day 1, evening #3
Audrey nodded, still smiling that tremulous smile. “My elder sister. I adored her.” A shrug of a delicate shoulder, her eyes swinging to her husband—her brother-in-law. “When she was gone, we were both so devastated, even though we knew it was inevitable.”
Claire’s initial spear of surprise was blunted with pity. “Was she sick?”
“Yes,” Mr. Ashbury said.
A pause, then Audrey nodded, looking at her plate. Claire instantly regretting asking about this. It wasn’t fair of her to make them relive their trauma. They weren’t doing it to her, for all that Audrey, at least, knew about the accident. And it was the kind that made people curious.
“She made certain sacrifices for us,” Mr. Ashbury continued, holding his wife’s hand. “Being in this family—being as blessed as we are—it requires some unpleasant business, sometimes. But Jo faced it head-on. She never backed down from a challenge.”
Maybe something about the family business had made her sick. Maybe Josephine Ashbury had been one of their scientists, or a test driver for the submarines or something, and had either contracted some weird ocean illness or died in an accident.
Claire gave a small, closed-mouthed smile, hoping it showed care and sympathy without seeming ghoulish. “She sounds like a wonderful woman.”
Wellsley seemed genuinely touched. “She was.”
Audrey nodded, her own mouth arranged similarly to Claire’s. “We all loved her so much.”
Patrick sat back. Dierdre shot him a brief, venomous look that Claire couldn’t make sense of, then glanced down at her plate again, picking around fish bones.
For all that the other two Ashbury brothers seemed happily married, there was some tension between Patrick and Dierdre.
Claire guessed it wasn’t feasible for every marriage in an extremely privileged family to be pleasant.
Theo was looking at Claire, a softness in his gaze, still cocooned beneath his husband’s arm. She returned his smile. She and Theo could be friends. It sounded like their lives had been somewhat similar.
“It brought us together,” Audrey said, taking another sip of her wine, seemingly bolstered.
“Grieving her. We’d all known each other since we were children, so Wellsley and I had always been friends, but it blossomed once Jo was…
was gone.” She gave her husband’s hand a squeeze, tight, then dropped it.
“Our family has been employed by the Ashburys nearly since they first started the business on the island. Most of my relatives still live here. None of them ever imagined we’d become part of the Ashburys. ”
Audrey spoke of her husband near-adoringly, like she’d married into royalty instead of maritime turbo-wealth.
Maybe the two things were fairly similar, in the end, and it sounded like they operated on similar rules.
Sure, it was weird that Audrey had married her sister’s widower, but not all that weird, maybe.
People fell in love with their spouse’s siblings.
It happened. And Claire assumed people also fell in love with their employees, especially people in this tax bracket.
Ethical, maybe not, but who was she to judge?
“My aunt is still alive,” she said, abruptly changing the subject back to her own family.
Now that she’d started talking about them, she perversely didn’t want to stop, like popping a whitehead.
“But we don’t really keep in touch. We didn’t even when I lived in her house, really.
” She nodded at Audrey, tried not to let her voice grate over the next part, wished Ash were there to hear it. “Ash was lucky to have you.”
Audrey laid her hand over her sternum, setting her diamond pendant to winking. “Thank you, Claire.” A tiny, nervous laugh. “If only he thought so.”
“We’ve gone easy on him.” This from Greg, shaking his head.
The third Ashbury brother was visibly younger than Patrick, but with the same rugged looks and the lean build of a distance runner.
Thus far, Claire hadn’t seen him speak much to anyone but his husband.
“Our family places high expectations on our offspring because we know that they can rise to them. That it is necessary. When one person shirks their responsibilities, those responsibilities come back on their siblings. Onto the whole family.” He sipped his wine.
“That boy doesn’t know how good he’s had it. ”
That boy was at least thirty, which probably wasn’t that much younger than Greg, but Claire didn’t think her pointing that out would be well received.
Greg’s vehemence was off-putting, after everyone else had made it a point to tiptoe around it, to focus more on the ways their family came together than on the ways it drifted apart.
Mr. Ashbury seemed to think so, too; he gave Greg a warning look.
Next to his husband, Theo looked down at his fish as if hoping its gaping mouth might somehow contribute to the conversation.
“Ash will come around,” Audrey said with a sigh. She glanced at Claire, gave her a small smile. “He already seems to be.”
If this was coming around, Claire was very glad she’d missed Ash before.
Mr. Ashbury tapped on the rim of his wineglass.
A woman dressed in the black and white of household staff emerged from the shadows, refilled the glass, then stepped away.
She was the only staff member Claire had seen, other than Alton.
Blonde, blandly pretty. There was an odd knot at the base of her neck, a lump almost like a goiter, shockingly incongruous against youth and beauty.
It reminded Claire of the driver’s wrist. Maybe the Ashburys made a habit of hiring help with physical issues? Something about that felt icky. But at least their hearts were in the right place.
Audrey also tapped her rim for a refill, but didn’t make eye contact with the woman as she poured wine, then faded quickly back into the gloom. The room was markedly darker now that the sun had gone down, the old-movie lamps studded around the room doing little with their yellow glow.
“He’d better learn,” Greg said, sitting back. Everyone shot him withering looks. Even if he was saying what they were thinking, the rest of them were well-mannered enough to keep it quiet.
Theo dug his fork into a carrot. “Go easy on him, Greg. He’s dealt with a lot.”
Greg shook his head but visibly softened at his husband’s chastising. “We all have.”
Quiet, broken only by the soft clink of cutlery and the gentle wash of water against the windows. Then, with a contented sigh and one last swig of wine, Wellington Ashbury stood. “Well then. I suppose it’s time we showed you.”
Nerves sparked in Claire’s belly, though she wasn’t exactly sure why. “Show me what?”
The Ashbury patriarch smiled, though the curve of it did nothing to make his sea-colored eyes look less cold. “The submarine, of course.”