Tolly attempts to hug me and I pull away, wincing.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he says, stepping back.
Somehow that feels worse.
“Gael, nothing you heard was the truth. I’d gone there knowing he’d mismanaged the estate’s funds, but he was going to sell Adrian’s land out from under him. Once I realized how horrible he was willing to be, I said whatever I could to keep him talking.”
I shook my head. “But you—”
“It meant nothing,” he insists, cutting me off. “Something you’d know if you’d turn on your damned phone.”
“Well, someone should hand you an Academy Award, then. You convinced me,” I fire back, fishing my phone out of my pocket.
I forgot that I’d turned it off, so I power it up and tap my foot impatiently as it boots up.
Dozens of increasingly worried-sounding texts from Tolly and Bea are waiting for me. I can hear her last message in that posh, warm voice of hers.
Bea: He was trying to protect us.
Bea: And may have accidentally started a land war between the Middletons and the Shrewsburys.
I laugh at her dry humor, then notice a text from Ant.
Ant: He told me that if he was lying that I could send Hopper after him.
Ant: Not Anders. Hopper.
“I never had any intention of marrying Clara or being a part of anything that stripped her of her autonomy, I swear it.” Tolly’s voice has an edge of desperation to it, and I know he’s telling the truth.
I’ve been so crushed, spending these last twelve hours unable to reconcile the man I’d come to know and love with that cold, calculating voice. But this voice? Somehow both crisp and warm? This is the voice I recognize.
“Gael, I can only imagine what must’ve been going through your mind. Growing up, I learned how to placate my parents, keep the ruse going, make them think that I would eventually settle down and be a part of their estate life. I’d been happy with my adventures, and I think some small part of me thought I would eventually want to settle down. But then I was there with you, and I realized I would never want a life that didn’t include you in it.”
“I would never be comfortable in the estate life, Tolly. And definitely not as some side piece.”
“God, me neither. I don’t care about some stuffy estate, but I wasn’t going to flounce off and leave the people I care about to the wolves. I had to play the game one last time. And I would never do you the dishonor of a less-than-forthright relationship.”
I shake my head. “How? What did you do?”
“My father had already partitioned the land. So, I had my barrister use one of my shell corporations to make an offer above what he was selling it for. By the time I hit American airspace, he’d accepted it.”
“But he said if you married Clara—”
“He lied.”
“That poor girl.”
“Clara is no poor girl, I can assure you. As it happens, she and her wife—”
“Wife?”
His grin melts off more of the ice around my heart. “Wife. They got married in secret, so the deal was always going to be off. She hadn’t known the extent to which her family was willing to sell her and her brother off to my awful family. I offered to help her, but, just like Bea, she told me to fuck off with my white knight syndrome. I suspect she’ll enjoy confronting her family.”
“What about Bea? Did she go to Heli?”
“She did,” he said, smiling. “They’re officially together. The section of land my father partitioned is quite large, and if Adrian and Dimitra willing—which I know they will be—she and Heli can build a house on it alongside them. All of the kids can.”
“But you said bringing me was a mistake.”
