Seduction by Molly Cochran

Champagne?”
    “Oh, no,” I said breathlessly, backing away. I looked around for Peter. “Um, thank you, but I’ve got to . . . to . . .” Then I turned and ran up the stairs to my room.
    • • •
    Why did I do that?
    I lay on my bed and furiously kicked my feet, feeling like the biggest doofus on the face of the earth. It’s not like gorgeous guys— adult guys—offer me champagne every day.
    I took a deep breath. Don’t be stupid, I told myself. That guy—what was his name, Mondo?—was just being polite. Which was more than I could say for myself.
    And what did it matter, anyway, I thought as I stripped down for my shower. I belonged with that group downstairs about as much as a daisy at an orchid show.
    After showering, I put on a clean T-shirt and crawled into bed with a secondhand Agatha Christie that had cost me nearly twenty dollars at the English bookstore. I’d nearly finished the chapter I was reading when someone knocked on my door. “Peter?” I called out hopefully.
    It was Fabienne. “Why did you leave?” she asked. She seemed to be sincerely bewildered. “Belmondo liked you.”
    I shrugged. “I didn’t belong down there, Fabienne,” I said honestly. “I don’t belong here in general.”
    “But you do!” she insisted. “Peter wants you to live here, and so you shall. The opinions of others are of no importance.”
    I frowned. “Why is Peter so important?” I asked.
    Fabienne rubbed her fingers together. “Money is always important,” she said sagely. “For them, bien sur ”—she gestured with her chin toward the festivities below—“it is most important. They will do nothing to lose Peter.”
    “But Jeremiah . . .” I was going to say that Jeremiah could also make gold, but I stopped myself. I didn’t know how much Fabienne knew about the alchemy, and I’d practically given Peter a solemn oath not to blab about it.
    “But it is not Peter who worries you,” she said. “It is the others, yes?”
    It was embarrassing to be so transparent, but she’d managed to go right to the heart of my discomfort, just as she hadback in Whitfield. “I guess,” I said. “They don’t seem to like me much.”
    She laughed. “You’re talking about my mother.” She rolled her eyes. “Sophie doesn’t like anyone much. Not even me. Not that I care. Je m’en fiche. I’ve hardly seen her, after all.”
    “You mean today? Since you’ve been home?”
    She shook her head. “I mean ever.” She took a deep breath. “I was raised by nannies in Switzerland until I was eight. Then I was sent away to boarding school. I only saw Sophie twice before I was twelve years old.”
    “What happened then?”
    “Then I was transferred to a school in Tokyo, then Los Angeles, and then Ainsworth. I think she didn’t want me to become attached to any one place, so that I would think of this place as home. During vacations I came back here.”
    “So at least you got to be with your mom then,” I said.
    “Not so much. She was rarely present. Sophie doesn’t like children.” She flipped her hair. “That is her way. The women in her circle believe children should remain in their own milieu until they are old enough to enter the adult world. That is why I have come now. I shall be one of them. An adult.”
    “At fifteen?” I asked, dismayed. “Isn’t that kind of young?”
    “It is our way,” she said.
    “And who are the women, anyway? The women who live here?”
    “Friends,” she said. “Or what passes for friends. With Sophie, one never knows.” She smiled.
    I couldn’t believe how okay she was about her mom. I mean, I also grew up without a mother, but that was because she died. Apparently, Fabienne’s just didn’t want her around.
    “Where’s your dad?” I blurted.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know who he is. None of us do.”
    I pictured my great-grandmother fainting dead away at that. “Er . . . none?”
    “We do not marry,” she said.
    This