CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT #4
‘I don’t want anything.’
‘I’m not speaking of trinkets, Julian.’
‘That’s kind of you, father, but I don’t want anything.’
‘You are my son and I do love you,’ Alistair says with a bite of padded frustration.
‘This life is hard, but you will never know hunger, or poverty or lack. Savannah is a beautiful girl just like her mother. She’ll make a fine wife.
Besides, it’s not until you are twenty-one anyway.
You have years to enjoy yourself.’ He sips his drink.
‘Very few people find that resistance improves their circumstances.’
‘My circumstances are more than satisfactory already.’
‘Satisfactory,’ the old man echoes with confused scorn. ‘We were not put on this earth to be satisfied, Julian. What about Jessamine? You may not want things for yourself, but for her?’
That’s a clever trick.
Jules bites the inside of his cheek, visibly structuring his request before he speaks it. ‘Perhaps she could be allowed to play with other children her own age. You must know people who have small kids like her.’
Alistair watches his son. ‘I do.’
‘Then maybe… that?’
‘I will consider it.’
Jules subtly wipes his eyes. ‘Thank you, father.’
‘Nothing else you want? You have not even asked me about the island. All your years of begging and pleading to go elsewhere and now that we are, you’ve no interest in it?’
‘Forgive me,’ Jules says, clearing his throat. ‘I was overwhelmed. Please tell me about the island, father.’
Alistair sets down his spoon with a clatter. ‘Enough of this. Where is my son, hmm? Where is my iron-willed boy who could not be broken?’ He throws a mildly accusatory look at Lachlan. ‘Is this your doing?’
‘Don’t blame him,’ Jules says, a little bite to it for the first time. ‘Just tell me how you want me to be and I will.’
‘I want you to be yourself.’
‘I can’t be myself with you.’
‘Of course you can. I’m your father. I always want you to be yourself.’
‘You punished me for it!’ Jules blurts out.
‘I…’ Alistair is briefly astonished. ‘I corrected you. Poor behaviour and insolence are not befitting our breed, Julian.’
‘As you say.’
‘This routine is almost as irritating as your snivelling.’
‘Father, I’m just trying to—’
‘You insult me greatly to imagine I cannot tell the difference between my authentic child and this mild-mannered monstrosity you present yourself to be.’ He waves his hand.
‘Leave my sight, prepare for travel and ensure that I at no point have to intervene for further correction once we arrive on the island.’
Jules wipes his mouth, sets down the napkin. ‘Yes, sir.’
Alistair waits until he’s gone.
Lachlan is bracing for potential worst-case scenarios.
The old man pours himself a glass of wine, offers Lachlan one.
‘No, thank you, sir.’
‘Have a fucking drink,’ he snaps.
‘Yes, sir,’ Lachlan agrees quietly.
‘I know better than to blame you for my son’s behaviour,’ Alistair says after a bout of unbroken silence.
He stares ahead at nothing. ‘You have done well. You did not deserve what I inflicted last time. It is, however, incredibly hard for me to see the way they look at you and the way they look at me.’ He drains his glass, pours more.
‘One of many reasons I cannot bear to be in her presence, and I know very well that she is happier out of mine.’ Lachlan says nothing, doesn’t need to.
Alistair glances down at his side. ‘They healed well?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’m glad. You are family, Lachlan. And our family is… quite different.’
‘Indeed, sir.’
‘Where is your little assistant, Miss Montbelliard?’
‘With Jessamine, sir.’
‘They are close now?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That’s good. What of you and my son? Are you closer than before? Is his training helping? Priscilla informed me he split his lip at some point.’
‘That was my fault, sir.’
Alistair’s eyes glint with amusement, pouring more wine. ‘I’ve no doubt, but I am not in a punishing mood, and lip skin does not scar. He is a rebellious thing, my Julian, so like his mother.’
It marks the first time Lachlan has ever heard mention of her.
He doesn’t even know her name. If she’s still alive. Where.
A burning curiosity rises up, makes him aware of the fact that Jules has never spoken of her, no one has.
‘Oh?’ he asks casually, taking a fake sip while Alistair takes a real one, but the old man’s contemplation moves in a different direction.
‘My father once had the soles of my feet flayed,’ he tells Lachlan.
‘He made me dance with my mother the next night for my birthday. I waltzed red ovals around the ballroom, and no one said a word. After that, he believed that we saw one another clearly. All I saw was a monster.’ He smiles to himself, brittle and sour.
‘The inevitability of inheritance. Legacy is a brutal lesson for children, don’t you think? ’
Lachlan thinks of Dougal Tanner’s last breaths.
He thinks of early years. The nights his door would open.
The evil in his eyes as he lay dying by Lachlan’s hand.
‘Nothing is inevitable, sir.’
‘Such youthful optimism,’ the old man sighs. ‘How I envy it.’