Chapter Nine #2
“Just because she has a boyfriend doesn’t mean she’s not doing her best, and no matter how you feel, she is your mother,” Cat said, trying to be diplomatic and smooth things over between the girls. “It’s probably hard on her too, trying to keep everyone happy.”
“She didn’t have to keep Roger happy. She didn’t even have to start dating him.” Jillian’s lips pressed together a firm unyielding line. She looked very much like her father just then, tough, decisive, and a little too inflexible. “She could have just stayed being our mum.”
“She is still your mum, even if she has a boyfriend.” Cat continued mildly, still trying to soothe tempers. “And because she is your mum, and she loves you, I think we should get her a gift. Each of you should choose something, unless you see something you want to give her together.”
“I want to get Mum some earrings,” Olivia said. “She loves earrings.”
“Expensive earrings,” Jillian said. “Nothing you can afford.”
Cat ignored this. Jillian could be as grumpy as she wanted, but Cat wasn’t going to let Jillian dictate their day. “Then let’s go visit the jewelry stores in Bakewell. Something might catch your eye and be the very thing she’d love.”
“What about me?” Jillian demanded.
“If you don’t want to buy anything today, you don’t have to, but if you see something that appeals, then you can buy it for your mum and your dad will pay me back. No pressure. But let’s just try to make it fun for everyone. It is almost Christmas, after all.”
“Ten days,” Olivia cried, jumping.
“Nine days now,” Jillian said, glad to have the last word. “Yesterday it was ten.”
Cat just smiled because what else was she going to do?
In the end, it was a longer day than any of them anticipated.
They didn’t just go in one store, they went in many, looking in any shop that might carry even a small selection of women’s jewelry, and Jillian was right, nothing that the girls looked at seemed quite right for their mum who had expensive tastes, or so Dad had said more than once.
But they spent so much time in Bakewell that they had lunch at a little café and then stopped at a bakery to pick up a cake to take home with them.
By the time they got back to the cottage, it was nearly two and the girls were drooping.
Cat sent them up to put on warm dry clothes while she put away the groceries.
When they came downstairs, she had cups of warm cider waiting and they curled up on the couch under a blanket to watch The Snowman on Cat’s laptop.
It wasn’t a very long film, not even thirty minutes, but the lovely wordless animated classic had the girls asleep by the end, both of them under the same blanket, Olivia curled up as close to Jillian as the bigger sister would allow.
Cat quietly closed her laptop and took it to the kitchen with her. She sat there working, researching jobs, applying for some, ignoring others. Nine days to Christmas meant just a couple weeks now until she flew home. The job hunt had to begin in earnest.
She was still working in the kitchen when Rhys returned. It was late in the afternoon, and she’d lost track of time—easy, when the girls were napping on the couch—and she’d been concentrating on getting as many applications out as possible.
He’d walked to Langley Park this morning and so when he returned it was without car lights or fanfare. If it weren’t for the scrape of the old oak door, she might not have even realized he’d arrived home.
“How is it going?” Rhys asked, voice pitched low as he entered the kitchen.
“Good,” she answered, closing her laptop, and pushing it away. “I’m making progress on the job search. I’ve had a couple bites, too. We’ll see.”
“That is promising,” he said, turning the kettle on. “But I’m not surprised. Any school would be lucky to have you.”
“That’s awfully kind of you,” she said smiling.
“Tea?” he asked, already taking two ceramic mugs from the cupboard.
“Yes, please.” She watched as he moved about the kitchen with typical Rhys focus, movements precise, confident. No bumbling male in the kitchen here. “You seem awfully comfortable here,” she said.
He flashed a rueful smile. “I grew up in a cottage very much like this one, just a stone’s throw from here. It’s bittersweet being back at Langley Park. Lots of memories, not all easy.”
“Because of your mum?”
He shrugged and measured out the loose tea. “That, and it’s England. I’m not English, but here, I feel more English than Welsh. Whereas my father is all Welsh. Welsh to the core.”
“Were you born here?”
“No, was born in Wales but we moved here when I was three. I don’t remember any of my early life in Wales. This was home until I was seventeen. That’s when the earl decided he no longer needed his stable or his stable master.”
“Oh, Rhys. That had to be hard for your father.”
The kettle whistled and Rhys turned it off.
“It was. My dad tried to pretend he was glad to be back in Wales, which was his home, but it was a terrible blow for him to lose his horses, his income, his identity. But what could he do? The earl wanted to trade in his horses for more cars, and the ancient stable’s interior was renovated, turning the venerable barn into a modern garage to house Lord Langley’s growing car collection. ”
Cat heard the depth of feeling in Rhys’s voice, and her heart ached—for him, and for his father, who’d built a good life here, one they’d both loved. “How much do the girls know about your childhood? Or your father’s work?”
“Not much,” he admitted, watching the tea steep. “Lyndsey didn’t see it as essential—not out of shame, but because she thought my career in medicine was what truly mattered.”
Cat didn’t want to criticize his ex-wife, but she disagreed with her.
Rhys’s past, and his life here, had shaped him, honing his discipline and ambition, making him who he was today.
“I think the girls would enjoy learning more. They adore you, and I think they’d benefit from knowing how you fit in here, and why the people you care about here—Mr. Trimble, Mrs. Booth, and now Mrs. Johnson—mean so much to you.
This was your world, and in many ways, these people became your family and community.
Because unlike the earl’s family, they all worked here, just as your father did.
You had a common goal, and I could be wrong, but I have a feeling when your mum was sick, Mrs. Booth would have stepped in and done whatever she could to help her and all of you. ”
Rhys stood very still, his jaw working ever so slightly before looking at Cat, emotion darkening his eyes.
“Very perceptive,” he said, voice husky, “and very true.” He cleared his throat.
“Now, what should we do for dinner?” he asked, pouring the tea and adding a teaspoon of sugar and milk to both of the cups before carrying her mug to her at the table. “It’s almost half past five.”
She blew on her tea. “The girls will be hungry. Apparently, I had them out walking for miles and miles.”
Rhys’s lips curved faintly, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes. “How far was it actually?”
He was far too attractive, far too warm and real.
Everything she wanted and more. “Just to Bakewell and back,” she said.
“But we did hit a lot of the shops, and then we came home through the front gates, which adds an extra fifteen minutes to the walk. All in all, it couldn’t have been more than two miles, but the fresh air and exercise did them good, they have been perfect angels ever since we got back. ”
“Angels because they’re napping?”
Cat couldn’t hide her grin. “You must admit they look angelic sleeping.”
“But my angels will turn to devils when they wake up starving.”
“I did pick up some sausages at the store and can try bangers and mash. I can’t promise you they’ll be very good—”
“How about pizza? I can get some pizzas delivered here, which will thrill the girls. Not that your bangers and mash wouldn’t be fantastic.”
Cat laughed. “They wouldn’t be fantastic. Pizza is a much better idea.” She rose from the table, taking her steaming cup with her. “And now I better wake them, or they’ll be up all night.”
“Brilliant. I’ll get the pizzas ordered and then have a quick shower.”
*
In the small bathroom adjacent to his bedroom, Rhys turned the shower on before he undressed as the water took forever to warm.
While he waited for the water to reach a bearable temperature he replayed his conversation with Cat in the kitchen, thinking he’d shared more with her about his life here—or in Wales—than he’d ever shared with Lyndsey.
Lyndsey didn’t see anything romantic in his background as the son of a stable master.
She came from a wealthy Houston family, and her father had both land, high tech investments, and a stake in a family oil business.
She’d been raised with the best of everything, and while Rhys’s father wasn’t blue collar, he also hadn’t gone to college or moved in the sophisticated world she had.
Lyndsey and his father had met several times, but it was never warm or comfortable, and it had been several years now since Rhys had seen his father.
He should do something about that. And Cat was right; his girls should know where Rhys came from, and what their grandfather did—not because it was shameful, but because Rhys’s father had a gift, an extraordinary gift, and Rhys’s daughters should know.
Rhys’s father had strengths, but he was a flawed man, like all men. He was blunt, and could be brusque, but there was no mean bone in his body. At one point, he drank too much but he’d given up alcohol right around the time Olivia was born and hadn’t touched the stuff since.
Cat was right about something else too. Rhys had grown up close to the Sherbourne family, as well as the house and garden staff.
When his mother was sick, Mrs. Booth and Mrs. Trimble helped look after Rhys’s mother, while Mrs. Booth took Rhys under her wing, making sure he was prepared properly for school, with the right uniform, the proper haircut, and a warm hug before he left to begin the new term.
It was Mr. Trimble who came to collect Rhys from school when his mother passed, driving him home in a heavy blanket of silence that was respect and grief because Rhys’s mother had always been kind and good and loved by all.
She was considerably younger than Rhys’s father and should have by all rights outlived him by a decade or two.
It was around then that Rhys overheard the young viscount, Alec Sherbourne, discussing the closing of the Langley Park stables with his father.
The earl was ready to part with the horses, but Alec protested, saying it wouldn’t be right to make such a significant change so soon after Mrs. Harmon’s death.
Less than one week after the funeral, Rhys had stood in the shadows outside the stable listening to father and son discuss the pros and cons of putting the decision off for a year, possibly two.
The earl didn’t want to be persuaded to wait, but eventually, reluctantly agreed that they would shelve the decision for the time being.
Nothing more was said about the stable and horses for another three years and then one day in early spring, Rhys’s father phoned him at school to say that the earl was making significant changes at his country estate, and emptying the stable was one of them.
Rhys had been expecting this call, but it had caught his father off guard and, in hindsight, Rhys wondered if he should have prepared his father.
But what would he have said, and how would it have helped?
It was hard enough grieving his mother and studying for his exams, without trying to manage his father’s future.
His father moved to Wales while Rhys was finishing his term and Rhys never had a chance to say goodbye to the place that had been home for nearly fifteen years.
He hadn’t been the one to pack up his room, and he hadn’t been able to say thank you to the Trimbles or Mrs. Booth for their care and concern.
Wales for Rhys was difficult. He didn’t speak the language, and his accent was prep school English, which made him the butt of jokes in the rural county his father settled.
But Rhys was used to teasing and mockery as he was always one of the scholarship kids, first at Cothill House where he began boarding at nine, and then later at Winchester College where he went at thirteen.
With one year left at Winchester, he knew what mattered, and that was earning a full scholarship to the university of his choice where he wanted to study medicine.
He didn’t want oncology—too often it was about managing the end of one’s life—but a field where he could make a radical difference, which was how he ended up at Imperial College London.
As Rhys stripped to step into the shower, he knew he’d done well for himself, but being back at Langley Park made him realize how much he still wanted, and how much more he wanted for his girls. A stable home, love, and respect for one’s heritage, both American and Welsh.