Alexander Ashford
Richard's voice comes through the phone on speaker, flat and precise the way it always was when the news was serious.
Charlotte stands beside me at her studio counter, close enough that I could smell the green water and cut stems that meant she had been working since before dawn. She has not stepped back when I put the call on speaker. She has moved closer.
"Sebastian submitted the forged email chain to the trustees yesterday," Richard says. "The filing landed before I could register your challenge to the codicil. Procedurally, they're required to open a formal review."
"Which means what?" Charlotte's voice was level. Direct. The same tone she used when she was adjusting a floral arch and someone suggested she might be wrong about the light.
"It means Alexander's counterclaim is frozen. Minimum thirty days while they evaluate Sebastian's submission."
I watch Charlotte's hand flatten against the counter. Her knuckles went white for a moment, then relaxed. She was processing. Calculating. Not panicking.
"Thirty days," she repeated. "And during those thirty days?"
"During those thirty days, I assemble everything we need to prove the emails are fabricated.
" Richard's tone shifted slightly. More engaged now that she was asking the right questions.
"The Calloway deposition is ready to file.
It establishes the codicil was manufactured.
I have the original Fairfax correspondence in my files showing every approach they made was refused on Alexander's behalf.
And I'll engage a forensic document examiner to analyse the metadata on those emails.
The timestamp formatting alone should be enough to demonstrate they didn't originate from Alexander's devices. "
"Thirty days is enough time?" Charlotte asked.
"If nothing else moves. Yes."
I look at her profile while Richard outlined the procedural timeline.
The morning light caught the red in her hair, turned it copper where it fell against her shoulder.
Three days ago I had woken up with that hair spread across my pillow, her warmth pressed against my side, and the terrifying certainty that I had never wanted anything the way I want her to stay.
She had left for Oxford that morning. Work. Obligations. The wedding consultation she had mentioned. And I had let her go because I was still learning how to not control everything, how to trust that someone could walk out of my house and choose to walk back in.
Then Sebastian had gotten to her.
"Alexander." Richard's voice pulls me back. "Did you hear what I say?"
"You need me to come to your office. Tomorrow morning."
"This morning would be better. But tomorrow will do if you're in Oxford."
Charlotte's eyes meet mine. A question in them that had nothing to do with legal filings.
"I'll be there at nine," I say.
After I ended the call, the silence in the studio settled around us like something with weight. Charlotte turned to face me fully, her back against the counter, her arms crossed. Not defensive. Waiting.
"Sebastian submitted forged evidence to the trustees." She said it like she was testing the shape of the words. "Evidence he believes is real."
"Yes."
"Evidence his mother gave him."
"Almost certainly."
"And if the emails aren't real, then everything Sebastian built his case on collapses."
"It doesn't just collapse." I set my phone on the counter beside her conditioning knife, the one with the worn handle she had probably been using since before she opened this shop.
"If we prove the emails are fabricated, Sebastian's position with the trustees becomes untenable.
He'll have submitted forged documents to a legal proceeding. His credibility disappears."
"He'll lose everything."
"He'll lose the claim he was manipulated into making. The one his mother engineered from the beginning."
Charlotte is quiet for a long moment. I watch her work through it the way she worked through a design problem, turning it over, examining it from every angle. The refrigeration unit hummed in the back room. Somewhere outside, a delivery van passed on the Oxford street.
"Sebastian doesn't know," she says finally. "About any of this. The trust payments to Calloway. The codicil manipulation. He thinks his mother was trying to protect him."
"He thinks she was trying to give him what she believed he deserved."
"And instead she was using him."
"Yes."
Her jaw tightens. "That's going to destroy him."
"I know."
"When he finds out his mother manufactured this entire situation, that she fed him evidence she knew was false, that she's been playing him against you for years while pretending to be on his side..."
"Charlotte."
She looks at me. Really looks. The kind of look that stripped away everything I had spent my adult life building between myself and the world.
"You're going to tell him," she says. It isn't a question.
"He's my brother."
"He's been trying to take your home from you."
"He's been trying to take what he was told should be his. What his mother spent years convincing him he deserved. He didn't create this situation. He was placed in it and pointed at me like a weapon."
Charlotte's expression shifts. Something softer moved through her eyes, there and gone before I could name it. "You still care about him."
"He's the only brother I have. Whatever else he is, whatever he's done with this legal challenge, he's been manipulated by someone who was supposed to protect him. And he deserves to hear that from me before he hears it from Richard's legal filings or from a confrontation with Evelyn."
She pushes off from the counter and crossed the small space to where I stand by the door. Close enough that I could see the faint circles under her eyes. She hadn't slept well either.
"What do you need?" she asks.
The question landed somewhere in my chest and stayed there.
"Richard needs to find documentation that proves the email chain didn't originate from my devices. Metadata analysis. Timestamp comparisons. Something forensic enough to satisfy the trustees."
"And beyond what Richard can do legally?"
I hesitated. This was the part I had been dreading. The part where I stop managing and started trusting.
"Charlotte, you don't need to be involved in this. Sebastian already tried to use you to get to me. Evelyn knows who you are now. If you stay connected to this situation, they will both try to use you."
"Alexander." Her voice was quiet but it stopped me mid-sentence. "I told you to stop deciding what I can handle. You promised."
"I know."
"Then tell me what you actually need. Not what you think I should be protected from."
I close my eyes for a moment. Open them.
"I need to prove the codicil was manufactured, not just contested. I need to trace the instructions back to Evelyn definitively. And I need to tell Sebastian the truth before his mother can spin this into something that makes him hate me even more than he already does."
Charlotte nodded slowly. "The document trail leads to Calloway. Richard's deposition covers that. But if you want to prove Evelyn instructed the manipulation, you need something that connects her directly to Prentiss's actions. Something beyond the trust payments."
"Richard is looking for financial records that show her involvement. Bank transfers. Communication logs. Anything that ties her to the specific language in the codicil."
"What about people who worked in the probate courts? Someone might remember an irregular filing. Prentiss wasn't exactly careful about covering his tracks if he thought he was protected."
I stare at her. "How do you know that?"
"Diane Forsythe's husband worked as a clerk in the probate system before he retired. He's the one who remembered the flagged irregularity. The one who gave us Evelyn's name on the authorization."
"Charlotte." I reach for her hand before I could think better of it. Her fingers were cool from the conditioning water, slightly damp. She didn't pull away. "You found that connection. You pulled that thread. Without you, Richard might never have discovered the second name on the memo."
"I asked questions. That's all."
"You asked the right questions. And you didn't have to. This isn't your fight."
Her hand turned in mine, palm pressing against palm. "You keep saying that. Like I haven't already decided to be here."
"Have you?"
The question hung between us. I could hear my own heartbeat in the silence that followed.
"I'm still here," she says quietly. "I'm still standing in this studio with you at eight in the morning instead of conditioning the stems I need for Thursday's arrangement.
I drove to London on Tuesday to meet your brother in a hotel bar because I want to know if you were lying to me.
I look at his documents and I come back and I showed them to Jess and I called you at nine o'clock at night and made you explain yourself.
And then I told you to come here this morning because I want to see your face when you answered my questions. "
"And now?"
"Now I'm looking at your face. And I'm seeing someone who's scared of losing his home and his brother and the woman who's standing in front of him asking too many questions."
I couldn't speak for a moment. She had stripped it all down to the essential facts, the way she stripped leaves from stems. Quick. Efficient. No wasted motion.
"I am scared," I say finally. "Of all of those things."
"Good." Her grip tightened on my hand. "Because if you weren't, I'd think you didn't care about any of it."
"Charlotte."
"What?"
"I need to call Sebastian."
She nods once. "I know."
"He deserves to know what's happening before Evelyn gets to him. Before Richard's filings make everything public. Before he reads about his mother's betrayal in legal documents instead of hearing it from someone who gives a damn whether it breaks him."
"Then call him."
"Will you stay?"
The question came out before I could shape it into something less raw. Less revealing. She looked at me for a long moment, her blue eyes steady on mine, and I watch her make a decision.
"Together," she says. "We call him together."
I pull out my phone. My hand wasn't quite steady. Charlotte noticed. She didn't comment. She just moved closer, her shoulder pressing against my arm, her presence solid and warm beside me.
Sebastian's number was the third entry in my contacts.
I hadn't called it in months. Our communications had been formal, careful, routed through solicitors and careful neutral language.
The last time I'd heard his voice without a legal intermediary had been November, when he'd shown up at Ashford House with accusations and what he believed was proof.
I press the call button.
The phone rang three times. Four.
Charlotte's hand found mine again, her fingers threading through mine and holding on.
On the fifth ring, Sebastian answered.