CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
(Charlotte)
We packed in a hurry and got into the car. Though it was a long ride, we didn’t say much. That was fine. We were comfortable with silence, usually. But there was a tenseness to this one that unnerved me.
“Do you think they’ll have taken her to a hospital,” I asked as we approached the gates to the estate.
“If they did, Allan would know,” Matt said grimly.
But without further details, Matt had spent the previous ninety minutes of travel in hellish limbo.
At least, I assumed he had. Maybe he wasn’t like me in the “borrowing trouble” department.
Because I’d filled my head with all sorts of possibilities, ranging from “I invested your inheritance in a Ponzi scheme and it’s all gone,”—best case scenario—to “a beloved relative has died,” worst case.
In the middle was news of cancer or other terminal illness.
But I didn’t understand rich people world, so there could have been all sorts of other problems. Like, “Your uncle’s cryogenic storage facility suffered a catastrophic power loss and now they’ll never be able to revive his severed head.
” Or “Your cousin’s hot air balloon was lost over the South Pacific during his attempt to race around the world in eighty days. ”
We stopped at the front door and Allan was already waiting, his usually grim expression even grimmer.
“She’s in the conservatory,” he said without further greeting, and led the way as if Matt wouldn’t know where that was.
I’d never been to the conservatory. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been in any conservatory. But on the walk, I assumed we’d find Mr. Body there, murdered with a candlestick.
Instead, we found Elizabeth, seated at a small cafe-style table, cigarette burning down to nothing in its elegant holder as she stared past the tropical plants surrounding her.
“Mr. Ashe and Ms. Holmes,” Allan announced, and Elizabeth turned sharply. Her eyes were ringed with shadows from smeared mascara and eyeliner. She’d been crying.
“Mother,” Matt said, hurrying to her side and leaning down to hug her.
“My darling,” she cooed, fresh tears surfacing. “It was horrible. Horrible.”
“What was?” he asked, straightening.
“Catherine—” she hiccupped and pressed a fist to her mouth. “I’m sorry. She—”
“Is she all right? Are the children all right?” Matt asked. I’d never seen Elizabeth upset before, but using Matt’s reaction as a gauge for the situation, things were bad.
I braced myself to hear that there had been a car accident, that all of them had perished. But what she said was somehow worse.
“She’s left Jackson. She’s left him for your… your…” Elizabeth’s eyes flicked to me, then back to Matt, her expression hardening. “For her brother.”
Oh, how quickly the ownership of my brother has changed . I took a step back, as if I’d been physically slapped. The venom in her voice stunned me.
“I-I,” I stammered, but I wasn’t sure what to say next.
“For Scott? Are you sure?” Matt asked, his glance cutting to me.
I shrugged.
“Of course, I’m sure.” Elizabeth nodded in my direction. “You knew already, didn’t you?”
“This is the first I’m hearing of any divorce,” I said, holding my hands up and taking another backwards step. Maybe if I kept doing that, I could back out of the room entirely.
But Matt reached to catch my hand and draw me even with him again. I didn’t know if he needed my support or thought I needed his, but either way, standing in front of his mother like a firing squad was the last thing I wanted to do.
Scott. Fucking Scott. He could have given me a heads up. He could have given both of us a heads up. How long had he been planning this? It hadn’t been that long since I’d last seen him, since I’d asked Matt not to…
I turned sharply to him. “Did you have anything to do with this?”
“Of course he didn’t!” Elizabeth snapped.
“When did all this happen?” Matt asked before I could shoot something sassy back at his mother. I was grateful; while she’d been perfectly nice in the past, I got the distinct impression that I probably wouldn’t be afforded such a reception ever again.
Elizabeth dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “She called me last night and told me that she’d thrown Jackson out of the house. He’d apparently spent an exorbitant amount of money on a townhouse for some woman he’s gotten pregnant a time or two.”
My mouth dropped open in shock. Matt’s closed tight, jaw clenching. Somehow, he managed to grind out, “That bastard.”
“Oh, don’t be so sentimental. Her marriage was always for status. She’s the one who forgot that.” Elizabeth propped her cigarette holder against the delicate china ashtray in the center of the table. The embers at the end still glowed, and smoke curled up like expensive incense.
“I don’t think it’s sentimental to object to your husband having an entire second family,” Matt argued. “Is she okay?”
“Okay? No, she isn’t okay! She’s walking away from her marriage without even trying to come to an agreement on things. These are illegitimate children he’s barely involved with; they won’t stand to inherit much of Jackson’s fortune.”
“Did he tell her that?” Matt asked.
Elizabeth blinked as if confused by the question. “Of course, he did.”
“She clearly didn’t believe him.”
“I can’t see why she shouldn’t. He’s her husband. Husbands do these things. Your father never recognized any of his illegitimate children in his will,” Elizabeth pointed out.
My brain made the screeching noise of a train engine braking.
But Matt was unfazed by the mention of these half-siblings that I never knew existed. He released my hand to gesture broadly. “No, he didn’t. He put them through college and bought their mothers houses. Catherine is married to a carbon copy of our father.”
“With less money,” Elizabeth was quick to point out.
“Does that even matter?” he demanded. “I can’t believe you’re still totally fine with your husband having a second family. And I can’t believe you’d be fine with that for your daughter.”
“I want what’s best for my daughter,” Elizabeth insisted. “And for my grandchildren. Imagine their prospects in society now, coming from a scandal.”
I felt like I was walking around in an episode of The Gilded Age. Who even thought divorce was a big deal anymore? Or worried about social prospects?
“Let’s settle down on the prospects talk, because it’s not like you don’t have friends who’ve been divorced eight times,” Matt said dryly.
Elizabeth’s face went red with indignation. “Yes. I do have friends who were divorced. They were divorced. They didn’t initiate those divorces.”
That was the problem? That Jackson hadn’t left Catherine?
“If she told you this last night, why call me this morning in hysterics?” Matt demanded.
“I told her last night in no uncertain terms that if she were getting divorced, she would return my mother’s ring,” Elizabeth stated firmly.
Then, her lower lip quivered. “She was here at eight this morning, with him, to return it. Also, to shout obscenities at me before she left. It was profoundly upsetting.”
I had to give my brother credit for coming here with Catherine. If I thought Elizabeth was frosty to me, I could only imagine how she’d treated him.
And imagining it made me furious.
As if suddenly remembering that her son was disabled, Elizabeth exclaimed, “Oh, darling, do sit down.”
Matt moved toward the only chair at the table, then hesitated. He turned to me and gestured to indicate I could take the seat, if I wanted it. I shook my head. “You need a rest.”
The sound of my voice alerted Elizabeth like a prey animal’s cry to a predator in the forest. She whipped her withering gaze to me. “I would ask you to leave, as this is a family matter, but it’s your family causing the trouble.”
“It’s Jackson causing the trouble,” Matt snapped. “You’re putting the blame everywhere but on him! He’s the one who cheated!”
“Husbands cheat.” The defense was so automatic, such a ready excuse, that I almost felt bad for Elizabeth in that moment. Mostly, I felt bad for Matt and Catherine. They’d clearly grown up knowing that their father had another family. I wondered if they’d ever met, or even if they’d ever wanted to.
But that was a part of Matt’s past he could discuss with me—or not—on his own terms. It seemed too painful a subject to ever pry.
If he hadn’t mentioned anything about half-siblings yet, it was because he either didn’t think about them or didn’t want to think about them.
Certainly, it was an indication that he didn’t have a relationship with them, and I knew he wouldn’t hide it if he did.
Husbands cheat . Was that a value that had been instilled in Matt? Was that why he’d never mentioned it? Could the sweet, devoted nerd I loved hurt me that way?
The way he answered his mother told me all I needed to know on that score. His gaze hardened and, with conviction I felt as an almost physical force, he said quietly, calmly, “I won’t.”
Elizabeth looked between the two of us, her earlier panic rising again. “You’re not—”
“Engaged?” Matt asked. “Yes. We are. We wanted to wait to tell you the happy news in person.”
Well played, Matt. I wasn’t going to blow his cover and deny it; he was clearly trying to get under Elizabeth’s skin and frankly, the way she had spoken about my brother as if he were some kind of home wrecker, when it had been her daughter doing the wrecking of her own home, I enjoyed the horrified look on her face.
“Is there a problem?” Matt goaded her cooly.
She lifted her chin. “Of course, there’s a problem. Your girlfriend’s—”
“Fiancé,” he corrected her to get under her skin, I knew.
“Your girlfriend ’s brother has already tarnished our family name. Now, you’re planning to bring her in to further—”
It was the talk about me like I wasn’t there that finally did it. It’s what finally broke me and prompted me to interrupt and finish her sentence with, “Lower your property value?”
She gaped at me.