“You need it!”
“It’s a bit bloody late to get a superinjunction now, anyway,” I railed. “I’m all over the paper already.”
“Superinjunction?” my brother scoffed. “Was that your plan? Pathetic.”
I turned to face him, my anger white hot. “And maybe if my family didn’t always treat me like this, I could have come to one of you and asked for help.”
“It wouldn’t have worked,” my sister Kathy said, matter-of-factly. “You’d need to show not only a major breach of privacy but an immediate risk of harm?—”
“And what is this but a major breach of privacy?”
My brother laughed, loud and mocking. “That ship sailed the second your boyfriend made his little public declaration.”
“Sunny said?—”
My brother’s laugh split the air again. “Maybe you shouldn’t take legal advice from a journalist?”
I slumped into the sofa, utterly defeated. It was pointless, hopeless. Gran squeezed my knee. If I looked at her, I’d cry.
“Let me help,” Kathy said, sitting forward on the sofa.
“It’s too late to do anything anyway, apparently,” I huffed.
She shook her head. “We can still tie them up in litigation. If you won’t accept Dad’s help, let me handle the legal side. Please, Pete.”
Her eyes were pleading. She seemed to actually care about me, and not the family name or the idea of being related to a baron or making sure I live by the rules.
Gran tapped my leg. Finally, I looked at her—and her eyes were filled with the supportive, loving, steely determination I had relied on my whole life.
“Let your sister help,” she said. “As old Reggie Kray used to say, ‘save yourself a headache tomorrow and shoot the fucker in the head today.’”
I laughed despite myself.
My sister-in-law looked up from her phone. “Can anyone hear a horse?”
Everyone’s heads tilted towards the window. Sure enough, I could hear the click-clack of horseshoes on bitumen in the distance.
“Funeral?” Kathy suggested.
“They’re too early, I’m still alive,” Gran said.
“It’s only one horse,” my brother said. “Not a full hearse.”
I ran to the front door in time to see Achilles rounding the corner into my parent’s driveway. William was astride, high inthe saddle, bare-chested, wearing nothing but his red satin boxer shorts.
Behind me, my mother gasped. “Good God.”
“What are you doing here?” I said, heart thudding in my chest. My family piled out onto the porch.
“I called Horatio Blunt,” he said. “I agreed to sell everything. Well, not the village. The tenants still get the village.”
There was a collective sharp intake of breath behind me.
“You did what?”
William hopped down. His feet were bare. He held the reins out, and Kathy stepped forward to take them. William cupped my arms, his eyes burning with a passionate intensity.
“All that matters is you,” he said. He was shaking. “I want to be withyou.”
