The Heiress and Her Bodyguard novel · Chapter 6 of 24
Chapter 6: Competent
I was dressed in ninety seconds.
Jonas helped with the buttons and said nothing, and I was grateful for both.
He left through my dressing room and came back into the hall from the stairs, so that when I walked down with one hand on the rail he was waiting at the bottom.
The split in his lip had stopped bleeding.
I could smell the iron on him anyway.
"They're in the dining room," he said quietly.
"I know," I said.
"I can smell the pine soap from here."
I heard him almost laugh.
Then I walked in with my head up.
The air smelled of lavender and old cigarettes and the pine soap the doctor used on his hands.
The doctor was a thin man with a voice like a paper cut.
Leif sat at my father's right.
Britta stood behind her chair, and I could hear her rings clicking on the wood.
Two others, silent, in suits.
Leif's board friends, I guessed.
"Linnea, darling," Britta said.
"The doctor has driven out in the dark to see you."
"It's nothing to be afraid of."
"I'm not afraid."
I took my father's chair again, at the head.
"Doctor, who called you?"
"Mrs. Haugland did."
"At what time?"
A pause.
Paper rustled.
"A little before two."
"A little before two," I repeated.
"Britta, what happened at two that you needed a doctor for me?"
She laughed, brittle and quick.
"You lost your father, sweetheart."
"I was worried."
"At two."
"In the morning."
"You woke a doctor, and he drove here, and you brought him through my front door at three."
"The same night a man in a gray coat climbed into my bedroom."
The room stopped.
"What man?" Leif said.
"The one in the gray coat."
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