Peter scoots along the bench closer to me. “Why don’t I believe you?”

  Panicking, I shift my gaze to him.

  “You have dark circles under your eyes.” He studies my face. “Clearly, you didn’t sleep, because no matter how much you deny it, you’re traumatized from what happened on Thursday night.”

  Phew. It’s about the attack. I realize I haven’t thought about it once since I knocked on Jonas’s door.

  Peter points to the base of my neck. “And this mark must be from the attacker! I hadn’t noticed it yesterday. When did he try to strangle you? Why didn’t you mention it to the police?”

  Because the mark wasn’t there. The attacker didn’t get a chance to strangle me.

  “It’s nothing,” I lift the mug to my face and apply myself to drinking the liquid as methodically as I can to hide my furious blush.

  Blimey! If I weren’t in such a desperate need of coffee this morning, I would’ve taken a longer look in the mirror. I would’ve spotted the hickey and lathered it with concealer until it disappeared.

  Thankfully, someone else enters the kitchen. I’m going to talk to whoever that is until my mug is empty, and my croissant finished, and then I’m out of here!

  I look over my shoulder, and to my astonishment, it’s the man who gave me the best orgasm ever. Aka, the bastard who gave me the hickey.

  With horror, I realize I’m already looking forward to later this evening—my last night in Jonas’s house. His proximity, as he takes a seat across from me at the long table, makes my heart flutter. I’ve never felt this way before and never expected to feel this way. In fact, I would’ve laughed if I was told that one day I’d feel this way about a man.

  Did he come down to have breakfast in my company? If so, why doesn’t he look at me?

  “Both Mrs. Everly and Oli are off this morning,” he says. “No one to cook me breakfast and bring it to my room.”

  Peter cracks up. “I would cite first-world problems, but yours is in a league of its own.”

  Jonas shrugs and heads to the fridge.

  Peter asks him something. Jonas answers, still not looking at me. My mind is too busy with its own preoccupations to register their exchange. It’s clear that the Jonas here in the kitchen is the same stranger I woke to—not the playful and passionate lover from last night.

  Was that it? Is it over? The question catches me off guard. Tomorrow I’ll move out of this house. Our paths will part, maybe forever. Was last night really a one-off?

  Get real, Margot! The answer is staring you in the face. Or, rather, not staring since Jonas won’t look at me.

  Peter knits his eyebrows. “Did you guys have a row?”

  “No, why?” Jonas says, buttering a toast.

  “You didn’t greet each other.”

  There’s a moment of panic, but then Jonas explains, “It’s because we’ve already bumped into each other earlier this morning. Margot’s room is next to mine.”

  “Ah, I see.” Peter smiles.

  Did he find Jonas’s explanation satisfactory? Will he suspect foul play? Is he going to connect the dots to my hickey?

  Oh well, it doesn’t matter.

  I’ll never go out with Peter, and Jonas has nothing to do with it. Not directly, anyway. On Thursday night, when Peter threatened our attackers to make sure they spare my life, my reaction wasn’t what I would’ve expected. Peter should’ve gained my admiration and gratitude for that gesture. Instead, disappointment was what I felt. Immense, profound disappointment.

  The Sky Hall is now the Netherfield Park mansion, decked out for the ball. The crystal chandeliers bathe the room in bright light that bounces off the beautifully carved panels lining the bottom half of the walls. The air smells of perfume, cologne, flowers, and candles.

  In one corner of the room, our talented musicians are playing a lively country dance. The music is loud enough that the conversations and laughter on the dance floor don’t drown it out. But it’s sufficiently quiet for the hanging mics and lavaliers to ensure that the audience hears every word.

  Caroline Bingley isn’t happy.

  Consumed by resentment and jealousy, she’s finished dancing, and now she’s eyeing Mr. Darcy who’s eyeing Elizabeth Bennet. My next dance is going to be with Peter, my character’s brother Charles.

  Here he comes, all fresh and kind and enamored with the oldest Miss Bennet, Jane.

  Arm in arm, we head to the dance floor. The musicians start the ländler. Peter takes my hands, left in left, right in right, and we begin our well-practiced routine. We execute our figures with near perfection and glide about the room. Peter steers me close to Jonas who’s now dancing with today’s Elizabeth. This isn’t in the script but given how much improv is allowed and even encouraged in this show, it shouldn’t strike me as odd. And yet it does.

  The other thing that seems off is how intently Jonas is looking at today’s Elizabeth—her civilian name is Giselle, I believe—while they say their lines. Giselle is a very pretty, very classy and, from what I understand, a very rich heiress in her early thirties. She is, by far, the most appealing Elizabeth of the week.

  Jonas did a great job conveying Darcy’s suppressed feelings to the previous Elizabeths. But what’s going on now seems… let’s call it a departure from the script. Mr. Darcy isn’t supposed to stare at her this intensely until her visit to Pemberley. Is it possible that the rapt attention he drinks her every word with isn’t Darcy’s, but his own? Can it be that his flushed face has nothing to do with the exertion of the dance?

  Oh my God, am I jealous?

  I look away from him and catch Peter’s uncommonly hard gaze on my hickey. Has the penny dropped?

  Jonas pays Giselle a compliment, drawing my attention back to the pair.

  “Can it be that you, Sir, possess a genuine interest in me?” she asks him.

  Oh wow. Either she doesn’t know her lines, or she’s ad-libbing. In which case, this would be the third significant departure from script I’ve witnessed in the last five minutes.

  “Indeed, I do,” Jonas replies.

  Peter maneuvers us so close to the leading couple that I can hear Giselle’s next line, whispered after she covers her mic with her hand. “I mean, in me, me.”

  “I am filled with admiration for your accomplishments, Madam,” Jonas whispers back, blocking his own lavalier.

  What in the world?

  She beams, delighted.

  He scans the audience until he spots the elegant couple he’d greeted warmly before the show began. Friends, I assume. They’re dancing at the other end of the room.

  As if reassured, he returns his focus to Giselle. “I should be overjoyed if you would allow me to learn more and to visit your museum,” he whispers.

  What museum?

  Ah yes, I remember something about Giselle being so into Regency that she has amassed a big enough collection of objects and works of art, thanks to Daddy’s money, to open a small private museum.

  After that brief exchange, the pair free their mics and return to the script.

  What just happened?

  I flounder through the rest of the show in a dark, confused state of mind. My thoughts scatter all over the place. They leap from Jonas to Peter to Jean-Paul Sartre, and I conclude that all men are bastards. But worst of all, I recognize that my performance today sucks. I even forgot a line toward the end, which earns me one of Sandra’s dreaded stares of displeasure.

  Will she keep me for the season in Bath?

  Right now, I can’t even bring myself to care.

  When the show and the talkback are finally over, I hang back in the Sky Hall and watch Jonas exchange pleasantries with the chic couple.

  He won’t look at me.

  Is it all my fault?

  Did I fuck up without realizing it? Did I do or say something that Jonas found so unpalatable, so awful and shocking that his fascination with me turned into repulsion?

  Was it my feminist views?

  He’s been aware of them since day one, and they didn’t seem to repel him, despite our diverging opinions.

  If only he’d tell me what turned him off like this!

  I won’t give up on my principles—if, indeed, it was my principles—but at least I’d now.

  To distract myself, I let my gaze meander around the room.

  Oh, look who else is still here! Giselle, waiting in the wings to talk to Jonas.

  He shoots her eloquent glances from time to time as if to beg her to wait a little longer until he’s done with his social obligations. Judging by Giselle’s coy smile and the fact that she stays put, she catches his drift.

  I peek at the fancy couple Jonas is talking with. They remind me of another beautiful couple that attended our Monday’s performance, and something I noticed then comes back to me. They seemed to know Jonas. Unlike with these two, whom he acknowledged from the beginning, he’d acted like he didn’t know them at first. But then all three disappeared during the intermission. When Jonas returned for act 3, without the couple, he looked so pissed off that Sandra told him to snap out of it. To his credit, he did so at once.

  I wonder what they’d said to him…

  Finally, the couple takes their leave, and Jonas rushes to Giselle’s side.

  I can’t watch this any longer. Feeling betrayed and mad at myself over my exaggerated, unreasonable reaction, I rush to the costume shop, change into my regular clothes, and leg it upstairs to my room.

  I hate you, Jonas d’Alenq!

  CHAPTER 25

  MARGOT

  It’s nine o’clock and everyone reconvenes in the third-floor bar to celebrate the end of the pilot season and to thank Jonas. Next weekend, Sandra is throwing a proper party at her place, but because we don’t know yet if Jonas will be there, the idea was to make sure everybody had a chance to thank him, Mrs. Everly, and Oli before we break camp tomorrow morning.

  I half expect Jonas to walk in with Giselle on his arm, but he turns up alone. Over the next half hour, he doesn’t say a word to me or spare me a single look. His coldness hurts. I end up in such a foul mood that I use a stomachache as a pretext and bow out.

  The anger and pain don’t let up once I’m alone in my room. I try to read. It doesn’t help. Mom and Dad call me. I talk to them, hoping that my fake cheer will become real, but that doesn’t happen either.

  When we hang up, I hear a noise in Jonas’s room. He’s in there! He must’ve left shortly after me.

  Should I go over and confront him? But on what grounds? All I come up with is: “You, Sir, had a one-night stand with me. But you didn’t make it sufficiently clear that it was a one-night stand, and now you’re hitting on another woman. How dare you! It’s against the rules to rescue a woman, make love to her all night, and lose interest in her the following day.”

  Hmm, there has to be a less pathetic angle.

  I could simply ask him to be honest with me, citing his self-professed life philosophy. I could tell him, “Be that strong man you claim you are and tell me where we stand. Don’t worry, I can handle it.”

  Yep, that’s what I’ll do.

  Determination in my step, I head out into the hallway. When I knock on Jonas’s door, no one answers at first. Then, when I’m about to admit defeat, I hear a patter of light steps approaching the door. It opens. Instead of Jonas, I’m greeted by a boy of about seven or eight.

  He sizes me up. “Hello.”

  The resemblance with Jonas is so striking I know at once who he is.

  “Hi, there,” I say.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Margot.” I narrow my eyes demonstratively. “How did you get here, young man, and what did you do to Jonas?”

  “Aunt Celeste brought me here,” he replies.

  While Jonas speaks a very BBC English, Matteo’s pronunciation is more international with a touch of French and closer to my mother’s accent than to my dad’s. The kind of accent you’d expect from a bilingual Monegasque kid.

  “Where is your aunt now?” I ask.

  “She went to the kitchen to get me some cookies and chocolate milk. Can you help me? I’m stuck.”

  I step in and follow him to an unfinished jigsaw puzzle spread out over the rug. It’s an incomplete picture of a tree with majestic branches reaching out to the cloudy sky. Matteo scurries around the rug picking up the scattered pieces.

  He lines them up neatly in front of me and pulls a face. “Nothing fits.”

  We both sit down cross-legged and stare at the unfinished tree. I take my time to observe the shape of the hole in it and each of the pieces he laid out for me.

  I place my first likely match. Nope, wrong. I try another one, and then a few more, even the unlikely ones. Matteo is right—nothing fits.

  Turning to him, I say reassuringly, “Don’t worry, Matteo, we’ll figure it out.”

  He gasps. “How did you know my name? Can you read minds? Are you a telepist?”

  I giggle, both at his rendition of telepath and at how much his mien smacks of Jonas’s “suspicious face.”

  “Wouldn’t that be great?” I say. “But, unfortunately, I’m no telepath. Your dad told us your name.”

  “Jonas,” he corrects me. “My dad is dead.”

  Say what? I stare at him, open-mouthed.

  He points at the puzzle. “Are you giving up?”

  “Who, me?” Recovering my cool, I push my chin up. “Giving up is for quitters. Margot Nolan is no quitter! Is Matteo a quitter?”

  He shakes his head.

  My eyes wander across the room. “We must think outside of the rug.”

  “K.”

  “Let’s split up.” I gesture to delimit one side of the room. “You search this half and I’ll take that one. Leave no stone unturned, OK?”

  Nodding to each other, we proceed to scouring the floor.

  I’m peering under the bed when Matteo cries out, “Found it!”

  I turn around.

  Matteo is on his feet by Jonas’s desk, brandishing a piece. “It was hiding inside the box!”

  I crawl back to the puzzle. “Let’s see if it fits.”

  He places it into the hole in the tree, and the piece fits perfectly with the ones around it. A satisfied grin spreads over his face. We continue to work in silence, watching the magical garden come alive. Birdies perch in the sprawling tree. Butterflies flutter around the blooming flowers. There’s even a small pond where two ducks swim around each other.

  Someone makes a noise at the door. It’s a dull thumping sound, like the person was using a foot to knock.

  Matteo opens to a young woman carrying a tray with biscuits, a cup of tea, and a mug with what must be his chocolate milk. She has a perfect body—the kind that would send Miss Universe scrambling for a better diet and workout routine.

  That being said, Miss Universe has nothing to fear from Celeste’s face. Dark-eyed and dark-haired, she has the same strong, angular features as her brother. But where that rugged quality accentuates Jonas’s hotness, it gives Celeste a rough look undesirable in a woman. A heterosexual woman, at any rate. While most would try to mitigate it with makeup or plastic surgery, I detect no trace of either on Celeste’s face. Maybe she’s gay. Or maybe she’s a black belt in the Olympic art of giving zero fucks.

  “I’m Margot,” I say in response to her surprised look. “Caroline Bingley in the show.”

  Relaxing, she sets the tray on the desk. “I’m Celeste, Jonas’s younger sister and”—she glances at Matteo—“this gentleman’s aunt. I’m sorry I missed the live shows, but I watched the recording of your opening night.”

  The one where Jonas whisked me out of the Sky Hall before the audience could see the red stain on my bum…

  I rise to my feet, smiling awkwardly. “I stopped by to check something with Jonas, and Matteo asked me for help with the puzzle…”

  Matteo picks up a biscuit from the tray. “She taught me how to think outside of the rug, Aunt Celeste! And she knew my name! She’s a telepi—” Interrupting himself he looks up at me.

  I mouth, “Path.”

  He shifts his eyes back to Celeste. “Telepath!”

  “Impressive!” Celeste studies me with curiosity, her eyelids at half-mast, and her face sporting the exact same expression I’ve seen on Jonas and Matteo.

  I fidget. “Well, I’ll leave you to your tea and biscuits.”

  “You were a fantastic Caroline,” she says.

  “It’s very kind of you.” Good thing she didn’t see me tonight! Despite my accident on the opening night, I hadn’t lost my cool then.

  The door opens again and Jonas walks into the room.

  Matteo runs to him. “Jonas!”

  They hug. He kisses the boy’s forehead before greeting Celeste.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks her with a sternness I didn’t expect.

  Judging by her raised eyebrows, neither did she. “Matteo wanted to see you, and my schedule was clear for today, so I thought, why not?”

  “Why not? Because of unnecessary risks,” he fumes.

  She knits her eyebrows. “What risks? What are you talking about?”

  Instead of replying, he rounds the jigsaw puzzle on the floor and surveys it. His face has the characteristically sheepish air of someone realizing he’s said too much. And he hasn’t looked at me once since he walked in.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Matteo,” I say to the boy. “And you, Celeste. Bye, now. Have a lovely evening!”

  As I head for the door, I feel Celeste’s piercing gaze on me.

  Jonas doesn’t utter a word.

  How can a man, who saved me from public humiliation last Sunday, who risked his life to save mine on Thursday and who made passionate love to me in this very room last night, treat me with so much disdain now?

  I can handle rejection, but this?

  Doesn’t he realize how much he’s hurting me? Doesn’t he care?

  Damn you, Jonas d’Alenq!

  CHAPTER 26

  JONAS

  Never, in my entire life, have I loathed myself as much as I do now. I turn away from the wall and look at Matteo who’s breathing evenly on the sofa bed on the other side of the room. Celeste is sleeping on a camp bed in Mrs. Everly’s office. It wasn’t the brightest idea she ever had to come visit me with Matteo now, but in all fairness, Celeste knows nothing about my mission.