Chapter 8 #2
“His photographs of you.”
The words land softly but hit hard. “He kept photographs of me?”
“He had many photographs of you,” Betty says with a nod. “School pictures. Newspaper clippings. The pictures of you with that famous Rembrandt you cleaned up for that exhibition in London when you were twenty-two.”
My throat goes dry.
“How did he even get that?”
“He had people,” she says simply.
Of course, he did.
“He’d stand there and look at them for a long time. Not touching. Just looking.”
Something presses against my ribs. “Did he ever talk about me?”
“Not to most people. To Axel, I think. And to me occasionally.”
“Why you?”
She hesitates. Really hesitates. “Because I was there when he’d had too much to drink and it all spilled out,” she says finally. “And because I didn’t repeat what I heard.”
There’s no arrogance in it. Just a fact, quietly stated.
“What did he say?” I ask, my voice quieter now.
Betty looks down at her hands. “He’d say he wondered if you still hated him. He’d say he didn’t know how to fix what he’d broken.” Her voice softens further. “He wasn’t very good at fixing personal things. Only companies.”
A bitter laugh slips out of me. “That tracks.”
She studies me carefully. “It’s not what you think.... He was afraid of you.”
“What?”
“Oh no. Not of you harming him. He was afraid you would see through him and not want a thing to do with him.”
The wind lifts a strand of her red hair across her cheek, and she tucks it behind her ear.
“He once told me that you had inherited his eyes to look at, but they were your mother’s eyes in every sense of the word. That you looked at people as if you were assessing the truth in them.”
My chest aches unexpectedly.
“That’s ridiculous,” I say, but is it really? Even my career is based around studying, analyzing, assessing what I see.
“It frightened him,” she insists gently. “He liked controlling the narrative. He couldn’t control what you thought of him.”
A strained silence settles between us. Someone calls Betty’s name faintly from inside. She tries to stand, but I grab her wrist and tell her to ignore it. I make a mental note to take the blame if she gets in trouble for it later.
“What was he like when he was angry?” I ask.
She exhales slowly. “Cold. Quieter than ever.”
“No shouting?”
“No.” A shake of her head. “Shouting would have meant a loss of control. He never lost control.”
I think of the boardroom stories. The dismantling of arguments. Of course, he did.
“At his most frustrated,” she continues. “He would go very still. That’s how we knew when to leave him alone.”
“We?”
“The house staff.”
“And at his most tender?” I prompt carefully.
That soft reverence returns to her face.
“There was no one like him. We had a groundskeeper, Mr. Alvarez. He had a stroke three years ago. It meant he couldn’t work anymore.
Your father paid for his rehabilitation.
All of it. And he continued his wages and left a provision in his trust that that payment would continue until the day Mr. Alvarez died.
He told everyone it was a retention incentive restructure. ”
Despite everything, I smile.
“He never told Mr. Alvarez it was him,” she says. “But he visited him in the hospital. Late at night. He sat by his bed and talked about the garden plans as if he’d be back any day.”
My chest tightens painfully. “Why hide such a wonderful trait?”
“He believed kindness created weakness in negotiations.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Yes.” A tiny, conspiratorial smile crosses Betty’s face. “I told him so once.”
I turn fully toward her. “You did?”
Her cheeks flush slightly. “I did. I may have said that being feared in business didn’t require being feared at home.”
“And?”
“He told me I was paid to polish silver, not offer philosophy.”
I laugh before I can stop myself. “And did that stop you?”
“No.”
Something shifts then. The air between us warms.
“You weren’t just staff,” I state quietly.
“No.” She meets my eyes. “I wasn’t. I cared deeply about him.”
There’s no impropriety in her eyes. No scandal. Just loyalty.
“He trusted you,” I say.
“Yes.” The word is steady. Certain.
I swallow. “Did he ever talk to you about why he stayed away from me?”
Betty’s expression clouds. “At the beginning, he thought it would make things worse if he bulldozed in where he wasn’t wanted. He didn’t want to take you away from the only life you knew, and he believed your mother would poison you against him if he fought for access.”
“She told me I was conceived from an anonymous one-night stand.”
“I know.”
We both fall silent. Inside, applause breaks out for something, another speech perhaps. The sound feels obscene considering the occasion, but rich people do things differently.
“I didn’t come here for his money,” I blurt out suddenly.
“I know,” Betty replies immediately.
“You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough.”
Her certainty catches me off guard. “What do you mean?”
“At the service, you looked at the coffin, not the guest list.” She tilts her head slightly. “That you haven’t asked a single question about the estate today. And you’ve done your best to remain in the shadows. When the vicar spoke about legacy, you didn’t look proud. You looked sad.”
My throat tightens. “He was my father,” I whisper. “I didn’t know him, but he was still my father.”
Betty’s eyes shine. “Yes,” she says. “He was. You were always in his heart.”
A long moment passes. Then she clears her throat gently. “If I may say something slightly forward?”
“Please.”
“You don’t have to navigate this thing alone.”
I study her carefully. “Are you offering to help me?”
“I’m offering,” she says with a quiet firmness. “To tell you the truth about things. About him. About what’s real and what isn’t.”
The wind bites at my fingers. I barely notice. “Why?”
She hesitates only for a second. “Because I cared about him,” she says. “And because I think he would have wanted someone on your side.”
Emotion rises fast and unexpectedly. I blink it back. “And are you?”
“On your side?”
“Really?”
Her answer doesn’t waver. “Yes.”
Not deference. Not obligation. Choice. Something inside me settles.
“Then you definitely have to stop calling me Miss Button,” I say softly.
A tiny smile breaks across her face. “Force of habit, but I’ll try.”
“Good.”
Inside, the music swells, some somber classical piece.
“Betty?” I call.
“Yes?”
“Did he suffer at the end?”
Her expression gentles in a way that feels almost protective. “No. He was lucid. Stubborn and irritated about the hospital lighting. He asked for the curtains to be adjusted three times.”
That sounds absurdly accurate from what I have learned about him, and a shaky laugh escapes me.
“He worried if the photographs had been packed,” Betty says.
“I brought them to the hospital for him. Master Sheldon and Mr. Rhodes were both there, but we all knew he was waiting for you. He fretted like a child about your arrival time. ‘Has she arrived yet. How much longer? Where is the plane now?’”
The cold doesn’t feel so sharp anymore.
“He just wanted you with him before he died,” she says quietly.
The silence folds around us. I don’t cry, but I reach for Betty’s hand.
We are not housekeeper and heir. Nor are we employer and staff.
We are just two women sitting in the cold, trying to piece together a man who was never simple.
And with Betty on my side, for the first time since arriving here, I don’t feel entirely alone.
Something occurs to me, and I blurt out my question, horrified that I might have been attracted to someone who is related to me.
“Betty, is Axel Rhodes my half-brother?”
“What? No. Why would you think that?” Betty asks, frowning.
“He just seems to resent me. I wondered…”
Betty shakes her head decisively. “No, nothing like that.
Mr. Rhodes is now the force behind the Manswell empire, but his beginnings are humble.
His mom was one of the cooks here, and since there was never any father in the picture that I know of, he practically grew up here below stairs, but Joseph saw his potential.
He nurtured and mentored him, made him brilliant.
“I suppose it was almost a father-son relationship, and as soon as he felt his protegee was ready, he installed him as the head of the whole organization. Your father didn’t trust easily, but he trusted Mr. Rhodes.
In his own way, I believe, he was much closer to Mr. Rhodes than to Master Sheldon, though he would never admit it to anyone.
Especially since Sheldon was a bit of a disappointment to him because he showed no interest in the business at all. ”
So… Axel isn’t just an employee. He’s been shaped and molded by my father. There’s a history here that I wasn’t meant to know, but somehow, I’m in the middle of it now.
As I absorb the information, my mind rewinds to Axel’s presence at the funeral, how controlled, precise, and protective he was over the proceedings. It makes sense now, the intensity of his attention, the quiet thunder in his gaze. He wanted Joseph’s final goodbye to go without a hitch.
Betty looks up at me, her shy smile returning.
“Don’t let him intimidate you. He … has a forbidding presence, but he’s not unreachable. There’s a decent guy in there underneath the brooding stares and the cutting comments.”
I laugh softly, shaking my head. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
I feel oddly at home sitting here beside Betty, our quiet bubble of normalcy in the midst of grandeur and grief.