Allegra’s eyes grew shiny and round with emotion. “I want to kill them all. And I want to shake Mamma so badly for all the things she’s said to make you not like yourself. Because you’re, like, the best person ever. I’d give everything to be you, Ari. I wish you could see yourself how I see you. And I won’t stand by and let these assholes ruin your future. All you do is work. You’ve isolated yourself. Sure, it’s a beautiful place. But you’re lonely, Ari. I won’t let you wither away. I’m going to force you to be brave and truly live again.”
I blinked in surprise at her passionate speech. Love for her filled me until I felt like I might burst with it. And it was enough. To have her affection and admiration was enough. Shimmying along the couch, I wrapped my arm around her and she snuggled into me, resting her head on my shoulder like she used to as a kid. “You, my sweet girl, are going to stop worrying about me because I’m fine. Let’s just focus on you and your future.”
Allegra didn’t protest.
So I stupidly assumed that meant she agreed.
Seven
NORTH
If something didn’t change soon, I was afraid I might lose my mind.
The hiding had begun to feel more like imprisonment. Sure, nicest prison in the world if so, but Ardnoch’s walls were closing in on me.
I needed something different to happen.
Preferably for my career to come back.
Shipping my guitar from my apartment had only helped for a bit. The feeling of restlessness and lack of productivity was making me so bloody angsty. And I couldn’t bear to think about how abandoned I felt by this thing—acting—that had brought me so much joy.
My pen swept over the page as I committed these feelings to paper. When I was thirteen, after what happened with Gil MacDonald, a child therapist had suggested I write everything down. For a boy who had been hoarding his anger and pain since he was seven years old, the act of unleashing at the end of every day into a journal was shockingly helpful. It was a way for me to voice everything I bottled up but where it was still safe. Where I only had to be vulnerable with myself.
I didn’t grow up in a very forward-thinking area. Boys didn’t talk about their feelings. We just took the piss out of each other and if it all boiled to a head, it usually ended in a brawl. There was always one arsehole who brought a knife to the fight, though, and I’d had a few lucky escapes.
By the time I was fourteen, however, between what happened to Gil, talk therapy, and my newfound self-therapy in journaling, I was a different wee boy. I moved to a better foster family in a village west of Falkirk and started a new school where I could reinvent myself. I studied harder and by chance fell into acting when my girlfriend, Donna （who I fancied myself in love with at the time）， begged me to join the local youth theater with her. If my mates from my old life had seen me, they would have kicked the utter shit out of me. And at first, the acting classes were mortifying. But it turned out, I was a natural.
Somehow, I just knew how to channel all my young angst and trauma into my performances. Ms. Anderson, our director, mentored and sent me off for auditions. I starred in a couple of local TV ads, and I landed a few episodes of a Scottish soap. Between that, my theater work, and my grades, I could audition for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. It’s one of the top performing art schools in the world. And to my awe, I got in.
Because I was eighteen with no financial aid from a parent, they even provided a scholarship and bursaries to help with the fees. I worked my arse off to get my BA in acting, and I was a working actor during my studies there. While performing at the school, an American producer saw me and asked me to audition for her upcoming rom-com. I had to do it with an American accent, and I got the part. From there, I landed a stream of rom-coms until I grew worried I was being typecast. Most of the world didn’t even know I was Scottish. It used to surprise the hell out of talk show hosts.
But I did that.
I clawed my way out of poverty. I was a discarded child. And I shattered what should have been my fate and gave everything to my pursuit of betterment.
Now the world wanted to take it away from me.
How fucking dare it.
I whipped the journal across the bed and braced my head in my hands.
I needed something to change.
An abrupt hammering on my suite door brought my head up. Reaching for my phone, I saw it was nearly midnight. What the hell?
“North, you in there?”
The female voice was familiar.
Hurrying across the room, I threw open the door to find Allegra Howard standing in the hall. “Something wrong?”
She gave me a pained smile. “Sorry to disturb you at this hour, but Aria sent me to get you.”
Worry scored through me. “Is she okay?”
Her eyes rounded. “I’m not sure. She just asked me to come get you. She said she really needs to talk to you.”
What? I scowled. “At midnight?”
Allegra shrugged. “That’s all she told me.”
Finding it all a bit strange, my guard was up. But my curiosity was also pricked. What if she needed to cancel my membership? And to save face, they were booting me off the estate in the middle of the night, so there were no witnesses to my humiliation. Bloody great. That would be the icing on the worst fucking cake. Well, if so, I wanted my goddamn membership fee back.
“One second.” I closed the door on Aria’s sister and impatiently shoved on socks and shoes and grabbed my key card.
Allegra seemed to sigh in relief when I reopened the door, her eyes darting over my body. But not as if she were checking me out. “You didn’t bring your phone, did you?”
“No, why?”
“Aria has some … privacy issues.”
“Among many others,” I muttered as we walked down the hall.
“I heard that.”
I chuckled darkly. “I meant for you to hear it. So, why is Her Majesty commanding me to meet her in her office at midnight?”
“Oh, not her office. She asked me to bring you to the library.” Allegra stared up at me, wide-eyed and confused. “And like I said, I’m as clueless as you are. In fact, I’m kind of worried.”
What on earth?
Tension settled between us as my concern grew. Allegra seemed anxious. If I had any dignity, I’d tell the sisters where to stuff their cloak-and-dagger games, but honestly, I was bored out of my mind. I’d probably have agreed to listen to one of them read from Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past at this point.
The castle was eerily quiet. Last summer, it buzzed nightly until one in the morning, but there were fewer guests this month and as we passed the dining room and lounge, they were dark. There was no sign of Wakefield or any of the underbutlers.
“Aria told everyone to finish up for the night at eleven,” Allegra whispered. “She said it’s the quietest week she’s ever seen at Ardnoch.”
“So why the hell is she still here?”
“Hey, that’s what I asked.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m beginning to think she truly is a workaholic. In here.” Allegra pushed open the large, heavy library door and ushered me past her.
Frowning, I strode in.
To an empty room. I spun around. “Where is she?”
Allegra whispered again, “She’s in her office, but she told me to bring you here. I’ll go tell her.”