Page 75 of Duke It Out
Meanwhile below us the estate stretches out in every direction. The loch curves out into the distance, still and dark under the tall pine woods. I can just make out the solar lights which mark the entrance to the boathouse. The moon hangs overhead, casting a pale glow over everything and catching the glass on the long greenhouse roof. Somewhere in the distance there’s music – Jamie’s speakers, perhaps, or ghosts. I shiver at the thought of it.
“I get it,” Anna says, turning to me. “I really do.”
I breathe in the cool damp pine-scented air and say nothing for a long moment, letting myself imagine what it would be like to be custodian of all of this. To belong here, and to know it was home. The beautiful pedigree horses in the stables, the priceless art hanging on the walls of every room. A walled kitchen garden and a huge glasshouse where you can stroll every day and select something delicious to eat. And the huge fires burning a welcoming blaze in the grates all year round…
Anna puts a finger to her lips for a moment and frowns. “Just don’t get taken in by it all, Edie.”
I glance over at her. “Taken in?”
Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “They’re billionaires. They’ve never wanted for anything in their lives. Neverwill. They don’t know what it feels like to need something. You’ll forget that. And then it’ll hurt when you remember.”
I give a weak laugh. “You make it sound like I’m—what? Falling for the castle?”
“Falling for the castle. Falling under the spell of all this. Falling for the job. Falling for—” She raises a brow and gives me a look. “Falling forhim.”
Her tone is light, but it hits me harder than I expect.
“I’m not,” I say, and the words sound brittle and hollow even to my ears.
Anna arches a brow. Maybe I’ve created something out of nothing—I’ve been doing it all my life. The words Rory said at dinner were just words, nothing more. Maybe I wanted to believe I mattered here, that I’d found a place after a lifetime of feeling on the outside of things.
“You’re the ghostwriter, Ede, not the story.” Anna’s voice is kind, which is more of a sting than her usual barbed comments. Her elbow brushes mine as she steps back.
I nod and don’t reply. The wind picks up and blows my hair across my face. I close my eyes against it, and for the first time since arriving here at Loch Morven it hits me that this place – the castle, the warm acceptance of the staff who feel like friends – none of it is for me. It’s a chapter in my life, nothing more.
28
RORY
This insomnia habitis keeping Theo happy in San Francisco because I’m on call whenever he needs me, but I swear it’s going to put me in an early grave. I stand at the office window, the dogs sprawled asleep on the sofa. The loch is rippled silver by the moonlight, the trees bending in the wind. Somewhere outside I hear a fox scream, sharp and eerie. I’ve always hated that sound.
Theo’s spreadsheet glows on the screen – numbers that almost work, plans to keep everyone from the local authorities to the preservation society happy. The numbers add up which is the main thing. If I can do one thing, it’s right the mess he made of this place, and make right his wrongs.
I pour a whisky out of habit more than anything and take a slow sip. Finn’s done a good job with this one, I admit. Must be nice to fuck off to the islands and absolve yourself of responsibility. I know why he’s chosen that life and I envy him it, but – I glance up at the black and white photo on the bookshelf of the three of us – I miss his dry humour and his no-bullshit approach to getting stuff done. If he’d inheritedthis place he’d have told everyone they could fuck right off if they wanted a ball. Duty, however, obliges.
Edie’s upstairs asleep, ready for another day of peeling back the past I’ve spent years trying to bury and batting off the snide insults from her so-called friend Anna. When she made that crack about her book tonight, I felt Edie go still beside me as if her breath had caught and didn’t quite come back. I’d spent the whole evening trying not to notice her and failing. Her scent – something soft and green, like fig trees in summer – caught in the air as she shifted in her chair. Her wrist grazing mine as she reached for the bread. The line of her neck when she tilted her head to listen. I tried to keep my eyes on Jamie, on my plate, on the bottle of wine. But they kept straying back to her.
And then I heard myself speak.
“Edie is an excellent writer.”It just slipped out.
It hits me that it might be the only unguarded thing I’ve said all week. In a house built on secrets, with a legacy I’ve been forced to protect with silence and spin, I offered her the truth like it was nothing.
She looked at me like she couldn’t quite believe it, like she wanted to, hoped to. That’s the part that undid me. She has no idea what she’s holding in her hands, the damage she could wreak. I’m sitting on an unexploded bomb, waiting for her to hit the point in the diaries when it all becomes clear and when it does, I’ll know. She’s an open book, and I don’t believe for a moment that her unguarded, open face will be able to hide the fact she’s read the truth. Not that there’s anything she can do with it, the NDA has made sure of that. But I have to face the fact that she’ll know my life here is based on a lie, and I don’t want to admit to myself that the prospect of that stings more than the reality of it.
I’m the duke. The one who’s supposed to keep everything together, hold the estate in my trust for a generation before I pass it on. The feelings I have are a complication I can’t afford.
The trouble is I can’t seem to look away.
29
EDIE
The castlefeelsdifferent the moment I wake up.
Flowers are everywhere. Hallways that used to smell of old wood and beeswax polish are now scented with roses and massed bunches of lilacs from the garden. Petals drop onto the gleaming surfaces and are swiped away in moments by the small army of unfamiliar faces who’ve appeared over the last week or so, making up bedrooms and sweeping corridors until the place feels like the hotel that Anna seems to be treating it as. Crates of glassware clink as they’re rolled across uneven parquet flooring and somewhere in the distance, I can hear someone playingThe Entertaineron the grand piano in the ballroom.
The place is full of strangers, glossy-haired women with tiny hips and elegant posture and men in cashmere with sunglasses on their heads despite the grey skies outside. A teenage boy echoing Anna’s demand for oat milk, and Gregor catching my eye and giving me a conspiratorial look that makes me giggle as I eat toast at the big morning kitchen table, where thankfully the guests don’t seem to be welcome.
