23. Secrets Revealed
23
SECRETS REVEALED
MAL
The crowd gasped at Johnston’s demand. I put a horrified hand on Prentice’s arm.
“Don’t do it,” I pleaded. “Don’t kiss him. I’ll find a way to get you the money, I swear.”
It would mean cutting into the money I’d set aside to get my mother out of there, but I found I was unable to watch Johnston fucking Furneau stand in front of all his moneyed friends and slobber all over the woman I loved.
She gently pushed my hand aside and stood. She spoke clearly. “Not even for half a million dollars, Johnston.”
The guests went silent, waiting to hear how Johnston would react.
“Not a quarter mil,” he said, his voice an annoying singsong. “Not a half. I see. Are we getting up to your purchase price yet, Prentice? How much is the help paying you per kiss?”
I was on my feet before I realized I was moving. My hands were fisted. He was calling Prentice a whore.
She stood, too, and put a hand on my chest to stop me. That was all it took. My rage was curtailed. Not gone . . . but back under control.
“This is not the help,” she said clearly. “This is Mal, the man I love.”
I stood taller, proud to be claimed by her. My gaze fell on Bitsy and found her smiling. She nodded to me. Surprised, I nodded back. Good.
“Prentice,” Johnston said patronizingly, straight into the microphone. “You’re embarrassing yourself now, sweetie. You’re going to look mighty silly when we marry.”
She shook her head. That was all, but it was a powerful negation of his words. I stepped behind her and slid one hand around her waist. She leaned into me but did not back down from Johnston, who was glaring at me.
“Take your hands off my fiancée,” he said.
I found I was wearing a predatory grin. “If I take my hand off Prentice, it will be to beat you to a pulp, Johnston. She is the only thing saving you right now.” I meant every word. It wasn’t polite. It wasn’t high society. But it was absolutely true.
That was when Jack, my dishonorable father, called out—but not to Prentice or Johnston.
“Gerta,” he barked.
Eyes swiveled as everyone looked for someone named Gerta. My mother stepped from inside the house, holding her clipboard.
Jack saw she was listening, and he called to her, his voice ringing with arrogance, “I told you to get your son away from Prentice Luce. This is not his place.”
My hands re-formed into fists. I stepped forward, but Prentice stopped me again.
Mama was walking swiftly. She wove through the tables until she took my hand. “Try to tell him yourself,” she called out, her voice ringing with authority. “You can try. It won’t work. Over long years, you’ve trained him to ignore you. Because, as you perfectly well know, he’s not just my son. He’s your son too.”
My mind went white. Shock and adrenaline made intelligent thought impossible.
She’d said it.
Out loud.
To him. To me.
To everyone.
I let go of Prentice so I could put my arms around my mother. It wasn’t until I held her that I realized she was trembling.
“What?” Johnston’s mouth was hanging open. “He’s your . . . what? Father?”
The whispers across the lunch table only grew. Jack tried to regain his power.
“Gerta,” he said crisply, “go back into the house. We’ll discuss this later.”
“No!” Mama stepped forward. “I’ve watched this girl bravely stand up to your son, and it shamed me. It shamed me! Because I haven’t stood up for myself! I haven’t defended my own son! Well, no more! You took me when I was eighteen and ignored me ever after, once you had the son you wanted. What do they call it in England? The heir and the spare?”
Johnston had fallen back from the podium, his confused gaze darting from me to his father. Fury and satisfaction rose in me. Now you see it , I thought. Now you see why you and I have dark hair. Now you see why he put me in with your nannies. Paid for my schooling. Listened to me practice, hour after hour, and never said a word to me.
Johnston settled on his father. “Is this—it’s not true, is it?”
Jack stared at him coldly. “Of course it’s true. You think I’d expect to get a kidney from you if I ever needed one?”
The crowd gasped, but I felt no surprise. At last.
At last I knew why he’d kept me around.
I released my mother to move in front of her protectively. “If you needed a kidney, you’d better hope your alcoholic son hasn’t ruined his. I wouldn’t give you the time of day. Mama, are you ready to quit?”
She looked up at me. “I’m sorry I didn’t do this sooner.”
“You did it exactly right.”
She turned to Jack, her words falling over the rapt listeners. She pulled off her headset and tossed it on a table. “I’ll be out of the gatehouse by this evening. Find yourself another estate manager. Your son is taking me away from you.”
I turned to take Prentice’s hand and found her wrapped around Bitsy, her face buried in her mother’s shoulders.
“Just go,” Bitsy said. “We’ll find you later.”
I escorted my mother from the terrace to the staircase that snaked down the bluff. We made it halfway down to the little balcony covered in wisteria vines when her trembling grew so severe that she paused to fall onto one of the benches.
“Oh, Mal,” she sobbed. I held her while she cried, her words coming sometimes in English and sometimes in German. Over and over, she repeated that she was proud of me, that she loved me, that she should never have let the situation go on. We sat and tried to get past the bitterness that had defined both of our lifetimes. More than anything, I wanted to ease her pain.
“Shh,” I said, brushing away a few hot tears of my own. “It’s okay. It’s done now, and I can get you a house anywhere you like. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.”
“I never knew,” she hiccupped, “that he wanted you for organ donation. It’s barbaric!”
“It is. And we’ll fool him. He made himself a gorgeous specimen like my own bad self, and he’s never going to lay a finger on me. I promise you that.”
“Oh, but Mal, he owes you so much!”
I tried to maintain the calmness she needed, but the cold that fell over me at the thought was hard to hide. “I wouldn’t take a single penny from that bastard. And why would I need it? Aftermath is already on the way. We just signed with a huge record label after a bidding war that made your friend Phil giddy with excitement. The signing bonus alone is going to buy you a penthouse on Fifth Avenue if that’s what you want.”
“I’m so proud of you!”
“Can you go a little further now? I’ll get you home and then double back to get my van. We’ll start moving you out right away.”
“Yes, let’s go. Oh, there’s so much to pack. You’ll help me?”
“I’ll help. I’ll get Archer and Ian, too, and Prentice.”
“Prentice! Oh, Mal, you must go get her! We left her up there!”
“She can handle herself,” I said proudly. “She’s as strong as you are.”
“No, now—I insist. I can get to the gatehouse on my own. I’ve been doing it every day for years. Go find her. Go on, Liebchen . I insist.”
Which was how I found myself back on the terrace, where a sea change had taken place. In the few minutes since Mama and I had left, the tables had cleared out.
High society had turned its back on the Furneau family.
I couldn’t bring myself to care. The last few people left on the terrace stared at me as I moved to the main house, but none of them were Prentice.
Or Jack. Or Johnston.
I hoped those two were locked away in some private part of the mansion, having some extremely painful conversations with each other. I could leave them to their own horrible truths. Let them rot in their combined rancidity.
I found Oliver inside.
“Mal!” The butler hugged me. “Son, we’re so proud of your mom. Will you tell her we all want to help? As soon as we’re done cleaning up here, we’ll be down to help her pack up. Where is she going? We’ll need her address. She’s been here for almost thirty years! How will the place run without her?”
“She’ll be grateful for your support, Oliver. Thank you. Have you seen Prentice?”
He looked around blankly and asked Hugo, who was coming in from the terrace with a load of dirty cups. “She’s under the big tree,” Hugo said to me. “You know the one?”
In the center of the circular driveway. The tree was centuries old, huge and spreading, with branches that draped to the ground. With the spring leaves darkening to the first heat of summer, it would be a cool, shadowy place and hidden from view.
I slid between the branches and found Prentice alone. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her head was down. She was staring at the sparse grass between the massive tree roots.
“Hey, Sapphire,” I called quietly.
She looked up, and I was stopped in my tracks by her chilled expression.
“You knew, didn’t you?” she said.
I’d come to a halt ten long feet from her, miles away in this cathedral of filtered light and stillness.
I admitted the truth. “I knew.”
She nodded but couldn’t meet my eye. “Since when?”
I shook my head. “Since forever. Johnston’s nanny was gossiping, and I overheard. I was four, maybe five.”
She exhaled hard. “You knew he was your father. And Johnston—when you defended me, you weren’t protecting me, were you?” Her voice was dry, unemotional. She was holding herself together, but it wouldn’t last long.
Unease was closing my throat. “Of course I was.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You were going after your brother. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Prentice.” I would explain to her, make her understand somehow.
But she held up her hand, freezing me again. “No. None of this was about me. And I’ve been thinking about your song, ‘I Was Watching.’ That’s not about me, either, is it?”
I opened my mouth to explain—to make it better—but nothing came out.
She gave me plenty of time too. Then she shook her head. “The first verse is about Johnston, not about me.” She sang, her voice clear and low.
SONG LYRIC
A small figure crouched against a brick wall, .
Hit by fear, anger, the lure of power’s call
Hidden from the eyes of authority,
You thought no one saw
But I was watching
“You’re not comforting me in that verse. You’re accusing him.” Her voice was flat, emotionless. “The second verse is about your father. And the third is your mother. Not me. None of it is about me.”
“But—”
“Tell me!” Her shriek was alarmingly loud in the green stillness. “Was any of it about me?”
All of the fury of my life rose in me and turned into suffocating concrete. I couldn’t get past it. I shook my head, and she sobbed, just once.
I tried to make it better. “It’s just that . . . I’ve hated them for so much longer than I’ve loved you.”
But that was the wrong thing to say.
“If Johnston hadn’t wanted me, would you have even looked twice at me? Are you even in love with me, Mal? Or are you taking a toy away from your brother?”
“No! Prentice, I do love you!”
“You asked me out because you wanted to hurt Johnston. You went to the gala because Johnston wanted to take me. This whole thing. God, I’ve been . . . a fool.”
She rubbed her hands across her eyes. I tried to touch her, to hold her, but she spun away from me, her hands coming up to defend herself. “Get away from me! Goddamn it, get away from me, Mal!”
Her calm was shattering as I watched, and she wouldn’t let me help. I no longer had the right to touch her, to comfort or defend her. She ran, pushing through the branches and out of my sight. Helpless, I followed.
“I’ll drive you home!” I called. “Prentice, please! Wait!”
“My mother will take me. Goodbye, Mal. We are done. God!”
Her mother’s car was idling in the nearly empty parking area. Prentice slipped into the passenger seat.
I stepped forward hopelessly, but Bitsy caught my eye through the windshield. She shook her head slowly, freezing me out and forbidding me to come any closer.
And then they drove away.