"The Mistress," she said, with the , composed dignity of a woman delivering information she finds simultaneously professional and somewhat extraordinary, "wanted to receive you properly."
He looked at the petals.
Then at the corridor.
Then back at the petals.
'She spread flower petals.'
He thought about Eliantra Westing — the dark-circled, file-reading, county-managing, aggressively-competent woman he had met in this mansion less than a week ago — and tried to reconcile her with a woman who had scattered rose petals on a corridor floor.
He couldn't.
He chuckled anyway.
"Really."
Internally: 'Elena. Your mother is spreading her legs for me. What are you doing right now, I wonder.'
He kept walking.
His hand, in passing, found Rihana's waist.
She leaned into it.
Outside the chamber he stopped.
Looked at the two women.
Gestured.
The , clear, 'wait here' gesture of a man who wants witnesses in reserve but privacy first.
They understood.
