Blair sits back in her chair and closes her eyes. “Is this truth or rumour?”
“Rumour,” Isaac says. “Nothing has been announced and there haven’t been any formal engagements together so it could just be a story that’s been amplified.” He puts down his cutlery and relaxes back in the chair. He goes back to London tomorrow.
I don’t know what will happen tonight.
“I’ll contact her. See if she wants to meet for dinner while I’m in Edinburgh.” Blair looks at me. “If we can make that happen given every place needs to be disinfected and swept for bugs.”
“Keeping you safe, princess.” I mutter the words and feel the kick under the table at the title.
Isaac laughs. It’s an unfamiliar noise. “He’s not wrong. It is to keep you safe.”
“I know. I hate the title.”
“But that’s what you are.”
She looks at Isaac with curious eyes, like a cat that’s just spotted a new mouse and isn’t sure whether it’ll be tasty. “Then what are you? No one questioned the interest you had in us, in my family. Why?”
Isaac looks at me. “He’s told you who I am.”
Blair glances at me and I nod. No point lying, for once.
“Yes. You’re Goldsmith’s half-brother.”
“My grandfather knew your father. Years ago, when we were kids.” Isaac looks at me and folds his napkin. “I knew about you as soon as I knew who my father was.”
I sit back. There’s never been any question about Isaac and people in the castle kind of knew him, those that had worked for the king for some time.
“Who was your grandfather?” Blair asks.
“Jeremiah Goldsmith. He was a professor of history at Oxford and very different to his son, my father. When he found out about me he came to visit. Twice a year after that he’d come and spend a week with us. We’d walk round the ruins in Tintagel which was meant to be part of Camelot and visit St Nectern’s Glen. He was a good man. He told me about you.”
Blair nods. “I remember him. He’d talk with my dad about history and the Scottish clans. I was too little.” She pauses. “Did you ever visit the castle?”
Isaac shakes his head. “Once. You were away at school.” He looks at me. “You weren’t. You were here with your father.”
I stare at him, trying to place if I saw him then but nothing came to mind. “How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
“I would’ve been fifteen. What time of year?”
“Easter. It was a couple of days before Blair came home. Her father was talking about it. I’d just been sent away to school and I hated it. Ivy stayed at home and went to the local high school and I wished I was there. When I saw what sort of home someone else who went to boarding school had and I wondered what the hell I was doing.”
I remember him now. Small, skinny, a mop of black hair and I didn’t know at first whether he was a girl or a boy because he had that prettiness that could’ve been either.
“You changed a lot.”
Isaac laughs. “I remembered you when I first saw you earlier this year. You were tall and broad back then. I was terrified of you. Then I realised I didn’t even register on your radar.”
“I was in my own world back then.” My aunt. Her ‘friends’. Everything falling to pieces that I couldn’t stop from blowing away.
“It’s okay.” He looks from me to Blair. “I thought this would be strange.”
Blair takes a gulp of wine. “It is. We’re just trying to ignore it.”
There’s a pause where awkwardness haunts the table.
“We can forget the stables ever happened if that’s what you need.” Isaac’s words are hushed and low. “I don’t want to come between the two of you.”
