Part 10
“What company?”
“Alderwick Agricultural Holdings.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“It received nine hundred thousand pounds from the trust and transferred most of it to the estate within six days.”
“Who owned it?”
“Edmund and your father.”
Nathan turned off the tap.
Celia pushed the cereal away.
“There is more,” she said. “Your mother signed two annual accounts as company secretary.”
He looked at her.
“She may not have understood them,” Celia added.
“Or she may have.”
“Yes.”
Nathan dried his hands carefully.
“Do not decide before we know.”
“I haven’t.”
“You looked as though you had.”
“I looked at you.”
“That is not reassuring.”
Celia pressed her palms to the edge of the table and stood. Her face tightened.
Nathan moved toward her.
She shook her head. “Braxton Hicks.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How sure?”
She looked up. “Would you like me to produce a certificate?”
“No.”
The pain—or pressure, or whatever distinction mattered—passed. She exhaled.
Nathan remained near her without touching.
“My mother may have known,” he said.
“Yes.”
“If she did, she lied this morning.”
“Yes.”
“Do you enjoy being right?”
“Not today.”
He looked at the discarded cereal.
“Did you consider telling me after the baby was born?”
Celia took a long time to answer.
“Yes.”
Nathan nodded.
“I thought,” she said, “that once she was here, you might choose differently.”
“You wanted to use our daughter as leverage.”
“No.”
“That is what you just described.”
“I wanted you to feel that we were a family too. Not an addition to this one.”
Nathan turned away.
Celia’s voice followed him. “You asked for honesty.”
“I did.”
“Honesty does not become manipulation because you dislike it.”
“No. The manipulation came first.”
She flinched.
He regretted the sentence but did not take it back.
For the next week, Ashcombe Manor became an office building inhabited by people who happened to share meals.
Solicitors arrived with document scanners. Accountants requested boxes from storage. The bank suspended the refinancing application after receiving a carefully worded notification of irregular historic transactions. Beatrice stopped eating in the dining room. Sophie took Poppy to London but returned alone two days later to collect clothing and financial records.
The relatives who had attended the engagement dinner telephoned with concern disguised as casual conversation. Oliver asked whether Celia was “resting somewhere suitable.” An aunt from Surrey sent flowers with no card. Someone told a local journalist that the engagement had been postponed because of a paternity dispute.
Nathan learned of the rumor when a photographer appeared outside the estate gates.
Celia saw the man from an upstairs window.
“He’ll leave,” Nathan said.
“He will leave when he has a photograph.”
“We can call the police if he trespasses.”
“He is on the road.”
Nathan closed the curtain.
Celia reopened it.
“What are you doing?”
“Removing the image of a frightened woman hiding behind curtains.”
“You do not owe anyone a performance.”
“No. But I know what story that photograph tells.”
She stood in full view for a moment, one hand beneath her belly, then stepped away.
The next morning, a newspaper website published a blurred image of her under the headline MANOR MARRIAGE IN CRISIS.
The article mentioned “questions over the unborn child” and quoted an unnamed family source who said Nathan had been “blindsided by a devastating revelation.”
Sophie called him before seven.
“I did not speak to them.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You thought it.”
“I thought Oliver.”
“Everyone thinks Oliver.”
“Usually for a reason.”
Poppy’s voice sounded in the background. “Is Uncle Nathan on the phone?”
Sophie moved into another room.
“She heard the newsreader say Celia’s name,” she said. “My mistake. I left the radio on.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That newspapers sometimes guess.”
“She’ll think this is her fault.”
“She already does.”
Nathan sat on the edge of the bed in the room he no longer shared with Celia. “I’ll come to London.”
“No.”
“Sophie.”
“You cannot fix her guilt in one visit while surrounded by photographers.”
“I need to speak to her.”
“She needs normality.”
“Is she getting that from you?”
There was a silence.
“That was low,” Sophie said.
“I know.”
“She asks whether telling the truth makes families stop loving each other.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
“What do you say?”
“That families can love each other and still be angry.”
“Does she believe you?”
“Do you?”
Nathan looked across the room at Celia’s empty dressing table.
“I don’t know.”
Sophie exhaled. “The bank sent me a letter about the cottage.”
“What letter?”
“They are reviewing security connected to the estate company.”
“Send it to the solicitors.”
“I already did.”
“Then why—”
“Because I wanted my brother to hear that I am frightened, not my director to give me an instruction.”
Nathan gripped the phone.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean it.”
“I know that too.”
After the call, he found Celia in the nursery.
She was taking baby clothes out of drawers and placing them into a suitcase.
“Where are you going?”
“My flat.”
“The photographer is still outside.”
“I have a driver coming through the service entrance.”
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
“My sister is meeting me.”
Nathan looked at the suitcase. “Are you leaving me?”
“I am leaving this house.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Celia folded a blanket.
“I don’t know how to answer yet.”
He leaned against the doorframe.
“The paternity rumor is false.”
“Yes.”
“I will issue a statement.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because denying it gives it a second day of life. And because our daughter’s parentage is not public property.”
“I asked the question.”
“In private.”
“In front of Edmund.”
“He has done worse things.”
Nathan looked at the cot, now assembled beneath the window. Beatrice had chosen it from storage, claiming three generations of Ashcombe babies had slept in it. Celia had quietly ordered a modern mattress and checked the spacing of the bars.
“When will you come back?” he asked.
May you like
“I don’t know.”
“The baby could come any time.”
