God, who was this man?
“Dair, you can go whenever you want,” I told him. “You could always have done that. But if you’re concerned about what’s left to do, in about ten minutes, there’s going to be a bouquet toss. A driver is then going to take Alex and Rix down to Phoenix, and I made sure they had a car with a partition they could put up because they’re going to be banging the entire way. They’ve got two nights at the Phoenician before they head down to St. Lucia for their honeymoon. Once they’re away, the coast will be clear. But for you, it is already.”
I felt triumphant that my comment about my sister and new brother-in-law banging wrung a small smile out of his mouth.
But I finished, “So you’re good to go. And, uh…thanks for helping me out.”
He simply nodded and watched the bartender put my martini in front of me.
I picked it up and took a healthy sip.
He watched that too.
Then he asked, “When did ye ken?”
Ulk.
I didn’t want to talk about it.
But I felt I had to, because he obviously did want to have this chat, and we were in the same boat, him and me.
Though, I didn’t have a parent’s mental and emotional health to consider.
“Feels like all my life,” I mumbled into my martini glass. I looked over it to him. “You?”
“Same. How’d ye find out?”
I made a face. “Do I really have to say?”
“I saw them fucking in the stables. I was eleven.”
Gross!
The bartender put his whisky in front of him, and fortunately, he didn’t down it in two.
He just wrapped his fingers around it and raised his brows at me in question.
“The upstairs hallway,” I forced out. “Against the wall. We were all in the country at Treverton, and your mum, Davina and Alex were off tramping around some National Trust property. They thought I’d gone too, but I bowed out at the last minute.”
“How old were ye?”
“I don’t actually remember. But no more than ten.”
Dair turned his attention to his whisky glass. “Not exactly stealth, those two.”
“No,” I said miserably.
I wanted to ask him if he thought his mother knew, but I didn’t want to make this harder on him.
I didn’t have to ask, though, because he told me.
“She was their Camilla, your mum.”
God, that was so awful.
I sidled closer to him and asked, “So…she knew.”
He lifted his glass, took a sip, put it down and nodded to the glass. “She knew. Never told me. But I knew she knew. Put on a brave face. Probably kept hoping he’d end it and come back to her fully.” The last he said quieter. “Not sure why she decided tonight to stop pretending.”
