The Fake Debutante and the True Billionaire novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Starling and Miss Cabell
A masked dancer takes a stranger's $5,000 at 1 a.m. and, hours later, curtsies in white to the Season's receiving line, where the host who whispers 'Thursday, Starling' is the man from booth four.
The man in booth four had not clapped once.
Everyone else at the Night Heron had.
I could see them through the slits of my lace mask, a sea of hands and open mouths beyond the stage lights.
He sat in the corner with a glass of water, perfectly still, watching me.
I finished the set on the floor with my platinum wig falling over one shoulder and the bass still in my ribs.
Then I walked off with my chin up, like I did every Tuesday.
Tavy caught me in the hallway and pushed an envelope into my hand.
"Booth four," she said. "Five thousand, cash. He says it's not for the show."
"What's it for?"
"He didn't say. There's a note."
The note was one line in square handwriting.
Thursday, if you'll have me.
I went through the bills twice, standing under the exit sign in my heels.
Five thousand.
Harbor Pines wanted thirty-one thousand four hundred for my brother's care by Monday.
Even with the Season's money due Friday, I was nine thousand short.
That envelope made it four thousand short.
"Hey, Jess." Tavy tipped my chin up with a knuckle. "You look like you're doing sums."
"I'm doing sums."
"Do them in the car. You've got a debutante thing at four."
I laughed, because it was funny.
At eight that morning I sat on the end of Tenny's bed at Harbor Pines.
The wig was in my bag and my real hair was pinned flat.
My brother was seventeen and had been in that building for two years.
He pushed his headphones down around his neck and looked me over.
"You smell like a bar," he said. "And a hairdresser."
"I smell like a debutante."
"Debutantes don't have to ask the front desk for payment extensions."
"This one does."
"That's why I'm so proud of you."
He grinned his crooked grin, the one that had come back after the fall slower than his legs had.
I kissed his curls and did not tell him about the envelope.
At four o'clock I stood in a white gown in a line of white gowns, in the ballroom of the Palmetto Cotillion.
The lawyer's folder had said I was Rosamond Cabell, of the Atlanta Cabells, twenty-four, unmarried, presentable.
It did not say what to do with my hands.
The receiving line moved forward one pearl at a time.
At the end of it stood a woman with waist-length blue-black hair in ivory silk, and a man beside her whose back was to me.
"Miss Cabell," the woman said, with a smile that did not reach her eyes. "Sabina Pinckney. I looked you up this morning."
"How kind."
"Cabell.
"Isn't that the family that sold Hartsfield Hall in ninety-four?"
She tilted her head for the people behind her.
"Do you still keep the family silver, or just the name?"
Someone near the punch bowl laughed.
I felt it go up the back of my neck.
I thought of Tenny's walker, and of the nine thousand dollars.
I smiled.
"The silver went with the hall, Miss Pinckney," I said. "The name was the only thing nobody wanted to buy."
The laugh turned.
It went sideways, into the people who had started it, and Sabina's smile held a moment too long.
"Well," she said. "How refreshing."
"I try."
"Darling, come and meet our newest girl."
She touched the man's sleeve.
"Mr. Landis is hosting the Season this year, Miss Cabell.
"He's rather new to us."
The man turned around.
He was tall and lean, with sandy hair swept back from a face that was all angles and no hurry.
A small white scar ran through his left eyebrow.
Blue-green eyes, the color of the harbor in March.
I had seen those eyes fifteen hours ago, over a glass of water, from a stage.
He did not blink.
He took my gloved hand in his and bowed over it.
His thumb pressed once across the inside of my wrist.
Right where the burn scar was, under the satin.
"Miss Cabell," Carlisle Landis said, loud enough for the line to hear.
Then, much lower, only for me, as his mouth came near my glove:
"You count under your breath when you're nervous, Starling. I watched your lips all through the second song."
He straightened.
"Thursday," he said.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend