Chapter 20
TWENTY
INTRODUCE YOU
James
Mrs Hinchcliffe cast another sly gaze my way, finishing her umpteenth story about the various times child-me had caused her mischief.
Memories emerged like figures through thick fog.
The time I rode my bike into the lake and she had to wade in to pull it out—I’d scrambled to safety though I’d nearly given her a heart attack.
Then when I’d taken Ella to the village on horseback, on a seventeen-hand shire horse we’d commandeered from the estate’s kitchen farm. I was seven and she not even four.
It felt like another world. Like someone else’s history. Not mine.
Under the table, Beth held my hand, making small circles with her thumb.
Across from us, Ella grinned and jumped in with her own additions to the stories, each memory growing more distinct.
The meal—lasagne served with salad and crusty bread—had been demolished, and soft lamplight filled the Hinchcliffes’ snug room.
A real family scene.
So much had changed in twenty-four hours.
Unlike last night, Mrs Hinchcliffe was careful not to directly mention my mother or father, maybe feeling it was an awkward subject, particularly in front of Beth who she’d fussed over like visiting royalty.
Beth glowed under the attention. She and Ella had hit it off from the start, and everything was right. My muscles relaxed in a way they hadn’t in forever.
I felt alive again.
For too long, I’d believed myself a walking hazard, a dangerous man who caused nothing but grief but, just maybe, I could be forgiven. Come through to the other side and have a happy family once more.
To get there, so much needed fixing. Talking to Ella about her ongoing situation with our uncle, for one. Finding out whether she knew the terms of the legal guardianship and the control of her money had changed.
On the other aspect of my life, my future, I had to proceed with greater caution.
Later tonight, I’d walk Beth through the house—she still hadn’t set foot inside the door—give her a tour, then tell her everything she needed to know about me.
Most importantly, how I worshipped the ground she walked on.
In a way that wouldn’t send her running for the hills.
“I remember that horse ride. Mostly when we were caught. Mum gave me hell for endangering her baby girl.” I raised my eyebrows at my sister. “You told her it was your idea, and I was only there to keep you safe. Do you remember?”
Ella sipped from her glass, then gave me a rueful half smile. “No, but I’m glad I did. We always looked out for each other.”
I gazed on her expression, so similar to Mum’s. “We need to talk.”
“Yeah, I was waiting for that. Let’s go.”
Mr Hinchcliffe snoozed in an armchair, so Ella and I stepped quietly out to the small conservatory on the side of the house.
“I’ve gone back in time.” My sister took a seat on a low wicker sofa.
I took the opposite one. “All we need now is Mum and Dad to walk in to take us home to bed and it’s just like old times.
” Her head swayed. “You know, I miss them so badly sometimes it hurts. Other times I can barely remember their faces.”
“You were only eight when they died.”
“And you were only eleven.”
“Old enough to know better.” I’d never apologised to Ella, even though I’d caused her to lose her parents, and now…
I had no idea how to make things better.
I hadn’t intended to bring up the accident, but after what happened in the garage, losing myself in Beth with nothing else on my mind than her, I had a new perspective.
A distance. I almost felt protected from the hurt. “Listen, that night, when they died…”
Ella’s eyes flared, but she waited.
“I distracted Dad and caused him to take his eyes off the road. I need to say how sorry—”
“No, James. No,” she bit out. “I know exactly what happened. I’ve read the police reports. Have you?” At my head shake—I was there, I had no reason to read the report—she continued, “Did Richard tell you it was your fault? That’s bullshit.”
“If you’d only been silent, they’d still be alive.”
I’d hated my uncle for telling me the truth, but that didn’t change the facts.
“He was right. But I want your forgiveness and I’ll be able to move on.”
My sister shook her head adamantly. “I can’t forgive where there’s no crime. Did you know Dad was a drunk?”
I stared at her. “He wasn’t drink driving.” I would have known. Surely.
“He had alcohol in his bloodstream, but also in the report was reference to his long-term habit. He was meant to be having treatment, but it obviously hadn’t stuck. It was listed as a contributory factor, his shakes, along with the weather and poor visibility.”
I’d never wanted so badly for a truth to be a lie. Dad had been drinking? I knew, in the recesses of my mind, that he’d enjoyed alcohol too much, in the way a child could understand it. His lateness, his exuberance. Mum’s resignation.
My sister talked through my shock. “All you need to know is that Richard is an evil son of a bitch if he let you assume blame. He manipulated you just like he banished me.”
“The man was grieving, too. I don’t think—” I stopped. I loved my uncle, but too much had happened to make me want to defend him. “He did a poor job at raising us.”
Ella gave a hard laugh. “Understatement of the week. But at least you’re able to see it. You’re different now, and I’m glad. Your friends, the ones you’ve been living with?”
“The McRaes.” The last time I’d spoken to Ella, I’d been about to move in with Gordain and his brothers.
I’d been spinning, my head in a whirl with all I was doing.
With Richard’s complaints and anger at losing control of me.
Back then, I’d assumed I’d have a place for him in my life.
Now, I couldn’t put him in the cosy scene with my sister, with Beth.
With Gordain and the family visiting. The Hinchcliffes at the table.
“One of them is a pilot, right? I’ve had so many dreams where he lands his helicopter in my school grounds and flies me away. He asks me where I want to go, and I say I need to save you. Over and over.”
“He’d probably have done it, if he knew where you were.”
Ella stole a peek through the open door. I followed her gaze to where Beth sat at the dining table, her head bent over a photo album, Mrs Hinchcliffe pointing at pictures. Family photos, I guessed. My chest ached. I put my fingertips on the hurt.
“Then here’s the litmus test. Are you going to marry who Richard wants you to?” Her gaze remained on the scene in the other room.
“No.”
A faint smile lit Ella’s face. “Have you asked Beth yet?”
A knot of apprehension formed in me, and I closed my mouth. My sister finally looked over, and I forced myself through the silence. “We haven’t talked about anything. It’s too soon.”
“You’ve got a matter of weeks. If you aren’t married, a stranger gets everything.”
“I know.” The stranger would be one of a number of second cousins of ours.
Something told me it still couldn’t be Richard, despite what I now knew.
He’d have fought for it his whole life, otherwise.
My claim notwithstanding. But that wasn’t my concern because I had no intention of losing my home.
“Did you ever hear Mum or Dad talk about more requirements than just my being married?”
“No. Why?”
“Nothing about the bride needing to be an heiress, or bringing money to the table somehow?”
She cocked her head. “Is that a thing?”
“Richard has told me so a number of times.”
Ella pondered the idea. “Fuck.”
“Exactly.” Whatever our views were on Richard, both of us knew his obsession with our family history. The battles we’d fought, titles we’d owned, land rights we’d won.
“And Beth being a normal human and not stuck in our weird world means that rules her out?” Ella’s eyes widened.
I watched the realisation of my conflict dawn on her. It had been in the back of my mind, but only now, being here, having everything exactly how I wanted it, did I understand the impact of it all being taken away.
No, not all. I couldn’t lose Beth.
“It doesn’t rule out anything.” My voice came back as a snap.
My sister leaned in. “How can you find out for sure?”
“I’m going to meet with Howard Marks.” My head trustee would have the final answer, and I’d already requested a meeting while sitting in the car waiting for Beth this morning. I didn’t care now about Richard finding out. Why did he need to know first?
“How much does she need to bring to the marriage? Is there a minimum?”
“I’ve no idea. I can’t find any of the paperwork.”
“What if I gave Beth the money?” Urgency crossed Ella’s expression. “If you took over my guardianship, you could approve the loan. Would that work? Shit, no. You can’t be my guardian until you’re twenty-one, and that would be too late, wouldn’t it?”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve researched guardianship rules. Many times.
Unless there’s something wacky in the contract, it should be easily transferrable.
” My sister leapt up and paced to the glass doors leading to the little garden.
Her reflection stared back at me. “I hate it. All of it. Richard controlling anything of mine. The fact I don’t get to spend my own money until I’m twenty-one yet he gets to live off it free and easy.
Whatever happens with the rest of this mess, you have to take over my guardianship. Promise me.”
Frustration surged, because I hated delivering the bad news. “Of course I will. If I can. But this is what I needed to talk to you about. Do you know there was a change recently, awarding Richard guardianship of you until you’re thirty?”
She whipped around. “What? How is that possible?”
“Yesterday, I read the papers in the safe in Mum and Dad’s room. It’s there in black and white. The minimum term was until your twenty-first, but if Richard chose, it could be extended. He put that change in motion.”
Ella stared, open-mouthed. Richard always claimed he had his own money, but if he was living off Ella’s, then that could explain a few things: namely, how he’d been able to afford his place in the US, and why he extended the term. Though under what premise, I had no clue.
“Shit,” I said, finishing my thought process aloud. “Dad signed that paper just before he died. If he was drinking heavily, maybe this sounded like a good idea to him. To protect you for longer.”
“Or maybe Richard arranged it and got a drunk man to sign what he could barely see.”
A faint ticking of a clock, maybe from the kitchen, was the only sound as we both faced a wealth of uncomfortable truths.
“We’re both screwed, then,” Ella eventually said.
Leaping up, I gave my sister a long-delayed hug. “I’m going to do everything I can to fix it.”
“Tell me you can undo these controls when you inherit.”
“I’ll make Howard tell me how.” The trustee board didn’t have the same oversight of Ella’s money as mine, but he’d been part of our parents’ legal team for years. If anyone knew, he would.
“Jesus.” My sister laughed again, undaunted. “Fine, then we have a fight on our hands. At least now I know, brother, whose side you’re on.”
Together, Beth and I explored the downstairs rooms of Belvedere. I told her of my plans to open up the whole suite of state rooms on a permanent basis, and she picked up the occasional antiquity and tried not to freak out.
I loved being able to show her my home, but I got how weird this all was. The art on the walls. The tables in the Elizabethan drawing room no one could ever use. She laughed at the plans my uncle had had for me—to enter the House of Lords and become a politician. I’d never wanted that either.
But there was a point to this. Other than the fact I lived here and this really was a home. Or could be, once again. I had something specific to show her.
We headed to the corridor that housed the portrait hall.
“Where are you taking me now? The treasure counting office? Wait, does this place have a throne room? Or a dungeon?” Beth gripped my hand, putting on a doom-laden voice.
“This will sound weird, but I want to introduce you to my parents.”
I arrived at the right painting and moved Beth in front of me, holding her against my body like a shield. I pushed aside the ugly fact that Dad drank. Maybe I’d always known, but that didn’t make it easier to accept.
“Oh,” Beth said softly, gazing at the modern painting that showed Mum and Dad dancing.
The portrait was of their wedding party. Mum’s loud ways had been captured in her joyful face, her arm stretched out above her head, and Dad’s adoration for his wife shone.
Now I knew he’d chosen Mum—giving up the choice my grandfather had made—I saw the picture differently.
They’d still had a society wedding. The other dancers and onlookers in the painting smiled.
No one showed disapproval and, as I’d seen the original photo this had been painted from, I knew their friends and relatives had been happy for them.
I hugged Beth closer and gazed into Mum’s eyes.
With all my heart, I wished I could do this in real life, for them to be alive and to know how much I adored the woman I’d brought home. But this would have to do.
“Mum, Dad, I’m proud to introduce you to Beth Grace. The most beautiful and perfect woman to walk the planet. And Beth, may I present James and Isla. My parents, the Earl and Countess Fitzroy.”