Slate pressed the blade’s handle into her hand. “Take this. Hide it.”Midnight brown eyes executed a rapid appraisal of Gigi’s body, and then Slate reached to pull her shirt upward and touched the small of her back. “Here.”
Gigi didn’t argue. She also forgot how to breathe. The hand on her back was warm, and Mattias Slater didn’tstoptouching her until she’d slid his knife into her waistband, after which Slate righted her shirt, scanned her body with military precision, then moved her back to the chair she’d been sitting in earlier and pressed her lightly down into it.
Gigi recovered the ability to speak. “What does Eve want?” she whispered. There was no time for an interrogation like the present.
“To matter.” Slate caught Gigi’s chin lightly in his hand. “We don’t have long, so let’s get one thing straight, sunshine: You never pull a weapon unless you’re willing and able to use it. If you’re going to hesitate,don’t.”
Don’t hesitate? Or don’t pull the knife?Before Gigi could ask, Slate was gone. Gigi heard incoming footsteps, took a deep breath, and gave herself a pep talk:Be smooth. Act natural. And whatever you do, don’t think about the knife in your pants!
Two more deep breaths later, Savannah stepped into the room. Gigi popped out of her seat the second she saw her sister. “Savannah!”
“Gigi.” Savannah managed to cram alengthylecture into that one word.
“Fancy meeting you here?” Gigi tried with a smile.
“What were you thinking, coming here alone?” Savannah crossed the room toward her.
“Lots of things,” Gigi replied brightly. “Would you like an alphabetized list?”
“We’re leaving.”
No. We’re not.Gigi gestured toward the silver tea set on a nearby table. “Coffee?” she offered.
“Oh dearlord,” Savannah muttered.
“If it’s any consolation,” Gigi told her, lowering her voice to a whisper, “I’m armed.”
“Not a consolation,” Savannah replied. “Did they take your phone?”
“Indeed they did! But butler-man said I’d get it back. He stashed me here in the parlor. Where’d they put you?”
“Great hall,” Savannah replied. “It took me forever to pick the lock.” Gigi tried not to be insulted that no one had bothered to lockherin.Always the bridesmaid, never the assumed-formidable bride.
“We’re leaving,” Savannah said again.
“Why would we do that,” Gigi replied, cocking her head to the side, “when someone wearing heels isfinallymaking their way down the hall right now?” She sat back down in her chair, delicately remedied a knife-wedgie, and nodded to the chair next to her.
Savannah was not happy, but she sat.Deep breath, Gigi told herself, and then a very old woman joined them in the parlor.
“Sisters.” That was the word that Helena Thorp greeted them with. She looked from Gigi to Savannah, as if searching for any resemblance whatsoever between the two of them.
Good luck with that, Gigi thought.
“There was a time I dreamed of raising daughters, plural,” the old woman continued, taking a seat herself. “My husband, of course, wanted sons. I gave him four.”
The woman had to have been in her nineties, but she seemed pretty spry to Gigi.
“Four sons,” Gigi replied. “But no daughters.”
“So it would seem.” The Thorp matriarch had violet eyes—there was no other word for that shade—and she didn’t even try to mask the way she was assessing the two of them. “You seem to believe you know something about my family,” she told Gigi. “And you…” Violet eyes locked on to Savannah’s silvery gray ones. “You have something that belongs to me.”
Gigi’s gaze went to the chain around Savannah’s neck. “Calla’s necklace.” Gigi’s mind went to the way Brady had analyzed the Thorp fleur-de-lis, to Nora’s sharp assertion that the symbol in question had no place in this town.
“Pour celui á qui il a été promis,” Savannah said, calmly pouring herself a teacup of coffee. “Pour la fille qui serait reine.”
“Flawless,” Helena commented. “And not just your French. You’re poised, my dear. Bone structure is exquisite. Excellent posture. Intelligent, too, I dare say, and yet, you’ve never quite fit in, have you?” Now it was Helena’s turn to pour herself coffee without ever looking down. “People find you intimidating, perhaps even cold.”
The Thorp matriarch swung her gaze back toward Gigi.