The billionaire’s Lavender Wife

Sophie had set the table for two.

I stood in the doorway of the dining room and looked at it, two places, side by side at one end of a table that could seat fourteen and thought, this is going to be the longest meal of my life.

I had been at the estate for three days. Three days of high ceilings and self-opening gates and Mrs Chen appearing at precisely the right moment with the right thing, and in all three of those days I had eaten alone. Arthur was at the office by the time I came downstairs in the morning. He came home after I'd already been upstairs for an hour. We passed in the corridors occasionally, briefly, politely two people being very considerate about the fact that they were strangers sharing an enormous house.

Tonight was different.I didn't know why tonight was different. Luke hadn't sent me an agenda. Arthur hadn't said anything at breakfast, because we hadn't had breakfast together, he'd already left. But when I came downstairs at seven, Sophie was in the kitchen with two plates and the specific focused energy of someone cooking for someone who actually cared about food, and the table was set for two.

I sat down and waited.

At seven-thirteen, I heard the front door.His footsteps were distinct, I'd already learned them without meaning to, the unhurried, even rhythm that didn't change whether he was coming home from a good day or a bad one. He came through the dining room doorway still in his work clothes, tie loosened exactly one inch, and stopped when he saw me sitting there.

Something moved across his face. Gone before I could name it.

“Miss Carter,” he said.

“Mr. Blackwood,” I said.

He sat down across from me.

Sophie appeared from the kitchen with two plates and set them down with the quiet efficiency of someone who had been feeding the Blackwood household for years and understood that her job right now was to be invisible.Then she disappeared.

We looked at the food.It smelled extraordinary,something with herbs and a sauce that I could identify three components of and the rest was a mystery I was very interested in solving.

We stared at each other.

“How was your day?” I said.

A pause,like he was deciding whether the question was genuine or performative. Then, “Productive. Yours?”

“I found the library,” I said.

“Did you.”

“By accident. I was looking for the bathroom.”

The corner of his mouth moved. Just slightly. “The bathroom is on the left.”

“The library is also on the left,” I said. “Just further.”

He looked at me for a moment. Then he picked up his fork.

I picked up mine then we ate.

It was not comfortable exactly nor was it uncomfortable either. Something in between. The specific quality of two people who had decided to be civil and were discovering that civil was easier than they'd expected.

Sophie's food was, as I had suspected, extraordinary.

I made approximately four bites before my shoulders involuntarily lifted and swayed a little while I hummed a lullaby that leaves rent free in my head. I caught myself halfway through and pressed my lips together and looked very deliberately at the window.

When I looked back Arthur was cutting something on his plate.

His expression was completely neutral,completely.

I picked up my glass.

“It's good,” I said.

“Sophie's been cooking here for eight years,” he said.

“She's extraordinary.”

“Yes,” he said simply. Like this was a fact he had known for eight years and saw no reason to elaborate on.

My phone lit up on the table beside my plate.

I'd put it there without thinking, ten years of habit, keeping it close in case the hospital called. I glanced at the screen, it was a notification from a blog I didn't follow.

‘That’s odd’ I thought, turning the phone face down and reaching for my water.

When I looked up Arthur was looking at my phone.

Not at the notification, at the phone itself. The crack that ran diagonally across the screen from the top right corner, the specific crack of a screen that had been dropped on pavement and had continued being used anyway because replacing it was not in the budget.

He looked at it for one second,then he looked back at his plate.He didn't say anything. Well,neither did I.

We finished dinner. Sophie appeared with something small and sweet for after, and we had that too, and by the time we pushed back from the table something had shifted, slightly, barely, the specific degree of shift that happened when two strangers had a meal together and came out the other side having established that they could occupy the same space without it being terrible.

“Goodnight, Miss Carter,” Arthur said, standing.

“Goodnight, Mr. Blackwood,” I said.

He left the dining room.I sat for a moment longer, finishing my tea, listening to the estate settle into its evening sounds.

I thought about the way he had looked at my phone.Just one second, a quick glance.Maybe I was overthinking things.

Later, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling and thought about the blog notification I hadn't opened.

I should check it or maybe it was probably nothing.

I reached for my phone but the notification was gone. From the blog post it had linked to, I could see on the preview that it had mentioned my name but that was gone too. The link led nowhere, page not found.I put the phone down.

Downstairs, Arthur's office light was still on. I could see the faint glow of it under my door.I wondered what he was doing, I also wondered what the notification had said but just decided to just sleep it off.

I was almost asleep when I heard it.His voice, low, carrying from somewhere below, his study, maybe, or the corridor outside it. Not the words, just the tone. The specific tone of someone delivering an instruction rather than having a conversation.

Then silence, a while later I heard footsteps on the stairs, passing my door without stopping.Seconds later, the footsteps faded away.

I lay in the dark and listened to the estate breathe around me.

Something about that deleted notification sat in my chest like a stone.

I didn't know why, not yet.