Chapter 15
T hough everything is going to plan so far, I can’t shake the sickness that settles in my stomach the further I descend into the tube station. Perhaps it’s being back in London after so long, the air, or the memories? Until Balmoral became my home for the summer, the cacophony of London, its hustle and bustle, never really bothered me. Yet now I find myself pinging through the public like a deer too far from the comfort of open fields and sheltered forests.
Or perhaps it’s something I’ve forgotten? Have I got the wrong date? The wrong time? No, this date has been playing on my wind for weeks; I can’t have gotten it wrong now. Unless it has changed, and in all the time I haven’t heard from Atticus, he hasn’t told me. But why wouldn’t he tell me it had been rescheduled if the main purpose of the evening is our engagement?
No, Alice, you fool. I stop dead on the tube platform as the reminder finally hits me. In getting so wrapped up in my excitement for the engagement Kitty told me about, I have overlooked the fact that the conference isn’t for me, or our relationship, it’s for his relationship with the company he is inheriting. The conference is to prove his power to the shareholders, to give a speech that will inspire and impress them. A speech I was supposed to write.
Selfish, self-obsessed, love-brained Alice strikes again.
One job, I had one job, one thing he asked of me, and I was too preoccupied with the thought of a nice shiny engagement ring and a public declaration of love that I let it slip my mind.
Scurrying onto the next tube that comes, I type furiously into the notes app on my phone, trying to piece together some semblance of a speech. He hasn’t given me any bullet points to work from, nor asked me for a draft before now. Perhaps he’s done it himself? Or he was thinking, as I do, that his love would surprise him and save the day. Refusing to disappoint the man I love, by the time the carriage pulls into my station I’m sweating from the stress as I weave together some ‘thank yous’ and flattery and hope for the best.
Rushing out of the station, I find his office building with some difficulty but soon I am neck-deep in suits and aged male faces and I know I am in the right place. Drawing up to the doorman in my muddied skirt and tatty hair, I am sure I look a sight, so it is no surprise when he stops me to ask my business.
‘I am here with Atticus Beaumont,’ I say, chewing my lip, impatient to get inside.
‘Name,’ the doorman says with a bored tone as he flicks through his guest list.
‘Lady Alice Walpole,’ I say proudly and stand up straighter, remembering one of my first conversations with the man of the hour all those months ago in the Kensington side street: ‘ Your title is your crowning glory ’.
Smiling softly at the memory, it quickly falters as the behemoth of a man speaks again.
‘Not on the guest list.’ Without looking at me, he turns to the next guest and allows them to pass without question.
‘Well look again, good sir,’ I persist. ‘Mr Beaumont will be waiting for me. He won’t be happy if you make his future wife miss her own proposal.’ Trying to force myself past him, he outstretches a tree trunk of a bicep and stops me dead in my tracks before I can get a toe in the door.
‘Not on the guest list,’ he grunts again and I can only give an exacerbated huff in reply.
Turning to walk away, I take a deep breath to calm myself. There is no way that I’m hacking through the wilderness, hitchhiking across Scotland, and sitting next to a train toilet for six hours just to be turned away at the door. No big beefy bloke is getting between me and the man I love.
With the kind of speed only the adrenaline of love can summon, I sprint past the doorman, get chased through the reception, and slip breathlessly into the lift. Pressing the buttons to the floor labelled ‘Beaumont it’s just business. I was always just business.
Except, I know full well that any of his business partners would have been treated with far more respect, not just replaced without even so much as a text.
I should be used to that feeling – of knowing that the benefactors, the public, and our images come before any of my needs. But here and now is when I want to know why. Why my parents, my lovers, my friends, have always prioritised everything but me. Why my feelings have never mattered as long as reputations remain intact. What have I done to not be worth the same respect as a contract or an article in a magazine? Why do people assume that just because I was born into this life, I am fine with the same coldness they all seem to revel in?
My heart races in my chest. The seeping, self-pitying sadness turns sour until I am blind with rage and clawing at my throat to keep my screams within.
Closing my eyes for a moment, I imagine myself back in Loch Muick, allowing the cool water to lap against my arms, feeling the plants slide between my toes, listening to the silence of true peaceful nature. Soothing my burning heart. I look at Atticus once again, his gaze scanning my face for any hints of anger.
I lean up to place a tender departing kiss on his cheek. He relaxes against my touch, just enough for me to jab my knee right into his little princelings.
He doubles over in pain, and Atticus’s groans are enough to summon the attention of all who had chosen to ignore me until now, but it’s his screaming of the word ‘bitch’ over and over that really sends them running.
Placing my hand on his shoulder, I lean down so close to him that my lips ghost over his ear as I speak. I have no idea how I manage to formulate any words at all, let alone with all the tranquillity of a woman well and truly over it all, but I say with all my strength, ‘Have the life you deserve.’
And I walk from that conference, from Atticus Beaumont, with straw in my hair and fire in my belly.