Dirty Aristocrat (4 page)

Tawny Maxwell

A
s soon as we reached the church I spotted my stepchildren.

Robert’s oldest child, Rosalind, looked at me. Her eyes were shining with malice and hatred. She was the most dangerous and most vindictive of his children. At twenty-nine she was a tall, dark-haired, plain woman who had unfortunately inherited Robert’s big nose and strong jaw. She was married to a spineless man who hardly spoke at all and had two young children I had never met.

The middle child, Bianca, was much prettier since most of her genetic identity came from her mother. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for me she was not the sharpest pencil. She was engaged to a well-known footballer who was standing beside her looking rather ill at ease. She was what my grandma would have called an undercover hater. She flashed me a fake smile before turning back to her fiancé and leaning her fair head dramatically on his shoulder.

The youngest was Robert’s only son, Dorian. He was the best looking of the three. He had a full head of straight, dirty blond hair, smoldering blue eyes, and dimples when he smiled. He had charm and confidence, but underneath it lurked something dark. Much darker. In truth I was very wary of him. Slowly, he winked at me.

It was so insolent, so inappropriate, and so disrespectful, I felt something crumple up and die inside me. Robert was wrong. I couldn’t handle these people. Not in a million years. Not alone, anyway. They were a totally different species than me. They were devious and cunning and false.

My shocked gaze ricocheted away from Dorian and fell upon Ivan. He stood head and shoulders above everyone else. He was wearing a dark coat and his hair was slightly disheveled from the wind.

Still, it was his face that made me freeze.

Against the whiteness of the snowy landscape it was as if it was hewn from stone. His eyes were almost silver and shone out of his face like lights directly into my eyes. Through the distance something passed between us. Something electric that made the hairs on my body stand. I couldn’t look away. It was the strangest feeling. As if I had been walking for a long time in the wilderness and I was finally home. I had come home. As if even the life that I had lived was not my own. My life was with him.

Then he nodded at me and I inclined my head before my eyes slid away to the woman with him. The obligatory blonde. Beautiful, spoilt and from the same class as him. How many times I have seen them, and yet this time I knew a moment of piercing pain. Where I come from we just call it jealousy.

The jealousy surprised and confused me.

Must be the grief,
I told myself.
He is not for you, but he will be there for you.

No matter how cold and distant he was to me I could trust him. He was the only one I must trust. Robert had said so and I trusted Robert. That man will fight your corner, he said.

I turned my eyes towards the church entrance. Yes, I could do this. I would die before I let Robert down. 

Ivan’s secretary hurried up to me.

‘Good morning, Mrs. Maxwell.’

‘Hello, Mrs. Macdonald,’ I said. All of a sudden I felt a jolt of panic. I clutched her hand. ‘The flowers on the top of the casket. They are dusky pink roses, aren’t they?’

She smiled faintly. ‘Yes, they are.’

‘Oh good. For a moment there I thought I forgot to tell Janice.’ Janice was Robert’s secretary and she had liaised everything with Mrs. Macdonald.

‘You didn’t,’ she said gently.

‘They were his mother’s favorite flowers,’ I explained.

‘I see.’ Her voice was polite.

Mrs. Macdonald’s gaze slipped down to my pendant. I understood. She could not help herself. It was so special. In a rush her eyes came up again, her expression almost guilty.

‘Come this way,’ she said and led me inside the cold, damp cathedral filled with hundreds of people. A sudden hush fell upon the gathered mourners. We walked up to the front pew silently, our shoes loud on the limestone floor. I could feel all their heads turn to watch me. Some were curious, others were openly envious or resentful. I am the American girl who appeared from nowhere, married a multimillionaire, and in two years was the heiress of a sizeable fortune. They don’t know I loved him entirely, the good, bad, the ugly. I loved all of it. They could not see my silent grief.

They just saw the gold digger.

All I could see was the rosewood coffin. Pale morning light streamed in through the stained glass of the cathedral’s windows and fell on his fine casket with its gilt handles and a lush arrangement of dusky pink roses on it. Inside I knew it was silk-lined and perfumed with sandalwood oil.

Robert was lying inside.

I took my seat on the hard bench and listened to minister’s words and the well-spoken words of all those people who had not come to see him in his last months. They waxed lyrical about what a wonderful man he was. Then Rosalind took the pulpit for her tribute. I kept my eyes to the grey flagstones while dry-eyed, she told the world about her great love for her father.

‘I sat on his knees. I loved him. Before he lost his mind he knew I loved him. But the sickness, it turned his brain to mush and he could no longer tell the difference between true love and the lies of strangers. People who were only there for what they could get. Daddy, I love you. Always. Wherever you are.’

Then it was Ivan’s turn. I looked up and his gaze met mine. I dragged my eyes away in confusion.

I sat staring at the floor and listened to old stories about Robert. Things I never knew. He loved to hunt. I never knew. He could out drink any man. I never knew. There was so much I didn’t know. I only knew him when he was sick and diminished.

My eyes became wet, but I did not even realize that I was crying until my ribs began to heave as if they were suddenly too full of sorrow. I put my head down and closed my eyes. It was good that he was gone. He was in pain. It was a good thing.

Of course, I did not take the stand. I told him I wouldn’t. ‘Please, Robert, don’t make me do it.’ And he had smiled. ‘No, your love is pure. What is pure must never be examined. It will hurt the impure.’

So I didn’t speak at his funeral service. Instead there would always be a part of me still dressed in full black, sitting on the front pew at his funeral, listening to ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd.’

Tawny Maxwell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEUgORVsECs

T
here were six pallbearers dressed in black suits and white gloves. The gold handles glinted in the sunlight as they lifted the casket onto their shoulders. I saw Ivan go up to the man in front, tap him on the shoulder, and take his position. I stared at him. Why, he must have loved Robert too. I stood at the bottom of the church steps and watched them carefully load Robert into the back of the hearse.

I tried to imagine him, lying in there as if sleeping. Finally peaceful.

They closed the doors and I turned away and walked towards the convoy of stationary black cars. My car was at the head of the long line. As I was about to get into it I felt a hand on the sleeve of my coat. I turned around, startled.

Rosalind smiled at me. Her dry-eyed crying had not smudged her make-up at all. Everything was perfectly in place.

‘Would you mind terribly if I rode in the car with you? Seeing that you are alone and ours is overcrowded with my obnoxious brother.’

I didn’t want her in the car with me, but there were people all around us avidly watching the stepmother and daughter’s interaction, and I could hardly turn her down. Mercifully, the ride to the cemetery was a short one.

‘Of course,’ I said.

With a triumphant smile she stepped in front of me and slid into the car. She did not close the door as if she expected me to close it for her and go on over to the other side. I stood bemused, the color rising into my cheeks.

Fortunately, Barry hurried around and closed the door. Looking at me kindly he said, ‘Come around to the other side, Mam.’

I cleared my throat and, keenly aware of many eyes watching, followed him around the back of the car to the passenger door on the opposite side. Barry opened the door and I murmured my thanks and sat stiffly on the seat, leaving as much space between her and me.

As soon as Barry turned out of the church’s driveway and into the main street, Rosalind ordered Barry to put the partition glass up.

I turned to her, my face devoid of expression.

Her face was equally drained of any emotion. ‘Can you tell me why we are all being summoned to Barrington for the reading of the will as if all of this was a particularly bad Hollywood production?’

I frowned at her. ‘How else would the solicitor tell us what is in the will?’

She sighed elaborately. ‘I realize that you are a bit of a redneck, but it is actually customary for all beneficiaries to simply receive written notification from the solicitor.’

‘Right,’ I said slowly. She said redneck like it was a bad thing. Still, it was in Hollywood movies that I learned of the custom of reading a will to a gathering of people.

‘I’ll take it then that you have no idea,’ she said coldly.

I put on my sweet face. ‘No. Ivan made all the arrangements.’

She narrowed her eyes skeptically and let them slide to my pendant. An ugly look crossed her thin, proud face. ‘Do you know the contents of my father’s will?’

Suck it up buttercup. He didn’t leave it to you. ‘Not really. I guess we’ll know after the funeral.’

‘But most of it’s going to you, isn’t it?’

I took a deep breath. This needed to be said. ‘You want his money, but you never once came to see him in the last six months.’

Her eyes widened with fury. ‘How dare you lecture me on my relationship with my father?’

‘You hurt him when you never brought your children to see him once in the last two years. He wanted to get to know them.’

‘Are you mad? Do you think I would expose my children to that pedophile?’

I gasped in shock. ‘How could you say that about your father?’

She looked at my horrified expression with revulsion. ‘Why are you pretending to be so shocked? I can say that because it’s the truth.’

‘It is not,’ I said, holding on tightly to my temper.

‘How old were you when you came to him?’

‘I was seventeen,’ I said indignantly. How could she even think that about Robert?

‘I rest my case.’

‘He … we … didn’t do anything, then,’ I stammered. I wanted to say so much more, but I couldn’t. I had to protect my secret. Otherwise it would have been all for nothing.

‘God, you disgust me. Both of you.’

She turned away from me and rapped smartly on the glass. When Barry put it down she ordered him to stop the car. As soon as the car came to a halt she got out. Before closing the door, she had one last parting shot for her stepmother.

‘Just in case no one told you. It’s not the done thing for the grieving widow to deck herself in her best jewelry to attend her husband’s funeral.’

Slamming the car door, she walked to the next car in the procession, the car that she should have been in. I turned my head and watched her enter it and shut the door.

I turned back to face the front. ‘Carry on, Barry,’ I whispered painfully.

My hands were trembling. I touched my pendant and closed my eyes. Oh, Robert. How could she even think that about you? I hoped wherever he was he had not heard our nasty conversation.

Quietly, Barry put on his stereo system and Nick Cave’s poignant and heartfelt song
Into My Arms
fills the car. No gesture could have been more appropriate at that moment. The unexpected thoughtfulness of that mostly silent man took me by such surprise that I could not even speak. Our eyes met in the rearview mirror, mine full of silent gratitude, and his kind. I smiled and he nodded.

When we arrived at the cemetery, I got out of the car, and Ivan strode up to me. His face was a like a thundercloud.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked harshly, his eyes sharp.

His breath smoked. I looked up at him, still dazed. The wintry air invaded my lungs and stung my eyes. Did he also believe that Robert was a pedophile? Was that what everyone was thinking? I nodded.

‘Why did she get out of the car?’ he demanded.

‘It was nothing.’ I paused. My mind had gone blank, but he was staring at me with demanding eyes. ‘Er … she … wanted to know why we are having a reading of the will at the house and not getting written notifications.’

‘Why on earth did she ask you that? She knows damn well that I’m the executor of the will.’

‘Anyway, why are we having it done this way?’

‘Because I wanted it this way.’

I looked at him curiously. ‘Why?’

‘I have my own reason. Now come on,’ he urged, and I fell into step with him. We walked briskly, our heads bowed on a path that glistened like white quartz.

It was strange that my hurt and confused heart should find the presence of that cold, hostile man reassuring and a comfort. I stole a glance at him. His face was closed and distant. He gave the impression that he was not even aware of me.

As soon as we reached the freshly dug grave, the woman he had come with caught up with us and linked her arm through his. There was no mound of exposed soil. Everything was white and completely beautiful. A woman handed out pink rose stems. I held it in my gloved hands. I looked around at the assembled. We were the official mourners, come to pay our last respects.

Our breaths rising in little visible puffs.

During the whole simple ceremony, no one spoke. There was just the slight sound of people shuffling. Then the coffin was put on the wooden lattice that had been erected over the hole in the ground.

Someone sang a song. Her voice was beautiful. It rose up in the cold, still air and seemed to hover over us. I put the pink rose I had been given on the casket and kissed the cold smooth wood before I moved on. I didn’t stay to watch anybody else. I was freezing cold. I walked quickly to the car and got into it. The interior was blissfully warm. I took my leather gloves off and rubbed my hands together. They were like ice.

That was it. Robert’s funeral.

I had survived it.

Now there was the ordeal of the reading of the will to be endured.