Since Davi was coming down to Somerset as soon as they had arrangements for the funeral, she was going to take care of Sorcha until then, but Dair needed a backup plan for his dog too. Therefore, he’d set that up as well.
Then he’d called his father, only to discover Balfour already knew, something that wasn’t surprising since it was all over the news. Much of it including old photos of Helena and Ned, along with pictures of Alex with Rix, and a different photo of Dair and Blake taken at the airport. This one of them walking and dragging her luggage, connected together and smiling at each other.
To the man’s credit, his father didn’t push anything else during that call.
He’d asked, “Blake is with ye?”
“Aye. We’re headed down shortly.”
“How’s she faring?”
“Not great.”
“Ye need anything, she needs anything, ye ring me,” his dad ordered.
Dair didn’t reply.
“Obviously, I’ll be attending the funeral,” his father went on.
Dair continued to say nothing.
“This isn’t the time, son. Just see to Blake,” Balfour concluded.
“Not something you have to tell me,” Dair returned. “I’ll see you at the funeral.”
And with that, he rang off.
When he was able to turn his phone back on after the flight, he had texts from Davi to say she’d picked up Mum, told her, and they were making plans to come down. They’d be in England by Friday, latest, but they were hoping to be down the next day.
This on top of a variety of group texts from Ned and Alex sharing their plans (Ned was flying commercial and was already on his way—Hale Wheeler was sending one of his planes to Alex and Rix to bring them over).
Blake spoke briefly to her sister on the ride from the airport to Treverton.
His woman had woken up to a call from the police communicating their need to speak to her as well as, since she was in the country, requesting she identify the body.
They were dropping their bags first and then heading to take care of that unhappy chore.
In the interim, they got further news of the crash, and this included a two-year-old had also lost her life.
Blake was wandering around lifeless, but when she heard that news, it visibly crushed her.
In turn, that crushed him, but there was nothing he could do but be at her side and see to anything that needed to get done.
As he drove up the drive, he took in the vivid green lawns and yellow Bath stone of the manor proper.
Wallace money was new money. Balfour—kickstarted by his father’s minor but not insignificant success with a small printing company—had built it and diversified it. And when the time came, he constructed a fine home in the country from good red Scottish stone in an old-style that was both roomy and mildly ostentatious.
His mother’s hand had kept that at “mildly.”
Treverton was old money, which somehow managed never to be ostentatious, even if it was a massive house with an attached, forward angled wing, twenty-five-foot ceilings inside, a dozen bedrooms, and a detached private chapel.
And, not incidentally in this time, a family cemetery behind that chapel.
Dair had always liked Treverton, mostly because the rooms were huge, there was a good deal of land attached to it to explore, and the stables were always full.
Now, he saw it differently.
Because it was Blake’s.
