Chapter 14 #2
It was late when Shug left. They’d made four dozen cookies, eaten at least a dozen with large glasses of milk, ordered a roast chicken with all the sides from Valentino’s, and watched a rom-com.
It was good to be home, with all the feels. Yet Shug had opened doors in Scottie’s thinking. Could she, as an American Blue, actually have a role in helping the Family—or even Lauchtenland itself?
Still, as Scottie climbed into her bed, she was eager to return to Kate and Hadsby, to finish what she’d started. She reached for her phone, found Michael’s number, hesitated, whispered a short prayer, then composed a brief text.
Scottie: Hey Mick, I was wondering…would it be possible to get a private meeting with Hamish Fickle?
With a deep breath, she hit Send.
* * *
Michael
The pitch was green. The sky, blue. The slipping breeze cooled his warm skin.
And he was running toward the goal in the father-son match between the Cross PF club and the Highgrove Sports League.
As the ball arched toward him, a winger raced his way—a brutish teen with thighs like tree trunks and his eye on the ball. But this play was Michael’s.
“Mick, back post!” Piers, or maybe Evan, calling from the sideline.
“Go, Uncle Mick. Go!” Unmistakably Finn.
He avoided the teen as the ball dropped toward him, planted his right foot then launched, swinging his left leg round and snapping his foot, sending the ball over the goalie’s head and into the net.
Michael celebrated, arms in the air, running, shouting, dropping to his knee and sliding toward midfield where his teammates, young and old, piled on top of him, patting his head, his back, his chest.
The goalie, an old uni mate, shook his head. He’d been good back in the day, but he now carried an extra stone or two. Sorry, not sorry, Baker.
Words bandied around and through him.
“Well played, old man.” This from one of the sons on their team.
“Sport, where’ve you been? We need you.” From a father.
The referee blew his whistle. “Time, lads, the match is over.”
“Uncle Mick, smashing.” Finn ran across the pitch to give him an energetic fist bump. “Uncle Mick, Uncle Mick, Uncle Mick.”
Evan slapped Michael on the back, knocking out what little breath remained in his lungs from the ninety minutes of play. “You’re his hero.”
“Only in football.”
The opposing team came round for congratulations, admiring Michael’s scissor kick goal, then the old men moaned about their throbbing knees and bruised ankles.
After gathering his gear from the sideline, Evan came alongside. “Pints at the pub? Finn’s going home with the Baker boys, so I have time to myself. Piers, are you buying pints at Pub Clemency?”
“No, but I’ll join you for one.” Piers dropped his kit bag next to Michael.
“Listen, mate, I know you don’t want to hear it, but you’re wasting your time with the HMSD.
If you go to the diplomatic core, you’ll fare no better.
Even worse if you sign up for the stuffy offices of Pratt Printing—no offense, Evan.
You’re a football man. Cross football needs you.
No one’s really managing the club. We don’t even have a mascot.
Come on, man, take up the call of the pitch. It is a Cross club after all.”
“You know there’s no career for me in football. That ship has sailed.” Michael dug his phone from the zippered pocket of his kit bag. He was waiting for a call from MP Hamish Fickle’s office. So far, nothing. He slipped his phone back into the bag.
“I’m not asking you to play for the Capitals.
I’m asking you to take the helm here. Use your training and skills to expand the club.
You’re stellar with the boys. They’d swing from tree limbs if you said it’d make them better footballers.
” Piers picked up his gear, slinging the strap over his head.
“I’m not fooled about your financial and social status.
The Cross and Pratt coffers can easily afford you a lovely place in downtown Port Fressa overlooking the bay.
I don’t know why you live in that palace flat. You can’t entertain there.”
“You assume I’m interested in entertaining.” Michael replaced his spikes for his trainers and zipped on a Cross football club hoodie with a glance toward his brother, who was fixed on organizing his kit.
Piers didn’t know about the decreased Cross coffers. It was reputation not wealth that maintained the family name and status. Funds for the Cross Football Club and the three Cross grammar schools came from a strictly managed trust.
On the Pratt side, Michael had money left by his great-grandparents. Clocking two years with Pratt Printing enabled him to participate in the profit sharing. He could easily take on managing the club.
“Fine, Michael, mate of mine, but think about it.” Piers hoofed toward his motor, tossing over his shoulder, “See you at Pub Clemency and I’ll buy the first round.”
“He’s not wrong.” Evan scooted toward Michael. “You look happy on the pitch, big brother. As for the kids, you’re a flame and they’re your moths.”
“That’s a little poetic for you. You seriously think I can leave Her Majesty’s Security Detail to run round on a pitch with eight-to-fourteen-year-olds? I’m one of the few Cross men still in her service. Dad is practically holding down the diplomatic edge on his own.”
“Mick, you have a right to live your life. But Mum’s got a point as well about how the decisions made by our Cross ancestors a thousand years ago, even two hundred years ago, govern our lives.
It’s the twenty-first century, for goodness’ sake.
Do you think our twenty-first great-grandfather would hold us to his ancient ways?
” Evan puffed out his chest and lowered his voice.
“‘Carry on for a thousand years in the same way as we do now in our stone castles and chapels, freezing to death in the winter and smelling like rotgut in the summer.’”
With a laugh, Michael started for the car park.
“You think the Pratt line is any different? Mum never misses a moment to prod me to join her family line.” He tossed his bag into the boot.
“I’m not being stubborn, Evan. But I—” He breathed in, trying to form the words.
“I feel called to do what I’m doing. Yeah, maybe for some allegiance to our Cross heritage, but it’s more than our name or reputation.
It’s something I feel here.” He patted his chest. “I’ll stay true until that feeling goes away. ”
Why didn’t Evan understand? Did he not sense what Michael sensed when he studied the Cross catechism?
Every young Cross man and woman studied Lauchten and House of Blue history every summer during their teen years.
They could teach college professors. The Cross family were the treasure keepers, the keepers of the gospel, holding fast to the stories the rest of Lauchtenland forgot.
But in the last twenty years, the family willing to take on the life of a Cross had dwindled.
When he’d proposed to Purnell, she understood his devotion to duty. She sensed it was more than an assignment. It was a way of life. The Cross life.
“I don’t know why you hang onto it all,” Evan said. “How are you different than any other former Special Forces chap who joins the HMSD? Does our name really carry prestige?”
“She called me when she wanted an equerry and protection officer for Lady Royal. And yes, because of my Cross name.” Without it, he’d have never met Scottie.
“Besides, one day, I may be the only Cross left in service to the Crown. If you ask me, the last man standing is every bit as important as the first.”
In the eighteenth century, a whole line of Cross uncles, aunts, cousins sailed to America.
In the nineteenth century, typhus and smallpox ravaged Lauchtenland.
The Cross dynasty was not immune. Add to that, the simple attrition of a thousand years.
Families moving away. Families with no sons and their daughters marrying into other ancestries where, after generations, their Cross heritage was forgotten.
In the 1920s, one Cross recordkeeper lost his family’s documentation in a fire. Then his two sons were killed in the Second World War.
No, Michael must stay the course of the Cross. It would take Emmanuel Himself coming down from the mountains, fragrant with the woods and smoke, to tell him otherwise.
“I never felt called to Cross service like you,” Evan said.
“Tracy and I decided together Pratt Printing was best for our future. I’m fine with you rejecting Mum’s offer.
I get it. But Mick, there’s more than one way to be a Cross man.
What if a Cross man upholds the youth football club our great-great-grandfather founded?
It was one of the first football clubs in this part of Europe, other than Great Britain.
Do you realize a Cross man or woman hasn’t run the club since the 1950s?
No Cross has ever been superintendent over our three schools.
Serving the community is serving the Crown. ”
“We should go,” Michael said, opening his car door. How could he make them understand? His calling was more than the Crown way. It was the Crown and the Cross. “Piers will be on his second pint and plate of chips by the time we arrive.”
Evan tapped Michael’s shoulder. “Think about it.”
“I do, little brother. More than you know.”
Michael climbed into his late-model sports car, which had been a luxury spend after a surprise inheritance from a distant cousin. He’d drive this motor to his grave.
Turning out of the car park, he considered his phone, hoping for a call from the MP’s office. He’d rung up yesterday morning, requesting a meeting. The little troublemaker best not let Scottie down. Michael felt a personal responsibility to make her wish come true.
Also, he missed her. Something known only to himself.
The afternoon on the pitch proved a lovely distraction.
Yet now that he was alone for half a second, his feelings surfaced.
He longed to see her face, peer into her deep blue eyes, then let his gaze slowly drift to her soft, supple lips.
Not that he’d tasted them or ever would. But a man could dream.
He flashed on a memory of Purnell. “Sorry, love.” Of course he knew she was gone to a place with no sorrow, and she’d want him to get on with life. Yet pieces of him hung onto her memory.
At Pub Clemency, he lucked into a parking spot near the door. He’d just cut the motor when his phone beckoned with a Private Number. When he answered, a stiff voice said, “Hold for MP Fickle.”
Michael snapped to attention. Finally.
“Cross, Hamish Fickle here. You called seeking an audience with me.”
“Actually, Lady Royal Blue requested to speak with you. She’s been away but will return Sunday morning.”
“My office on Wednesday, ten a.m. My aide will send details.”
“Thank you, sir.” Calling him sir felt unjust, but the man was a member of parliament, duly elected by the people of his district.
“What’s this about, Cross?” Hamish filled his voice with force. “I’ll not be mocked.”
“To be honest, sir, I don’t know. However, I doubt Lady Royal has any intention of mocking you.”
MP Fickle rang off and Michael stepped out of his car, wondering what Lady Royal actually intended.
There’d been a quick and thorough investigation of the Midlands Faire disruption, and several protesters were arrested.
MP Fickle pulled his political strings, and the lot of them were released with a slap on the wrist two days later.
As for Michael, the HMSD performed their own investigation. Thanks to the testimony of Lennox and Schueler, along with the eyewitnesses at Eloise’s shop, Michael was cleared. Again.
The press spun the story as if Lady Royal was accidentally caught up in a political march. But everyone present that day knew she had been targeted.
From now on out, the Chamber Office would not announce any of her appearances.
Her Majesty Queen Catherine offered her support, assuring Gunner Ferguson that Michael was still the man for the job.
Outside Pub Clemency’s door, he texted Scottie.
Michael: Meeting with MP Fickle Wednesday morning, 10:00.
Scottie: Thank you! Did he say anything? Ask why?
Michael: He wondered if you were going to mock him.
Scottie: Mock him? I want to talk. So, am I being foolish? Risky?
Michael: Probably but sometimes things don’t change if things don’t change.
Scottie: Well said, Cross. What are you doing while I’m away?
Missing you.
Michael: Paperwork. Playing a bit of football.
Scottie: I felt your smile when I read you were playing soccer. Did you demonstrate ye ole scissor kick?
Michael: Scored the final goal of the match with one.
Scottie: Show off. : )
Michael: Finn was thrilled. What about you? How are you filling your days?
She’d left late Saturday after the Midlands Faire incident. Six days and forever since he’d seen her. Since the scent of her perfume carved a new memory for him.
Scottie: Work. Ha! Going into the office, brainstorming the spring line while making sure the fall launch is set. Winter is almost in the can. For some reason, I’m the only one in all of O’Shay who knows how to write a tech pack. #Jobsecurity.
Michael: But you are returning?
Scottie: Yes. I miss Kate. I miss you Lauchten lug heads.
Michael: She’ll be delighted to have you home.
So would the lug heads.
Scottie:…
Michael waited but the three dots never changed.
Michael: I miss you. Do you miss me?
There. He’d said it. Of course he didn’t send it. But now it was out of his system.
After the Rose Ball, she’d return to Hearts Bend permanently and he’d take on a new assignment. Because it was his calling, his lot in life.
One day down the line, he might meet a lovely woman. Fall in love. If so, they’d buy a tiny cottage by the sea, raise a baby or two, God willing, and he’d rest easy at night knowing he’d carried his cross dutifully.
The fact that it quite possibly cost him the love of Scottie O’Shay would be a distant, bygone memory.