Part 2
His jaw tightened.
Then he looked away.
The entrance hall beyond the conservatory was cooler and smelled faintly of beeswax and wet wool. A member of staff hurried forward with Clara’s black coat and Oliver’s navy overcoat, keeping her eyes carefully lowered.
Clara helped Oliver into his coat. His fingers trembled when he tried to fasten the top button.
“I can do it,” he whispered.
“I know.”
She let him try.
He missed the buttonhole twice. On the third attempt, she covered his hands with hers.
Neither of them spoke until they were outside.
The late December air struck Clara’s face hard enough to make her eyes water. Gravel crunched beneath their shoes as they crossed the drive toward the waiting cars. Bare branches showed black against the afternoon sky. Beyond the formal gardens, the estate’s winter fields rolled away beneath a crust of white frost.
Their driver had left the engine running.
Oliver stopped before they reached the car.
“Aunt Clara.”
She turned.
He stared at the gravel.
“Am I in trouble?”
The question seemed to move through her body without touching anything on the way down.
“No.”
“She said I’d spoiled it.”
Clara knelt despite the cold soaking immediately through the hem of her dress.
“You didn’t spoil anything.”
“The lunch.”
“No.”
“The photographs.”
“What photographs?”
He pulled his injured wrist against his chest.
Clara kept her voice level. “Oliver, what photographs?”
The conservatory doors opened behind them.
She rose quickly, placing herself between him and the house again, but it was Daniel who emerged. He had no coat. The black leather folder remained under his arm.
He came down the steps and stopped several feet away.
“Lady Beatrice has asked that no one leave until she has spoken to you.”
Clara looked past him toward the open doorway.
“Tell her she can speak to my solicitor.”
Daniel’s expression barely changed. “She anticipated that answer.”
“Of course she did.”
“She would prefer to avoid unnecessary escalation.”
Clara looked at Oliver’s wrist. “She had a strange way of showing it.”
Daniel’s gaze followed hers. Something flickered across his face.
“What photographs?” Clara asked him.
He glanced toward the house.
“I don’t know.”
It was too quick.
“You do.”
“Ms. Whitmore—”
“My nephew has just asked whether he is in trouble for spoiling photographs. Lady Beatrice was hurting him while demanding answers. You were standing fifteen feet away. Don’t tell me you don’t know.”
Daniel’s fingers tightened around the folder’s edge.
Oliver moved closer to Clara’s side.
Daniel lowered his voice. “This is not a conversation to have on the drive.”
“Then it will be a conversation with my solicitor.”
He gave one small nod. Not agreement. Recognition.
“Check your email before you speak publicly,” he said.
Clara stared at him.
“Is that advice?”
“It is the only thing I can say without losing my position.”
“You just watched your employer grab a child.”
His eyes moved to Oliver, and for the first time his professional composure broke. Not dramatically. His mouth tightened. His gaze did not rise again.
“Yes,” he said.
The car door opened.
Clara helped Oliver inside, then looked back at Daniel. He stood in the frost without a coat, the closed black folder pressed against his charcoal suit as though it contained something capable of escaping.
“Tell her,” Clara said, “that the next person who contacts me should be a lawyer.”
Daniel’s answer was nearly lost beneath the sound of the door closing.
“It will be.”
For the first ten minutes of the drive, Oliver watched the countryside through the window.
Clara sat beside him rather than across from him. She had removed her heels and tucked her feet beneath the long skirt of her dress. Her right palm throbbed. She turned it upward once and saw a faint pinkness near the base of her fingers.
The sight made her feel ashamed.
Not of stopping Lady Beatrice. Not of stepping between them.
Of the sound.
She had heard that sound before in a different room, made by a different hand.
Oliver shifted beside her.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
Clara closed her fingers.
“No.”
“Your hand is red.”
“It’ll be fine.”
He nodded, accepting that because he had no energy left to question it.
The car passed through the estate gates. Stone pillars disappeared behind them.
Clara’s phone vibrated in her evening bag. Then again. Then three times in quick succession.
She did not look.
Oliver rested his forehead against the glass.
“What did she mean about photographs?” Clara asked gently.
His shoulders rose.
“You don’t have to tell me now.”
“She said Mum looked happy.”
Clara went still.
“What?”
“In the pictures. She said Mum looked happy, so I shouldn’t tell people things that weren’t true.”
The road bent through a stand of beech trees. Light moved over Oliver’s face in gray bands.
“What things?”
He rubbed his thumb against the seam of his trousers.
“That she was scared.”
Clara had spent eleven months learning not to react too quickly when Oliver spoke about his mother. Grief came out of him sideways. A cereal bowl he refused to use. A sudden hatred of lavender soap. A question about whether people could hear the sea after they died.
This was different.
“Who did she say you might tell?”
“The lady who asks questions.”
“Mrs. Patel?”
He nodded.
Amira Patel was the family court guardian assigned after Lady Beatrice filed for formal contact six weeks earlier. Her job, as she had explained to Oliver, was to listen without taking sides. Lady Beatrice’s solicitors had objected to the appointment and then publicly welcomed it.
Clara watched Oliver’s fingers.
“Did Grandmother ask you what you planned to say to Mrs. Patel?”
“She said I remembered wrong.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Then what happened?”
Oliver swallowed.
“She asked if you’d told me to be frightened of her.”
“I never told you that.”
“I know.”
May you like
His voice was small but certain.
Clara looked out at the hedgerows slipping past.
