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“So they break up, three months later she meets my dad. He’s infatuated, her family’s desperately relieved she’s finally dating someone suitable, and they were engaged and married soon after.”

“Uh huh.”

He kept his gaze on the rim of his glass, where his finger was resting.

“But the press never really got over her. Our family’s estate is one of the oldest in the UK, my father extremely wealthy, my mother very beautiful, and quite charming. She’d been a model and she loved the attention. While she transitioned into the role of society wife with aplomb, she made sure to keep the spotlight on her.”

Tia frowned. “How?”

“Any life event was photographed expertly, the pictures being sold to the highest bidder. Usually OK! or Hello. Pregnancy. Birth of a child⁠—,”

“That would be you?”

He grimaced a nod.

“And my brother. Our first days at school. Home renovations. Milestone birthdays. Everything. Our family became almost as famous as the royal family. We were invited to all sorts of events, and when we were younger, mother would dress us in suits and top hats⁠—,”

Tia lifted a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh.

The look Hamish sent her was droll, but she sensed that beneath it was a serious trauma. “I’m sorry,” she apologised. “It’s just…you’d look pretty cute in a top hat.”

He arched a brow and she did her best to rearrange her features into a more serious expression. “Keep going, I’ll be quiet,” she promised.

“It’s not that. It’s something I haven’t thought about in a long time. I don’t love talking about it.”

“Okay. I get it.” She bit into her lip. “I mean, my childhood’s the same. I can do the high level stuff, you know? Drunk parents who fought all the time, Grace and me ditching school, smoking when we were twelve years old…”

“Delinquent,” he teased, bumping his knee against hers beneath the table. Her blood simmered instantly. She looked away.

“But to talk in any actual detail about it,” she said, glancing away, then sipping her drink—the tiniest of sips only, given her hopes of falling pregnant.

“It’s hard. I mean, to really explain what it was like,” she shuddered. “You kind of had to be there. Not that I’d wish that on anyone.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

She forced a smile. “It was a long time ago.”

He nodded once. “For me, too.”

“Was it?” she pushed, because something about the way he was speaking made her doubt.

“You’re very perceptive.”

“Part of my job.”

“Part of you,” he corrected. “But I bet it helps make you great at your job.”

Warmth flooded her at his praise; she squashed it.

“When Cressida and I got engaged, I wanted to keep it quiet. She’s from another significant family, and I figured there was every likelihood our intention to marry would make a bit of a splash.”

“Fair enough. It’s not anyone’s business but yours.”

“My mother didn’t see it that way. Nor did Cressida’s.”

Tia’s brows shot up.

“They coordinated a press release, ambushed us with a photo shoot when we came back that weekend. It was the first time Cressida had met the family in the capacity of my fiancée and there was a bloody photographer there to capture the whole thing. You cannot imagine how I felt. The sense of being purely a marketing tool for your family—I wanted to grab Cressida and run away just as fast as I could.”