His Substitute Bride

Don't Believe Him

The east wing had a library I wasn't supposed to find.

That's the thing about houses like this. They're built to impress and designed to hide. The library sat at the end of a hallway that looked like it led to a closet, behind a door that matched the wallpaper so perfectly my eye caught it only because the pattern didn't quite line up. A quarter-inch off. Someone had rehung the door after the wallpaper was done, and they'd done it wrong.

I pushed it open.

The room smelled like old paper and leather and something else — something sharp, like the air before a storm. Bookshelves covered every wall, floor to ceiling, with one of those rolling ladders that belonged in a movie. A desk sat in the corner, dark wood, clean surface, a single brass lamp.

I stood in the doorway and counted. Twelve steps to the desk. Fourteen to the window. The window faced the garden, the same garden I'd stared at from my bedroom, and the light came in low and gold, the way it does at the end of the day when you've been inside too long.

I shouldn't have been there.

I went in anyway.

I'd been at Black Manor — because that's what the staff called it, Black Manor, like it was a haunted house in a novel — for four days.

Four days of breakfasts I ate alone. Four days of dinners I ate alone, in the dining room, at a table so long the candlesticks at the other end looked like toys. Four days of Elena asking if I needed anything and me saying no, thank you, I was fine.

I wasn't fine.

I was married to a man I'd met twice, living in a house I didn't know, wearing clothes that weren't mine because my suitcase had been lost in the chaos of the wedding and Elena had lent me a robe and a pair of slippers and a dress that hung loose on my shoulders. My sister's dress still hung on the back of my bathroom door. I'd stopped looking at it.

Damian was gone most of the time. He left before I woke up and came back after dinner, and when we did cross paths — in the hallway, in the kitchen, once in the garden where I'd been standing too long staring at the roses — he nodded at me like I was a neighbor he didn't quite remember and kept walking.

He hadn't called me Stella again.

He hadn't called me anything.

I'd started to think the whole marriage was a mistake he was waiting to undo, a receipt he'd misplaced, a thing he'd deal with when he had time.

And then I found the library.

It wasn't the books that caught me. It was the desk.

I told myself I was just looking. That's what I do — I look. I look at lines and shapes and the way things fit together, the story a thing tells without meaning to. My sister used to say I could read a room like a book, and she wasn't wrong. I'd built my career on it. I could tell you which painting in a gallery was real and which was a copy, which designer had made a piece and which had knocked it off, which woman in the room was wearing her own diamond and which was wearing her husband's guilt.

I could tell you that the desk had been moved recently — the rug was flat under the legs, but the dust was disturbed in a rectangle just to the left. Someone had shifted it, then shifted it back, and they'd been in a hurry.

I could tell you the drawer didn't close all the way.

It was the bottom drawer, the one on the left, and it stuck out a quarter of an inch. Just enough. I knelt down and pulled it open, and my heart was pounding so loud I could hear it in my ears, and I told myself I was just looking, just seeing, just —

The envelope was white. Plain. No name, no address, just a folded piece of paper inside, the kind from a hotel notepad, the kind with a logo in the corner.

I knew it before I opened it.

The logo was the Grant & Co. crest. My father's company. The hotel where Stella had spent the night before the wedding, the one she'd chosen because it was close to the church, the one she'd told me had a spa and a view of the river and room service that brought you chocolate cake at midnight.

I unfolded the paper.

The handwriting was my sister's.

Sofia —

If you're reading this, you found the library. I knew you would. You always found the things I tried to hide.

I stopped. My hands were shaking. I read the line again, and then I read the next one.

I can't tell you everything. I can't tell you where I am or what I know, because if I put it in writing, he'll find it. He finds everything.

He. Who was he? Damian? Someone else?

But I need you to know one thing. Just one.

Don't trust him.

Don't trust anything he says. Don't trust the way he looks at you. Don't trust the house, the staff, the flowers in the garden. Don't trust the marriage.

I know what I'm asking. I know you're in the middle of it now, wearing my dress, saying my name, living my life. I know you're angry. I know you think I ran because I was scared of him.

I was scared. I am scared. But not of the thing you think.

That's all I can say. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Sofi. I never wanted this for you.

Be careful. Please. And don't trust him.

— S.

The paper shook in my hands. I read it four times. I read it the way I'd read her first note, the one she'd left on the pillow in the bridal suite, the one that had started all of this.

I can't do this. I can't marry him.

I'd thought she meant she was scared of Damian. I'd thought she meant she couldn't face the wedding, the marriage, the man.

But this note said something different. This note said she'd been protecting me.

I never wanted this for you.

I read it again.

Not of the thing you think.

I heard footsteps in the hall.

I shoved the note back into the envelope, shoved the envelope into the drawer, shoved the drawer closed. It stuck again, a quarter of an inch, and I pushed harder, and it clicked, and I stood up and smoothed my skirt and turned around just as the door opened.

Damian.

He stood in the doorway, still in his suit, tie loose, looking at me with an expression I couldn't read. The light from the window caught his face, and for a moment I saw something there — something tired, something old — and then it was gone, and he was just the man I'd married, the stranger who nodded at me in hallways.

"The library," he said. "I didn't expect to find you here."

"I didn't expect to be found." My voice came out steady. I was proud of that. "I was looking for something to read."

"Anything in particular?"

I could have said a novel. A biography. Anything. I could have lied, and it would have been easy, and he would have believed me, and I could have walked out of the room and never come back.

But I heard my sister's voice in my head. Don't trust him.

"Actually," I said, "I was wondering about the painting."

His eyes flickered. Just a fraction, just a moment, but I saw it. The painting in his study, the one I'd found on my first day here, the one with the woman wearing the necklace I'd designed in college. The one Stella had never worn.

"What about it?" he said.

"The woman. Who is she?"

He was quiet for a long moment. The room was quiet. The smell of old paper and storm air filled my nose, and I stood there in my borrowed dress, in his library, in his house, and I watched him decide what to tell me.

"A friend," he said finally. "An old friend."

"She's wearing a necklace I designed."

The words came out before I could stop them. I saw his face change — not much, not enough for anyone who wasn't looking, but I was looking. I was always looking.

"You designed it," he repeated.

"Yes. In college. I sold it to a gallery in the city. Westbrook, I think. I never knew who bought it."

He didn't say anything.

"Stella never wore my designs," I said. "She said they weren't her style. She said I was the artist, she was the one who wore pretty things." I paused. "But that woman in the painting — she's wearing it. Like it matters to her."

Damian looked at me for a long moment. The stillness in him was total — like a man who'd learned long ago that any movement gives something away.

"It was a gift," he said. "For someone I cared about."

"Someone you cared about."

"Yes."

I waited for him to say more. He didn't.

He crossed the room to the desk — the desk, the one with the drawer that didn't close all the way, the one with my sister's note hidden inside — and opened the top drawer, the one on the right, the one that slid smooth and silent.

"Elena said you haven't been sleeping," he said.

"She talks too much."

"She worries. So do I."

I almost laughed. I didn't. "You haven't spoken to me in four days."

"I've been working."

"You've been avoiding me."

He turned to look at me, and something in his face shifted. Not much. But I saw it.

"You're not what I expected," he said.

"What did you expect?"

"I don't know." He closed the drawer. "Someone easier."

The word hit me like a slap. Easier. Someone who wouldn't ask questions, wouldn't poke around, wouldn't find things she wasn't supposed to find.

"I'm sorry I'm not what you ordered," I said.

"That's not —" He stopped. Started again. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Then how did you mean it?"

He was quiet for a moment. The light was going gold outside the window, the way it does at the end of the day, and I stood there in the middle of his library with my sister's note burning a hole in the drawer and thought about all the things I couldn't say.

"I meant," he said slowly, "that I didn't expect you to be so —"

"Honest?"

"Brave."

The word hung in the air between us. I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't know what to do with him, standing there in his suit with his tie loose and his eyes tired, looking at me like I was a question he didn't know how to answer.

"I'm not brave," I said. "I'm just — I'm just here."

"Yes," he said. "You are."

He looked at me for another moment. Then he turned and walked out of the library, and the door clicked shut behind him, and I stood there in the quiet with my heart pounding and my sister's words echoing in my head.

Don't trust him.

Don't trust anything he says.

But standing there in the library, watching the door swing shut, I couldn't stop thinking about the way he'd said brave. Like he meant it. Like he'd been waiting to say it.

I went back to the desk.

The drawer stuck again — a quarter of an inch, just like before. I pulled it open and took out the envelope, and I read the note one more time, the last line, the one that made my stomach drop:

Don't trust him. Don't trust anything he says.

I folded it and put it back and closed the drawer.

Then I walked out of the library, down the hall, past the study where the painting hung, past the room where my sister's dress still hung on the back of the door, and I went to find Elena.