‘Hit me.’
It was her turn to grin. ‘Phrases you never expect to hear coming from the mouth of an earl. I should start to make a list. Sebastian, I was just wondering. If you do sell the estate – what happens to the villagers?’
‘They’ve mostly got lifetime tenancy agreements, and those things are pretty much unbreakable, so they don’t need to worry. It’s just like a change in management in a football club, or something.’
‘You think I know how football clubs work?’ Jess began to grin.
‘No? To be honest I don’t, either. I’m not sure why I chose that as an example. But what I’m saying is the villagers don’t need to worry.’
‘Not even the ones who would like to see you hung, drawn and quartered?’ She was teasing him – at least he hoped she was.
‘They feel that strongly?’ he asked.
‘I may be exaggerating a bit,’ she said, her smile dropping away, replaced instead by a pensive look.
The conversation should have been at an end, but she stayed put, staring at him. For the first time, Sebastian allowed himself to acknowledge her gentle expression, her oval face set with delicate features. The strength emanating from her wide, dove-grey eyes. There was something she wasn’t saying.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
She pressed her lips together, then sucked in a big breath. ‘OK, so now I’m completely overstepping, but there’s something else I need to ask. It’s been preying on my mind. And I’m going to apologise in advance, because it’s difficult to ask and probably even more difficult to answer. But here goes. I overheard you and Olivia – well, it wasn’t difficult, she was shouting very loudly about who should have inherited Kirkshield, and why. And I wanted to ask – are you OK?’
‘Am I OK?’
‘Yes. I can only imagine how an accusation like that might feel, for you and for your mother. And from your own sister, of all people.’
Sebastian shook his head. ‘Olivia blows very hot very quickly. It’s just who she is. And as for my father’s claims? I always was a disappointment to him. I suppose in a twisted attempt to distance himself from me, the old bastard tried to convince my sister that our mother had an affair, and I was the result. Just because he was a lecherous old bugger, shagging anyone who came close enough for him to get his ugly old paws on …’ Sebastian paused, shaking his head. ‘He never did appreciate our mother. Treated her horribly. But this? It’s completely beyond the pale to accuse her of this. And to make Olivia complicit. My sister never could see his flaws. Didn’t want to, I suppose.’
‘But there’s something I don’t understand,’ Jess said. ‘And I might be being completely indelicate with this thought, so I apologise in advance – but if he didn’t want to think you were his son, why did he leave everything to you? Why not leave the estate to Olivia and be done with it?’
Sebastian smiled, but it was thin, hardly travelling north of his lips. ‘No, it’s a good question. A couple of reasons, I think. Firstly, there’s no way he would have broken with tradition like that. And not because he was a traditionalist, as such, more because it would have screamed my supposed illegitimacy to the establishment, and there’s no way he’d want anyone to think that of him, even posthumously. There’s no way he would have wanted anyone thinking he’d lost control of his wife. And the other reason is …’ Sebastian sighed, as though this was far harder to vocalise, ‘He knew full well our mother would never have done something like that. He knew it was a lie, and the fact that he would do his best to convince Olivia of it anyway – Jess, it’s poisonous.’
‘Dear God, Sebastian. That’s awful. I’m so sorry.’ She looked truly shocked. It was the most genuine reaction Sebastian had heard in a long while. ‘But if he never had any intention of leaving the estate to Olivia, why say any of it at all? What was the point?’
‘To drive a wedge between us all once he was gone, I suppose. Who knows …’
‘That’s so cruel,’ she whispered.
He arched his eyebrows. ‘He was. And since I’ve been back, I’ve started to wonder if he didn’t spend the last ten years buggering up the finances on purpose, to leave me with this mess to deal with.’
‘And there was me thinking I’d missed out by not having a family – other than Vivi, I mean.’
He smiled. ‘As family goes, your aunt Vivi might not be blood, but she’s about as good as it gets. Go and see her, and I’ll let you know when the investor is due to fly in.’
‘Fly in?’
‘Helicopter.’
‘Oh. Wow.’
The mirth in Jess’s expression cushioned him, allowed him to turn the potential dismantling of his heritage into a joke, of sorts. ‘Yes. Hopefully that means he’s got more money than sense and he’ll want to take this old heap off my possibly illegitimate hands.’
He took strength from her gentle smile and left the room before his emotions got the better of him.
Dee woke gently, wrapped up warm and comfortable in Robbie’s bed, the morning sunlight sidling in past the lower edges of the curtains. In the moments it took her to remember where she was, and whose bed she was in, she’d sighed with a contentment she hadn’t felt for far too long, then panicked when she glanced across to find the other side of the bed empty. She’d only just found him. Where had he gone?
Sounds from downstairs gradually percolated through the room: clattering and banging kitchen noises, the gentle burble from a radio. Dee pulled the tartan wool throw from the floor, where it had slipped at some point earlier on, wrapping it around herself as she climbed from the bed and pulled open the door.
She wanted to go to him, to boldly descend the stairs wearing nothing more than the blanket they’d kicked away amid their passion, but Dee paused, suddenly unsure of herself – of any of it.
