Alexander Ashford
I am standing in my study at nine in the morning when Richard Ames calls to tell me that Sebastian has filed a formal procedural query with the estate's trustees.
The words arrive through the phone in Richard's careful solicitor's voice, the one he uses when he needs me to understand something without reacting to it.
I sit down in the chair beside my desk and listen to him walk through the filing.
Sebastian is citing a clause in my father's will relating to continuous residence at Bodington Estate.
A clause that was inserted in the final codicil eighteen months before my father died.
I already knew about the codicil. I have read it four times in the last month, looking for the shape of what Sebastian might do with it. But hearing Richard explain the formal filing makes it different. Concrete. A thing that now has a docket number and a procedural timeline.
I ask Richard who drafted the codicil.
He pauses before answering. The pause is long enough that I understand the answer matters.
The codicil was drafted by a solicitor named Gerald Prentiss, Richard says. Prentiss retired from practice four years ago. And he had a professional relationship with my stepmother Lady Evelyn Ashford for approximately eleven years.
I sit with that for a long moment.
Evelyn. Who married my father when I was twelve and Sebastian was fifteen. Who spent two decades as the Countess of Bodington and who now lives in the dower house on the estate's north boundary with all the dignity of a woman who believes she was owed more than she received.
I tell Richard to pull every document Prentiss filed on behalf of the estate. I tell him to do it quietly.
Richard agrees. He tells me he will have preliminary findings by Wednesday. He tells me the procedural query will take approximately sixty days to work through the trustees' review process, which gives us time to build a response. He tells me to call if anything changes.
I hang up and look at the study ceiling for three full minutes before I move.
The ceiling is plaster, original to the house, with a hairline crack running toward the window that I have been meaning to have repaired for two years. I have looked at that crack a hundred times. Today it looks like a fracture line through something that only appeared solid.
I open my laptop and begin drafting an email to Charlotte.
I write four sentences. Delete them. Write three different sentences. Delete those as well.
The problem is that I promised her the truth. Yesterday, in the service corridor, with her van idling in the courtyard and her eyes holding mine with the specific patience of someone who has decided to wait but not indefinitely. I told her I would explain everything after I spoke to my solicitor.
Now I have spoken to my solicitor. And what I have learned is that the codicil my brother is using to challenge my inheritance was drafted by a man who worked for my stepmother for over a decade.
I close the laptop without sending anything.
Victoria arrives at Ashford House at six without an appointment.
Mrs Hartley shows her into the drawing room and offers tea, which Victoria declines with the precise warmth she deploys when she wants something to seem casual. I find her standing at the window overlooking the garden, her reflection in the glass watching me enter before she turns.
Victoria is wearing pale grey today. She always wears pale colours, dove and cream and silver, as though brightness might be interpreted as trying too hard.
Her hair is pulled back from her face in a style that probably has a name I do not know.
She looks exactly like what she is: the daughter of a Marquess, educated to occupy rooms like this one without appearing to notice them.
I am checking on the gala arrangements, she says. On behalf of the foundation's board.
You are not on the foundation's board, I say.
Victoria smiles. The smile does not change anything about her eyes. I am aware of their interests.
I offer her a seat. She takes the chair nearest the fireplace, crossing her ankles in the way finishing schools apparently still teach. I remain standing because sitting across from Victoria has always felt like agreeing to rules I did not set.
She asks about the floral displays. I tell her the commission is complete and the designer has done excellent work. She asks who the designer is and I tell her. Charlotte Ellis. Petals and Promises. Oxford.
Victoria files the name away behind her expression the way she files everything away.
I watch her do it and I am aware, suddenly, of how long I have been watching Victoria file things away.
Years. Since Sebastian first brought her to a family dinner and she sat at the table assessing the silverware and the paintings and the width of the hallway outside.
The flowers are lovely, Victoria says. She is still smiling. You must be pleased with how the evening will come together.
I am.
And Miss Ellis. Victoria's pause is deliberate. She will be attending the gala itself?
As the designer. Yes.
Victoria stands. She smooths her skirt with one hand, a gesture that looks automatic but is not. I do hope the evening goes well for you, she says. These events can be so unpredictable.
She walks toward the door. At the threshold she pauses and turns back.
Sebastian mentioned you have been keeping rather close to the preparations this year. Personally involved. She tilts her head. It is nice to see you taking an interest in something.
Goodbye, Victoria.
She leaves. I hear the front door close behind her, then the sound of her car in the courtyard. I stand in the drawing room for a long moment after, thinking about the specific weight of her questions and what she will tell Sebastian when she gets home.
After Victoria leaves I sit at my desk and think about Sebastian's call to Charlotte yesterday morning.
He called a woman he met once. He called her before seven in the morning and implied the commission was legally compromised. He gave her his card and wrote a message designed to make her doubt me.
Sebastian is not trying to undo the gala. The flowers are already in place and the event is tomorrow. What he wanted was to open a line to Charlotte that runs through me. To use the inheritance question as the handle.
I write Charlotte's name on the notepad beside my keyboard. Look at it. The letters in my own handwriting. C-h-a-r-l-o-t-t-e.
I cross it out.
I should tell her more than I have. I know this.
Oliver told me so two nights ago and he was right.
The truth she needs is not complicated: my stepmother apparently helped create the legal ambiguity my brother is now exploiting, and I have spent three months building a file to defend against it instead of explaining any of this to the people around me.
But telling Charlotte means admitting that I brought her into a situation I did not fully disclose. That every time she asked a question and I gave her half an answer, I was deciding for her what she was permitted to know.
I look at the crossed out name on the notepad.
I open my laptop again. This time I do not try to write an email.
I open the photograph I took weeks ago of Charlotte's margin notes on the original brief.
Ranunculus, poor east light, try anemone.
The handwriting quick and certain. The underline beneath anemone as definitive as anything I have read in a legal document.
I think about the eucalyptus stem she handed me in the ballroom when I could not breathe. I think about the peony she left on the mantle, positioned precisely where the light would find it.
I think about standing three inches from her in the service corridor yesterday and wanting to close the distance so badly that my hands ached with it.
The phone rings.
Charlotte's name on the screen.
I answer immediately.
I spoke with my solicitor, I tell her. Before she can say anything else. He had news this morning.
There is a pause. I can hear something in the background of her call, the quiet sounds of the studio where she works. Stems in water. The hum of a refrigeration unit.
What kind of news?
The kind I need to tell you in person.
Another pause. Longer this time. When she speaks again her voice is careful.
Sebastian texted me last night.
I close my eyes.
A photograph, she continues. You outside a solicitor's office. Shaking hands with someone in a suit. The caption said I should ask you who Fairfax Holdings is.
Charlotte, I say. And I do not have the next words ready. Her name is all I have.
I was not going to ask, she says. I was going to wait until you told me, the way you said you would. But then I thought about it all night and I realised something.
What?
You have been protecting me from information I did not ask to be protected from. And I need you to stop.
The words land in my chest with the specific weight of things that are true.
I know, I say.
So tell me.
I sit at my desk with the phone pressed to my ear and I tell her.
I tell her about Fairfax Holdings and their interest in the estate. I tell her about Sebastian's procedural query and the codicil and the residence clause. I tell her about Gerald Prentiss and his eleven year professional relationship with my stepmother.
I tell her I have been building a file for three months and I did not tell her any of this because I was trying to manage it. To solve it before anyone had to know how serious it was.
I tell her I was wrong.
The silence on the line after I finish is the longest of my life.
Then Charlotte says: I am coming to London tomorrow. After the gala is set. I want to see this file you have been building.
I look at the ceiling crack above my desk.
All right, I say.
And I want you to stop deciding for me what I can handle.
All right.
Another pause. When she speaks again her voice is softer. Not gentle exactly. Just less defended.
The photograph Sebastian sent me, she says. You looked tired.
I was.
Are you sleeping?
No.
There is a breath on the line. Not quite a sigh.
Try, she says. I need you coherent when I get there.
She hangs up.
I sit at my desk holding my phone for a long time after. The study is dark now, the winter evening having arrived while I was talking. I should turn on a lamp. I should eat something. I should sleep, the way Charlotte told me to.
Instead I open my laptop and begin drafting a message to Charlotte that I have been unable to write all day. The words come easier now that I have already said them aloud.
I type three sentences about the file I will show her tomorrow. I type one sentence about the peony she left on the mantle.
I delete the sentence about the peony.
I send the rest.