Chapter 34
Lovelyn
Rain spattered the car, the afternoon darkening the deeper we got into the countryside outside Deadwater, on our way to the home of the Marchant grandparents. I mused on her name. Primrose. Another P name. Though surely not the one we sought, unless controlling the companies would be of use to her.
Kane had been silent since we left the warehouse, and I understood why. He didn’t love the Marchant family. This wasn’t a happy reunion for him, more a necessary evil.
I would do my best to make it easier.
On a road lined with trees and gated driveways spaced far apart, we pulled up to a gate with cameras looking down on us. Kane pressed the button on an intercom box.
It crackled.
He pressed it again and spoke. “Kane Ryan.”
“And?” a male voice answered.
“Lovelyn Wells,” Kane added.
There was a pause, then the gates clanked and eased open.
A shiver ran over me, and I subtly held my arms against the creepy vibe the estate was giving off.
Further down the road, a huge, white, modern house came into view.
Not what I would expect to find in its rural surroundings.
It looked like it had been dropped into the pretty surroundings, all sharp edges and clean lines.
An alien in the landscape of mountains and heather.
We approached the front door, and it opened to reveal the man I’d seen in the club last night. Wallace, Kane’s uncle.
At around five-nine, and in an oversized jumper and what appeared to be pyjama trousers, Wallace gave Kane a pointed once-over and me a dismissive smile. There was a passing familiarity when he turned his head to show us in. Enough for me to recognise that his brother had passed on some genes.
In an echoing hallway with a shiny white floor and little furniture, Wallace paused. “Mother is in the office. She’s expecting you. Before you go in, I need to give a warning.”
Kane shifted closer to me. “I wouldn’t.”
The threat in his voice was clear.
Wallace gave a dramatic shudder. “God, you’re just like him. Able loved to play the hardman as well. The warning is not to upset her. She’s suffering.”
“How?”
Wallace huffed. “How do you think? Everything she knew changed. Her life is in upheaval. When we finally get this shit behind us and the company off her shoulders, she might be able to breathe again, but currently, your grandmother is drowning.”
My heart panged for the woman. Though there was still so much I didn’t know and was dying to unpack in the Marchant mysteries, the one thing I was certain about was that more victims would be uncovered.
Maybe she was one of them.
The uncle sloped down the corridor. More slowly, we followed.
Kane leaned into me and spoke low. “Notice how he didn’t say she was upset at the loss of her husband?”
He was right. I’d let the thought be implied in my mind, but it hadn’t been said.
At the end of the corridor, Wallace went right. I peered left then stalled at a strange sight. “Oh my God.”
Kane followed my gaze.
On the wall was a series of blown-up nude pictures. A beautiful woman draped over furniture and in poses that were somewhere between artistic and provocative, her breasts on display. Other parts of her, too. She looked horrifyingly like Mila, but my shock cleared and showed me the differences.
Kane shook his head in disbelief. “Fucking hell. That’s the grandmother?”
We shared a moment of shock and revulsion. My mind ticked over how Kane never claimed his Marchant family, never using my grandmother or my uncle to describe them. It reinforced how far he held himself from their influence. If I’d thought today might change that, I was probably wrong.
A door cracked in the other direction, and we swung around to see Wallace beckoning.
“She’ll see you now.”
Leaving the unsettling display, we entered a darkened room. The late afternoon light barely pierced the shades, and there was no lamp on. Wallace shut the door and rounded the desk to where a frail woman sat in a chair that was far too big for her.
Ships’ instruments. Ledgers in a cabinet. This had to be the grandfather’s office from the desk and acres of highly polished wood.
Mila had loved him. So much she’d gone to great lengths for his business after he died. His wife hadn’t wanted to fill his shoes.
For a beat, nobody spoke. The grandmother stared at Kane, and he glowered back. With silver-white hair in a bob, she could be anyone’s well-off granny.
She raised a hand to her son, a faint tremble in her fingers. “It’s gone so dark in here. Fix the windows, will you?”
Wallace obeyed, raising the blinds on large panes of glass, letting in grey light, diffused through raindrops. The grandmother returned her attention to Kane who stood stiff at my side. Discomfort poured off him in waves. It wasn’t a small room, but the door was closed. He’d hate that.
“You look like my son, though Able wasn’t as tall as you. I must admit it surprised me to hear your mother called you Kane.”
I’d made the same connection to the Bible story of Cain and Abel. From memory, Cain’s jealousy led to him killing Abel, his brother, making him the first murderer. Surely it wasn’t deliberate. No mother would want that connection for their child.
Her gaze wandered to me. “Sit, both of you. Who is your friend?”
I settled into a cold, brown leather visitor’s seat. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs Marchant. I’m Lovelyn. Your house is beautiful.”
She dipped her head in acknowledgement. “It’s a mausoleum, but I’m not dead yet. And call me Primrose, please.”
She peeked back to mutter something to Wallace about tea, to which the man sighed and slouched off.
I took the opportunity to better study the office now there was light to do it.
Floor-to-ceiling cupboards of glossy dark wood made up one wall, filing cabinets with pictures above on the other.
One was of the Eden, the ship that had sunk.
Mila had called it her grandfather’s pride and joy.
By the window, a plant hanger caught my eye, a cream macramé cradle of white rope suspending a trailing ivy. The knots were intricate and tight. I found myself staring.
Primrose clucked her tongue. “Ugly thing. Presley brought it the other day. He is persistent. Always has been.”
The name jerked Kane’s attention. “Presley?”
“Philip and Phylis’s boy. Philip is Able and Wallace’s cousin, so yours, too, once removed.
His father was brother to Austin. They’d bring Presley for visits often when he was small.
Now, he comes by himself when he wants something.
” She rolled her eyes. “One sees so few young men interested in houseplants. A credit to his mother, I suppose. But anyway, you didn’t drive all this way to hear me insult my house.
You came to talk business. We’re on opposite sides of the table when it comes to Marchant Haulage. ”
Kane held the sides of his seat. “We are.”
“I want to close it.” Her simple words were delivered with a crisp edge.
“For good. I want my family outside the shadow it throws.” Primrose gestured to the picture of the Eden, her expression darkening.
“You cannot paint decay and call it oak. The beams are worm-eaten. The deck will cave in. Better to bring it down ourselves and build something new.”
I leaned in, fascinated with the insight. She knew the company was rotten. The discovery of the bodies hadn’t been a revelation.
“I held my husband’s dinner parties,” she continued.
“I cut ribbons at depots and smiled on grey mornings. I supported his dream. Do you know what women do when their men build empires?” She looked between us, the shake in her body unmissable.
“We fetch the water. We wash stains no one else will admit exist.”
Goosebumps rippled on my arms beneath the coat I hadn’t removed. She wasn’t weeping. She wasn’t even angry. She was…decided. It was more unsettling.
Kane’s voice came out low. “How many stains, Primrose?”
Her eyes met his, and for a beat, something resembling pity lived there. “More than I can bear, child. And more than they will ever print.”
Silence expanded.
“Help me to end it.” Primrose’s softness came back. “Do not spend the next twenty years proving that a deck can be scrubbed white when the water is red.”
Kane just watched her.
“Wallace said you’re suffering,” I broke the taut air.
One bony shoulder rose under her cardigan. “I am. But not in the way you expect. I am tired of being a piece of furniture in my own life. I am tired of expectation and performance. You are young. You don’t yet know that women have bones that ache from holding a family’s shape.”
She turned to Kane, and something in her face gentled until I felt it in my chest.
“Your mother knows,” she stated. Not a question.
Kane went still.
Primrose pressed her advantage. “She is unwell.”
“Aye.”
“And you have been pulling a great cart uphill with your teeth. Her care is expensive. More than her payout for birthing you. All that on your shoulders is a burden few could manage.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
My stomach knotted and twisted. I’d guessed why he was pushing so hard, but to have the information spoken out loud was a gift.
She inclined her head a fraction, as if they had just concluded a bargain without speaking.
“If you lend me your vote, I will see your mother’s care is paid while the lawyers unwind the accounts.
” She lifted a hand when he opened his mouth.
“Quietly. No photographs. No speeches. Invoices go to my private solicitor and are settled. I will not have you made a beggar for doing the right thing.”
The room narrowed around us. Relief on his behalf flared in me so fast it hurt.
Kane didn’t move. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch. But no contract either. No evidence of my influencing your vote and going against the wishes of my husband. For your benefit more than mine.”
Wallace bustled back in, a tray in his arms. He deposited it on the desk then poured tea from a pot into a fragile china cup, added milk, and handed it to his mother on a saucer. She took it and sipped, watching us.
I accepted a cup of my own. Kane didn’t even acknowledge the offer. His breathing was too fast, the knuckles on his hand pronounced.
The ivy in the macramé cradle ticked the window in a draft.
The silence was killing me. I was certain Kane wouldn’t agree without serious consideration, even if I didn’t know the details why. The expectation had sunk him to silence, but there was more he’d wanted to ask. That he’d regret if he walked out now without saying.
I gripped my cup. “If it’s okay to ask, can you tell us anything about Able’s eldest daughter, Darcy?”
Wallace swore but hid it behind a cough, his floppy sleeve covering his mouth.
Primrose sniffed. “That girl went wild. She was selfish and a bad apple. I’m glad she’s not part of the efforts to hold on to a company that needs to go to the grave with its maker.”
None of that description sounded like Dixie. She was kind and sweet. She helped the other girls and was the loveliest human.
I tried again. “The solicitors are searching for her. Do you know where she is?”
Her pale, barely there eyebrows arched. “I haven’t seen that girl in over a decade. To me, she doesn’t exist anymore.”
“But you provided the picture?”
Her mouth worked, but then she sighed and reached for a drawer, extracting a silver frame.
“Mother,” Wallace spat.
She ignored him, holding out the treasure.
I set down my cup and took it, staring at the pretty teenager, her hair up in a ponytail and her smile bright.
It was so clearly Dixie yet different enough if you didn’t know the connection.
Kane had made it already. But to have this felt important, like the little elephant of hers still in my room.
I wanted to ask a hundred questions at once.
Why Primrose had never tried to contact Kane before.
Why she’d never told the three siblings about each other.
Why Mila had never lived in this house despite being raised as their heir.
The pictures, the offer, from expecting nothing, I was in danger of information overload.
Abruptly, Kane stood. “Thank you for your time.”
His grandmother put down her teacup. “You’re leaving.”
“We are.”
She rose, small and neat. Wallace steadied the chair without being asked.
“I am old. I want to step into my last years with clean hands. If you are determined to keep the doors open, you will do it without my blessing. If you close them, I will help you pay the locksmith.”
The uncle went to the door and held it open for us. Remembering a polite goodbye, I skittered after Kane who stalked out without a backwards glance.
At the mansion’s front door, Wallace paused us on the wide entryway step. “I should say that Mother’s generous offer is directly against her husband’s wishes. And that of the family.”
Kane heaved in a deep breath. In the fresh air, he stood taller. Perhaps felt freer than in that closed, tight environment. “Meaning what?”
“We still haven’t read the will, so I don’t know.”
Mila had told me the will reading had been abandoned. It couldn’t be read until all those named in it were present.
Kane shook his head and directed me back to the car. They might not know, but we could guess. Either way, I had more information on Kane than ever before. I had everything I wanted, and I’d do whatever I could to help.