Battle Royal by Lucy Parker

Chapter Ten

Middlethorpe Grange, Surrey

Haunted by rumors of discontented spirits for over seven hundred years. Throughout the centuries, locals spoke of lights in the wood, voices in the dark, words on the walls. Legend foretold of a dark, chilling force that would someday strike wide the door as the people cowered in fear—

“I mean, to be fair, Dominic did knock first.”

—Sylvie Fairchild

“Not amused.”

—Dominic De Vere

During Sylvie’s firststint on Operation Cake, the stately home episode had been shot at the property that was also used as a stand-in for Rosings Park in the latest adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. Extremely grand, well heated, and the dining room had a chocolate buffet. She’d been so busy she hadn’t even searched Middlethorpe Grange online, but her expectation had been something similarly Austenian.

In reality, the Grange was a Gothic monstrosity more suited to Bram Stoker. And under a glum gray sky, the surrounding fields scattered with a light dusting of early snow, it was an inconveniently long commute to work on a Monday and a reminder that her own poky little flat was at least warm.

She had a private driver, but the car ran into three backups in traffic, and it was already midmorning by the time she sat down in a makeup chair. The hair and makeup team had set up in a hideous stone-walled parlor, in which some Middlethorpe of old had indulged his melancholic streak by hanging massive, scowling gargoyles from the ceiling. She assumed there was a suitably bloodthirsty curse attached to their removal or disturbance; otherwise, there was no excuse for not ripping them down and trying a nice plant.

Zack picked up a concealer bottle and looked between her sleep-deprived face and the leering monstrosity beside her. His fingers fluttered in feigned confusion. “I’m sorry, which is the patient?”

“Ha-ha,” Sylvie said, but a small grin broke through. He wasn’t wrong—at this rate, the bags under her eyes would be drooping to her clavicle by the final.

She’d spent much of the weekend with Sugar Fair’s most difficult customer, a wealthy Mayfair businesswoman with five daughters. Each daughter celebrated her birthday with a party so extravagant that there had actually been cause, at the fourteen-year-old’s gala festivities on Sunday, for somebody to whisper, “What carat do you think those diamonds are?”

In reference to the birthday girl’s straw. Her diamond-encrusted straw, which probably cost more than Sylvie’s annual rent.

The mother was an absolute nightmare, and every time Sylvie had to deal with her, she seriously debated the benefits of a reclusive lifestyle in which human contact was limited to pizza delivery and fictional characters.

And when she hadn’t been changing a million details at the last minute, and usually changing them all back again when Madame reverted her whims, she’d been thinking about Friday night in the Dark Forest.

She could still feel the pressure of Dominic’s lips, the strength of his fingers, the hard warmth of his chest beneath her palm.

“The smudge-proof claims of that lipstick have been highly exaggerated. If you don’t stop touching your mouth,” Zack said, swatting her hand away before he continued circling a blush brush over her cheekbones, “I’m feeding you to Quasimodo’s chums here. What’s with you today? Visions of wedding cakes dancing in your head?”

His wiggling eyebrows invited expansion on that topic. Sugar Fair had been officially mentioned as a possible contender for the Albany contract in yesterday’s tabloids. De Vere’s was still leading the odds at the bookies’ by a massive margin, but nobody could say the gutter press wasn’t thorough when it came to wild speculation. Several reporters had come sniffing around the shop floor over the weekend. They’d all zeroed in on Mabel, sitting quietly at her table carving sweet little candy kittens. Young, female, probably naïve and easily flattered—a prime target to bully into a stammering disclosure.

Sylvie had almost felt sorry for them.

Silencing the first queries with a delicately raised finger, Mabel had paused for three majestic seconds before slamming the blade of her sharpest knife into the cutting board and resting her chin on the handle. Her gentle smile had lowered the temperature of the room about thirty degrees.

She’d torn them to shreds and strewn the remnants of their egos like confetti.

“We spent a fucking fortune decorating this place,” Jay had commented with reluctant admiration. “Ruins the vibe when you have grown men almost pissing on the floor.”

Restlessly playing with the tube of lipstick on the table, Sylvie glanced up at Zack. For all his garrulous delight in gossip, she would actually trust him to be circumspect. After that burst of glee when they’d first discussed the possibility, he hadn’t breathed a word of her intentions on set. However, her lips were now contractually zipped.

The pressure was starting to mount on the contract. The clock was ticking on their deadline. For all intents and purposes, she’d invented Midnight Elixir, and she still couldn’t produce an edible facsimile in cake form. And despite returning again and again to the photograph of Patrick and Jessica, with an odd, tugging fascination, she was no further forward on the design elements.

There was every reason for Rosie’s wedding cake to keep her up at night.

It would be a far more comfortable explanation for her exhausted jumpiness now.

She forced herself still. He had a job to do, and she was being a pest. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep well.”

For the first time in a very long time, she’d lain in bed last night and experienced the physical ache of missing a particular person’s body, their touch, their scent. More personal than simply thwarted arousal, it was a feeling she’d never had for somebody she barely knew in a physical sense. It was something she associated more with a separation in a long-term relationship, when her body was used to sleeping entwined with another.

Not with a man she’d previously have fancied chucking under a nonmetaphorical bus.

And that light, whispering kiss was the least of the intimacy that had started to weave between them.

Yesterday at the party, when she’d been unusually tired and frustrated, there’d come one moment when her patience had been stretched to the finest of threads—and her sudden instinct had been to call Dominic.

As if in response to that thought, her phone buzzed on her lap, and she glanced down at the screen. Her heart jumped at his name on the display. He’d hit the traffic jams as well, but his car was well and truly stuck, and he was running late. She sent a quick reply, confirming she’d arrived safely.

They were just simple, no-frills messages—thankfully he hadn’t broken out the emojis. If he ever smiley-faced her, she’d have to assume it was some sort of SOS and report his kidnapping.

But still . . . He’d texted to let her know.

If she were not a grown woman with increasingly crackly joints and white hairs in her eyebrows, these rapid developments might have distracted her from the job she was being paid to do today.

Fortunately, she’d racked up a lot of life experience that included multiple short-lived infatuations, two serious relationships, and a failed one-night stand with a man who’d recognized her from TV and thought she’d find it hilarious if he smeared himself with icing and dipped his dick in sprinkles.

She’d survived an encounter with Cupcake Cock. She was not going to be earth-shatteringly flustered by one tiny kiss.

One tiny, really great kiss.

Oh, look. Residual sex tingles. From a memory.

This wasn’t potentially life-upturning at all.

Zack was looking for somewhere to put his muslin cloth. He hung it from the clawed hand of the nearest gargoyle, like a Gothic towel rail. Addams Family chic. “This is all so weird,” he pronounced with great satisfaction.

Yes. Yes, it was.

With her eyebags sufficiently camouflaged, she followed a grip to the ballroom where the team was prepping for the day’s competition. Leaning against a pillar out of everyone’s way, she watched the contestants setting up their stations. The usual format was temporarily dropped for the location shoot. Instead of multiple rounds, the contestants would have five hours to produce four types of sweets—petit fours, sugar cookies, tartlets, whatever they chose. The selection had to include an occasion cake; it must adhere to the chosen theme, which this year was current West End musicals, and it must involve elements of sugar craft. Four years ago, this was the episode in which she’d topped the leaderboard, and she was hoping she’d see some spectacular art today.

Emma was helping Adam unpack a variety of molds and stencils at his station. Their heads were close together and they were laughing. Transparently, endearingly smitten. Smiling, Sylvie’s gaze passed on, coming to a stop on Libby.

At her counter, the redhead was efficiently sorting her ingredients for each component of her menu, checking them off against a handwritten list. She frowned suddenly, her finger pausing on the page. After a moment, she walked over to a neighboring station and spoke briefly to its habitant, Sid Khan, the jovial alien abductee. Libby beamed at the elderly man when he obligingly handed her a small box. Returning to her station with it, she caught wind of Sylvie’s scrutiny, and her eyes widened.

Innocence personified.

Aadhya came striding over, Mariana trailing languidly behind with a coffee cup perched on one elegant palm. The producer opened her mouth to speak, then followed the direction of Sylvie’s pensive stare. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a down on the poor girl, too.”

Sylvie chose to focus on the last part of the accusation. “Too?”

Aadhya’s eye roll was masterfully expressive. “Dominic. At our last meeting, he was typically obstructive. Just lounged there like a bloody Roman emperor, ready to turn his thumb down and condemn every idea I put forward,” she said with obvious lingering irritation.

Sylvie had to suppress faint amusement. She wasn’t surprised Dominic hadn’t jumped for joy at whatever brain wave Aadhya had sprung on him. Just last Friday, she’d tried to push through the idea of thematic costumes for today’s shoot. Emma had been assigned Grease as her musical, so wardrobe could supply her with a Pink Ladies bomber jacket. And Adam Foley had Beauty and the Beast; wouldn’t he be a scream as Cogsworth? The health and safety officer had put her foot down then, painting a dire picture of what was likely to occur if Adam was forced to maneuver pots of boiling sugar around a minuscule work space while kitted out as an anthropomorphic clock.

As much as Sylvie liked and respected Aadhya, it was an illuminating experience being on this side of the kitchen counter.

“Having contributed absolutely nothing of use,” Aadhya went on, “he mildly suggested that I ought to keep an eye on Libby, because there ought to be a line between ‘manufactured soap opera bullshit’ and cheating.” She fixed Sylvie with a piercing look. “Do you suspect nefarious activity as well?” Her tone was not encouraging.

“I suspect she’s a bully at best,” Sylvie returned matter-of-factly. “Nobody’s reacted quite as”—epically—“forcefully as Nadine, but I’ve seen some of the contestants giving her a wide berth.” Her gaze traveled back toward the contestant pool, but the lighting team had clustered in front of Libby’s station, unrolling a long spool of cable and blocking her view. “And admittedly, some people in this room are quite capable of setting their own ovens too high or leaving the freezer door ajar, but there do seem to have been an unusual number of incidents. She clearly misled Byron during the ingenuity challenge, even if he shouldn’t have been asking for help.” She drew her lower lip between her teeth in a brief tug. “It was the look in her eyes when that button wound up in his scone.”

“It’s a competition,” Aadhya pointed out. “It’s natural to be privately relieved if a competitor does poorly.”

“It wasn’t relief in her face,” Mariana said unexpectedly, watching her tea swirl as she moved the cup. “It was satisfaction. Of the clever wee me variety.”

“I haven’t received a single complaint from any contestant about Libby.” Aadhya looked faintly harassed. Sylvie wasn’t surprised about the radio silence behind the scenes. She recalled very well that with the grand final prize money at stake, nobody had wanted to rock any boats and prejudice their chances of winning. “Do you have any evidence the girl is waging some invisible scheme of sabotage and harassment?”

“Not a scrap,” Sylvie said, and the producer’s response was crisp.

“Then I hope you’ll retain an impartial view of her performance today and going forward. Excuse me; I need to deal with this latest disaster.”

As Aadhya departed, Mariana supplied the necessary footnote. “There’s a problem with the electricity source in this wing. A real ace card, this place. Freezing cold, poorly lit, and ugly as sin.” She sipped her tea. “I wouldn’t dwell on Libby’s behavior. Unfortunately, there’s always going to be a rotten apple in the barrel. Have you seen the art gallery yet?”

It took a moment to register the sudden change in topic. “No. What—?”

“The Middlethorpe family have an extensive art collection in the third-floor gallery, and apparently the lady of the house has an especial interest in glass works. I know you also like pretty glass, although unless you can pour a bottle of wine into it, I don’t quite understand the appeal,” Mariana teased, before her face settled into softer lines. “Your aunt, nena—Mallory?” Her voice lifted into a tentative question. “You told me she was an artist, yes?” When Sylvie nodded silently, the older woman patted her arm. “Go have a look.”

It was very tempting, but—they were supposed to be working here.

Mariana correctly interpreted her second lip bite. “With the lighting gone kaput and Dominic stuck on the M4, we’re delayed at least half an hour. You might as well seize the opportunity for a quick peek.”

Libby chose that moment to cruise past Adam’s station and say something to him that made his sweet, thin face fall, his eyes darting toward Emma, back at her own counter. He looked down at himself and touched his crumpled tie. His shoulders folded inward. Even at that distance, crystal clear stance of someone who had just taken a hit to their self-esteem.

Sylvie decided to take up Mariana’s suggestion. Lest she pick up a dessert from the snack table and follow Nadine’s example with the tart.

If nothing else, this job and working side by side with Dominic was doing wonders for her usual aversion to confrontation.

Halfway up the grand stone staircase, her phone vibrated in her bag and she pulled it out with embarrassing haste.

Unknown number, which she almost ignored as a possible scammer.

However, as the lord of the manor was coming down the stairs and casting her a lascivious glance, it was advisable to close off every opportunity for conversation. After their brief introduction upon her arrival, even speaking to a faux bank or purveyor of penile enlargements seemed favorable.

“Sylvie Fairchild speaking,” she said into the receiver as Lord Middlethorpe continued on his way with a regretful backward glance. The man reeked of the old boys’ club. She bet he regularly sat over a whisky with his cronies and reflected on the good old days, when he could behave as atrociously as he liked with impunity. “To save time, I’m not giving you any financial details, I possess no appendages that need enlarging, and if you’re claiming to be a member of a royal family, I’m going to need multiple sources of evidence.”

There was barely a pause before the very cut-glass voice of Rosie’s secretary said, “I make no claim to royal birth, merely employment, madam. This is the Honorable Edward Lancier.”

Of course he used his full title even on the phone. She bet he entered it in the address field when he was doing his online shopping, hitting up Marks & Spencer for his Honorable hankies and jammies.

Sylvie exchanged a companionable grimace with one of the gargoyles on the landing wall. “Sorry,” she said, clearing her throat. “Yes, Mr. Lancier.”

“With respect to the previously discussed commission, one requests a short meeting at your earliest convenience. Would tomorrow afternoon be suitable?”

She agreed without hesitation to a meeting with one, drawing out her notebook to jot down the directive. Not a meeting at St. Giles Palace this time, but an office on a street she’d never heard of. Apparently, every step of this commission was going to be laced with intrigue.

Still a lingering chance of that recruitment into a band of misfit do-gooders.

When she reached the third floor, it was eerily quiet after the pandemonium downstairs. The walls in the Grange must be a good twelve inches thick, and where it fell down in central heating, it provided in spades for soundproofing.

If that particularly malevolent-looking gargoyle were actually moving and had grand plans to reach out and strangle her as she went past, her demise would likely pass unnoticed until they needed her for the opening shots.

Dominic was possibly correct that her attraction to all things fantastical had grown to epic proportions since she’d taken this job.

Nevertheless, she was fascinated when she found the gallery and discovered an art collection with all the eclectic disorganization of a junkyard, nestled in a dramatically spooky setting—and contents that wouldn’t be out of place in a national museum.

The silence was even more cavernous here, and she jumped at the distant squeak of a footstep.

She had the passing neck prickle that usually heralded watching eyes, but her attention had caught on a large oil canvas. They hadn’t seriously just tossed a Caroline Beckwith onto the wall, with no obvious security? If she wanted to whip out her keys right this second and scrape that £50,000 painting into shreds, there was literally nothing to stop her. And given the abrasive personality of its owner, she wouldn’t be surprised if half the neighborhood would quite happily wreck the family valuables.

Living truism that you couldn’t buy common sense.

Several glass works were arranged on podiums. She was immediately drawn to a beautiful little sculpture of clear glass shot through with shimmering silver, as if it had caught a forever sheen of moonlight. Lovers, their heads lowered together in a perfect curve, limbs entwined in a sinuous twist, two bodies forming one continuous shape. One figure was cradling the head of the other, hand cupped in a protective shield. She’d been raised by a curator; she knew better than to touch an exhibit without permission, but her fingers almost went out and traced the gentle lines of that revealing gesture.

She pulled out her phone and bent to snap a few close-up photos.

A strange skittering sound brought her head around sharply. There was nobody behind her, but one of the long wooden panels in the wall appeared to open a few centimeters. It closed again just as quietly. The dizzying effect of the black-and-white floor tiles was messing with her eyes, not helped by the leering gargoyles sprouting from every corner, but she was quite certain that was a door.

Cautiously, Sylvie rose and approached the panel. When she tugged on a protruding beam, it slid back easily, revealing a narrow corridor. Her vision slipped into darkness beyond a short distance, and she couldn’t see where it ultimately led.

This was now entirely too Famous Five for first thing on a Monday. She ought to have sandwiches and lemonade in a rucksack, an intelligent dog at her leg, and a gang of smugglers to foil.

As it was, she had a roll of breath mints in her handbag, Middlethorpe Grange was miles from the coast, and if any lost smugglers had walked these fields, they would now be very old bones.

From somewhere in the creepy abyss, a board creaked, and a murmuring susurration drifted on a gust of cold air. At least she knew there was a window somewhere.

“Hello?” she called, purposefully raising her voice and injecting a note of cheerful normality.

Another creak, another singsong murmur.

Okay.

Rapidly becoming less Famous Five, more The Haunting of Bly Manor.

“For God’s sake,” she muttered, flicking on the flashlight app on her phone. She took several steps forward and flooded the cramped interior with light.

Her eyes adjusting rapidly, she looked around a musty hallway that led to a door, about fifteen feet away, and to her side, a few rickety-looking shelves containing the odd unloved book and a bowl of the most disgusting, desiccated potpourri.

Potpourri that appeared to be . . . undulating.

With the feeling she was seriously going to regret this, Sylvie reached out and poked the bowl. Just as a hairy twig-like leg nudged aside a shriveled petal and delicately waved at her, she caught sight of the pale blur of a face in the darkness.

By time her brain had caught up to the facts of mirror and own reflection, her poor heart was doing its best to wrench out of her chest.

For all Sylvie’s love of everything whimsical and extraordinary, she actually considered herself quite a straightforward person, not prone to panic. She could have handled the horror of whatever was living in the potpourri. The fright over her reflection was a passing blip.

But what was written on that mirror, smudged very, very clearly into the dust, wrenched a sound from her that she’d never made in her life.

Her left foot skidded on the floor and she almost fell. Something moved behind her, and on instinct, she fought back with the ultimate weapon: a direct shot of infested potpourri to the face.

The unknown presence in the dark screamed loud enough to wake every gargoyle on-site.

As he or she thrashed about and a piece of potpourri rebounded into Sylvie’s chin, she turned back down the passage, almost hurling herself into the comparative brightness of the gallery.

Her breath was coming in small, squeaky hitches, and her legs were shaking.

All she saw then was Dominic, standing alone in front of an ugly metal sculpture of a tractor, a heavy scowl on his face—and she acted on sheer, driving instinct.

“What the fuck is going on up here—?” He didn’t have a chance to finish the incredulous snap of words before she was at his side, only just catching herself seconds before she could follow through on the immediate plan announced by her brain.

Basically, to throw herself into his arms, burrow into his body, and stay there for a while. Five minutes. An hour. A decade.

Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. One of her hands still hovered in the air millimeters from his chest.

She had hesitated; he did not.

As he’d done once before, Dominic took her hand in his, this time drawing it around his neck and pulling her into him. Her hot cheek coming to press against the cool silkiness of his shirt, Sylvie exhaled through her mouth and felt the first tension wash out of her muscles, as if her body were melting into his.

His fingers stroked her hair, gentle, unbelievably soothing, and then his hand moved to cup her cheek, holding her head as she nestled into the curve of his neck. She could feel the steady movement of his pulse beneath her fingertips.

“Sylvie,” he said in a low voice. His arms tightened on her as she struggled to stop the residual trembling right down through her wrists and ankles. “What the hell happened?”

Her eyes were squeezed closed. All she was aware of in that moment, as she forced her breathing out of that asthmatic wheeze and into long, juddering inhalations, was his scent and his warmth wrapping around her. “Dom.”

It was nothing more than a whisper, but he heard her. His hold, already tight, drew her in even closer to the long planes of his body. She felt the abrasion of his jaw against her temple, and the weight as he rested his cheek on her head.

The fingers entwined in her hair played gently with the fine strands.

“I know all this place is missing is a young David Bowie before it goes full Labyrinth,” Dominic said against her temple, the words light, the underlying tone anything but, “but I don’t think there’s much danger beyond appallingly bad taste.”

His thumb ran lightly down her nose, before his fingertips touched under her eyes. Sylvie hadn’t realized that she was crying a bit until he made another low sound, and was so horrified that she immediately stopped.

He was just pulling her back to look into her face when the panel door banged back open behind them, and she almost jumped out of her skin yet again.

With complete and total outrage, a high-pitched voice roared, “You threw a spider in my face.”

She twisted, Dominic’s hand falling to hold the curve of her waist, and saw a small, furious-faced boy with violently red curls, extremely round freckled cheeks, and waving fists. He shook one at her, like a crabby policeman in an old-fashioned children’s book. She half expected his next words to be Look ’ere!

“It ran down my neck,” screamed the very loud child. “It had legs!”

Dominic was running his fingers up and down Sylvie’s back. She thought he probably wasn’t even aware he was doing it. Normally, that would provoke a renewed rush of sensation, but the initial shock of that experience with the mirror was creeping back.

“Friend of yours?” he inquired mildly, eyeing the child with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

Even in the light of day, holding on to Dominic’s body, her heart was starting to beat too fast again, throwing another little catch into her breath.

His hand came up to cup her cheek again, but that typically shrewd gaze swung back to the child.

The little boy clearly had some brain cells to go with the lung power, because he’d stopped hollering at her and was giving Dominic a slightly wary look.

One small foot edged back.

“Don’t move.” It was Dominic’s most grim sergeant-major tone, usually reserved for the absolute worst offenders on Operation Cake, and the kid’s hair almost stood on end.

Amazingly, for a child who looked as if he’d never heard the word “no” in his life, he did not move. Even when Dominic squeezed Sylvie’s hand and crossed the distance to the panel door in long strides, both she and her erstwhile spook-in-the-dark stood in silence.

Dominic activated his own phone light and disappeared into the corridor. He was back in less than ten seconds, and when he closed the door behind him with a slow, deliberate click, Sylvie wasn’t surprised the little boy quailed.

In all these years of icy words and withering looks, she’d never seen Dominic so angry. There was nothing cold and restrained about the expression on his face now; it was intense, burning fury.

The kid reanimated with a vengeance. Scooting behind a metal statue of a soldier, much taller than his own four-foot-nothing, he peeked out at the Angel of Death descending upon him. “You can’t do nothing to me,” he said, chin jutting. “My daddy owns this place and he can have you killed.”

“Your daddy and I,” Dominic said, his eyes lethal, “are shortly going to have a chat. You cruel little brat.”

The freckled chin lifted higher. “I’m a Middlethorpe,” he retorted, as if that should say it all.

Actually, having met his daddy, it probably did say it all.

Middlethorpe Junior shot her a quick look. “It was a joke.” A sullen note was creeping in.

“It was a disgusting thing to do. And I’m betting it’s not the first time you’ve tried out your ‘joke’ on unsuspecting visitors.” Dominic’s hard stare hadn’t wavered, but he looked at Sylvie now, and she swallowed hard at the immediate change in the depths of his eyes. Very gently, incredibly gently, he said, “Did you mention your aunt’s name at some point this morning?”

A fine tremor had come back into her hands. Tucking her fingers under her armpits, she took a steadying breath, trying to clear the last of the fog that had netted her thoughts since her light had landed on that mirror.

And she’d seen Mallory’s name smudged in the dust and grime.

She closed her eyes for a second. “Mariana did,” she said, and her voice cracked. “Just for a second.”

A muscle ticked in Dominic’s jaw as he turned to the belligerent, wary boy. “It’s not a joke. It wasn’t funny. Don’t you ever do something like that again.”

The child stuck out his lower lip, darted out from behind the statue, and took off. Sylvie heard the echo of his footsteps on the stairs a moment later.

Her arms were still crossed tightly. “A kid’s prank. I completely freaked out. That’s really embarrassing. I’m sorry.”

Dominic stood still; then, as if in the passing of mere seconds, he’d come to a decision, he crossed to where she stood. Their eyes locked as their chests moved with ragged snatches of breath. His hand lifted to touch her cheek, the lightest, softest heart clutch of a caress. Trembling again, she reached to fold her fingers back over his, and he exhaled.

And then his hands were slipping under her hair, lifting her lips to his own, and Sylvie’s whole world shrank to that warm bubble where nothing existed but them.

In a sound almost like a tiny sob, her breath hitched again as he kissed her—nothing tentative or exploratory this time; it was hard, hot, deep, his tongue a silken stroke around hers. Her hands fisted against his ribs, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt.

It was an intense kiss, but not a long one. Neither his hands nor his lips had traveled lower than her collarbone. Yet, when he lifted his head, her mind was swimming and her stomach was clenched. Her heart had jumped into thumping beats, pounding so hard it was almost painful.

Powerful chemistry was quite a ride.

With his thumbs under her chin, voice husky, he repeated, “It was a repellent thing to do. The kid’s a nasty little shit.”

She reached up and held on to his wrists. “I just—I was already thrown, and . . . in the dark, when I saw Mallory’s name—”

“I know.” His gaze very steady, he traced his thumbs in circles over her cheeks.

Sylvie could feel heat creeping into the skin under his touch. Suddenly, ridiculously, shy, she lowered her eyes to the base of his throat, where his pulse beat quickly.

A thread of renewed tension etched into the air between them, and Dominic released her, his hold dropping away.

“You made it out of traffic,” she said at last, foolishly, to his top shirt button.

“Eventually. They’re almost ready for us downstairs.” That same sense of constraint had come into his body.

“Oh, good.”

“Your favorite contestants were holding hands when I left the ballroom.” A flicker of amusement broke through the complicated, conflicted expression in Dominic’s eyes. “I think you just bounced up and down without moving a single muscle.”

She couldn’t help the return smile. “I have a text bet with Pet. She says they’ll be living together by Easter. I’m slightly less optimistic. My money’s on June.”

Dominic shook his head, but the amusement was still there. “My sister’s texting the enemy now, too, is she?”

Her smile faded as she asked, quite seriously, “Do you mind?”

He was, as usual, difficult to fully read. But there was nothing uncertain in his response. “No. I don’t mind.”

They were still standing very close. Suddenly, impulsively, she reached up and kissed him again. Just a soft, dancing press of her closed mouth against his.

“I suppose we should go down, then,” she murmured, and he moved his head, a slight gesture of assent.

As they walked back through the artworks, she stopped, her attention fixed on a wooden cabinet. Behind the display panel was a selection of smaller pieces of blown glass.

One in particular—an exquisitely rendered little sculpture of a deer.

And in the space of a blink, a heartbeat, the indrawing of her breath, it was fifteen years ago. In a room that was a sterile blur in her memory, but for the oddly specific details of a crack on the wall that looked like a butterfly and the blue-and-white star-print curtains. Someone had hand-sewn those. A valiant effort to introduce some cheer into four walls where hearts were inevitably going to break, over and over and over again.

A machine beeping, so familiar that her blood seemed to be pulsing in rhythm with the sound. And on the bedside table, amidst a jug of water and an array of medication bottles, a few scattered items. Beloved objects, a small piece of the home that would never echo with her aunt’s laughter again. A doll, the last remnant of Mallory’s childhood, a present from a doting older brother. The doll’s rosy cheeks had a dull sheen, worn away by years of kisses, but her hair and clothes were still immaculate. Mallory had kept his gift safe.

As she had later kept his child safe, and so very loved, for nineteen years.

There were well-worn copies of her favorite books. The necklace she’d never taken off until drugs had left her skin so sensitized that the friction of the chain was unbearable. And a tiny glass sculpture of a deer. During a trip to Paris for Sylvie’s sixteenth birthday, they’d visited the studio of the renowned animal sculptor Arielle Aubert, and Mallory had fallen in love with that one little deer. It was utterly beyond her reach financially, but Arielle herself had seen the look on the face of her visitor. As they’d prepared to leave, the artist had appeared from the private room out back. Vivid features, shining white hair, sparkling light-gray eyes; Sylvie would always remember her as looking like the spirit of a midnight star. She’d silently taken the little deer from his companions and placed him into Mallory’s hands.

Arielle Aubert had been killed a month later in a random act of violence on the streets of Montmartre.

Sylvie remembered curving over with her cheek resting against her aunt’s bed on that last night, her eyes parched and tight with exhaustion, staring at the little deer. La Belle Étoile, Mallory had called it. The Beautiful Star. In that dim, airless room, with the weight of the coming hours pressing down upon her and dread a sick clawing at her gut, the deer had seemed to be standing guard over them as they lay in the dying light.

Mallory had been largely drifting by then, heavily medicated, already a step departed from Sylvie’s world. With their fingers entwined against Mallory’s chest, Sylvie had watched as the taut, grayish skin over her aunt’s high cheekbones seemed to pull tauter as the sun slipped away. So quiet and still, as the disease raging through her blood and bones made its last advance, and her tired body rallied for the final, futile stand. She had been unwavering since the diagnosis, relentlessly strong, ever cheerful, keeping her sense of humor until the end.

But in those last hours, her hand had suddenly tightened on Sylvie’s, with a strength Sylvie hadn’t known she still possessed.

“I don’t want to go,” her aunt had said fiercely, her feverish eyes fixed over Sylvie’s shoulder. “I promised him. I promised him. I promised him.” The words low and urgent, a refrain of anguish. “She’ll be alone. I don’t want to leave her alone.”

Sylvie had cried, then, for the first time in Mallory’s presence, her face pressed against their joined hands, contorting as she tried to hold back the tears that wet both their skin. She was glad her aunt was too delirious to know.

And as the sky turned black and it got really bad, Mallory’s pain increasing, her breath taking on a labored rattle, a nurse standing in constant vigil, Sylvie had pressed that little glass deer into her aunt’s hand, wrapping her fingers around it.

She had lain beside her on the narrow, hard bed, cuddling her one last time, her forehead touching Mallory’s temple. “It’s okay.” A whisper in her ear, for her alone, for them alone. The hardest thing she’d ever done, to steady her voice and dry her eyes and put every bit of love in her heart into those last words. “You’ve given me everything you had and everything I need. It’s okay.” Her eyes had squeezed closed. “It’s okay to go now.”

In a place neither of them wanted to be, but under the starry sky they both loved, Mallory had slipped away.

And the deer had fallen from her fingers and shattered against the black linoleum floor, a thousand fragments of crystal sparkling in the light.

Cool, firm lips were pressed against her temple. Closing her eyes for a moment now, as she had then, Sylvie breathed deeply before she turned her head and looked up at Dominic. He was holding her, his arms wrapped around her without hesitation, his body sharing its warmth.

For once, the expression in his dark eyes was transmitting clear as day. Deep concern, but primarily empathy. The bone-deep understanding of someone who had walked a similar path.

“Which piece?” he asked, inclining his head toward the glass cabinet without taking the comfort of that steady connection away from her. “Which one took you back there?”

“The deer.” As she slipped her hand into his, she looked at it again. It was unmistakeably an Arielle Aubert, so similar to Mallory’s that it might well have been on the same shelf that day in Paris, a sister work. “It’s the deer.”

She felt a slight tug on her hand, as if he were unconsciously trying to pull her away from the source of obvious pain, and she shook her hand.

“It reminds me of the worst night of my life.” Like that long-ago companion in the dark, this deer had incredible eyes, so expressive in such simple lines. She could feel the tight traces of tears on her cheeks, but her body felt calm now. Peaceful. Comforted. “But also—more so—some of the best times. And it’s beautiful.”

When she looked up again, Dominic said nothing, but very lightly, once more, he touched the back of his free hand to her cheek.

And once more, she repeated the words in her mind and in her heart. “It’s okay.”

They’d progressed fromsoggy bottoms and burnt crusts in previous seasons to outright assassination attempts.

Death by incineration.

Dominic knocked back another half glass of milk and exhaled through his mouth, trying to suppress the residual flames burning through every taste bud. Mariana was still bent over Sid Khan’s countertop, her face cradled in her hands, muttering to herself. Once she’d regained the ability to speak after her mouthful of Sid’s Hello, Dolly! cake, he’d heard a rasping repetition of “Mierda.” Followed by an equally blunt “Fuckin’ A.” The moment the first burn of chili had hit his tongue, he’d knocked Sylvie’s piece out of her hand before she could bite into it; unfortunately, he’d been a second too late in preventing Mariana from putting her entire slice into her mouth. He was surprised she was still conscious.

The cake—seven layers of chocolate with a “hint” of chili, according to Sid’s initial intro—lay abandoned on the countertop. The elderly widower’s structural design—Horace Vandergelder’s top hat—wouldn’t have scored highly for either ingenuity or difficulty, even if the man hadn’t packed in enough heat to sear the hide off a rhino. However, any official critique on this one seemed a bit redundant.

The poor bloke was just about in tears, turning his own hat over in his hands as he apologized profusely for the thirtieth time. Sylvie had her arm around him, trying to gently tease him out of his misery, while Aadhya and the medics bent over Mariana.

Draining the last of the milk, Dominic shook his head at the medic who tried to approach him with a blood pressure monitor. “I’m probably about thirty percent grayer than I was five minutes ago,” he said wryly, touching his temple. “But it was only one bite. I’m fine.”

“Are you?” Sylvie had left Sid to the sympathy and support of his fellow contestants. She searched his face. Her hand moved to touch his chest; he doubted she was even aware.

Certainly, she’d appeared to be entirely driven by instinct when he’d been bent forward, coughing his guts up after his bite of the aptly named Lucifer’s Sponge. Sylvie had been at his side, rubbing his back, pushing milk at him. It hadn’t passed unnoticed that she’d gone straight to him before she’d tried to help Mariana. Quite a few crew and several contestants were sending speculative glances their way.

And Dominic’s own instinct was to shield her from the scrutiny. She was still pale after the events in the third-floor gallery, a star scattering of freckles standing out on her nose. A fresh dusting of powder had removed the traces of tears from her cheeks, but he could still see her in his mind, standing staring at the little glass deer. Completely still, her mind obviously miles away. Or rather, years away. Despite the misdeeds of Middlethorpe’s mini-me, the true haunting had been in her eyes then. Before she’d returned to the gallery, to him, her arms had come up and folded around her body, as if she was holding herself. Or remembering reaching for someone, holding someone, who was no longer there.

Over the years, he’d had relationships with women, generally playing out at a very surface level on both sides and ending amicably. None of those experiences had left or inflicted scars.

But there were other bonds in his life that had—not broken but splintered his heart, chiseling fragments away.

Today, part of his heart had fractured for someone else’s pain.

It would have been quite possible to step away, mentally and physically, from the intimacy that had unexpectedly ramped off the scale last Friday night.

But the way he’d felt today at the Grange, when Sylvie had been genuinely frightened and she’d burrowed straight for his arms, when she’d stood alone with her memories, her chin held high and her eyes wet with tears—

Understatement of the millennium to say this was not what he’d expected from this period of contractual proximity.

He could still feel the press of her lips, the teasing dart of her tongue, a satin stroke against his own, and the sense of utter . . . rightness sinking into his bones as she wriggled close.

It was as if she were settling inside him, a constant warm little light in his chest.

“I’m fine,” he repeated in a low voice.

Mariana had recovered her composure and the full use of her lungs. “Mother of God,” she said, coming over to join them. Her eyelids and cheeks were red, and even the single strand of silver hair stuck to her forehead was extreme dishevelment by her usual standards. “His recipe called for a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper. That was like inhaling a Carolina Reaper. How the hell do you make that mistake?” Barely pausing to draw breath, she added severely to Dominic, “But don’t go and ask. The poor man feels bad enough without a De Vere decimation.”

“He wouldn’t do that when someone’s genuinely upset.” With a small frown, Sylvie had turned to look over at the contestants. She spoke absently.

He looked at her for a long moment.

Mariana was watching him. Her glance also flickered momentarily to Sylvie, with a ghost of a smile. However, when she spoke, it was merely to incline her head toward one workstation in particular, where Sylvie’s scrutiny was focused. “Are we directing a few faint and fiery suspicions at Libby?”

“I mean, you said it yourself.” Sylvie shifted at Dominic’s side, her hand brushing his again. Just for a moment, one finger slipped inside his cuff, teasing the skin of his wrist. The tiny shiver of pleasure that danced down his spine was increasingly reliable. “It’s a hell of a mistake to make, isn’t it? Sid’s a careful, meticulous man.” Alien abduction claims aside, which had clearly been a blatant lie to get on the show. And had succeeded; so—well done, Sid. “Libby did borrow something from his station earlier.”

“Chili?” Mariana asked doubtfully, and Sylvie shook her head.

“I think it was baking soda. But it was chaotic with the lighting crew throwing cables everywhere, and Sid was away from his station when I left the room. She could have messed up his other ingredients. But once again—”

“No proof,” Mariana finished.

They all looked over at Libby’s station. She was one of the few contestants who weren’t standing with Sid. If she were responsible, at least she wasn’t compounding her sins with hypocrisy. They had already judged her Chicago-themed display. Other than a few minor errors, her dishes today were excellent. The home economist on the crew had privately pronounced her caramel brownie tart the best bake of the series so far, and Dominic didn’t disagree.

Only one remaining contestant still had to present their work, and unless Adam pulled off something spectacular, Libby was going to top the leaderboard again.

It was a high bar to clear—and Adam clambered over it.

“Oh my goodness,” Sylvie said with obvious delight, immediately leaning down for a closer look at the former professor’s Beauty and the Beast spread.

There were iced biscuits, piped well, each in the shape of an animated character. Happily chomping down on a smiling teapot, Mariana cooed, “Look at the gingerbread houses.”

Adam had re-created the central square of a small French-inspired town in gingerbread blocks, chocolate beams, and blown sugar fountains. He’d mechanized the latter to spill out a cascade of syrup, which fizzed like sherbet and tasted far better than Dominic had expected.

Most of the sugar-craft requirements had been checked off on the cake, however, and the sculpted objects that stood atop the icing. Even for a highly skilled, trained sugar artist, it was difficult to pull off a human figure, and Adam had wisely opted for the Beast’s enchanted household: the clock, the candelabra, and so on.

With one exception.

Mariana emitted a strangled squeak, and Sylvie went suspiciously still and quiet.

After a long stare at Adam’s mild-mannered, reserved face—and the twinkle in his eyes—Dominic crouched to look at the figure of Gaston in pride of place.

The legs were a bit malformed and the ponytail more of a mullet, but it was clearly the show’s arrogant, narcissistic villain.

With Dominic’s face.

Dead-on likeness.

Unlike the character, Dominic didn’t spend hours gazing at his own reflection, but even he had no trouble recognizing Adam’s tongue-in-cheek mimicry.

The silence stretched.

From the beginnings of twitching lips, Sylvie was now openly grinning.

Adam was starting to shuffle his feet.

“Some of the sugar work is clumsy,” Dominic said very coolly. “The proportions on a few of the figures are off, and you clearly overboiled this batch. These biscuits are overbaked and there are lumps in your custard.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emma Abara’s face. She had been entirely unbothered through the critique of her own more mediocre Grease bake, but she was glaring at him now.

Sylvie also noticed that. She perked up even more.

Dominic reached out and plucked Gaston from his perch, carefully holding the sculpture on his palm.

“Just a little joke?” Adam suggested with a shade of caution.

“I wouldn’t call it a joke.” With his other hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the little gold disc all the judges were given at the beginning of the season. Engraved with a crown, it could be awarded by each of them only once and earned the recipient an instant cash prize of £1,000. “From the neck up, I’d call it fairly exceptional work. Well done.”

A blinking Adam took the disc, looking a bit stunned as the other contestants broke into applause—notably unenthusiastic clapping from Libby—and Dominic extended his hand.

The other man was completely flabbergasted now.

As he shook Adam’s hand, he turned his head and raised a brow at Sylvie.

Laughter was a dancing light in her eyes. She inclined her head in a silent Touché.

His own amusement was tested when they headed out into the grounds for some fresh air before the journey back to London. He’d been distracted by Aadhya, chattering at him with yet more lunacy—did he think it would be a good idea to stage one of the final rounds on a Thames barge? No, he fucking did not. And nor should she, after what had occurred last year, when she’d made them film an episode on a train to Edinburgh. Rocking surfaces, three saucepans of highly flammable liquids, two blowtorches, and one elderly former judge’s toupee. Jim Durham’s drinking had noticeably worsened after that disaster.

So it wasn’t until they were standing on ice-crisp grass in a spectacular winter garden that he noticed what Sylvie was holding.

She blinked placidly as she gave Gaston-Dominic a pat on his mullet.

“Unless you’re planning to eat that,” he said, “you’d better not be taking it in the car.”

Her look was drenched with pity for his poor straggling wits. “Obviously, I’m taking it in the car.” She smiled beatifically at it. “I’m going to put it in the kitchens at Sugar Fair as our new mascot.”

Before he could voice one of several comments on that, she reached into her bag and pulled out another item she’d purloined from the tables. It was a pink sugar Cadillac, reasonably identifiable and Emma’s one real success today.

Carefully, she propped up G-D in it.

“What—”

“How else is he going to get around with those teeny legs?”

Absolute last straw.

When he started to laugh, the smile in Sylvie’s eyes lifted her mouth. But the humor in her face faded, transmuting into something else. An emerging hint of an emotion that made him feel slightly less alone in new territory here.

Spontaneously, she reached up and touched his cheek, dusting her lips across his jaw in a feather-soft kiss. She paused there afterward, fleetingly, obviously checking his reaction. Lightning fast, Dominic cupped the back of her head before she could lower from her tiptoes and kissed her mouth. Her smile grew against his, and she nuzzled her nose against his cheek before she drew back.

He took a slow, deep breath, trying to clear his head.

Sylvie touched the tip of her tongue to her lips before she pressed them together. Her hands gripped the sugar Cadillac, cradling it against her chest.

Suddenly, she sighed. “And I once swore that I’d never let my knees quiver in your presence.”