Page 108 of Thick as Thieves
“Tarron, did you bring that item I asked you for?” His tone is conversational, like he’s asking Dad about the weather in Scotland.
“I did, Marcus. But can I just say this first before you actually open it.” All the eyes in the room swivel to him. “Rowena, your husband was a good man. He knew about his grandson, as you know, and in the last few years of his life he had taken to following them around London.”
Marcus turns his whole body around to stare at Dad. Clearly he and I did not know that. Marcus looks upset. “What the fuck?” he says.
Dad just nods at him, a serious look on his face. One of compassion. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Marcus, but he swore me to secrecy one day when I saw him in a coffee shop. And I saw the boy.” He stops and I can see the tears in my dad’s eyes. “He looked so much like you when you were that age. And I saw her—only briefly—but obviously she’d been fourteen the last time I saw her. So I wasn’t sure if it was the same girl, but I assumed. She knew who your father was, and what he was doing. But she let it go, kept the same routine, so he would know where they were.”
He pauses whilst he gets himself together. His thoughts in order. The room is soundless.
“They never spoke. But on one occasion, when he was really ill, Henry fell in the park, and James picked him up. He’d be about twelve at the time. All Henry did was cry. About all the missed time, how beautiful the boy was, how he was grateful she never pulled him away or changed their routine. He said he was going to tell you, but made me swear never to breathe a word to a soul. But I think he got so sick so very quickly, he never got the chance to tell you.” Dad is stoic as he imparts his information.
I feel the wetness on my cheeks and see the tears on Marcus’s face. The atmosphere has totally changed in the room. Even Rowena looks upset.
“He never told me,” she says shakily, her drama put on one side.
“So why, with all this regret, you seem now to want to throw away another two grandsons, Rowena, I will never know. But I will take them.” He seems to sit up grander in the chair. “They are part of my clan anyway. As they were born on my land, they will always belong to me. They are mine, and I will take them as grandchildren to inherit some of my titles. Well, the titles Xan doesn’t want, anyway. Give the titles to the twins. Those boys belong to you and Marcus.
“Xander, you love them as much as Marcus does, and you both love their mother.” He stops and smiles at us both. “I’m already Grandpa Tarron to James and Bucky, and the Purcells. I will take all those magnificent boys.”
He stands and looks down at Marcus and then at me. “I didn’t agree with that.” He points to the envelope he’s given to Marcus. “But if it puts this total rubbish to bed, then so be it. I stood by all those years ago and never pushed Henry to tell you, and that was wrong. I should have shouted it from the rooftops. I have lived with that regret everyday. I will not make the same mistakes again.”
Turning to face Rowena, who’s sat like a statue in her chair at the head of the table, he imparts, “I just hope, Rowena, that you are happy on your own. If James is ignoring you now, once he knows the full extent of your actions and treachery, you will never see that boy again. He is his mother’s son, one hundred percent. There is no one more important to that boy than her. You’d do well to remember that. Even these two don’t register on that scale. Not compared to her.” His face is solemn, but his words are sincere.
I stand and hug my dad. The man is a colossus, and I love him.
I turn and see Rowena eyeing the unopened envelope.
“You had them tested and never said,” she hisses at Marcus.
“I didn’t need to. I knew they were my boys. I’ve always known it, but I also knew that someone would come for them, for Evie. I just didn’t think it would be my own family.” I watch as Rowena finally starts to see the writing on the wall.
“I’ve wanted Evie Greystone forever,” Marcus continues. “I love the woman. She married me because I wanted my son to have the title and he wanted to accept it. But not for himself, for my four other children who did not make it. Can you imagine what that was like, listening to your eighteen-year-old son tell you he wants it to honour his dead siblings. Children he did not know. He wanted to prove and show that he and his mother were above the petty squabbling and power games a title and money throws into a family. To be better. To be a bigger person than the family that had thrown him out as a child and disowned himtwice.”
My dad apparently didn’t know this about James and Evie and he makes a growling noise in the back of his throat. I have to put my arm on him now, he’s looking daggers at Rowena and Co. They’re shrinking back faced with Marcus’s and my dad’s growing fury.
Marcus opens the envelope and slaps the sheet of paper in front of Rowena. “If you’d have asked, I would have told you. In fact, I did tell you long before the birth, and again after. I never opened this, because I knew they were mine. I didn’t need a piece of paper to tell me.”
Rowena scans the paper and starts to cry. She was so sure they were not his. “They brought me proof, showed me the book with all the events in it. Evie with Xander. They even brought men here to tell me how they’d been on dates with Evie and when. They said they could prove it.”
I look up at my husband, his stance dominant, authoritative. His alpha male in charge. His ‘do you know who I am?’ vibes battering us all with the Lord Stockton energy. I fucking love it. I move to stand next to Marcus, shoulder to shoulder, and sweet heaven, he takes my hand and brings it to his lips. And kisses it. I watch as eyes widen around the table, but not from our friends and bandmates.
“Xander and I love Evie. We’re all together. We live together, we love together. You need to accept it, Mother.” He shrugs. “To be honest, I don’t care if you do or don’t. She is right, you won’t see them again. Evie will never accept an apology after what you’ve done.
“And to top it off, Bug has been calling me. If my cousin tells me he’s leaving Eastwood, which I suspect he is, I will never forgive you for costing me my family.” His voice is not particularly loud. But the power in it pushes everyone back in their seats.
“Anthony has nowhere else to go. There’s no money in Ireland,” Rowena gets out desperately. Chrissy is nodding her head in agreement. Clearly they’ve been harbouring that as an excuse to hassle Bug in Yorkshire.
Marcus starts to laugh. “You have no idea who the Greystones are, do you? Evie will have offered him a house, a farm, his own place. She loves him with everything she is, and that is a massive love to be part of. And as for his boys, they are hers as much as theirs, they belong to her. So if I get that call from Bug, you better be off to Ireland, because you will not be welcome in Yorkshire at Eastwood anymore.”
He huffs out a sarcastic laugh. “So trapped in your own period drama. She’s still little Everett Parker, with a borrowed fucking dress shirt and holes in her boots. The girl who turned up for dinner.” He starts to bang at his chest. “She could have worn a fucking bin liner and I would have loved her, we both would.” He stops his fist on his heart. I can see he’s losing it, remembering that party night for his sixteenth birthday.
52
Xander age 15
Eastwood Estate,Yorkshire
It’sMarcus’s 16thbirthday, and he’s buzzing. “Marcus you do know there is not a lot you can do at sixteen other than get married, which I’m sure you don’t want to do. Oh, and have sex. That’s it.” I’m pretending to be blasé.
