“My guest?” I frowned at the older man, making no attempt to hide my confusion.

Jameson, I suspected, disapproved of outward displays of emotion, especially confusion. Something about my face made his eyes narrow slightly.

“Indeed, Miss Eilish,” was all he said, turning and taking my coat with him.

I watched him go until he disappeared, and then I turned toward the hallway off the foyer. The blue room was extremely pretty, the furniture and paintings impeccably maintained. Several of the pieces dated back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and were museum worthy.

I’d rarely been allowed in the blue room.

Low voices met my ears as I approached, yet I was fairly certain the higher of the two belonged to my mother. Without knocking, I opened the door. Scanning the ornate parlor, I sucked in a sharp breath as my eyes locked with Bryan’s. His were twinkling as they moved over me, and I couldn’t tell if he looked amused or angry.

Or perhaps a mixture of both?

“Eilish,” he stood, smoothing his hand down his tie and dress shirt as he did so, “there you are.”

I gaped at him, but I did not overlook the relief in his voice or the strained lines around his mouth. And that’s when my attention moved to the only other person in the room.

“Mother,” I said, my tone forced lightness. “Where is everyone else?”

She smiled, but it looked more like an aggressive baring of teeth. “You never said how . . . colorful Mr. Leech was.”

Colorful was my mother’s code word for indecent or coarse. It’s what she’d always called my friend Josey. My mother had tolerated Josey only because her father was one of the first Internet millionaires.

As my brother Charles—the banker—liked to say, “New money is still money.”

Ignoring her reference to Bryan’s colorfulness, I returned my attention to Bryan, wanting to apologize to him. I was certain the time he’d just spent trapped in this room couldn’t have been pleasant.

“It’s good to see you,” I said instead of apologizing, walking into the forbidden blue room and coming to stand at his side. An odd desire to protect him from this place and the people who dwelled here gripped me.

The tense lines around his mouth relaxed as I approached, and he bent forward, placing an unexpected and gently lingering kiss on my cheek.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re finally here,” he said flatly, his words communicating so much more than their surface meaning.

I tried to impart sympathy with my eyes while also endeavoring to make sense of his presence. I didn’t want to ask, Why are you here? because that would give my mother the upper hand. Better that she think I knew all along that he was coming.

Right on cue, my mother asked, “Oh, did you know he would be here?” She sounded both shrewd and mildly disappointed, which was how she usually sounded.

“Eilish and I speak frequently.” Bryan slipped his arm around my waist, pulling me to him.

I glanced at him, impressed by his double-talk skills and his misleading non-answer. But then I reminded myself that his father was one of my mother’s type; he’d likely learned to navigate polite society and their impolite maneuverings.

My mother issued Bryan an unfriendly smile and stood from her chair, glancing vaguely at her watch. “I must check on brunch, and Circe’s found a new breeder, she’ll want to tell me the details.”

“Wait, mother.” I stepped out of Bryan’s hold. “Did you have those documents? For me to sign?”

“Oh.” She frowned distractedly. “They’re not ready yet.”

I blinked at her. Once. Slowly. And hard. “I suppose the ring is . . .?”

“At the jewelers. Being resized for you.” Now she looked harassed. “Really, Eilish. I have to go.”

“Go ahead,” Bryan said, giving her an unfriendly smile of his own. “We’ll just wait here until the food is ready.”

She looked like she was going to protest. Surprisingly, she didn’t. Instead, her gaze slid to mine momentarily and then she turned, leaving the room without another word. Her footsteps echoed in the marble hallway. As the sound of them tapered, I released a heavy exhale.

My mother was up to something and I knew it wasn’t good, because she was never up to something good.

Bryan squeezed my waist, glancing at me from the corner of his eye.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered.

“I was invited, so I came,” he said easily, then grimaced. “Worst mistake of my life.”

I chuckled, facing him. “Was it very bad? With my mother?”

“Yes.” His answer was immediate and full of humor. “Her talents are wasted on blue bloods, she should be interrogating terror suspects.”

I laughed again, shaking my head. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. I get to see you, don’t I?”

His words startled me, as did the smoothness and warmth with which he’d said them. I cleared my throat, glancing away, searching the blue room and its priceless antiques for something to say.

Eventually, he bent to my ear and whispered, “How did you manage to grow up here without breaking anything? This place is like a china shop on steroids.”

“I didn’t grow up in this house,” I answered, feeling oddly breathless.

“You didn’t?” He looked surprised, interested.

“No, not really. I grew up in boarding schools.”