Free Web NovelChapter 104: Chapter 104 The new place
_Author’s POV_
The following night, Kasper showed up at the mansion at nine in the evening and suddenly told Rowena to get dressed.
She looked at him from the doorway of her study where she had been reviewing documents for the past three hours and said straight up, “No.”
He added, “Pierre and Greg are in the car.”
She said, “Still no.”
He leaned against the doorframe and looked at her with the patient expression of someone who had already decided how this conversation was going to end and was just waiting for her to catch up.
“You haven’t left this house for anything that wasn’t serious business in weeks,” he said. “You fought men in an alley. You got placed under house arrest. You snuck out twice. You visited a hospital. You met with the Alpha King.” He paused. “Go somewhere that doesn’t require you to be the Marchioness for one evening.”
Rowena looked back at her documents.
“He’s right. You need this break.” Kyra chimed in, helpfully.
“I’m not in the mood.” Rowena grumbled.
“Just go, you crackhead, just once.” She pushed and Rowena released a sigh of defeat. Honestly, she really needed this break. And it was okay to have just one night of fun, right?
“Right!”
She looked at the clock and sighed once more before she closed the folder.
“Yay!” Both Kyra and Kasper cheered.
Pierre was in the front seat and Greg was in the back. When Rowena came down in dark jeans and a simple black top with her hair loose, Greg whistled. “Hot looking Marchioness.”
Rowena and Pierre glared at him.
Kasper chuckled and started the car before she could change her mind.
They explained where they were headed to Rowena.
The club was in uptown, recently opened, tucked between two older buildings in a way that made it easy to miss from the outside if you didn’t know it was there. No large sign. Just a name in small letters above the door and a line that moved quickly because the people managing the entrance knew what they were doing.
They didn’t wait in the line.
Someone at the door recognized Kasper and they were taken through immediately, which Rowena noted and said nothing about.
Inside was a different world.
The space was large but it didn’t feel large because whoever had designed it had understood how to make a room feel full without feeling crowded. The lighting was warm and low in some places and brighter over the bar and the dance area. The music was the right volume, loud enough to feel it but not so loud that talking became impossible. The seating was comfortable. The staff moved efficiently and smiled like they meant it.
Rowena sat down and looked around and gave it a ten out of ten in her head immediately.
Whoever owned this place knew what they were doing.
She wasn’t particularly curious about who that was. She was just glad the place existed.
Kasper ordered a round and Greg immediately pulled him toward the area near the DJ where a small crowd had gathered and something competitive involving a dance floor was developing. Greg loved those situations. Kasper went along with resigned energy.
That left Rowena and Pierre at the table.
Pierre ordered something and looked at the room with the calm attention of someone who was present without needing to participate in everything. They sat in comfortable quiet for a while, which was one of the things Rowena had come to appreciate about Pierre. He didn’t fill silence for the sake of filling it. freёwebnoѵel.com
She ordered something light, sipped it and looked at the room. She let herself just be there.
Kyra stretched out inside her, slow and satisfied, the way she did when Rowena finally gave her body a break from the tension that had become so normal Rowena sometimes forgot it was there. She felt it and let it happen.
“Good,” Kyra said simply. She was enjoying herself as well.
They stayed like that for a while. Kasper came back looking slightly disheveled and very entertained. Greg was still on the dance floor looking like someone who had found his natural habitat. The music shifted and the crowd responded and Rowena watched all of it with a light smile. This was her first time in a place like this and so far it wasn’t bad at all.
But just then, someone unexpected appeared.
Ezekiel walked in, spotted them and came to sit down across from her.
She stared at him in shock.
He looked completely healthy for someone who had been in a hospital bed two days ago, which she suspected had more to do with royal medical resources than with any responsible approach to recovery. He was dressed well, he was always dressed well, perks of being a rich prince.
Plus, he had good tasted fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
“You look surprised,” he grinned, showing off his perfect white teeth.
“You were in a hospital two days ago,” she pointed out.
“I heal quickly,” he said. “Royal bloodline.”
“That’s not how that works,” she frowned.
“It absolutely is,” he said, with complete confidence and zero supporting evidence.
He ordered two drinks and slid one toward her even though she already had one. She looked at it. Then at him.
“The service here is excellent,” he said, looking around. “Someone with taste owns this place.”
“My thought exactly,” she said.
He smiled and then his eyes moved. Not to Rowena. Past her.
She didn’t turn around immediately. She watched his face instead and watched something in it shift, the easy charm becoming slightly more deliberate, the smile recalibrating into something that was trying to look casual and wasn’t entirely succeeding.
She turned.
Pierre was looking at Ezekiel with the expression he wore when he was deciding whether something required a response or could be managed by ignoring it. He was leaning slightly forward with his arms on the table. Pierre looked bored but also entertained.
Ezekiel nodded at Pierre.
Then Ezekiel said something to Rowena about the music that she answered without fully hearing because she was watching the two of them not quite look at each other and very much look at each other.
Ezekiel was hovering near her side of the table. On the surface he was talking to her. But his body kept angling slightly toward Pierre’s side of the space and his eyes kept making the same trip they’d been making since he sat down.
Pierre’s jaw had done something subtle.
Rowena picked up her drink.
“He’s not interested in you,” Kyra said, amused.
“I see that,” Rowena responded with a small smile. She wondered what was happening.
“Pierre doesn’t know that.”
“I know that too.”
She sipped her drink and stayed where she was because the situation was genuinely interesting and she was having a decent evening. She saw no reason to intervene in something that was going to resolve itself one way or another without her help.
The music shifted to something slower and the lights over the dance floor changed color and the crowd moved with it.
Then a voice came from the entrance.
Clear enough to carry over the music.
“Who do we have here?” The voice paused.
“Marchioness Ashthorne.”
Rowena looked up to see who it was.
Virella stood at the entrance to the seating area in a fitted silver dress with her hair down and her eyes fixed on Rowena.
