Chapter 48
Hugo had left Starbourne Manor twenty minutes ago as one person. Now he was returning as a different one. Luckily he knew that his father was spending the evening playing bridge in Cheltenham and wouldn’t be back until almost midnight. Even more luckily, Tristan had jetted off to Marbella with a group of his noisy male friends.
He found his mother in the drawing room, swatting at an annoying bluebottle with a rolled-up copy of the Telegraph .
‘Oh, it’s you. Here, kill this bloody thing, will you? How am I supposed to concentrate on reading the news with flies buzzing around my head?’
Hugo took the newspaper from her, pulled open the sash window and patiently nudged the fly towards it whilst his mother tutted and sighed and said, ‘For crying out loud, just splat it.’
Finally the fly escaped. ‘At last ,’ Constance exclaimed. Then, ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘I learned something interesting today.’ Hugo indicated the faded blue velvet sofa. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’
‘I was going to head out into the garden.’
‘Easier if we chat in here.’
‘What’s this about? If you’re going to start questioning the increase in Tristan’s allowance, it’s none of your—’
‘I’m not. I didn’t even know you’d upped it.’ Not that it came as any surprise. ‘Look, take a seat.’
Predictably, telling his mother to do anything made her cross. ‘I’m not a child , Hugo. If you have something to say, go ahead. Spit it out.’
‘Fine. I know who my biological father is. I know you had an affair with Vernon Hughes. I know I’m not the heir to the Starbourne estate.’
Constance blanched and froze, then collapsed onto the sofa. ‘Oh God . . .’
‘Told you it was interesting,’ said Hugo. ‘Does Pa know?’
Constance buried her face in her hands. ‘No. He doesn’t. Nobody knows.’
‘Not until today.’ As he sat down next to her, he saw that her hands were trembling. ‘Ma, it’s OK. It’s a shock, but I’m not angry.’
‘How on earth did you find out? I suppose it’s that girl.’
‘I thought Nella might like to find out more about her father’s side of the family. So I bought her a DNA test, but they were two-for-one so I did the second one myself, just to keep her company. The results came back today. Quite the surprise,’ he concluded. ‘For both of us.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Constance shook her head, uncovering her face and reaching for his hand. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The physical contact was unexpected; she’d never much gone in for it. Not where her children were concerned, anyway. ‘Is Tristan a Peverell? Or . . .?’
‘Yes, yes. He’s Henry’s.’ Constance squeezed his fingers.
‘So he’s the true heir to Starbourne Manor.’
‘Oh Hugo, he can’t be the one to inherit. Can you imagine what would happen? He’s not cut out for it. You’re the responsible one . . . we can trust you to run the estate.’ She paused. ‘I love you both. I hope you know that. But we all know Tristan wouldn’t be capable of running anything. It’s just not in him.’
‘You mean he’s the fun son,’ said Hugo. ‘And I’m the boring one.’
‘You’re steady. And dependable. And you don’t drive like a complete maniac,’ Constance replied. ‘You don’t run people over.’
‘I try not to.’ Hugo nodded in agreement. He hadn’t finished yet – there was plenty more to be discussed – but he already knew he wasn’t that disconcerted by the fact that the unemotional man he’d grown up feeling no particular connection with wasn’t his biological father.
‘I can’t get over it.’ Nella was shaking her head, still lost in thought. ‘It’s just . . . whoa.’
‘It is.’ Nick found it whoa too. But his plans for this evening hadn’t included a distraction of this magnitude. During his time in New York, he’d spent each day looking forward to his Zoom calls with Nella. The connection between them had deepened with each one. His feelings for her had grown stronger. For months he’d resisted making a move, even when the temptation had been overwhelming, but it was no good, he couldn’t hold out any longer.
Of course the risk had always been that a romantic relationship might not work out and the resulting awkwardness would lead to Nella leaving Starbourne, but there came a point when you had to give in. His feelings for her were just too strong. It would be catastrophic if it went wrong, but he just had to take that chance.
Which was why he’d spent the last few days and pretty much every minute of today’s flight back to the UK looking forward to seeing her again and telling her how he felt about her, before finally – finally! – making that move.
And OK, the incident with the dog poo hadn’t got the reunion off to the most promising start, but that had only been a temporary hiccup. Until Nella had been showering upstairs and Hugo had turned up with the envelope containing his DNA results. Even then, he’d expected their respective results to be interesting for maybe an hour, tops, before Hugo headed off to see Cami and the baby he so plainly adored, leaving Nick here to let Nella know how he felt and find out if his feelings for her were reciprocated.
He exhaled slowly. God, he hoped they were. He’d even dared to think they might be, because surely he hadn’t been imagining all that chemistry between them? It would be humiliating if it turned out she wasn’t interested, but that was a risk he was just going to have to take.
Except now clearly wasn’t the time. The big plan for tonight had gone flying out of the window the second a far more momentous discovery had blown it into the stratosphere. Nick had poured Nella a glass of Chablis twenty minutes ago, but it was still sitting there beside her, untouched.
Much like himself.
‘The thing is, I have so many questions,’ she said now, clutching her favourite photo of her grandfather. ‘And no one to ask. No way of finding out the answers. I’m never going to, am I?’
‘You never know, something might—’ Nick broke off as her phone began to ring and they saw Hugo’s name flash up on the screen.
Nella snatched it up. ‘Yes?’
He watched her face as she listened for a few moments then said, ‘OK,’ and hung up.
‘Constance wants me to go over there.’ She held out her hands. ‘Look at me. I’m shaking.’
Much as he wished he could go with her, Nick knew he couldn’t; this was something that didn’t involve him. ‘I’ll walk you to the gate. Come on.’
She tried to take a gulp of wine but managed to spill it onto the rug. They left the cottage and made their way along the high street, then turned left up the lane that led to the manor.
At the entrance they stopped, and Nella said, ‘Maybe I’m about to get some answers after all.’
Gazing into her eyes, Nick knew without a doubt that he loved her. More than he’d ever loved anyone before. He nodded, said, ‘Good luck,’ and put his arms around her quivering body for just a second or two, to show that he was on her side. Breathing in the scent of her hair, hugging her like a friend.
‘I feel a bit sick,’ Nella murmured against his shoulder.
‘Well, try not to be,’ said Nick.
‘Hugo assures me I can trust you.’ Constance’s tone was clipped. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this.’
‘You can trust me.’ Nella started nodding then realised she’d been doing it for too long and needed to stop. ‘I promise.’
‘My mother and father arranged for me to marry Henry. They were friends with his parents. Back in those days, it was the way things were done in our class of family; they made the decisions and you did as you were told. The marriage was . . . not a bundle of laughs, let’s put it that way. I tried to make the best of a difficult situation, but Henry never seemed interested in trying to improve it. We just muddled along. It was a lonely existence for me. Mingling with the villagers wasn’t the done thing, what with our family largely employing them.’ Constance looked from Nella to Hugo and took a defiant gulp of her gin, the ice cubes clanking against her teeth. ‘I wasn’t happy. Henry was distant, off in his own world. There were rumours in our social circle that he had a lady friend in London, but I don’t know if that was true.
‘Anyway, I’d seen Vernon Hughes working on the estate, but we’d never spoken to each other. Until one afternoon I finished arranging the flowers in the church and burst into tears as I was leaving. Yes, I know.’ Constance waved a dismissive hand when Hugo’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Not like me to blub. But that day I’d had enough. And I thought I was alone, but round the corner was Vernon, visiting his wife’s grave. I was mortified, but he said, ‘No need to be embarrassed. If you can’t cry in a churchyard, where can you cry? I’ve done it plenty of times myself.’
Nella smiled at this, because it was exactly the kind of thing he would have said. Instinctively Constance had even adopted the way he’d have said it.
‘He cared. He understood. And he was so kind, so compassionate.’ Constance’s eyes grew misty at the memory. ‘The absolute opposite of Henry. We sat on the bench and talked about his life and how happy he’d been with his wife and how lucky they were to have found each other. And I ended up telling him how hopeless I felt because I couldn’t see a way out of the mess I was in.’ She paused, her spine straightening, chin lifting in defiance. ‘So that was how we met. He was an exceptional man, so thoughtful and kind. I adored him. It wasn’t long before we started meeting up in secret, after dark. We had to be incredibly careful, of course. And I was the one who instigated the relationship, because it had to come from me. But it was the best thing that had ever happened. Vernon lit up my life and I treasured every minute with him. Being with him made everything so much better.’ She stopped to take another swallow of gin, then slowly shook her head. ‘And then I discovered I was pregnant.’
‘Were you still happy with him?’ said Hugo.
‘I was.’
‘But you didn’t stay together.’
‘I know. The morning sickness started early and there was no hiding it from Henry. He guessed right away and was over the moon, telling everyone we had a baby on the way.’
‘You could have left him,’ said Hugo. ‘Run off with Vernon.’
‘And lived happily together for the rest of our lives? The lady of the manor and the humble estate worker who lived in Tin Cottage?’ Constance grimaced. ‘Those were Vernon’s words, by the way, not mine. He said it would never work, and I knew he was right. I was too much of a coward to leave Henry, if I’m honest. I liked living here, having money and social standing, even if my marriage wasn’t the best. Vernon told me we needed to stop seeing each other and to act as if our relationship had never happened. He said it was the only way. So that’s what we did. We both made sure our paths didn’t cross after that. We’d got away with it, and we knew how lucky we were.’
‘You never saw him again?’ said Nella.
‘To speak to? Just the once. It was a few days before he died, when we knew he didn’t have long left. The nurses assumed I was paying a duty visit to one of the loyal tenants of the Starbourne estate. They let me stay with him for twenty minutes.’ Her eyes brimming, she took a breath. ‘I told him I’d always loved him. And he said he’d never stopped loving me. That was on the Wednesday. By the weekend he was gone.’
‘I visited him on the Thursday morning,’ Nella remembered. ‘The nurses told me you’d been in the evening before. I thought how kind of you to have made the effort.’
‘He was the most wonderful man I’d ever met.’ Constance wiped her eyes, then gathered herself and said simply, ‘It was no effort at all.’