Chapter Eight
Lucas
I have had roughly two hours of sleep, taken in installments, and yet I feel capable of lifting the house off its foundations with one hand.
The dining room smells of coffee, of which I am on my second cup.
I’m not reading the paper in front of me because I keep thinking about the sounds Rochelle made throughout the night.
The soft ‘ah’s’ and the desperate whimpers, the broken screams. How greedy she was for my cock, how hungry I am for her pussy.
I’m not an idiot. I know sex isn’t everything, but it’s good to know we are compatible in that area.
For four years, I have wondered if the attraction I felt towards her was ridiculous or not.
Whether she was attracted to me or just saw me as her best friends brother, or worse, only saw me as a duke…
Then she turned up fully focused on helping with the wedding when her best friend was let down at the last minute, and ended up showing me exactly what she wanted.
Rochelle comes in at ten past eight with the lever arch file under her arm and her hair still damp at the ends. She says good morning to the room like a woman with a schedule. She takes the chair opposite mine because it's the one with the space for her file without looking at me.
The tips of her ears are pink.
The toast rack is by my elbow. I pick it up and hold it out to her, she looks at it, and then she looks at me, and the pink spreads across her cheekbones.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she says, perfectly polite, and takes it out of my hand with two fingers brushing mine on the way past.
“Sanderson leaves for the airport at ten,” my mother says from the other end of the table, folding back a page of her own list. “Delphine lands at noon. I've put her in the rose room,” she lifts her eyes to mine to punctuate her disappointment.
“Mm,” Honora says, biting a piece of grapefruit from a fork.
“She's very good with people, Delphine.” She turns the list over. “I've asked Elsie to put flowers in the rose room, since we have a florist coming today anyway, and I thought at the rehearsal we might—”
“Stop.”
It comes out flatter than I intend. Cassia's spoon stops halfway to her mouth. Theo stops murmuring about his speech.
My mother lifts her head. She has a way of receiving rudeness that makes it look as though you have broken something belonging to somebody else.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I've heard enough about Delphine Corvain.” I put the knife down on the edge of my plate. “We need to address the seating plan.”
For the first time in some while, I have my mother's whole attention. She sets her pen down with great care.
“The seating plan is finalized.”
“Then we'll unfinalized it. I'm not taking anyone in to dinner tonight, and I'm not sitting where you've put me tomorrow.” I keep my voice level, because the moment I raise it she wins. “We'll go through it after breakfast.”
Cassia looks between the two of us like a spectator at something she has bought a ticket for by accident. “Since when do you care about the seating plan? Last year you told me to sit you next to whoever complains the least…”
“I've developed an interest.”
“He's developed an interest,” Cassia says to Rochelle, delighted, and then abandons the subject completely, because my sister has the attention span of a squirrel in the fall. “Ro, the flowers. She said two, but if she comes at two and the chairs come at three then they’ll all be tripping over each other.”
Rochelle turns the file around without looking down at it.
“Chairs are booked between one and two, and I made them confirm it in writing, Barry knows to guide the florist to the North door, and that the vans from the chair company can park and unload by the fountain, then be carried down to the marquee.
Barry even said he would help with that.
Flowers go into the cold larder overnight, the cake will be stored in the still room, as that is cold enough, the baker confirmed for me yesterday, and then the caterers have the run of the kitchen from five tomorrow morning.”
She says it all so calmly and competently, that Cassia’s entire anxious demeanor relaxes by two notches.
“The registrar is calling today at ten to confirm he has received your vows, the quartet arrive at five today for the rehearsal.
Cake comes today at four and the cake designer will be here at seven to set it up in the marquee.
After that the only thing left on Delia's list that nobody has touched is the buttonholes, because she wrote buttonholes? with a question mark. Did you want buttonholes?”
Cassia thinks for a moment while Theo continues spooning porridge into his mouth.
“Yes, I did,” she says solemnly, “Is it too late now?”
“No,” Rochelle says. “I had the florist make up a dozen in three different styles so you can choose in the morning.”
“What happens if there aren't any that look right?” Cassia asks.
“Then eleven men will stand in a photograph with nothing on their lapels and nobody notices,” Rochelle says, “except your mother, who will notice tomorrow at ten past nine.”
Honora laughs before she can stop herself, which is possibly the most shocking event of the week so far. Mother lifts her head, unimpressed with being the butt of the joke.
The door bangs open against the sideboard, startling everyone, and my uncle blusters into the room red-faced.
He is wearing yesterday's shirt, without his signature tweed jacket, and what I sincerely hope is tea down the front of him.
He is also the happiest I have seen him since he lost his wife eight months ago.
“Nine,” he announces.
Nobody says anything.
“Nine puppies,” he says again, louder, in case we missed it.
“Five brindle, three black, and one that I cannot describe to you and will have to be seen. She started shortly after midnight, finished at twenty past four, and she did the entire business without so much as a whimper. Mother is doing fabulously. Absolutely fabulously.” He looks around the table for the ovation this deserves. “Gloria's given her a beef heart.”
“Congratulations, Peregrine,” my mother says, in the tone of a woman being told about somebody's holiday and trying not to cringe at the mention of the beef heart.
“There's a small one,” he says, sitting down heavily in the chair next to Cassia and helping himself to her toast. “Runt. I've been rubbing it with a towel. Rochelle, my dear, you'll want to come and see her, she was quite taken with you.”
“Absolutely.” She is smiling, her face lit up with happiness. Peregrine beams at her like she alone made this happen. “I’ll make time this afternoon, if it’s not too soon?”
My mother stands, gathers her lists, and goes out through the door to the hall with her chin at the angle she uses for county functions.
I give it four seconds and follow her.
She stops by the barometer and turns around.
“We need to talk,” I tell her.
“Then talk.”
“There isn't going to be an arrangement.” I say it plainly.
“Not with the Corvain’s, not with anyone.
I know what the trust says, I've had Gilbert on the telephone about it twice this week, and I'd rather deal with it as a man who chose than as a man who was assigned. So Delphine can come, and she can be looked after properly as Cassia’s guest, and she can go home on Sunday.
But she isn't being seated at my right hand tomorrow, because that seat is spoken for.”
Her hand tightens on the pen she is still holding as she connects the dots. “You have known her for two days.”
“I've known her for seven years,” I counter. Because even though we haven’t been close, I have been attracted enough to learn about her and still keep my distance.
“You can’t be serious,” she says, very quietly.
“I've chosen who I intend to spend the rest of my life with. You can be part of it or you can be somewhere else. I would rather have your blessing.”
For the space of a breath I think she might collapse and I prepare myself to catch her if that happens.
Then she goes past me, back through the dining room door like she is moving in a daze.
Rochelle is still sitting at the table with the coffee pot in her hand.
“How long,” my mother says, “have you been working on this?”
Cassia says, “Mamma,” in a voice I have not heard from her since she was nine.
Rochelle looks confused for a moment. “Cassia called me on Tuesday…” she trails off when she sees my face, the realization dawning.
“You’ve been welcomed here for seven years. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you’ve insinuated yourself into my home.” Her voice doesn't rise. That's the terrible part. “First my daughter, and now my son. Tell me honestly, Miss Gallacher, did you ever intend to leave on Sunday?”
“Of course,” Rochelle stammers. The pot is still in her hand, tilted very slightly, and her face has gone the way it goes when somebody hands her a problem she has not been given the information to solve. “Of course,” she says again, firmer this time. “I’m still planning to leave on Sunday.”
“So what is this then?” my mother gestures in a circle with her pen. “If not a bid to get your feet under the table.”
Rochelle’s head moves back like she has been slapped. Her face registering surprise before smoothing out into a sad sort of acceptance. She nods once, a tight smile on her face.
My mother opens her mouth to say something more, but I cut her off.
“That's enough,” I say. “She is a guest in my home, and you will speak to her the way you'd speak to me. If you can't manage that today, you can manage it by tonight, because there are a hundred and fifty people arriving tomorrow to celebrate Cassia and Theo, not me and some stranger you’re trying to set me up with.” I move so that I am standing beside Rochelle, and I stay there.
“Whatever you say next, you're going to have to live beside it for a very long time.”
My mother looks at the two of us together at her table.
Cassia is also looking between me and Rochelle, her mouth hanging open.
Then she gathers herself, stands from the table and walks from the room.
My mother raises an eyebrow, throws up her hands in surrender, and follows Cassia.