It was as good an idea as any, he supposed – and one more than he’d managed to come up with – but the fact was they would have to do B and B in the castle for about a thousand years to clear the debts. And that was without all the improvements they’d need to make to the castle itself before anyone would want to stay. People parting with their hard-earned cash wouldn’t be impressed by slow plumbing, or icy temperatures, however grand the room was.
When he’d said rock and a hard place, he’d meant it. It may not be as simple as wanting to keep the estate in the Barclay-Brown family. Regardless of what he’d said about the tenants, and however hard he wanted to protect them, things might have already gone too far.
Sebastian heard the slam of the main entrance door, the chattering voices of his sister and Candida floating along the corridor. Blinking for a few seconds too long, he wondered how long it would take Olivia to seek him out, especially if she’d got wind of Edward Ellingham’s visit.
Not long, if the sounds from the corridor were anything to go by. He could hear Olivia asking Jess where he was.
‘He’s in here.’ Jess’s voice floated in, followed by her pushing open the library door, carrying a mug of coffee in one hand and tailed by Olivia.
Once Jess had deposited the coffee, raised her eyebrows at Sebastian and had withdrawn from the room, Olivia plonked herself into a chair.
‘Good couple of days away?’ Sebastian asked.
Olivia shrugged. ‘Suppose so. Good couple of days here?’
‘I suppose so,’ he countered.
‘Any important visitors while I was away?’ The rise in Olivia’s eyebrows told him she knew all about Ellingham’s visit.
‘I won’t make any decisions without informing you first, Olivia.’
‘Why, thank you so much I’m sure, Your Lordship,’ she said, sarcasm lacing every word. Then she held up her mobile, waving it in his direction. ‘I’ve just received an email from the laboratory. Thought I’d wait until I was here before I opened it, as it concerns you as much as it does me.’
‘They emailed through the results?’ he said.
‘It’s a next-day premium service, so they’re hardly going to rely on snail mail, are they?’
Sebastian bit his lip to stop himself from asking how much the ‘premium service’ had cost.
Olivia paused as she studied the email, her eyebrows furrowing, then arching as she scrolled.
‘Well? What does it say?’ Sebastian was sure the results had never been in any doubt, but the expression on his sister’s face made his fingers tighten around the arms of his chair. She turned her gaze onto him and began to smile.
Olivia’s smile broadened and, to Sebastian’s consternation, she began to laugh.
‘Oh my God. That’s … Well, that’s hilarious.’
‘What’s hilarious?’ Sebastian couldn’t work out how anything to do with establishing their parentage could be so funny. In a way, if it did turn out that he wasn’t Henry’s son, maybe handing all the financial problems over to Olivia might be amusing. But there was no way he had any doubt over his mother, or her misguided loyalty to his father.
‘So, I took some hair from Daddy’s dressing room, from his comb. You know how messy he was, how he left everything lying around. Maybe I should have realised, because I found it on the floor. Anyway, the hair from his comb wasn’t ideal, it’s supposed to have the follicles still on the ends, but it was the best I could do. And I sent that, as well as yours and mine.’ Her features creased into a grin which she fought to get under control. ‘Or at least, I thought it was some of his hair.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Well, it looked like his hair. Although if I think about it, it does make sense. I mean, she doesn’t have much control over it, does she? It goes all over the house.’
‘Speak English, Olivia.’
‘It was dog hair.’ Olivia tossed the phone in his direction, then dissolved into giggles again.
‘Dog hair?’ Sebastian scanned the email.Close familial links between two of the hair samples, likely closely related, siblings with same parents. One hair sample erroneous. Not human hair, instead animal – likely canine.‘Digby?’
Olivia nodded. ‘Must be. If you think about it, his hair and Daddy’s hair are quite similar, in colour at least.’
Sebastian couldn’t help himself, pressing his fingers to his lips as he tried to suppress his laughter. Digby’s fur was a pale silvery grey underneath the apricot tinge on top, and he supposed Olivia was right. Their father’s hair hadn’t been all that dissimilar. He chuckled at the thought of what his father would have made of someone mistaking dog hair for his own, then glanced at Olivia and allowed himself to laugh, enjoying the feeling of sharing a joke, and a proper belly laugh, with his sister.
It took him a while to notice Olivia had stopped laughing, her face creasing as she began to weep instead.
‘What’s wrong?’ Sebastian rounded the desk and wrapped her in a hug. ‘Olivia, what’s the matter?’
