He looked straight at me then. I looked away. I didn’t want to talk about Sir Edward and Angelica now. I couldn’t help but notice William hadn’t actually described what the old baron had been like as a father.
“How do you rebel against a father who leaves pot for you in his desk drawer?”
William laughed. “You become a fantasy-reading,Dungeons and Dragons–playing rugby jock.”
“How did that go down?” I offered him the joint, but he shook his head.
“He didn’t care in the least, as long as I was happy.”
My heart wrung itself out in my chest, the way it always did when someone talked about having loving, supportive parents.
“You’re lucky, bruv. What was it like growing up here?”
“As childhoods go, it could have been a lot worse. My parents indulged our imagination. They encouraged us to get outside and play. We had four thousand acres and no discipline. I remember, one time, David and I had a fight over—I don’tremember—something stupid. I felt slighted and I declared, rather pompously, as I was all of seven, ‘I demand satisfaction.’ Goodness only knows what I’d been reading at the time. Well, Dad thought that was hilarious. So, our parents acted as seconds while my brother and I fought a duel, over there on the Great Lawn, with pea-shooters made from hollowed-out biros. David and I fired spitballs at each other for five minutes, until I finally managed to hit him square between the eyes with a really gloopy one, and honour was satisfied.”
I laughed. “For real?”
“That was parenting the way my folks did it.”
“Sounds magical.”
“It was. I thought so, anyway. Until I discovered he was as lax with everything else as he was with discipline.”
William was opening up. He was quietly crying. Neither of us mentioned it.
“Do you mind if I ask what happened to them?”
“You don’t know?”
I said I didn’t, and William shrugged. “It’s all a matter of public record. It was a light plane crash. David was an amateur pilot. He’d taken Dad up for a joy flight. He liked to do that sometimes. They had engine trouble, David tried to land it in a field, came down too steeply, and instead of skating along the grass, slammed into the ground. They died instantly.”
“I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t think what else to say. William reached for the joint and I handed it to him, grateful to have something to do. “That must have been a really hard time.”
“I was on a rugby trip down in London when it happened. There was a train strike, the roads were jammed. I couldn’t get home. I was stranded, heartbroken, and alone. I cried myself to sleep in a cheap hotel in Saint Pancras that night. When I finally did get home and someone called me ‘my lord’ for the first time,I found I was actually rather angry. I still am, sometimes. At Dad. At David. At life. But it is what it is. And here we are.”
William sucked the smoke into his lungs, then covered his mouth as he spluttered and coughed. I passed him my drink. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine. Perhaps it’s not a great idea to smoke a joint that’s older than your trauma?” He coughed again. “Anyway, we rallied. My godparents—you remember Leaf and Karma?”
“The fox hunt saboteurs?”
“They came down and stayed for a few weeks, to look after Mum. My sister and her husband came up from London with the kids. We had a lot to sort out. Including what it meant for my sister’s boy, Callum, who was now the heir. We sat around and drank a lot and talked a lot and had a tonne of meetings with accountants and lawyers and slowly came to the terrible realisation we were all quite fucked.”
“Fucked how?”
William shook his head. “Never mind.”
He took another hit on the joint, passed it to me, and got up and opened another window. He stood there, letting the cool night air drift over his skin, his body bathed in moonlight. He was beautiful. My stomach fluttered with nerves, and I took a hit to calm them. It was time to shoot my shot.
“The man at the pub today?”
William turned to look at me, resting his buttocks against the windowsill.
“What did he want?”
“He wants me to sell the estate. He’s found buyers. Belarusian oligarchs. They’re cashed up, and they’re determined. They want to turn it into a hotel.”
“You’re kidding. You’re not going to sell it, are you?”
