Page 51 of The Pearl (The Godwicks 3)

He thought he’d die in those five seconds it took for Regan to slip the letter out and unfold it.

“My Darling Regan,” she read, her voice steady but cold.

You’re too young to understand what’s happening right now. I need to tell you a few things before I’m gone. My own mother died when I was about your age, and every unanswered question in my heart is an open wound.

It’s no one’s fault that I have cancer. I was dealt a bad hand of cards just like my own mother. That’s life, I’m afraid, and a lesson you need to learn. But I also want you to know that I did literally everything I could to save myself so I could watch you grow up. I’m afraid “literally everything” won’t be enough.

Regan cleared her throat.

There is a clinical trial in America for people with my sort of cancer. I was accepted into the trial, but as it’s in New York, I needed money for the airfare and a few months of funds to cover a long recovery. We didn’t have it, not even close enough to get me halfway there. Desperate, I went to see Lord Arthur Godwick—

“I never—”

“I know she means your grandfather, not you.”

“Sorry. Go on,” he said.

…I went to see Lord Arthur Godwick who my father told me on more than one occasion I should go to if I was ever in need of help. He couldn’t tell me why there was a connection between our families, only that he was certain the Godwicks would help if I gave them his name. Lord Godwick agreed to see me at his private home, Wingthorn Hall. The meeting was short and pointless. Even though I told him my name, my father’s name, and that I had a young daughter at home, that I needed only a modest loan so I could possibly live to see you grow up, he refused me.

I begged him, on my knees. I reminded him that my father was a friend of his family, and that even his least valuable painting hanging on the walls of his picture gallery could mean the difference between life and death for me.

He sent me away and told me to never show my face there again.

And now I’m in hospital and there’s no chance anymore. But I did try, my darling. I did try everything I could for you. Please forgive me for not being there to see you grow up. And whatever you do, stay away from the Godwick family. No matter what your grandfather believed, they cannot and should not be trusted. My life was worth less to them than the price of one of their precious paintings.

Regan slowly folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope that had gone soft as cotton with age and a thousand readings.

“There’s more,” she said, “But I’ll spare you the rest where she tells me how much she loved me.”

Arthur buried his head in his hands, his elbows on the little tea table. Slowly he looked up. “Why us?”

“She guessed my grandfather had done something for your family years ago—a gift, some good deed during the war. Something that meant we were owed a favor,” Regan said. “He was wrong.”

“Doesn’t matter though, does it?” Arthur sat back in his chair. “Your mother was right. Even our least valuable painting could have paid for her to travel first-class around the world ten times over.”

“He tossed a dying woman, a mother with a young child, out on her arse for the price of an airplane ticket and three months in a cheap hotel. She died two weeks after she wrote that.”

Regan blinked and a tear fell down her face. Or started to. As soon as it left her eye she swatted it off like it was a fly that landed on her and not proof of her humanity, her deepest hurt.

“I’m—” he began.

“Don’t say you’re sorry if it won’t bring her back.”

And so Arthur said nothing, because nothing could bring her back.

“I had no grand plan to avenge her,” Regan said. “But when young Master Charles Godwick was suddenly in hock to me up to his eyeballs, I remembered a conversation I’d had with your mother at your sister’s wedding. A conversation about art. My favorite paintings. Her favorite paintings…”

“She told you their favorite painting in the house was the portrait of Lord Malcolm’s.”

“She didn’t say why,” Regan said, “only that if the house were burning down, that was the only painting she’d risk her life to pull from the fire. Now every time I see him hanging on the wall of my bedroom where I’ve been fucking his great-grandson, it makes me feel a little better. Petty revenge, yes. But not for a petty crime.”

Arthur couldn’t begin to think of anything to say to her. What could he say? That it wasn’t his fault? Not his doing? True but useless. He might as well toss money onto her mother’s grave.

“Get out,” she said coldly, quietly, which was so much worse than ordering him out screaming and shouting. “Get out of my hotel. You and everyone else with Godwick blood in your veins are forever banned from The Pearl. It will not be your playground anymore. And I will keep that painting of Lord Malcolm. Your family’s attorneys can pry it out of my cold dead hands. If your father’s anything likehisfather, I’m sure he’ll have that arranged.”

She picked up her teacup again, took a sip, then set it on the saucer and continued: “You act like I’m some sort of monster for taking one painting from your family, meanwhile your family took my mother from me. This is rather a moot point considering everything that’s happened between us, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say it—fuck you and every Godwick who’s ever walked the face of this horrid little Earth.”

Now her tears did fall and she let them, hot angry tears. She stared at him through them, like a veil.

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