The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 790

By seven in the morning, every door in the east wing of the Tiffany house was locked, and nobody would tell the idiot why.

"What was the scream?" Alexander asked the cook innocently, at the kitchen door.

"What scream?" the cook snapped.

"At sunrise," he said patiently. "From the tower."

"There wasn't any scream, Your Highness," she said, nervous. She didn't look at him. "You must have dreamed it."

"Everybody dreamed it, then," Alexander said mildly. "The dogs dreamed it too. They were barking for an hour."

"Breakfast's in the servants' hall," the cook said sharply, and shut the door in his face.

Upstairs, behind the locked doors, he could hear the house running about in a panic: the doctor's car on the gravel at half past seven, Pauline's voice, sharp and low, and once, very clearly, Patricia's.

"That's impossible!" she shrieked.

Felicia found him in the yard, in the grey morning light, feeding the hounds.

"Something's happened up there," she whispered. "The maids are crying. Madam Pauline's taken all their phones."

"Has she?" he said vaguely.

"Prince," she whispered, "do you know something?"

"I know the dogs want more sausages," Alexander said cheerfully, and gave them more sausages.

Felicia didn't laugh. She held out her hand, and her mother's thin gold ring was in it again.

"Quay Street opens at nine," she said, very quiet. "Please, Prince. For Tom."

"Keep it," he said gently. He closed her fingers over it, the way he had in the rain. "Someone already paid."

"Who?" she asked, startled.

"Someone," Alexander said lightly, and went back to the dogs.

It was true, and it was the first time he had kept the whole truth from her to keep her safe. It would not be the last.

…

At breakfast in the servants' hall, around the long scrubbed table, the radio on the shelf was playing the news.

"...and in business news, a company nobody in Westmere had heard of until last night has bought the city's most famous hotel. Halcyon Group, registered on the mainland only yesterday, completed the purchase of the Grand Hotel at four o'clock this morning..."

The servants' hall went quiet.

"The Grand?" a footman gasped. "We were at the Grand last night!"

"Four in the morning?" a maid said, amazed. "Who buys a hotel at four in the morning?"

"Somebody very rich who couldn't sleep," the cook said dryly.

"Maybe they'll give us a raise," the footman said hopefully.

"We don't work at the Grand, you fool," the cook said, and the whole table laughed for the first time that morning.

"Halcyon," Felicia repeated, very slowly, and looked across the table at Alexander.

He was buttering his toast.

"Halcyon?" he said, puzzled. "Never heard of them."

"Neither had I," Felicia said softly. "Until just now."

…

Halcyon's new offices were the top five floors of the Harbour Exchange, a glass tower on the waterfront, empty until this morning.

By ten there was a name on the brass plate in the lobby, and Hugo Bellamy was standing in front of it, a big man with a red face, sweating through a very good suit. He had been up since five, on the phone.

The Grand had been Bellamy Shipping's best customer for forty years. Hugo's father had signed that contract with the old owner over a bottle of brandy, and Hugo had always said the Grand would sooner change its name than change its shipper.

"I'm here for Ms. Vale," he told the girl at the desk, loudly. "Hugo Bellamy. Bellamy Shipping. She'll see me."

"Do you have an appointment, sir?" she asked.

"I don't need an appointment. I am the Grand Hotel's supply line."

The lift doors opened behind him. A young man in a plain old wool coat came out of the lift, carrying a courier's file box under one arm, and walked across the lobby towards the doors.

Anyone who had followed the idiot from the Tiffany gate this morning would have seen exactly what the city expected: a married-in nobody who had found work carrying other people's boxes.

Hugo stared at him.

Then he laughed, loud and relieved, the way a man laughs when something finally makes sense.

"You! The waiter! Ha!" He blocked the young man's path, delighted. "Delivering files now, are we? Moving up in the world!"

"Something like that, sir," Alexander said mildly.

"Lost your tray?" Hugo teased.

"I left it at the Grand," Alexander said.

"Good boy. Good boy." Hugo clapped him on the shoulder. "Here, you'd know. Is she in? Ms. Vale? Is she the type who's nice in the morning?"

"I don't think she's nice at any time, sir," Alexander said seriously.

"Ha! Then I'll be nice enough for both of us." Hugo pressed the lift button and looked back, generous now. "You should come and work for me, son. Bellamy Shipping. Carrying boxes. Steady pay."

"I'll think about it, sir," Alexander said politely.

"Don't think too long. Your sort never does." And Hugo laughed again, and went up in the lift, his black shoes still polished to a mirror.

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