Vengeful Love (25 page)

Chapter Thirty

We pull off the gravel path in the DB9 and I pull down the passenger mirror to apply a pink blush lipstick. I ran out of time to blow-dry my hair after Gregory joined me in the shower and ended up styling my wet hair in two tight French plaits brought together at the nape of my neck.

“You look pretty,” Gregory says, looking over my cobalt high-neck Reiss dress.

“Thank you, but I feel like I look like I ran out of time to get dressed after having sex in the shower.”

“Maybe that’s why I like how you look.”

I watch his hand moving across the steering wheel, the diamond bezel of his Rolex—one of multiple extortionate watches—gleaming. There’s something strangely erotic about that
hand. I need to focus on something else, anything else to stop my insatiable, hormone-fuelled desire from wanting him in this obsessive way.
It’s a hand on a steering wheel, for Christ’s sake.

“Who will be at lunch?”

“My mother and Lawrence. Charles and Camilla, their friends. Wi—”

“Charles and Camilla?” I giggle.

“Is that
really
funny to you?”

I giggle some more. “It sounds like we’re having lunch with the Prince of Wales.”

His steely eyes stay on the road ahead. “I don’t understand what’s funny about that.”

“Well obviously we’re not having lunch with the monarchy.”

I stop laughing abruptly when his face still doesn’t change.

“You’re joking, right?”

He glances to me now, not a flicker of amusement about his face. “Camilla is a good friend of my mother’s.”

He really isn’t kidding.
I cast my eyes over my dress. “Holy shit!”

“I don’t mind your expletives where they’re well placed when my cock is inside you but you might want to rein them in over lunch.”

With the royals.
“Fuck,” I whisper.

“Williams will probably be there too.” He continues talking as if this isn’t going to be the biggest occasion of my life. “He usually turns up regardless of whether he’s invited. He can’t resist my mother’s honey glazed ham.”

“Your mother cooks?” I ask, returning to real time.

“Well, the honey glazed ham she pays for.” He laughs. “There’s someone else going you might like to see.”

I ponder the very small list of people we both know. “Who?”

“Jackson. And he’s bringing Sandy.”

“Sandy?” Of course,
Jackson and Sandy
. I still can’t get my head around that. “Does Jackson usually go?”

“He’d usually be there in one capacity or another. Driver, security. But my mother invited him to dine, and to bring Sandy today.”

“Is that strange?”

He shrugs.

Does it matter? Everything in life has been strange since I met this man.

We travel out of the countryside and back towards civilization, the evergreen trees replaced by tarmac and streetlamps.

“Are you and Jackson friends?”

“It would be unfortunate if we weren’t. I spend more time with Jackson than anyone else I know. We go most places together, he lives with me, we work out together. He’s definitely not just an employee, if that’s what you mean.”

“Kind of like Sandy and me. It’s quite cute actually, Jackson and Sandy, isn’t it?”

He scoffs and raises his shoulders again. “I guess.”

“What’s he like? Objectively. Will he be around a lot to see her, if things get serious? What about their living arrangements, I mean, where would they live? With you? Will you give him more time off so he can take her out on dates?”

“Scarlett, I—”

“Do you think they’ll have kids? Maybe they’re too old now, would you say?”

“Scarlett,” he says, slightly louder than normal. “I really have no idea. It’s all new, I doubt even
they
know the answers to your million questions yet.”

I scowl at him then turn to watch the cars in the middle lane of the motorway as we fly by. Nerves build in me as we pull off the main road and drive closer to Lara’s house. The last time Lara saw me she was begging me to forgive her son. I was cold and uncompromising.

“Gregory,” I say meekly, “do you know your mum came to see me? It was after my dad died. Before...before you came that night in the rain.”

The memory of Gregory’s face flashes painfully in my mind. “You should know that, that I wasn’t... I was pretty sharp with her.”

Gregory’s jaw tenses. I wish I could read his thoughts.

“Whatever happened between you is private. Unless, she didn’t upset you, did she?”

“Oh, it’s not that, I just don’t want today to be awkward.”

“Scarlett, my mother invited you,” he says, resting his hand on mine.

“She told me some stuff. About you...about your father.”

He takes his hand away and concentrates on the road. He swallows subtly but I see the sinews in his neck tense. He’s not ready and I won’t push him.

The road becomes increasingly lined with conifer trees and flanked by grass. Gregory pauses the car at tall black iron gates and waits until a voice sings through a speaker on the white wall.

“Where is this?” I whisper, so the intercom voice can’t hear me.

“Cobham. Surrey.”

Gregory picks up speed as we drive another hundred meters or so along a tarmac pathway. The trees come to an abrupt, perfectly straight, trimmed end, exposing an enormous white mansion, three triangular peaks and floor-to-roof windows marking the front of Lara and Lawrence’s home. Gregory rolls the DB9 around to one side of the house and stops in front of a four-door garage. An inordinate amount of land is accessed at the back of the house by twenty or so steps leading down from a large veranda. A pool house extends from the side of the house furthest away from us. On the lawn, maybe fifty meters from the house, men are working to construct what looks like a grand pavilion.

“It’s for the party,” Lara says, having appeared from the front of the house.

“Party?” I ask Gregory as Lara approaches.

“Hi handsome,” Lara says, kissing her son on both cheeks. “Go on, get inside.”

I know immediately she wants to be alone with me. Gregory does as instructed and walks to the front of the house but not without casting one last look over his shoulder to me.

Lara stands in front of me, putting us face to face. The last thing I want is conflict. Doubt begins to ask me why I agreed to come.

“How’re you holding up?” she asks me softly.

She’s not pissed at me?
It takes a moment for that to hit home. “I’m okay, thank you.”

She places one hand on my shoulder. “I don’t know why or how or what convinced you and I don’t ever need to know but for his sake, I’m pleased you changed your mind.”

I study her face trying to understand the
mens rea
, the motive, the hidden meaning but there’s nothing to uncover. We both wait in anticipation of me finding the right words to say but they don’t come. Eventually, she rubs her hand briskly up and down my shoulder and that’s the end of the matter.

“Come on, you must be freezing,” she says, turning on her patent heel, her wide legged black trousers swinging to expose their full width.

She offers me a flexed arm sheathed in a grey silk blouse that I recognise to be Paul Smith. Linking my arm through hers, I follow her to the house.

“What’s the party in aid of?” I ask.

“Gregory hasn’t told you yet?” She swings her glossy brown hair to look at me. “Tut tut. I throw a bonfire night party every year. A hideously extravagant thing but I love it. You have to come.”

A housemaid opens the large white double front door for us. I smile at her as I step inside.

“If nothing else it’s an excuse for a new dress,” Lara adds as she scuttles along the high polish wood floor and dips into a room to the right of the hallway.

“She’s a whirlwind,” the housemaid says. “I’ll show you along. This way.”

“Do you live here?” I ask of the slim mousey blonde who I guess is about my age.

In the sweetest high-pitched voice she explains, “We all do.”

“All do?”

“Me, Mack who works the garden and Tony, the chef. You’ll enjoy his food. His honey glazed ham is the best.”

“That’s not the first time I’ve heard that today,” I admit. “I’m Scarlett by the way.”

“Oh, I know.” She glances at me without breaking pace. “I’m Miranda. It’s this one.”

Miranda motions to the open door and walks back down the corridor when I step inside. The first thing I notice is the regal crystal chandeliers hanging over the sea green suede sofas and two large leather chairs, one brown, one burgundy, in that 1920’s stately-home-library kind of style. The second thing I notice is the touch of Gregory’s hand on the small of my back.

“Scarlett, I’d like you to meet Charles and Camilla.”

My eyes widen with anxiety for a nanosecond until I realise I’m looking not at the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall but a very ordinary man with a wealthy, rotund stomach, and a short woman with a precisely styled bob and more diamonds on her fingers than in a De Beers window.

Gregory coughs into his hand when I cast him a subtle pout. An amused grin breaks behind his closed fist.

“Charles, Camilla, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” I say holding out my hand.

“Camilla designed all of the interiors here, Scarlett,” Lara calls from the sofa.

“Wow, they really are beautiful. You have such a talent.”

“Thank you. It’s easy to decorate a beautiful home,” Camilla says.

Charles shakes my hand. “It’s nice to put a face to a name at last.”

That’s funny, I’ve only known you exist for an hour and I thought you were the heir to the throne for most of that time.

Charles takes a seat in the leather reading chair, picking his half-full glass of champagne from a side table and crossing one tweed leg over the other. Lara pats the space beside her on the sofa and Camilla fusses with the gold chain belt pulling her blouse neatly onto her pleated trousers.

As I wave to Lawrence at the far side of the lounge, a familiar form stands from the sofa opposite to Lara and looks nervously around the other faces in the room before shuffling toward me.

“Sandy.” I throw my arms around her. Across her shoulder, Jackson stands from the sofa, still dressed as if he’s on duty in his black suit, white shirt and black tie. He nods toward me in his usual way then he, Gregory and Lara leave the room. “How are you?”

“Fair to middling, as your father would say. Lots of change, some bad, some good.”

“I know what you mean. Have you been staying at home?”

Startled, she opens her mouth to speak then closes it again. Her cheeks flush to a beetroot shade.

“I didn’t mean, you know, I’m just worried that you’re in the house on your own. I went back yesterday to get some things and it was...different.”

Sandy’s cheeks return to a shade of normal. “I couldn’t face it. Actually, I stayed here last night.”

“Here? This house? Why?”

“Something to do with Gregory’s work, I think.”

“Gregory’s work?”

“Champagne, Scarlett?” Miranda interrupts, holding a full single flute on her black tray.

I remember waking by the fire to hear Gregory vexed on the phone to his mother.

“Thank you. Erm, could you tell me where the ladies’ room is?”

“I’ll take you.”

“I’ll be right back,” I say to Sandy as she holds out a hand to take my champagne.

“You can just point it out to me,” I say quietly as I follow Miranda out of the room.

“It’s no trouble,” she sings much too conspicuous for my liking.

We walk further down the long hallway. I hear Lara’s voice coming from a room opposite a grand staircase that veers off both left and right at the top.

“Just here,” Miranda says, directing me to a door under the stairs.

“Thanks.”

I tuck inside the bathroom and draw the door closed, watching Miranda walk away. When I’m sure the coast is clear, I tiptoe across the wood floor, back in search of the muffled voices, until I come across a billiard room with the door ajar. I can just make out Gregory’s navy chinos and grey wool jumper pacing back and forth.

“Show me,” he snaps.

Squinting through one eye, I see Gregory accept a small box, which he opens, examining the contents.

“You’re sure this is yours?” he asks.

“For God’s sake, Gregory, I know my own wedding ring. The last time I saw the pig I threw the damn thing at him.”

“How did he get to the house, Jackson?” Gregory is snarling through gritted teeth.

“He didn’t,” Lara pleads, “it was in the postbox this morning. Mack found it. It was wrapped in brown paper with a note.”

“A note saying what?”

Lara turns her back to Gregory and paces the floor by the billiard table, one hand on her hip.

“Saying what, mother?”

The fear in her voice is audible. “It said, it said—”

“It said ‘something I should have done a long time ago,’” Jackson cuts in.

Gregory moves back into my field of vision, holding Lara’s wedding ring up to the light.

Miranda’s footsteps in the corridor startle me.

“The lounge is this way, Scarlett,” she sings.

“Oops, so it is, I lost my bearings for a second there.”

I follow Miranda back to the lounge and take my glass of champagne back from Sandy. She’s returned to her spot on the sofa and is talking to Lawrence.

“You look pretty,” I say as I take a seat on the sofa. “I like this dress on you.”

As Sandy does, she rolls her eyes and wafts the air with a hand, casting a cursory glance over her purple, blue and green floral wrap dress.

Pearson. Lara’s wedding ring. Another note. He’s been here. I feel sick and light-headed. I wash away the feeling with a gulp of champagne. For now.

Jackson, Gregory and Lara return to the room and are followed shortly by an apologetic Williams.

“Argh, sorry we’re late, Lara,” he says.

“Amanda!” Her name leaves my mouth a little overzealously as I bound toward her.

“Hey you!” she says, pulling me into a tight cuddle.

“I didn’t know you’d be here.” Then, lowering my voice. “Does this mean you two are...?”