Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
THEO
The shock of my visit to police headquarters had worn off a little.
Now that Quinn Gray’s name was out there and the public knew who he was, I had relaxed marginally.
It was hard to hide these days, and I hoped someone would see him and call the police.
The public rage toward him was terrifying but ultimately useful in this case.
People wanted him caught. They were tired of being scared.
I wanted it over. For the victims’ families, for the public, for myself, and Sarah.
I’d just signed the contract on the deal for Juno McLeod and sent it to Sarah for completion.
Colleen was gearing up to sell the idea to Skylark with the actor Olivia Jones attached to play the role of Juno.
Just a few short months ago, I was impatient to get to this point, and now I was nauseated.
It didn’t feel right to put a crime series into production that followed a subplot about another serial killer.
But I couldn’t disappoint Sarah, and this was my job.
Sarah stirred beside me in bed and I sat up, swinging my legs out, elbows braced on my knees, head buried in my hands.
Gentle fingertips skimmed my naked back. “Are you all right?”
I couldn’t voice my doubts aloud. I … I’d already let her down enough. So much so, she still couldn’t bloody well tell me she loved me.
Instead, I surprised even myself by announcing, “I think it’s time to face my father.”
At her silence, I glanced over my shoulder. She stared up at me, sleep-rumpled and wide-eyed. “Are you sure?”
It was as good a distraction as any.
Moreover, I was afraid. I was afraid if I didn’t try to let go of my bitterness toward the old man that Sarah was right. I’d eventually fuck up what was between us because of it. And what she and I had was the only bloody thing holding me together right now.
“Yes.” I turned, sliding back into bed and bracing myself over her warm body. “But after I make love to you.”
Sarah opened herself to me, caressing my chest, arching her hips in invitation. For a while, I didn’t have to think about anything but the bliss I found inside her.
“Wow.”
The word echoed off the marble floors as Sarah gawked at my family’s London townhouse on Wilton Crescent. There were five floors to the home. Four above us, plus a roof terrace, and one below us.
The spacious entrance hall led to an impressively wide staircase with an elaborately carved balustrade that swept upward, curving along a balcony that overlooked the hall from above.
To our side an open archway led to a library/sitting area.
Beyond that were double doors into my father’s study.
He’d barely updated the furnishings since my mother’s passing.
It wasn’t exactly contemporary, and the hallway walls were cluttered with paintings of our family and our ancestors.
I noted the painting of my mother at the bottom of the stairwell and blocked out the swell of emotion that threatened. This place held a strange mix of treasured memories and pain.
“You grew up here?” Sarah whispered as my father’s butler went to announce our arrival.
“If you think this is something, you should see Haleshall Manor,” I murmured back sardonically. At her uneasy expression, I threaded my fingers through hers.
I knew Sarah and I came from opposite sides of the track, but I didn’t want her using that to put any more distance between us.
I was no longer the Honorable Theodore Merrick Cavendish, second son of Viscount Stephen Jerome Cavendish. I’d buried that boy long ago.
The butler, whom I didn’t recognize, reappeared but disappeared down the staircase at the back of the hall. However, my father had followed in his wake.
Obviously fully recovered from testicular cancer.
He looked like he’d never been sick.
With a heart like his, Stephen Cavendish should have been a balding, fat, ugly little man.
Instead, I got my height and lean but strong physique from him.
That was where the similarities ended. Sebastian looked more like him.
Dark hair, black eyes. Eyes like the fucking devil.
I had my mother’s fairer complexion and coloring.
Stephen Cavendish was almost sixty-one years old, had just battled cancer, and yet he didn’t look a day over fifty. He was, regrettably, a very handsome man. Until you looked a bit closer at his insides.
His dark gaze moved from me to Sarah, and I had to fight the urge to stand in front of her, block her from his regard. “You must be the writer I’ve heard so much about.”
I stiffened. Sebastian had been talking.
My father scowled at me. “My son doesn’t keep me updated on his life, so I have to find other ways. I must say I’m extremely surprised to see you here, considering you couldn’t be bothered to visit me while I was recovering from cancer.”
Rage suffused me, but Sarah’s hand tightened in mine, bringing me back. Centering me.
Somehow, for my sake and hers, I had to let this go.
But first, he needed to know why.
“We need to talk,” I replied, gesturing to his study. “Shall we?”
He couldn’t quite mask his curiosity. “All right.”
Sarah squeezed my hand again. “I’ll wait out here.”
I nodded, pressing a kiss to the back of her knuckles before reluctantly releasing her. She didn’t look at my father as she eased onto the chaise near the front door.
My father stared at her a little too long for my liking, and I moved in front of him, blocking her from view. “Lead the way.”
As soon as we were inside, he closed the doors and rounded me to sit behind his desk.
It reminded me of the times I’d gotten in trouble at school, and he’d brought me into his study during the school holidays to lecture me on my behavior.
Sometimes those lectures had been accompanied by a smack across the face.
I shoved out the old memories.
“I must say, she’s rather lovely for someone of such commonness.”
I stiffened. “Excuse me?”
My father glowered. “I can see the appeal, Theodore. Truly. But you do know that her mother has a criminal record and is a drug addict. Her father was a farmer.” He spat out the last word like it was filth.
Sebastian had done a lot of talking.
“You didn’t know.” He sat back smugly. “I thought not.”
Only a year ago, I would have been enraged by his smugness. By his judgment of Sarah.
Now … now I saw a pathetic man who cared about things that didn’t matter in the real world. Who derived pleasure in control and humiliation.
He was a sad piece of shit.
And I wouldn’t let him pull me into his games anymore.
“I know about Sarah’s background,” I told him calmly. “I know everything about her. Also, I’d quite like to take this moment to remind you that your ancestral estate survived off the backs of farmers for centuries.”
He rolled his eyes and waved off my comment. “Yes, but my ancestors would have had someone shot if one of their children was discovered courting a farmer’s daughter.”
Courting.
I grunted. “I wish you would join the rest of us in the twenty-first century. And I’m sure once you do, this little piece of information will delight you. I could not care less about Sarah’s mother or where she comes from. It won’t stop me from marrying her one day. If she’ll have me.”
“Then you’re an idiot, but that’s nothing new,” my father scoffed. “And you’ll grow bored, like always.”
“Like you, you mean? What’s it now, Father? Marriage number ten?”
He glowered. “Don’t you dare speak to me in such a disrespectful manner.”
Sighing, I shook my head. His study was filled with leather-bound books in reds, greens, and browns.
A large window overlooked the gardens, the walls covered in rich paneling, and old worn carpets worth a fortune decorated the wooden floors.
Leather chairs with metal studs. It was like something from the past. And that was the world my father lived in.
Some forgotten heyday of the aristocracy, of gentlemen and privilege.
Where the viscount was master of his home, his staff, and his family.
He was utterly detached from reality.
“I didn’t come here to argue with you about the appropriateness of my girlfriend. I came here to tell you why we haven’t spoken in a decade.”
My father waved his hand. “Oh, do tell. I’m sure I’ll enjoy this fictional examination of our past. It’s what you’re good at. Writing little imaginary scripts.”
I gave a huff of laughter because he really was quite the unbelievable bastard. “I don’t want anything to do with you because you cheated on and abused my mother for the entirety of your marriage and then you had an affair with my twenty-one-year-old girlfriend while Mother was dying.”
He stiffened, rage filling his expression.
“Now you can warp the facts to suit your conscience, but those are the facts, Father. You did betray my mum and you did betray me.”
“It was complicated,” he insisted.
“No.” I shook my head. “It wasn’t. It was disgusting and selfish. And for a while, I thought it was unforgivable.”
My father leaned forward expectantly. “And now?”
“I forgive you,” I released the words on a whoosh of air, like they’d been locked inside me for years, desperate for freedom.
“But not for you,” I hurried to explain.
“I forgive you for me. For Mum. I have to. I don’t want your actions to ruin the rest of my fucking life.
So I forgive you. But I don’t want to have anything to do with you ever again.
Don’t call. Don’t set private investigators on me, and for Pete’s sake, leave Sebastian out of it. ”
“And if I don’t?” he seethed.
“Then I will file a restraining order,” I told him calmly.
His face slackened with shock. “You cannot be serious.”
“I’m very serious. I don’t want you anywhere near my life or the people I love. If you cannot abide by that, I will make sure you abide it by law.” I turned before he could say another word and pulled open the doors.
I half expected him to shout something vile after me, but there was only shocked silence.
Striding into the hall, I halted upon finding Sarah standing beneath my mother’s portrait.
She turned as I approached. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, taking her hand. “It felt good to be the one in control for a change.”
Her smile was soft, tinged with a little sadness, as she turned back to stare at my mother. “Is this her?”
“Yes. This is Mum.”
“She was beautiful, Theo. You look like her.”
“He didn’t deserve her.” The painter, a famous artist called Raphaella Forbes, captured the warmth and kindness in my mum’s eyes. “She was so good to everyone. Even him. He didn’t deserve her,” I repeated, wishing like hell she’d had a better life.
“No, he didn’t.” Sarah squeezed my hand.
“I worry I don’t deserve you,” I confessed hoarsely. “That everyone will agree because of my past.”
She turned to me, expression solemn. “You have done nothing but take care of me while empowering me at the same time. Do you know how rare that is? To hell with everyone else.”
Warm gratitude filled the hollowness in my chest. Relief too. I brought our clasped hands to my mouth and pressed a hard kiss to her knuckles. “My mum would approve of you.” I looked up at the painting, into Mum’s soft eyes. “Wouldn’t you, Mum?”
A beat later, I looked down at Sarah. “She says yes.”
She laughed softly, eyes still filled with an understanding of my grief that made me love her even more. Pressing a kiss to my fingertips, I rested them against the painting. “Miss you, Mum.”
Swallowing hard, I stepped back, tugging on Sarah’s hand. “Let’s go, my love.”
As we turned to leave, my feet stuttered at the sight of my father standing beneath the archway of the library. For just a second, he wore a stricken expression that shocked me.
However, he quickly covered it, smoothing his countenance to that blank expression I was more familiar with. I knew that blank expression. I’d worn it many times myself to cover up my true feelings.
I realized then that perhaps my father was human after all. That maybe he did experience remorse and guilt. But he was too scared to admit those feelings, too afraid to reveal he was fallible. Terrified, perhaps, to let those emotions in, in case they swallowed him whole.
And in the end, my father’s fear would leave him with nothing and nobody but one son who stuck around out of duty.
It hit me then, as we left the house on Wilton Crescent, with more clarity than ever, why Sarah asked me to do this.
I couldn’t lock my feelings away like my father did.
I’d only lose everyone who mattered to me.
And there was no way in hell I’d ever risk turning out to be just like Stephen Cavendish.
I wanted to be better.
Not just for Sarah.
For me too.