Chapter Eight Tristan
Chapter Eight
Tristan
I fucking hate you for making me do this alone.
I sent the text before I could reconsider it, jabbing my thumbs hard on the screen. Then I slid my phone into my trouser pocket and reached for another champagne flute from a tray appearing at my elbow with perfect timing.
The weekend had delivered me here.
Hampstead Village. My brother’s house, set just far enough back from the Heath to feel private without being remote.
A period property with good bones and better taste: pale brick, tall sash windows, a frontage softened by clipped hedging and the quiet confidence of money.
A house that had never known chaos, only careful additions.
Bedrooms repurposed, not created. Futures anticipated, not improvised.
It was, apparently, perfect for this.
A baby shower meriting a discreet photographer and a whispered understanding that the right angles would later become a double-page spread in Tatler.
Less celebration than exhibition. A hand-selected convergence of London’s upper tiers, all loosely connected by profession, philanthropy, or bloodline, and united by the shared instinct to be seen in the correct rooms at the correct times.
A far cry from Pentonville.
Though, the men in there had also been hand selected.
I’d spent the week since leaving Razor in prison trying, futilely, not to think about him.
About his bruises. His split lip. His swollen knuckles.
The blood on his top. And how when his thumb had brushed mine, I’d almost folded right there at his feet.
But also how he’d looked at me with defeat.
Confusion. As if he hadn’t quite believed I’d come back at all.
And those eyes. God. I hated I hadn’t been able to speak to him properly. Not the way I wanted. The way I needed.
To tell him everything.
But Imogen had been unequivocal. If I wanted to be involved, if I wanted this case, her trust, and the protection of chambers, then I played it clean.
Professional only. No blurred lines. No private conversations.
No moments that could be questioned, dissected, or used.
Mercer hadn’t been there as a courtesy. He’d been there as a structure.
As a witness. A buffer between what I was and what I could not be.
Which was a man in love with his defendant.
So I did what was required.
I compartmentalised.
Proving to Mercer, Imogen, and the systems that would decide whether I was permitted anywhere near this, that Slade, Richard A was another name on a file tab. A defendant. A case. Someone I could represent without scandal, without weakness, without betraying a single professional line.
Even if every part of me knew that wasn’t the truth.
Mercer had formally notified the court that Razor had representation again, and I stayed far enough back to be permissible.
Conflict checks ran. Instructions were drafted and revised.
Imogen read everything with forensic care, striking out anything drifting too close to instinct rather than evidence.
Disclosure requests went in. Proper ones, not summaries or assurances.
They came back slow and thin, as they always did.
Enough to suggest weight. Not enough to justify it.
Which bothered me more than it should have.
In between all that, my own work didn’t pause.
I’d had court twice that week on unrelated matters.
Mentions, short hearings, administrative appearances where I’d stood, spoken when required, and sat again.
Cases belonging to other people. Problems solved inside a courtroom without anyone bleeding for it.
I drafted late into the evenings, notes and skeleton arguments stacking up in neat digital piles.
I performed competence. I gave no one a reason to look twice at me.
Now I was here, dutiful Tristan Hale-Fitzroy, champagne balanced neatly between my fingers, expression arranged for public consumption. Every inch of me performed ease while my mind clawed back towards my desk, towards work. Work that might set things in motion again.
That would allow me to see Razor again.
My phone buzzed. I took it out and read the incoming message.
Sorry, Tris. I fully appreciate this is an obscene time for a road traffic collision to occur and for me to be called in. I shall endeavour to prevent such inconvenient emergencies for the next event neither of us wishes to attend.
I smiled despite myself and typed back.
As you fucking should, Dr Hen. These events are far more important than saving lives. Sending love x
I tucked the phone back into my pocket and took a sip.
Of course, Henry didn’t want to be here.
Neither did I. But I had to play this part to keep me from going completely, utterly insane.
And Eloise Hale-Fitzroy nee Kingsley wasn’t going to allow for that.
Not when she’d spent years trying to reach this moment.
Years of effort, disappointment, and waiting.
If the reward for endurance was spectacle, then spectacle she would have.
As the eldest daughter of retired Judge Kingsley, once one of the High Court’s most formidable figures, she had been raised on the understanding that events mattered.
These moments were opportunities. Her patronage of the arts and her carefully chosen charitable affiliations meant occasions like this were never just personal.
They were platforms. Statements. Proofs of continuity.
And yet.
The house itself hadn’t changed.
No plastic. No pastels. No evidence of disruption. The furniture remained sharp-edged and antique. The walls held art chosen for conversation rather than comfort. The abundant and loosely arranged flowers flown in rather than sourced, looked as though they belonged to the room, not the occasion.
The baby, it seemed, would adapt.
I drifted towards the main drawing room, where the centre of gravity had formed, and found a perch on what was almost certainly an eighteenth-century side chair, its presence justified by provenance rather than ergonomics.
From there, I watched Eloise and Marcus pose obligingly beneath the tall windows, champagne in hand, smiling with the relaxed assurance of people entirely at home in attention.
She opened gifts with a gracious flourish. Cashmere blankets. Silver keepsakes. Neutral-toned objects that would one day be described as heirlooms rather than purchases. She looked radiant. Welcoming, composed, inhabiting the role she’d worked so hard to claim.
Around them, the room murmured. Barristers, judges, advisers, patrons. Old friends from university years, newer ones acquired through marriages and boards and committees. Conversations overlapped politely, never colliding. Everyone knew where to stand.
And I’d never felt more out of place.
Because the truth of it was simple: I’d rather be back inside a real prison than standing here, trapped in this gilded one of my own making.
“Tris.”
I looked up, realising belatedly that Marcus had appeared at my shoulder.
For most of our adult lives that moment would have arrived with a faint tightening somewhere between my ribs and my temper.
Marcus and I had never quite mastered the art of being brothers without also being competitors.
But somewhere between Father’s diagnosis and Eloise’s pregnancy, things had… changed.
The rivalry that had once seemed so important had quietly taken a back seat.
It turned out there was very little point in arguing about legacy and expectations when the man who’d built them was suddenly mortal.
Marcus, for his part, had softened too. The tight edge he’d carried for years, ever since the quiet panic about heirs and succession had started hanging over him, had eased once Eloise’s pregnancy was finally certain.
As if producing the next Hale-Fitzroy had allowed the human underneath all that pressure to surface again.
“Marcus.” I tipped my flute against his glass of Gin and Tonic. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” He dropped his voice conspiratorially. “Though really, all congratulations should be redirected to my wife. My primary contribution occurred some time ago and involved very little effort.”
“One should always be congratulated for administrative success.”
He snorted. “Hardly administrative. More… outsourced.” He sighed. “I didn’t even get the enjoyable version. Wanked into a cup like a particularly underwhelming Eton dare.”
I grimaced. “Please don’t tell me you’re planning to name the child after the location of conception.”
He considered it far too seriously. “You don’t think Porcelain has a ring to it?”
“You are a Hale-Fitzroy married to a Kingsley.” I bounced on my heels. “You cannot tell me it wasn’t bone china.”
He huffed a laugh. “Sadly, it was plastic.”
“Scandalous.”
“Quite.”
“I’ll assume that detail won’t be making the Tatler cut.
” I tipped my glass subtly towards the photographer crouched near Eloise, currently capturing her delighted reaction to a particularly ostentatious Moses basket.
Wicker, draped, gently rocking on carved legs.
It looked less like a place to put a baby and more like something one might be laid out in for a tasteful funeral.
“Were we meant to leave the price tags on our gifts? Or is that only for items over four figures?”
“Don’t be obtuse, Tristan. Your tragic little three-pack of muslin cloths will be discreetly returned and exchanged for the blankets Eloise actually wanted.”
“I am a junior barrister, Marcus. I earn very little.”
He hummed. “Funny. Forbes seems to think you’re worth at least half of that.”
“Ha. Ha.” I took a sip of champagne and nodded towards Eloise, who was shaking hands with someone who looked suspiciously like a board member. “And how does Eloise intend to maintain all her patronage and committees whilst heavily pregnant?”