28. Rory
RORY
This insomnia habit is keeping Theo happy in San Francisco because I’m on call whenever he needs me, but I swear it’s going to put me in an early grave.
I stand at the office window, the dogs sprawled asleep on the sofa.
The loch is rippled silver by the moonlight, the trees bending in the wind.
Somewhere outside I hear a fox scream, sharp and eerie. I’ve always hated that sound.
Theo’s spreadsheet glows on the screen – numbers that almost work, plans to keep everyone from the local authorities to the preservation society happy. The numbers add up which is the main thing. If I can do one thing, it’s right the mess he made of this place, and make right his wrongs.
I pour a whisky out of habit more than anything and take a slow sip.
Finn’s done a good job with this one, I admit.
Must be nice to fuck off to the islands and absolve yourself of responsibility.
I know why he’s chosen that life and I envy him it, but – I glance up at the black and white photo on the bookshelf of the three of us – I miss his dry humour and his no-bullshit approach to getting stuff done.
If he’d inherited this place he’d have told everyone they could fuck right off if they wanted a ball. Duty, however, obliges.
Edie’s upstairs asleep, ready for another day of peeling back the past I’ve spent years trying to bury and batting off the snide insults from her so-called friend Anna.
When she made that crack about her book tonight, I felt Edie go still beside me as if her breath had caught and didn’t quite come back.
I’d spent the whole evening trying not to notice her and failing.
Her scent – something soft and green, like fig trees in summer – caught in the air as she shifted in her chair.
Her wrist grazing mine as she reached for the bread.
The line of her neck when she tilted her head to listen.
I tried to keep my eyes on Jamie, on my plate, on the bottle of wine. But they kept straying back to her.
And then I heard myself speak.
“Edie is an excellent writer.” It just slipped out.
It hits me that it might be the only unguarded thing I’ve said all week. In a house built on secrets, with a legacy I’ve been forced to protect with silence and spin, I offered her the truth like it was nothing.
She looked at me like she couldn’t quite believe it, like she wanted to, hoped to.
That’s the part that undid me. She has no idea what she’s holding in her hands, the damage she could wreak.
I’m sitting on an unexploded bomb, waiting for her to hit the point in the diaries when it all becomes clear and when it does, I’ll know.
She’s an open book, and I don’t believe for a moment that her unguarded, open face will be able to hide the fact she’s read the truth.
Not that there’s anything she can do with it, the NDA has made sure of that.
But I have to face the fact that she’ll know my life here is based on a lie, and I don’t want to admit to myself that the prospect of that stings more than the reality of it .
I’m the duke. The one who’s supposed to keep everything together, hold the estate in my trust for a generation before I pass it on. The feelings I have are a complication I can’t afford.
The trouble is I can’t seem to look away.