teasingly against his mouth. “Royally pissed off every time somebody fails to appreciate the other’s spectacular talents.”
A little gruffly, he said, “I’ll always be the biggest supporter of anything you want or do in life, Sylvie. And you know if you ever need help, I’m here—”
“And vice versa.” Any hint of humor momentarily falling away, her eyes were serious on his, but a smile flickered back. “Team Fairchild-De Vere.”
A door slammed down the corridor, releasing the distant sound of an eerie howl of despair from one of the other themed rooms.
“Did that ghost just say ‘what the fuck’?” she asked absently, and he snorted.
“Probably the spirits of our former selves.” His response was dry, but he couldn’t help smiling as she laughed.
“Dom?” Her voice was very light as she twined her arms around his neck.
“Mmm?” His fingers sifted gently through her hair.
She spoke directly into his ear, her breath causing a reactive shiver down his spine, and her tone was so entirely normal that there was a two-second delay before his entire body went still. “Would you be my husband, please?”
He continued to not move for five more ticks of their heart-clocks. Then he pulled back to look into her face, his hands tightening on her waist.
There was the smallest shade of nervousness in Sylvie’s eyes, and she bit her lip, but her breathing and her voice were steady and sure. “Since I was a little girl, I’ve dreamed about beautiful wedding cakes—for other people. I’m just not a walking-down-the-aisle sort of person, and I never thought much about marriage. When I looked into the future, I manifested Sugar Fair. I saw myself happy in my career, with a successful business and the family I’ve collected around myself. Still making sugar sculptures into my eccentric twilight years. Living with at least four cats.” She smoothed her hand over the curve of his shoulder, watching the movement of her fingers, before her gaze lifted back to his. “And then I met you.” Her dimple flashed. “And started fantasizing on a regular basis about pushing you into the Thames.”
His mouth lifted at one corner, but he didn’t take his eyes away from her face.
“And now I still see all that.” She blinked hard against a sudden sheen in her eyes, and he immediately broke free of the frozen stasis that gripped every muscle. His arm sliding right around her, he pulled her closer into the shelter of his body. She spread her fingers against his chest again, in that half-wondering, half-possessive way she did sometimes, which unfailingly caused a strange, catching sensation at the base of his throat. It made him feel—connected, belonging, in a way he never had. Sylvie breathed out shakily. “But now, one of those cats is Humphrey, and that happiness is shared, and I’m not alone in that kitchen while I’m burning the pads of my fingers for the hundredth-thousandth time.”
“You won’t be burning anything in our kitchen,” he said, his voice almost emotionless because inside he was anything but, “and definitely not yourself.”
His hand moved to close over hers. His skin was calloused; so was hers, and they traced the length of each other’s fingers, slowly, absently.
“I want to be your wife,” Sylvie whispered, “and I’d really love it if you were my husband. So, someday—in ten years’ time, or five months’ time, or tomorrow—you want to go a registry office with me, and take all our family out for really great food and lots of wine, and have a massive argument over which one of us gets to make the cake?”
Very slowly, Dominic tilted his head and leaned in to kiss her neck again. He paused there against her faintly damp skin until his hands steadied, breathing in her scent, hearing the catch in her own breaths and feeling the tremble moving through her body. His mouth moved to the base of her throat, his tongue lightly tracing the rapid beat of her pulse, ignoring the hint of a bitter tang from the grey paint.
“Dominic…” Her soft voice cracked on a sharp inhale as he kissed the warm skin between her breasts, the silk of her dress a bitingly sensual glide against his nerve endings as—still in slow, measured movements—he lowered to one knee.
Which cracked loudly, because apparently everything after thirty-five was the death knell for all joints and ligaments.
“Dom.” His name, uttered with the wonder and fragility of butterfly wings, as he touched his lips lightly to her abdomen in a final kiss, before he took her hand in his again and brought it back to his chest.
Her lips parted on silence as he moved her fingers to the heart-clock that still ticked there, steady and reliable. Then, with a quick flick of his little finger under her index finger, together they unfastened the hidden latch on the dial and opened the clockface.
Sylvie had to release his hand to grip his shoulder as she stared into the revealed cavity.
She was shaking hard when she finally reached out and took the ring from its metal loop.
“As usual,” he said, one of the truest smiles of his life starting to break free, “you’re determined to get in ahead of me. I was planning to maneuver you back to the Dark Forest after we left the party tonight.”
She joined him on the floor in such a rush that his hands shot out before her kneecaps could bruise on the panels.
Holding the ring in both hands, she stared at it for long enough that he regretted not just buying the far more tasteful diamond solitaire. She moved so that the artificial starlight turned the facets of the central pink sapphire into a riot of sparkles.
It was surrounded by petals of smaller diamonds and lavender amethysts. A jeweled flower on a gold band.
“It matches my hair.” Sylvie was still trembling. One hand rose to touch her head, obviously forgetting that the streaks were currently concealed beneath the colourless wig. She took a huge breath. Looked back up at him. “You cannot tell me,” she said, her voice crackly, “that you don’t find this ring absolutely hideous.”
He lifted both brows. “Do you think it’s hideous?”
Her fingers immediately closed over it protectively, as if he’d been about to take it back. “I think it’s a perfect dream of a ring, and it’s never leaving my sight again. And I think you probably despise it with every fiber of your being.”
“When I look at this ring, I see you,” he said calmly, as they knelt there on the floor, still in full costume, his sister’s birthday party continuing to increase in volume outside. “So I’m never going to think it’s anything but beautiful.”
Her lashes were wet.
Seizing the leather strap that secured the monocle, he pulled it from his head and tossed it aside. With his thumbs, he brushed away the few tears that had slipped down her cheeks. Her makeup was starting to smear; neither of them gave a damn.
“Sylvie,” he said, as she gripped his wrists, “there isn’t a single thing I’ve ever wanted in my life more than I want to be your husband.”
Her forehead rested against his as they just—existed in that moment, of absolute contentment and real, true happiness, for a long time.
Then, for once still on an identical wavelength, they smiled at each other in that aura of calm and peacefulness, and spoke in unison.
“But I’m baking the cake.”
Having just completed major event contracts—a global aviation conference for De Vere’s and a film premiere for Sugar Fair—they’d taken the evening off to wallow in mutual exhaustion, eat Thai food and reject-bin truffles in Dominic’s bed, and sleepily grope each other while they missed most of a murder mystery rerun.
Unlike the philandering village doctor who’d just been decapitated with a pair of oversized, novelty scissors, she was winning at life right now.
Their attention had briefly returned to the TV when the village baker made his entrance and rapid exit, Dominic turning his tousled head from the curve of her neck to watch.
The heat in his dark eyes had sharpened into a scowl. “Is he using a piping bag or milking a fucking cow?”
The doomed baker had still been very energetically icing his cupcakes, even as he hissed threats at an unseen presence. Never a wise move to start shouting insults when strains of ominous music were trickling in. A+ way to end up as man jam in the sad-looking Victoria sponge behind him.
Pushing up on her elbow, Sylvie had studied the actor’s very jerky frosting technique.
“Clearly never been in a commercial kitchen in his life,” she’d agreed cheerfully, stroking a silvering lock of black hair away from Dom’s creased brow. She hadn’t been able to resist a little tug of his earlobe. He was just so delightfully stroppy when his critic switch was flipped. “On the other hand, you’ve clearly never been on a farm. If that’s your cow-milking method, enjoy having your testicles kicked into your throat.” She’d hummed low in her throat, flicking a glance upward through lowered lashes. “And considering the amount of whinging just because of the teeniest tap from a hoof made of cake…”
His teeth had lightly nipped her own ear, and she’d grinned.
Pulling her gaze from the amused light in his own, she’d inclined her head toward the screen, where the piping was becoming increasingly vigorous and ineffectual. “I would call that technique more along the lines of…”
“Yes?” Dominic’s attention had returned to her body, deliciously tickly kisses travelling up her throat.
She’d shrugged, her breath catching. “Angry wank?”
When he’d moved to kiss her mouth, laughter ran deep and warm in his eyes and lips and chest.
Thirty seconds later, over his freckled shoulder, the baker had suffocated to death in an enormous vat of buttercream, at the hands of a perpetrator who’d turned out to be his own wife.
As Sylvie stood now in her own commercial kitchen, she was starting to see where the woman was coming from. She glanced at the new blackbird clock on the wall. Four-forty in the afternoon, well into their sixth hour on this final stage of an extremely stressful joint bake.
She arched her neck in a futile attempt to stretch the cramped muscles there, keeping the spray gun in her hand hovering over the countertop. The nozzle was starting to leak and this particular food colouring was an absolute bitch to scrub off floor tiles. The gun was an aging troublemaker that needed replacing, but Dominic had zeroed in and pinched her best one with unerring instinct, and her team were using the others for their assigned jobs.
“It is straight.” She was enormously impressed with herself that the words emerged so levelly.
She admired, desired, and adored this man. All the way down to his abrupt, grouchy, golden soul. If a wrathful former Operation Cake contestant burst into Sugar Fair right now and tried to drown him in a bucket of icing, she would stand between him and mortal harm. She wanted to spend every night for the rest of her life with her feet tucked between his hairy calves.
She’d also temporarily forgotten exactly how irritating he could be as a colleague.
Dominic crouched and examined the line of lavender dye she’d just meticulously faded into encroaching grey. His eyes narrowed very slightly.
Without looking away from him, Sylvie reached out and opened the drawer under the central island. Feeling for and extracting an item, she dangled it delicately at arm’s length. She could feel the silent sarcasm seeping from her pores.
Expressionlessly, he looked at the magnifying glass in her hand. He stood in a swift movement, ignoring it and her. “It is straight.”
“I know it’s straight.” A little less level that time. Several of her confectioners were working nearby to fulfil a truffle order; in her peripheral vision, she saw Halley wince. “This is like the eighteenth birthday cake I’ve done this week.”
And as this cake was for Pet, who was liable to walk through the kitchens at De Vere’s at any given time, this collaboration was taking place in Sylvie’s territory, which drastically reduced her tolerance with Dominic’s professional bossiness.
“The flame tier is too far to the right.” He was staring at the cake with cold criticism again, one hand propped against the counter.
The man was seriously lucky he possessed those forearms, because sometimes--
Actually, he was right. The flame tier was fractionally too far to the right. Each level of the cake was situated on an electronic turning wheel; when completed and spun at speed, every tiny detail blurring into motion would give the effect of shimmering movement across the entire structure. From the gorgeous blue and purple flames of Hades’s seductive underworld, rising to the swirling fog and lamplit romanticism of Persephone’s alternate-universe period London. The steampunk-inspired romance was Pet’s favorite show on the West End right now.
If any detail was even slightly out of place, the illusion skewed.
Carefully, Sylvie bent and adjusted the lower tiers. “How’s—” A single glistening sugar pearl fell from the whispering suggestion of a silken gown and skittered across the bench. They both reached out instinctively to catch it. Dominic was still holding the tiny, razor-sharp knife he’d used to neaten the dramatic lines of Hades’s inner lair; an extremely rare safety error on his part, not to have sheathed it immediately. Sylvie hissed as their hands collided and the blade scored her index finger.
She clutched her hand, then calmly examined the damage. Little more than a scratch, a tiny bit of blood, and a minor sting. The two great passions of her life were Dom and sugar craft. She handled molten sugar on a daily basis; her hands were a lost battlefield of scars and callouses. Short of a severed limb, she wasn’t concerned about a cut.
She was turning dismissively toward the first aid cabinet when Dominic broke free of his momentary, taut-muscled stasis. He set the knife in the nearest sink and put his hands around her waist, his thumbs moving in a single sweep over her lower ribs. Before she could say a word, she was being propelled backward through the corner alcove, into the room beyond, and lifted to sit on the edge of her drafting table. Sheets of paper covered with scrawled diagrams and measurements crinkled beneath her butt. She blinked away her surprise.
One look at his rigid face, and she lifted the hand that didn’t have the negligible scratch to cup his stubbled jaw. The bone there shifted as he looked down at her injured finger, cradled on his palm.
“If you’d given yourself this cut,” she said bluntly, “you’d barely have noticed. It’s nothing. And it’s unlike you to overreact. Next series of Operation Cake, you’ve just lost the right to roll your eyes at contestant theatrics for at least three episodes.”
He was not diverted. “I didn’t cut myself. I cut you.” He looked furious with himself, but he couldn’t have held her any more gently. His thumb was rubbing gently above the scratch now, as if trying to soothe the hurt. “Because I was being bloody careless, making totally unnecessary adjustments to that ridiculous, garish cake that—”
“That is going to send your sister orbiting around the moon.” As she slipped her hand down to rub comfortingly against his chest, Sylvie let the stress and tension of the day slide from her muscles. She was feeling light and relaxed—and just really, really in love. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss between his ribs. “If you just iced a plain sheet cake with your own hands, Pet would adore every crumb. But a five-tier, four-flavour spin-cake that took you twelve hours on the mechanical plans alone, even though you aesthetically despise it to the core of your being?” She smiled at him. “Major big brother points.”
After a moment, Dominic exhaled, rolling his neck to try to ease the strain. “It’s the first time I’ve actually been around for her birthday. She hasn’t had so much as a card from family since our mother died. I just want her to—”
“I know,” she said softly. She pushed off the table, her body pressing against his in a rasp of crisp cotton and underlying warmth. Circling both arms around his neck, she held him in a brief hug.
He cupped her head in his palm and nuzzled his lips under the curve of her jaw, tracing shivery little mini-kisses to her ear.
And then he recommenced overreacting to the world’s smallest injury and went to get the first aid kit. Under his uncompromising surveillance, she was securing a plaster on her finger when a familiar voice echoed through from the kitchens. Dominic swore under his breath, and she nudged his foot with the tip of her trainer, stifling a laugh at his expression.
“Do you know how many people would trip over themselves to be able to call Zack in for a fancy dress party?” she murmured.
The Operation Cake makeup artist was a special-effects maestro, with a social media following now edging into high six figures. He was out there hugging all the confectioners before he came to transform and torment Grumpus here. Sylvie could hear a lot of giggling and flirting.
“‘Dress: steampunk chic or witchcraft wondrousness.’” Dominic quoted Pet’s gorgeous calligraphy-and-wax-seal invitation with all the joie de vivre of Eeyore. “If it were anyone else’s birthday, nobody in their right mind would actually RSVP yes to this party.”
As it was, half of London would probably pack into the venue tonight. Pet was easy to love and she had a lot of friends. Most of whom would fully embrace the chance to slip on a pair of metal goggles and explore a historic home in Seven Dials that was rumoured to be a veritable bastion of spirits. Of both the ghostly and alcoholic variety.
Since it was, you know, cool as fuck, to those who’d escaped the inexplicably sexy, crabby misanthrope gene.
“I would say to be careful, that one day the wind will change and you’ll be stuck with that expression, but clearly that ship has sailed,” Zack said cheerfully from the doorway. He was heavily loaded down, with garment bags slung over his broad shoulder and the handles of shopping bags threaded through his sparkly-tipped fingers. He cradled his professional kit under one arm like a baby. “Hi, lovely—” a smiling aside to Sylvie as he kissed her cheek, “—how are my very favorite unlikely loved-ups? Ready for me to work my magic?”
“A few more tweaks to the cake before Dominic’s sous-chef escorts it over to Seven Dials, and we’re all yours.” Sylvie could sense Dominic’s internal groan, but he kept silent.
Setting down the bags, Zack lowered his makeup case to the worktable with care and caution worthy of the Crown Jewels. He fixed his attention on the topmost sketch amongst her papers. “Do you already have your own idea in mind for the look? Because—” His hand shot to his throat and his appalled gaze turned on Dominic. “Oh, honey, no.”
Dominic’s brows lifted, and Sylvie arched on her tiptoes to see over Zack’s shoulder. She snorted. “Yeah, that would be my breakfast brainstorming for Cory Ball’s sixth birthday cake. I realize it’s not entirely temperamentally inapt, but Dominic is not attending Pet’s steampunk gala dressed as a grumpy cartoon duck. Feel free to exhale.”
She then got a serious case of the giggles, which brought a reluctant curve to Dominic’s mouth.
By the time they left the fairy-lit exterior of Sugar Fair and stepped out into a dark and drizzly night, however, any inclination toward amusement had been swallowed by sheer, unadulterated lust.
Mostly for him. A little bit for herself.
Dominic held a large umbrella over their heads as he opened the door of the black cab for her. The driver barely glanced at them. Apparently on a Friday night in London, giving a lift to the embodiment of fantastical evils didn’t warrant distraction from a meatball sub.
Which, to be fair, smelled fantastic.
As the car began its slow progress through the packed streets toward Seven Dials, Sylvie curled in her corner of the dimly lit cab to blatantly stare. She wouldn’t be surprised if she were currently exuding little floating love-hearts and coils of pink smoke like an infatuated cartoon.
Zack was a gold-plated genius, but he’d also had a lot to work with when he’d transformed Dominic into a sort of piratical steampunk Time God. Her gaze wandered up past black trousers that would make Bowie’s Jareth jealous and a white shirt that wasn’t so much concealing as revealing his upper body—including the intricate series of working cogs Zack had imbedded down his left arm via silicone putty and a hell of a lot of detail work. The cogs continued across Dom’s muscular shoulder and chest, where they opened at his pec to reveal a clockwork heart. Quite literally, a clock, the hands ticking in a gentle rhythmic pulse, to which she kept aligning her breaths without conscious choice.
Zack’s clever hands and brush had swept dark shadows up the chiseled planes of Dominic’s face, sculpting out even harder angles and an aura of menace. The contact lens in his left eye was etched with another clock dial, roman numerals circling an artificially pinpoint pupil. He wore a golden monocle, fixed to the worn leather strap encircling his head, and digital numbers constantly appeared and disappeared on its surface. He was…unearthly, resonating with danger and sex. If they were characters in the play Pet adored, he’d be a transparent villain, devoted only to his own interests and his lover.
The only softness in his entire body at this moment was the rakish fall of hair over his forehead, the silver strands prominent in the streetlight, and the look in his untouched right eye as he studied her from head to toe in return.
And he should be struck speechless with sparkling desire right now, because she was very much feeling her own alter persona, as well.
Zack had declared the look “Clockwork Ghost Sorceress.” "First glance: alluring and dreamy. Second glance: deadly. If you’re still breathing by then."
With scary amounts of energy, he’d gone to town on her face and body with every muted, gloomy tone in his palette. From her silvery wig to the pure-white, satiny silk that clung to her torso and swirled around her legs, she looked like a photographic negative. Almost angelic, until somebody noticed the curving black claws that tipped her fingers, the faintest suggestion of metallic fangs when her lips parted, the very subtle red dots in her black, dilated contacts—and the clockwork heart when the wispy straps of her dress parted. It was identical to the one in Dominic’s artificial chest cavity, the hand ticking perfectly in time with his own.
Even Mr. Cynical “Dressing Up is for Children, Theme Park Performers, and Every Pomeranian with a SW1 Postcode” had looked at her in unblinking silence and added an eyewatering bonus to Zack’s fee.
He reached out a hand now, and she slipped her fingers into his, careful to keep her claws away from his skin. She caught her breath in a startled laugh when he smoothly transferred her to his lap. They both swung a quick glance at the driver’s back, but the man’s attention was still divided between the traffic standstill and the remnants of his dinner.
With the side of her finger, Sylvie traced the edge of the metal cogs in Dominic’s “heart”. The surrounding painted putty blended so seamlessly into his own skin that the join was almost imperceptible.
“Zack is so wasted at Operation Cake,” she murmured into the quiet darkness, as she enjoyed the familiarity of his body and breath and presence, and the subsequent fizzy feeling in her middle.
“Yes, he is.”
She swallowed as his own fingertips touched her so lightly, a butterfly-soft stroke down the line of her grey throat to where her own heart-clock ticked in a far steadier rhythm than the human beat beneath.
“But in this case—” As he kept a millimeter between their skin to preserve each painstaking brushstroke, his breath was like a physical caress in the hollow of her throat; his head moved and tilted, their lips just barely meeting. The very tip of his tongue touched her lower lip and she met it with her own in the most fleeting contact—the outline, the blueprint of a kiss. She couldn’t help a soft sound, and his chest moved with a deep inhale as he vocalized one of her own thoughts. “He had a fairly spectacular canvas to work with.”
Sylvie leaned her head into his—and then, given that they were in a public taxi, it was probably fortunate that she couldn’t entirely smother a sudden giggle. “I one-hundred-percent thought you were going to say something like ‘really solid base ingredients’ there.”
Dominic snorted, shifting position carefully. The already legendary black trousers didn’t exactly…conceal much.
“I mean, your idea of a compliment on my Valentine’s Day dress did involve the words ‘stiff peaks’,” she said, putting up her hand to cover a tiny yawn.
She was excited about this party—tickets to Horcliff House were like hen’s teeth, and Pet’s connections were apparently endless and daunting—but fatigue was catching up with her. It made her so happy that Dominic had asked her to collaborate on his sister’s cake, but it had been a lot more work than either of them had expected, and Sugar Fair was bidding for three contracts this week.
He reached up to adjust the strap over his ear. The numbers swimming to the surface on the glass monocle lens were oddly hypnotic. “I did not say it looked like meringue—”
“I distinctly heard the word pavlova.”
“I was referring to the ballerina.”
“Nice try.”
Their hands linked again, Dominic looking down and playing with her fingers as she watched the lights from passing cars dancing over his cheek.
“Any word on the contract tenders yet?” he asked after a moment, and she shook her head.
“Almost certain we’ll get the Schyler deal. Hopeful for the Wolford Hotel and King George gigs, but we probably won’t hear anything before Monday.”
His glance sideways was shrewd. “It’s the King George you want most.”
“Yes.” She allowed herself a moment to imagine a positive outcome there. An exclusive contract to cater every launch party for the West End theatre, theming to each new show. Financially lucrative, yes, but more so just the artistry side of it. Yes, she wanted it.
“I was speaking to Joseph Warren today,” Dominic said, and her mind returned with laser sharpness to the present reality.
“You didn’t—” she began, a hint of warning in her tone, and he gave their entwined fingers a gentle little shake.
“No, I didn’t coerce him into putting in a good word for you, or whatever accusation was hurtling this way. I steered a brief side topic around the issue and gleaned that the shortlist is Sugar Fair and Hunter’s. No more. You unquestionably have the advantage. Hunter’s hits the mark about fifty-percent of the time, and their ingenuity is lacking since they lost their head confectioner.” With an edge of coolness, he added, “We’ve already established that I do not hold some sort of mafia influence over the London food scene.”
“Not mafia,” she said consideringly. “More like the Michelangelo of sweets. Plenty of jealous rivals and nasty comments, but people still recognize the mastery and end up doing what you say.”
Ah, one of those highly satisfying moments when she caught him completely off-guard and turned the tips of his ears crimson. Perfect way to start the party.
After a weighted second of silence, he said extremely drily, “I can’t say I’ve noticed that phenomenon in present company.”
Her response was airy. “I’m exempt. I’m the Leonardo. Just chilling over here with my sketchbooks and dreams.” She tilted her head. “Also, arguably the superior Ninja Turtle.”
As happy as she knew she made him, it was still too rare that he fully, properly laughed—and it was like a shot of pure… belonging, straight into her heart every time.
* * *
As the extremely irritating and very beautiful love of his life would attest, Dominic did not entertain fanciful ideas. He also didn’t live under a rock, so he was aware of the centuries-strong rumours surrounding the old Horcliff House property. Originally built by some eccentric twat from the House of Lords in the eighteenth-century, it had been left derelict until an enterprising millionaire had started marketing it as a party hotspot. From what he’d heard, it had been cleverly tarted up with special effects and just enough structural refurbishment that it wouldn’t actually crumble around their ears, but he didn’t believe for a moment it was haunted by anything other than expensive overheads. Its standard clientele expected to be scared, were actively looking for eerie atmosphere, and usually pissed to the gills. Small wonder the tales of mysterious happenings continued.
However, it was right up the street of both Sylvie and Pet, and—Christ, he’d do a lot more than dress up as the fucking Dread Pirate Rolex and spend fifty minutes in traffic getting to Seven Dials if it meant seeing those smiles.
Despite the throng of outlandishly dressed guests milling into and around the property, most of whom were masked and heavily disguised, his sister found them within five minutes of their entry into the central function room.
“Oh my god.” Pet was a picture-perfect steampunk aviator, with a pair of goggles perched on her head that he looked at twice and strongly suspected had been temporarily purloined from a museum. He endeavored to know as little as possible of his baby sister’s love life, but she remained on good terms with many of her former boyfriends, and he seemed to recall a curator amongst them. “Look at you two. You look amazing. Wait.”
She whipped out her phone and situated them in her camera lens. “On the count of three, let’s have a smile on the left and praying for swift death on the right.” Snap. “Nailed it.”
“Happy birthday, Pet,” Sylvie said, laughing as she hugged her. She held out Pet’s arm, admiring her costume. “And wow. Likewise.”
At some point in her imaginary backstory, Pet’s costume persona had taken a curse blast—glittering metal radiated out from an entry point on her torso, and her body was rapidly turning into crystal. In jagged, creeping lines, thousands of tiny glittering jewels covered her skin beneath the torn fabric of her shirt and waistcoat, spreading down one arm, up her neck, just edging onto her lower lip.
“How long did it take to get those crystals on?” Sylvie asked, running her fingers over the sparkling scales on Pet’s hand.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know. I wasn’t even allowed to go pee.” Pet hugged her again, bubbling over with excitement and likely a fair whack of champagne; then she turned back to Dominic with another smile. And beneath the frothiness, there was something in her eyes that seemed to flick another tiny missing piece back into his heart. “Thanks for coming.”
“Of course we came.” For just a moment, old instincts and shadowed thoughts attempted to swipe at him, but he stepped forward firmly and pulled her into his arms for a quick hug. She immediately squeezed him tight. “Happy birthday. Don’t sneak into the kitchen and try to cop an early look at your cake.”
She pulled back and rolled her eyes at him. “As if I would. I like surprises.”
“A love unfortunately outweighed by engrained nosiness.”
Her small nose lifted with a sniff. “I changed my mind. Older brothers are highly overrated.”
Before she was called away to greet another group of arrivals, Pet paused and looked up at him. “Mink.”
He barely heard her over the increasing noise of the band, but his mind jolted.
A sudden flash of vivid memory. Pet as a baby, in a room his memories had faded to misty grey now; she was the only part worth remembering. Barely able to speak, she’d been so young, then; just a couple of words. One of them— “Mink,” his sister said again now. “Mum once told me I used to call you that. But somehow…somehow I remember anyway.”
And then she was gone, flitting away to enjoy her night, amidst a crowd where even the most superficial of acquaintances appreciated her more than the people who’d raised her.
He stood for a moment. The lights started to dim as the music picked up, cleverly placed spotlights picking out sinister sculptural details on the shadowed walls. In the last series of Operation Cake, they’d shot an episode at Middlethorpe Grange, a mass of Gothic conceit and gargoyles that prided itself on a certain mystique. In genuine atmosphere, to give credit where it was due, Horcliff House made the Grange look like a kids’ haunted house at a village fête.
He almost--almost—jolted when Sylvie’s hand slipped through the crook of his arm. She wasn’t smiling, her eyes searching as she studied his face.
Always looking out for him.
Turning swiftly, he cupped her gorgeous, ghostly face in his hands and kissed her pale grey lips. What he’d intended to be a peck escalated like he’d set a match to a pool of gasoline.
All around them, couples were starting to move into each other’s arms.
However, the majority of those people were dancing, not drowning in the wet, silken sensation of a mouth that could steal the breath from his body and drive him out of his mind. When Sylvie’s hips started to instinctively arch and rub against his, they broke away simultaneously, still holding onto each other’s arms as they cleared their throats, also in unison. Her cheeks were showing a little pink through the paint.
“Um.” Sylvie darted her tongue in a tiny lick over one of her baby fangs, an action that had zero business kicking another jolt of undiluted lust into his gut.
Considering his work schedule, it had been an extremely inconvenient discovery that when physical desire was entwined with love, it acted like an accelerant on his sex drive.
And since his inclination was equally strong to just wrap around her in bed watching shite TV or sit and watch her draw out yet another over-the-top, fantastical creation in her sketchbooks, the work/life balance had definitely, irrevocably shifted.
He closed one hand over the clock in his chest, feeling the rhythm of the ticking through his palm. With his other thumb, he nudged aside the silken strap of her dress to study the identical thrum of the dial over her breast.
The passing of time seemed irrelevant at that moment. Dominic moved his thumbs, temporarily stopping the movement of both clock hands. The way he felt about her, his gratitude that he could feel like this, was a fixed and immoveable thing.
She was watching him solemnly; then suddenly, she leaned forward and spoke directly into his ear, just a hushed breath of sound.
“Always.”
Yes.
Always.
She exhaled again, looking into his eyes, and she smiled.
That unexpected, brilliant smile that had, to his intense irritation, literally stopped him in his tracks the first day they’d met on set.
“Before we end up doing something on this dancefloor that will scar your sister for life, let’s go find some ghosts. This seems like an opportune time.” She inclined her head toward the terrace doors on the far side of the room, where guests were gathering in a giggly, sweaty cluster to watch a pyrotechnic light display. Pet’s friends had adopted the “go big or go home” mindset when it came to party-planning. “Less of a crowd upstairs. If the legendary Terror of London decides to sidle up behind me and whisper things in my ear, I want to be able to hear it.”
“At the absolute outer limit, I’m prepared to accept that certain places and properties retain a lingering atmosphere and energy. However, if it comes in the form of a functioning larynx and lips—”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Sylvie assured him cheerfully, looping her arm through his as they headed for the grand staircase. “I was talking about you.”
Although Horcliff House was decrepit and brutally ugly, and therefore atmospheric in its entirety, most of the haunted rumours centered around the infamous library. It took up a large percentage of the second floor, the rest of the space occupied by the so-called “storybook rooms”, a literary-themed special effects display that Pet had been wanting to experience for months. He hoped the night was living up to her dreamy-eyed expectations.
The library itself had been largely left alone by the property’s developer. It was eerie enough on its own merits, according to various media write-ups, without the assistance of hidden speakers and projectors. Dominic was extremely skeptical on that point.
When they reached the head of the stairwell and found the imposing wooden doors to the library, a couple of giggling girls in pseudo-period costume came tumbling out and tottered past them. He caught the door before it could close and held it open for Sylvie.
She flashed a teasing glimpse of fang at him as she passed through into the dimly lit chamber. “Don’t worry. If any dwellers of the underworld take a fancy to you, they’ll have to go through me first.”
“I feel suitably reassured.”
They appeared to be the only guests in the large, sprawling space now. He suspected that had more to do with the temperature than any potential fright factor.
Sylvie shivered. “I take it back. If there’s any portal to Hades’s lair in here, I’m a starter. I’m pretty sure he has at least one fireplace down there.”
Their footsteps echoed along the stone floor as they studied their surroundings. Draped tapestries, arching beams, dusty chandeliers, and a general air of mustiness and neglect. Rows of bookcases led off in all directions, becoming a veritable labyrinth as they turned a corner, the already scarce light ebbing as they walked.
Idly, Sylvie reached out to touch a cobweb, draped artfully over the spine of a faded volume. “Do you think they scatter these around every ni—” Her light query turned into a screech as the source of the web appeared and almost ran over her fingers.
Lightning-fast, she shot around Dominic’s body and clutched his waist.
He exchanged a glance with the petrified spider, before turning to look over his shoulder. “Just so we’re clear, then: in the event of imminent attack by ghoul or zombie, you’ll protect me at all costs. However, if it’s a spider larger than a 10p coin, I’m on my own.”
“Maybe 5p,” she said against his back.
“I thought you liked spiders.”
“I do. I admire and respect all spiders that stay at least ten feet away from me at all times.”
She peeked around his arm and looked up at him, her smile growing as he dropped a kiss on her upturned mouth.
As soon as their lips touched, the sound of footsteps drummed through the darkness to both their left and right, and he lifted his head.
A faint susurration drifted on the air, a sound difficult to describe—a whisper entwined around rustling silk, was the closest he could get. It was admittedly effective in the deserted gloom. Just subtle enough to add to the atmosphere without going full fairground Haunted House.
As he’d thought, there was little chance that somebody who’d spent hundreds of thousands of pounds installing a miniature theme park experience down the hall would be able to resist at least a few taped squeaks and sighs in this space.
“As much as I love libraries, haunted and otherwise, I’m turning blue. Do you think we—” Before Sylvie could finish speaking, an enormous bang echoed through the room, with enough force that the nearest bookshelf wobbled, and they both jumped.
More voices and footsteps followed, this time clearly not originating from a recording—and at least one of them had a ring of familiarity.
With an unexpected clank of metal, a small group of fellow guests rounded the corner into their aisle. A couple holding hands came first, flanked by a walking tank in steampunk combat gear, heavily embellished weaponry strapped to his thick thighs and massive chest. A top hat was pulled low over his eyes, a mask covering everything but an uncompromising mouth. His extremely asymmetrical features were hidden tonight, but by his sheer build, disguise was all but impossible for Matthias Vaughn.
And this environment must be the bodyguard’s worst nightmare. An old building full of twists and turns, populated by a riotous number of people with their identities hidden, their inhibitions down, and their limbs laden with makeshift weapons.
However, if he hadn’t immediately identified their personal protection officer, Dominic would never have recognized the couple over whom Matthias hovered with every line of his body taut, sober and alert.
Her Royal Highness Princess Rose of Albany and John Marchmont, royalty of the British realm and Pet’s new bosses, were dressed as iron dragons. Full metal dragon costumes with visible bolts and joinery and sweeping tails. They creaked as their entwined claws swung.
“They totally already had those at home,” Sylvie whispered on a laugh, shaking off her surprise as she sketched an awkward semblance of a curtsey.
A snort echoed from the smaller dragon, before Rosie lifted a claw and tipped back her headpiece to reveal a makeup-free, amused face. “Sylvie. You’re curtseying at a slightly rusty, scrapheap dragon. Shall we all just take a really good look at our lives right now?” The princess studied their own attire with that typically penetrating stare. “Brilliant costumes. You both look wonderful.”
And she herself looked content, at least for now. Considering that photos of the most painful part of her private life and vicious commentary about her relationship were still circling the tabloids 24/7, Dominic was glad to see that the princess appeared genuinely relaxed and rested tonight.
Johnny, hapless, devoted, and incurably well-meaning, had also flipped up his razor-sharp snout. He was wincing. “S-sorry for the clash and cl-clatter, folks. There’s a sort of pop-up zombie affair in the rear stacks. Gave me a hell of a fright, and I managed to trip over a paving stone. Knocked over a full shelving unit. Sometimes feels like I’ve got at least eight left feet.” His cheeks had turned slightly pink. “I’ll find out who I need to p-pay for any damages.”
“You’re not clumsy,” Rosie said, immediately fiercely loyal. If not entirely accurate, in this instance. “That paving stone was dangerously loose.”
Matthias had been standing in habitual silence, but he spoke now in his deep, curt voice. “Several paving stones are loose. The banister on the central stairwell isn’t secure, I doubt if the lighting downstairs meets industrial standards, and the pyrotechnic displays are a fire hazard. Any guest here tonight could have had a similar accident. The owners are failing to meet numerous health and safety obligations.”
Johnny had visibly brightened during that grim recitation. “Profit over people,” he said sagely, and Matthias inclined his head.
Silently, Rosie looked from one to the other, before she turned back to Dominic and Sylvie. “Clearly, I need to get this lot home before the party spirit just rages completely out of control. We’ll go downstairs and see if we can track down the birthday girl.”
“Glad she seems to be enjoying her night,” Johnny said with renewed cheer. “Guys b-buzzing around her like b-bees on pollen last I saw.”
Just fractionally, in the dark hollows of his mask, Matthias’s eyes narrowed.
Setting her metal claws on Sylvie’s arm, Rosie drew her aside and spoke very quietly. The hushed words reached Dominic’s ears, but he doubted if the other men heard. “Matthias is on duty with Johnny tonight, but Pet did invite him as a guest, and he slipped a present onto the gift table when we arrived. He’s got the most gorgeous manners under all that stiff professionalism and all he said is that it’s ‘what you do’, but I saw what was in the bag. A little antique gold compact, circa 1920. Straight out of a flapper’s handbag. So pretty you could cry. It must have cost at least a hundred pounds. And he didn't even write his name on the gift tag.”
The clanking dragon and the ghost sorceress then exchanged a very meaningful look—the subtext of which Dominic was going to soundly ignore. It clearly edged into the realms of Pet’s personal life. If his sister ever appeared to be remotely in danger in that area, emotionally or physically, he would come down on the other party or parties involved like a ton of bricks. Otherwise—as long as she was happy, none of his business.
Although, beneath her devotion to her job and her sunny smiles for everyone she met, he suspected Pet wasn't all that happy where Matthias was concerned. She clearly thought the brutal-looking bodyguard walked on water and was doing her damndest to make him her new best friend, but apparently he was just as determined to keep her at a distance.
Rosie straightened and returned to Johnny’s side, ignoring his guileless, enquiring look and Matthias’s slightly suspicious stare.
They left the library as a group. Sylvie was starting to shiver harder under Dominic’s arm, and he had no great desire to see Johnny’s “zombie affair”.
Outside in the hallway, Rosie murmured, “Time for us to say our goodbyes and slip out before anyone else recognizes us, but we’ll be in touch.” She shot Sylvie a quick smile. “Make sure you check out the storybook rooms down the hall. They’re fab; and as the main brain behind Sugar Fair, they’ll probably be right up your street.”
The trio departed, Matthias herding the couple toward the staircase, where three more figures with very official-looking posture slipped out of the shadows and joined the entourage.
Sylvie slipped her hand into Dominic’s, and he linked their fingers. “All right,” she said, “we’ve got another hour before the cake comes out. Let’s see what gobs of unearned millions buys you in the world of special effects.”
As they walked down the corridor and passed a beveled window, he could see the neon flash of the technicoloured lighting display in the paved courtyard below. There was a lot of shrieking and laughter floating upward.
“It sounds like people are having a good time.” Her thumb moved playfully against his.
“It sounds like people are absolutely shitfaced.” He watched as bright pink light glanced across her cheekbone, then a skittering of blue and green. She was so much more Sylvie in rainbow hues than in the greyscale of her makeup. “And most of the endless stream of admirers who’ve been traipsing into De Vere’s to see my sister these past months, using my bathrooms and buying a single token chocolate, are irritating enough when they’re stone-cold sober.”
“Happy birthday to you…” Sylvie ended in cheerful singsong, the light of amusement in her eyes widening into a full smile. Her arms twined back around his waist. “You’re such a buzzkill.” She sounded very satisfactorily proprietary. “You could form some sort of club with Matthias and Johnny. Imagine all the fun you could have writing up your official safety handbook.”
She laughed when his hand moved in threatening tickling distance of the sensitive spot on her ribs.
There were three of the storybook rooms, and they found an unoccupied one on their second try.
Inside, it was gaudy, ornate, and looked as if someone had vomited the contents of an Enid Blyton book into physical interior design. Sylvie’s hold tightened on his torso as she leaned into him. He expected a stream of enraptured commentary to be whispered across his skin at any moment.
The lights were low, spotlights illuminating a path of glittering golden bricks that wound toward three central pedestals, each containing a large, heavily prop-looking book.
Fifty quid said whoever had been contracted to design this spectacle had furnished at least one Vegas casino.
Without hesitation, Sylvie reached forward to open the first book, Alice in Wonderland. Dominic winced as jaunty music exploded from hidden speakers and just about blew out his eardrums. In a swirl of shimmering light, figures emerged, seeming to pass through their bodies as Alice chased the White Rabbit across projector screens.
They both had to adjust their stance quickly as the scene whipped into a void, tipping all of them down the rabbit hole, their feet giving a solid illusion of dropping out from beneath them.
The Mad Hatter had just appeared on the scene in a spinning whirl of teacups, holographic cakes, and chronological inaccuracy when Sylvie reached out and shut the book.
Quiet and sanity abruptly restored.
He raised a brow at her, and she wrinkled her nose.
“I’m starting to feel carsick. And this is impressive, really impressive, but it’s also kind of—”
“A completely soulless cash splash?”
“Yeah.” She ran her fingers down the next book. Odysseus. He feared to imagine. “Sugar Fair has…heart. Home. It’s not just gimmicks.”
Slowly, almost peeking, she lifted the leather cover—and immediately the ground under their feet shuddered and a roaring Cyclops lunged forward in the carefully slanted surrounding screens.
“Uh, nope.”
Another book slammed shut.
Before her completionist soul could reach out to the third and final volume, Sylvie touched the small silk bag she wore and dug into it for her phone. He could see the screen lit up with a text. She looked at it for several seconds, then wordlessly put it away.
Her eyes were unfocused on the closest book pedestal. She slowly exhaled, then straightened her shoulders.
Dominic would never know all of Sylvie. She possessed chaotic depths of the utterly unfathomable, and he’d never realized that love could be so…kinetic. Infinite. That his love for someone could take on another facet from one second to the next; she could say something utterly absurd, or do something entirely unexpected yet so naturally kind, and suddenly he loved her just a little differently. Just that much more.
She was the rock in his life, the centre point on which everything else turned, but he doubted there would ever be a steady familiarity in their relationship.
Sylvie was far too unpredictable, and he was apparently endlessly fascinated.
However, he knew that particular look.
“Contract bid?”
She nodded, catching her lip between her teeth.
He frowned. “The King George?”
She was stoic, already mentally travelling forward—it was futile to dwell in this business; opportunities moved quickly—but she didn’t hide her disappointment from him.
“Yeah. That was Jay.” Her best friend and business partner was holding the fort at Sugar Fair tonight. Pet had invited Jay, and they got on well enough, but he didn’t approve of forfeiting the income from three Dark Forest sessions for a party. Bluntly, although things were healing in their own way and time, he also still preferred not to spend unnecessary time in Dominic’s company. Sylvie blew out another breath. “They went with Hunter’s.”
“I know at least one board member at the King George is an unapologetic fuckwit, but apparently they barely have a single functioning brain cell amongst them.” He spoke levelly, but also made no attempt to sugar-coat his reaction.
Her gaze flicked up to his, the light of a small smile appearing there. After a moment, without a word, she went up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
“It’s not pacifying bias,” he said with icy crispness, and that glimmer of a smile widened, lifting her lips into a soft, distracting curve. “Hunter’s is inconsistent and unreliable, and they’ll run into problems by the second function. Every element of the theatre’s requirements dovetailed impeccably with Sugar Fair. It’s a poor decision that they’ll live to regret.”
Her irrepressible dimple had appeared. She was still looking into his eyes, the expression in her own slightly enigmatic again.
Scowling at her, he lowered his head to drop a whisper-soft kiss on her dimple. A lingering one on her neck, the tiny spot beneath her ear that always sped up her breathing. “I’m sorry.”
Sylvie took his chin between thumb and forefinger, inviting his mouth to hers. She hummed quietly into the kiss, reaching to entwine their fingers again, then pulled back so abruptly that their lips parted with a slight popping sound. “I love you.”
His eyes narrowed. “And I love you. But it’s still bullshit.”
“Yeah. But there’ll be other contracts.” She reached with her free hand to idly trace over the cover of the third prop book. Treasure Island. “After the pirate ship debacle on set last year, I’m almost afraid to look at this one.”
She flicked it open, and immediately the room dimmed to a cool darkness. Thousands and thousands of the tiniest lights drifted through the air around them like glittering dust particles, as the screens and surrounding audio plunged them into an underwater cavern. It was again cleverly done, convincingly three-dimensional and intricately detailed, from the silvery splash of a school of fish to the glint of gold in a sunken chest.
A flicker of movement to his left, the darting of a long iridescent tail and the glimpse of long silky hair. A pale hand reached through the blue-tinged, starry gloom, moving in a delicate, melancholic glide, as if stroking over their faces.
From the hidden speakers came the first eerie crash of a breaking wave, a creaking boat, a rhythmic drumbeat—and the haunting harmony of almost inhumanly beautiful singing voices. The strains of My Jolly Sailor Bold, somehow circling behind them, entwining around their bodies, drawing them together and trying to tug them forward.
Sylvie didn’t close the book immediately this time. She squeezed his hand, and they stood in silence until the voices finally drifted away and they were returned to the surface, the scene transforming into a peaceful night sky, just the quiet sound of the waves remaining.
“Suddenly, I get why you’d be drawn in by a Siren.” Sylvie tilted her head back, looking up at the simulated stars. “I like this one. Unsettling, but beautiful.” Her gaze slid sideways, and she smiled at him. “You know, sometimes it still blows my mind that we’re here. I think it always will, a little.”
“In the Horcliff House of Horrors?” His words were sardonic, but he lightly stroked his fingers around her hip.
“Just…anywhere. Everywhere. Together.” She spread her fingers against his chest, then fisted them in his shirt, tugging him back down. She spoke teasingly against his mouth. “Royally pissed off every time somebody fails to appreciate the other’s spectacular talents.”
A little gruffly, he said, “I’ll always be the biggest supporter of anything you want or do in life, Sylvie. And you know if you ever need help, I’m here—”
“And vice versa.” Any hint of humor momentarily falling away, her eyes were serious on his, but a smile flickered back. “Team Fairchild-De Vere.”
A door slammed down the corridor, releasing the distant sound of an eerie howl of despair from one of the other themed rooms.
“Did that ghost just say ‘what the fuck’?” she asked absently, and he snorted.
“Probably the spirits of our former selves.” His response was dry, but he couldn’t help smiling as she laughed.
“Dom?” Her voice was very light as she twined her arms around his neck.
“Mmm?” His fingers sifted gently through her hair.
She spoke directly into his ear, her breath causing a reactive shiver down his spine, and her tone was so entirely normal that there was a two-second delay before his entire body went still. “Would you be my husband, please?”
He continued to not move for five more ticks of their heart-clocks. Then he pulled back to look into her face, his hands tightening on her waist.
There was the smallest shade of nervousness in Sylvie’s eyes, and she bit her lip, but her breathing and her voice were steady and sure. “Since I was a little girl, I’ve dreamed about beautiful wedding cakes—for other people. I’m just not a walking-down-the-aisle sort of person, and I never thought much about marriage. When I looked into the future, I manifested Sugar Fair. I saw myself happy in my career, with a successful business and the family I’ve collected around myself. Still making sugar sculptures into my eccentric twilight years. Living with at least four cats.” She smoothed her hand over the curve of his shoulder, watching the movement of her fingers, before her gaze lifted back to his. “And then I met you.” Her dimple flashed. “And started fantasizing on a regular basis about pushing you into the Thames.”
His mouth lifted at one corner, but he didn’t take his eyes away from her face.
“And now I still see all that.” She blinked hard against a sudden sheen in her eyes, and he immediately broke free of the frozen stasis that gripped every muscle. His arm sliding right around her, he pulled her closer into the shelter of his body. She spread her fingers against his chest again, in that half-wondering, half-possessive way she did sometimes, which unfailingly caused a strange, catching sensation at the base of his throat. It made him feel—connected, belonging, in a way he never had. Sylvie breathed out shakily. “But now, one of those cats is Humphrey, and that happiness is shared, and I’m not alone in that kitchen while I’m burning the pads of my fingers for the hundredth-thousandth time.”
“You won’t be burning anything in our kitchen,” he said, his voice almost emotionless because inside he was anything but, “and definitely not yourself.”
His hand moved to close over hers. His skin was calloused; so was hers, and they traced the length of each other’s fingers, slowly, absently.
“I want to be your wife,” Sylvie whispered, “and I’d really love it if you were my husband. So, someday—in ten years’ time, or five months’ time, or tomorrow—you want to go a registry office with me, and take all our family out for really great food and lots of wine, and have a massive argument over which one of us gets to make the cake?”
Very slowly, Dominic tilted his head and leaned in to kiss her neck again. He paused there against her faintly damp skin until his hands steadied, breathing in her scent, hearing the catch in her own breaths and feeling the tremble moving through her body. His mouth moved to the base of her throat, his tongue lightly tracing the rapid beat of her pulse, ignoring the hint of a bitter tang from the grey paint.
“Dominic…” Her soft voice cracked on a sharp inhale as he kissed the warm skin between her breasts, the silk of her dress a bitingly sensual glide against his nerve endings as—still in slow, measured movements—he lowered to one knee.
Which cracked loudly, because apparently everything after thirty-five was the death knell for all joints and ligaments.
“Dom.” His name, uttered with the wonder and fragility of butterfly wings, as he touched his lips lightly to her abdomen in a final kiss, before he took her hand in his again and brought it back to his chest.
Her lips parted on silence as he moved her fingers to the heart-clock that still ticked there, steady and reliable. Then, with a quick flick of his little finger under her index finger, together they unfastened the hidden latch on the dial and opened the clockface.
Sylvie had to release his hand to grip his shoulder as she stared into the revealed cavity.
She was shaking hard when she finally reached out and took the ring from its metal loop.
“As usual,” he said, one of the truest smiles of his life starting to break free, “you’re determined to get in ahead of me. I was planning to maneuver you back to the Dark Forest after we left the party tonight.”
She joined him on the floor in such a rush that his hands shot out before her kneecaps could bruise on the panels.
Holding the ring in both hands, she stared at it for long enough that he regretted not just buying the far more tasteful diamond solitaire. She moved so that the artificial starlight turned the facets of the central pink sapphire into a riot of sparkles.
It was surrounded by petals of smaller diamonds and lavender amethysts. A jeweled flower on a gold band.
“It matches my hair.” Sylvie was still trembling. One hand rose to touch her head, obviously forgetting that the streaks were currently concealed beneath the colourless wig. She took a huge breath. Looked back up at him. “You cannot tell me,” she said, her voice crackly, “that you don’t find this ring absolutely hideous.”
He lifted both brows. “Do you think it’s hideous?”
Her fingers immediately closed over it protectively, as if he’d been about to take it back. “I think it’s a perfect dream of a ring, and it’s never leaving my sight again. And I think you probably despise it with every fiber of your being.”
“When I look at this ring, I see you,” he said calmly, as they knelt there on the floor, still in full costume, his sister’s birthday party continuing to increase in volume outside. “So I’m never going to think it’s anything but beautiful.”
Her lashes were wet.
Seizing the leather strap that secured the monocle, he pulled it from his head and tossed it aside. With his thumbs, he brushed away the few tears that had slipped down her cheeks. Her makeup was starting to smear; neither of them gave a damn.
“Sylvie,” he said, as she gripped his wrists, “there isn’t a single thing I’ve ever wanted in my life more than I want to be your husband.”
Her forehead rested against his as they just—existed in that moment, of absolute contentment and real, true happiness, for a long time.
Then, for once still on an identical wavelength, they smiled at each other in that aura of calm and peacefulness, and spoke in unison.
“But I’m baking the cake.”