Velvet Devil: A Russian Mafia Romance (26)

I hear voices and turn to see Isaak standing in an alcove, talking to a man who’s almost as tall as he is.

Are all Russians tall? Or maybe it’s just the Russians I’m unlucky enough to come into contact with.

Isaak, yes.

Bogdan, yes.

Al—No. Maxim. I say it under my breath three times fast: “Maxim, Maxim, Maxim.” It still feels weird and clunky in my mouth.

He’d told me that he was an American with investment interests in Britain. But if Isaak is right, then my fiancé was as Russian as the rest of them. Apparently, I have a type: foreign and deadly.

The laugh that springs out shocks even me. Everyone turns to stare as though I’ve just grown another head.

“Camila?”

I shake my head and put my face in my palms. If I don’t stop laughing now, I’ll start to cry.

“Camila.”

I swallow the desperate laughter. I look up, searching for a way out.

But all I see is Isaak.

He’s looking over at me with an expression that’s close to sympathetic—but not quite. I honestly don’t think he’s capable of emotions like that. Pity, yes. Rage, of course. But sympathy?

That would require him to be human.

“Why don’t you go up to your room and rest?” Bogdan murmurs from my side.

I raise my eyebrows. “My room?”

He nods. “Of course. Edith will show you up.”

Bogdan steps aside to reveal a young woman in a navy blue maid’s uniform, complete with a white apron. She’s blonde, too, but her hair is more honey than gold.

“Welcome to Pembrooke Manor, Mrs. Vorobev,” she says with a completely straight face, and a very British accent.

“Who are you talking to?” I snap irritably.

She looks so startled that I actually feel a little guilty for being so rude. “Please forgive me, madam. I didn’t mean to cause offense.”

“Edith,” Isaak interrupts, his voice calm but lashing, “why don’t you just show our guest up to her room?”

She gives him a grateful nod and turns towards the semi-spiral staircase that leads up to the second floor. “Right this way, if you will.”

I would have refused to follow—if it hadn’t been for the fact that I want them all to stop staring at me. So I head towards the staircase in the maid’s wake.

We reach the landing, which opens out onto a maze of sumptuous carpeted hallways. Portraits line the walls. The men and women in them all look eerily like Isaak—and, I note with a shudder, like my fiancé.

Edith takes the leftmost corridor, shuffles halfway down, and gestures to a room. “Here you are, madam,” she says, holding the door open for me.

I step into the room in a daze.

Why should I expect anything less than magnificence? After the grandeur of the entrance and the foyer, you’d think the shock would have passed, but the room takes my breath away all the same.

This is the difference between riches and wealth.

It’s a colossal, circular room. The walls are lined with Victorian paneling, each of the edges crisp and painted over in a deep sea green that seems to swim before my eyes. The fireplace is carved from the purest white marble. In front of it sits a pair of leather wingback armchairs, and above it is a mantlepiece stacked high with gilt-edged books. Looking down over everything from above the mantle is a sprawling oil landscape of the moors. It’s cloudy, moody, dreamy. Almost certainly the lifetime achievement of some famous master artist whose name I could never pronounce.

The bed has a canopy draped with sheer tuille, though the hangings are tied back with golden rope to reveal the embroidered duvet and enough pillows to use a different one every night for months on end.

Directly across from the fireplace, the wall breaks again to ensconce a pair of windows and a Juliet balcony. It looks out onto the courtyard behind the manor, which is so green it makes my eyes throb.

“Well… fuck me,” I breathe.

I flinch as soon as the words come out of my mouth. This place might be fit for a lady, but apparently my manners don’t quite match. I glance guiltily at Edith.

She gives me a shy smile. “It’s quite a lovely room, isn’t it, Miss Camila?”

I frown. “Cami is fine.”

She looks instantly uncomfortable with that. “Well, you have an en-suite bathroom just through there,” she tells me, gesturing towards a cream door across the room. “And your wardrobe has a modest selection of clothes for you to wear for the time being. We’ll get you fitted for new things as soon as you’re ready, but in the meantime, I’ve taken the liberty of laying out a dress for you for tonight.”

I cut off my gawking at once and whirl to face her. “Excuse me: tonight?”

She wrings her hands in front of her. “Oh, yes, madam. For dinner.”

“Dinner?” I probably sound like an idiot, but I want to make sure I’m hearing this right. Because she didn’t say “dinner” like it was just the time of day you eat a meal.

She said “dinner” like it was a date.

“You’re having dinner with Master Isaak tonight, of course.”

I’m angry and I don’t bother hiding it.

“I most assuredly am not!” I say with all the adamancy I can muster. “You can go down and tell him that forcing me to marry him doesn’t mean I’m going to play along with this insane charade he’s got going on here. He married a prisoner, not an accomplice.”