Chapter 7

Chloe's POV

Eleanor was waiting at the door herself when I arrived that afternoon. Someone took my suitcase and started up the stairs with it, and I turned to watch it go; she took my arm and walked me in.

"Elias isn't back yet. Have a look at the room first, and tell me if there's anything you don't like."

The corridor was quiet. When she pushed one of the doors open I saw the dark coat over the chair back first, and then the files on the desk, the glass of water and the pill bottles by the bed. My suitcase had been set down beside the wardrobe, the staff had gone back out, and I was still standing in the doorway.

"This is his room?"

"It's the suite. Dressing room and bathroom are both through there, plenty of room for two." She gestured me inside. "If you're getting married, you have to start living together sometime."

I didn't move. "Does he know you put me in here?"

"I'll tell him."

Again. Will.

She patted my arm and started in on the car schedule for my commute. I followed her in and listened to her ask what time I ate breakfast, whether I needed different bedding. She asked it all very thoughtfully, and I couldn't stop looking at that row of pill bottles, wondering what Elias's face would do when he came home and found a person had been added to his room.

Eleanor sat down by the window and finally let the household details go.

"There's one more thing we should be clear about."

I assumed she meant the registration, so I set my bag down beside the suitcase and turned to wait.

"I'd like the two of you to have a child as soon as possible."

I looked at her and couldn't answer straight away. Everything Rachel had warned me about turned suddenly concrete, along with the question she'd asked me yesterday — why this moment, of all moments, to find her son a wife.

"The sooner the better," Eleanor added.

She looked toward the bed and pressed her lips together. When she spoke again her voice was lower than before. "His body may not be able to wait much longer. I know this is sudden for you. I don't want to waste any more time."

My hand closed around the strap of my bag. None of this had been in the plan.

"Is that also why you chose me?"

Eleanor lifted her eyes. There was no fluster in her face at being caught out — only tiredness.

"This family needs a next generation, Chloe. And I'd like my son to leave a child behind him."

I looked down at my luggage. The arrangements that had felt thoughtful when I walked in were now making it hard to breathe. I didn't agree to anything and I didn't get up and leave. I just went back through the words I'd meant to say and put them in a different order.

This was something I had to ask Elias himself.

After Eleanor left I sat on the edge of the bed for a while, until the footsteps in the corridor had faded out, and then I bent down and opened the suitcase.

What she'd said wasn't hard to follow. Her son might not live much longer, and she wanted an heir. But the moment I thought about where I'd been placed in that arrangement, my hands slowed down, and the dress I'd been about to hang up stayed on my lap.

When I agreed to the marriage, I'd thought about what it would cost me. Moving into a strange house. Getting along with a man who might never like me. Accepting that he would get worse. I'd even worked out how much this payment would make the rest of my life easier, and I'd been embarrassed at myself for working it out so carefully.

None of that had included a child.

A child who'd need me to look after it, who'd get sick, who'd grow up, who'd ask where its father was. When the marriage ended, I couldn't leave that at the estate and take the money back to my apartment and pick up my old life.

Elias wasn't back yet, and I wasn't going to make a decision like this on his mother's word alone.

There wasn't much in the room that didn't need to be there, but the coat over the chair back kept pulling my eyes. He'd been wearing that color last night in the private room. And then I was thinking about the way he'd caught my wrist and looked down at his own chest.

What had actually been wrong with him?

I hung two things in the wardrobe and couldn't get the question out of my head. The dresses sat there among his shirts looking wrong, so I closed the wardrobe door and stopped looking at them.

There was still time, so I took a change of clothes into the bathroom. The hot water hit my shoulders and the tension of a whole day started to come loose. I stood with my eyes shut, trying to work out how I'd begin when he got back.

I turned off the shower, pushed the glass door open, and was reaching for the towel when the outer door opened.

Cold air crossed my wet shoulder. I spun around and Elias was in the doorway with his hand still on the handle.

I snatched the towel up in front of me and nearly stepped on the hem doing it. "Get out."

His eyes came up from me to my face. The surprise was plain for a second, and then the usual coldness was back over it.

"So you've moved in already."

I held the towel tighter. "I said get out."

"You weren't this shy about it when you were undoing my buttons."

He didn't say it loudly. It just took my embarrassment and burned it straight off me. I reached out, grabbed the shampoo bottle off the shelf, and threw it at the door. He stepped aside, and I got across the tile and kicked the door shut behind him, and turned the lock.

I looked down at the towel I'd pulled crooked, and after a moment I wrapped it properly again.

Bastard.

Getting dressed, I put a button through the wrong hole and had to undo the whole front and start over. By the time my hair was toweled down to damp instead of dripping, I had myself mostly back.

Elias was standing by the desk. He turned when he heard the door.

"Did nobody tell you I was in here?" I asked.

"I came up the back stairs. I didn't see anyone." He drew his hand back off the edge of the desk.

"She brought me in. I asked whether you knew, and she said she'd tell you."

He didn't answer immediately, but the line between his brows got deeper. I picked the towel up off the chair, gathered my wet hair back over my shoulder, and waited.

"I already told you to cancel." He looked at me. "So you decided to take her arrangement anyway."

"I decided to talk to you again. That's not the same as taking everything she arranges."

"For the money."

My hands stopped on the towel. I laid it over the chair back and lifted my head.

"If this were only about the money, we finished that conversation yesterday. But your mother raised something else today, and I want to know whether it was your idea too."

He waited.

"She wants us to have a child. As soon as possible."

His face changed. He straightened a little, his eyes on mine, checking whether I was exaggerating.

"That's what she said?"

"Right before you came back."

"Did she tell you it was my idea?"

"No. She said the family needs a next generation, and that she's worried about your health." I hesitated, then finished it. "She wants you to leave a child behind."

He looked toward the window.

"That's not something I agreed to," he said.

The breath I'd been holding let go, and then I heard the rest of it, colder.

"She doesn't get to decide it. And you don't get to nod along on my behalf because you took her money."

I stared at him with my chest going tight. I'd been about to say that it had landed on me just as suddenly, that nobody had asked me either, and I pushed all of it back down.

"That's why I'm asking you." I kept my voice level. "There's nothing about a child in the agreement. I didn't say yes to her. And I didn't decide anything for you."

He looked at me a moment longer, and something in his attention shifted, as though only now had the sentence actually reached him.

The room went quiet. We stood there looking at each other.

He was the one who looked away. He picked his phone up off the desk.

"Wait a minute."

He went through into the adjoining study and didn't close the door all the way. I didn't follow. I took the two dresses back out of the wardrobe, folded them, and put them in the suitcase.

He came back about ten minutes later with two documents clipped at the corner.

"After she signed her version, I had this drawn up. I've just been through the clauses again." He held one out to me. "If you still want to go on with this, read it first."