The Mischievous Mrs. Maxfield (74 page)

“If this is about Nicole and your child, I can’t say that Brandon took anything you valued at that time, Francis,” Martin said, eliciting more startled gasps around the room. “You severed your ties and left them high and dry. I would’ve stepped in if Brandon hadn’t.”

It’s one hell of an afternoon for revelations.

“You know about them, Dad?” Brandon asked in bewilderment. “You knew all this time? About everything?”

A faint smile crossed Martin’s lips. “Son, just because I let you live your lives, doesn’t mean I don’t keep track of them.”

Tessa’s head swung towars Francis. “You have a child? With Nicole?”

Francis’s brows furrowed into a small frown but he nodded. “Yes. I have a son.”

“You have a little boy and you didn’t tell us about him?” Anna asked with a baleful look at her cousin. “I would’ve loved to play auntie!”

Martin let out a short laugh but his expression turned serious once again when he returned his attention to Francis. “If you want to start over with your little family, Frans, I suggest you start on a clean slate. Lay out your cards, ask for forgiveness and compromise with them as you start anew. The last thing you should do is bulldoze your way in, not caring who you run over in the process.”

The strain in Francis’s expression eased but only a little. “It would be easier to do that if Brandon hasn’t bred two years’ worth of mistrust about me.”

I couldn’t help a snort. “Oh, you didn’t need help in that department. Owning up to your mistakes isn’t pleasant—I should know. It’s like vomiting in your mouth over and over again. But let it out, get it over and done with, and maybe then you’ll find some relief.”

My gaze drifted back to the rest of the group who were watching me and my eyes lowered. “It’s really quite disgusting, isn’t it?”

“It’s the people who stick around even after seeing you at your worst who matter, isn’t it?” Cassandra said with a small smile. “To err is human; to come clean with it is someone worth a chance at forgiveness.”

“And I should know,” Sebastian said kindly as he put an arm around his wife. “I think all of us, at some point in our lives, have gone too far for the sake of something important.”

I smiled faintly and risked a glance at the rest of the people in the room.

While I couldn’t see anyone giving us murderous stares, they all wore a variety of puzzled frowns and still-stunned expressions.

I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. “Thank you, for at least letting us explain. I can never apologize enough for having done what we did but amazingly enough, I have no regrets.”

I forced myself to meet everyone’s eyes, biting down on my trembling lower lip. “I met the man I will love for all of my life. I found myself a part of a wonderful, happy family I never really had growing up. I found people, a select few amidst a big crowd of critics, who took one look at me, resigned themselves to everything that would never change about me, and decided that no matter how oddly matched I was to this world I landed in, I was worth their time, their respect, their affection. I know I deserve none of it after the lie we perpetrated but I wanted you all to know how much it all meant to me, for what it’s worth.”

A big, fat tear rolled down my cheek—as heavy and as futile as the guilt that weighed down my heart—and I swiped at it with the back of my hand.

With a sob choking up my nose as the floodgates burst inside of me, I grabbed my bag and sucked the tears back in. “I’m s-so sorry. I have to g-go.”

I turned and dashed out the door, remotely aware of the heavy footsteps that followed behind me as I sprinted through the hall, nearly stumbling down the front porch steps.

Tears were streaming down my face and I could hardly keep up with dashing them back.

“Charlotte, love.”

A big, strong hand snatched me by the elbow and yanked me back against the familiar, solid frame of my husband.

“Come here,” Brandon murmured against my ear as his arms locked around me, his breath warm and soft against the side of my face. “Don’t run away. Never run away. You’ve got me, always.”

“You’ve got me but is that enough?” I choked out, raking a hand through my hair. “What if your family decides to cast you out for lying to them?”

“I’ll be very sad. I’ll miss them.”

I peered up at Brandon slowly, blinking the tears away from my vision. “What if giving me up means keeping them?”

He exhaled long and hard, his shoulders slumping slightly. “Then despite my sadness, I’ll still be a content and happy man. I love you, Charlotte. I’m frustrated that you tried to shoulder all the blame and cast me as the hero. I don’t want to be a damned hero to anyone but you.”

My lower lip trembled before the tears broke free from me again.

“I feel so awful,” I sobbed against his chest, my eyes squeezing shut. “I feel like a terrible person. I never wanted to be a terrible person! My p-parents w-were terrible people so I know—I know!—how it feels to be on the other side. I know how it is to realize that the p-people you cared about... and trusted so much... are nothing like you thought they were in r-reality.”

Brandon’s arms tightened around me. “Hush, Charlotte. Please... Don’t cry.”

I sobbed harder, pressing my face against his chest, my hands clutching his shoulders as I leaned in for support.

I couldn’t remember where we were or how we got there but for a long time, I let all my suppressed emotions run free, hoping the flash flood would erode away all the guilt and shame I’d banked for months. 

The beauty of a natural disaster, underneath all the rubble and destruction, is that sometimes, the landscape has completely changed. I hope I can be scrubbed and stripped clean of my sins. Then something new just might grow.

“You’re not a terrible person, Charlotte. I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous than that,” Brandon murmured gently, running his hand down the back of my head in soothing strokes. “And let me remind you that Dad was just as sly and manipulative about all of this. He’s not the completely innocent victim you grieve him to be.”

I pushed my head up to look at Brandon. “I know but it doesn’t make me any less guilty. The gravity of a crime isn’t lessened by another one more gruesome. The person who deliberately ran you over with a car isn’t less of a murderer just because someone else hacked another person’s head off.”

Brandon wrinkled his nose in distaste but I could see his lips twitch slightly. “While I see your point, could you come up with a less gory metaphor?”

I smiled reluctantly, sniffling as I shook my head. “The point is that I didn’t have to take the bait just because someone was flinging it at my face. I’m my own person, Brand, with my own mind. I made the conscious decision to participate in that deception. And so did you. Your Dad was right about the fact that we could’ve come to him and said no. But we didn’t.”

Brandon nodded. “Right. We didn’t.”

“We decided to get married instead—even though it was crazy and wrong and absolutely ridiculous."

“You were the wrong girl and I wasn’t the guy you dreamed up I was.”

“Exactly!” I agreed. “And we were taking a lot of risks.”

“Like getting caught. Having it blow up on our faces,” Brandon enumerated. “Being publicly disgraced.”

My head bobbed up and down. “Yes, yes, and yes! It sounded like there was a lot at stake, but was there really?”

“Not really now that I think back on it,” Brandon answered, his brows knitting together thoughtfully. “I mean, I’m sure we could’ve gotten ourselves out of it if we’d really wanted to.”

“Right. But we didn’t,” I said, pausing when I realized I was repeating the exact words Brandon had said at the beginning of this long-winded loop of a conversation we’d just had.

Brandon smiled down at me, his hazel eyes twinkling. “We could’ve, but we didn’t.”

I slipped my arms around his neck, drawn in by this curious, bubbly feeling of being on the verge of a startling yet elusive epiphany. “Then why the hell did we go through all of that then?”

Brandon lowered his face to mine, the tip of his nose brushing my cheek, his lips a whisper away. “Because we wanted to.”

I smiled against the soft whisper of his lips across mine. “We really did, didn’t we?”

“We did,” he agreed in a murmur, his arms tightening around my waist. “Whether we knew it then or not.”

“So I’m not really a serial killer who decapitates people?” I asked with a crooked smile. 

A small, surprised laugh rumbled out of Brandon. “No, you’re not.”

He bent to kiss my cheek. “You’re not the kind of girl who would’ve simply traded your self-worth for a million dollars—no matter how much you liked your father-in-law.”

I raised up on my toes and pressed a kiss on his cheek in return. “And you’re not the kind of guy who would offer it up to any girl just because your father told you so—CEO position at stake or not.”

“So I guess in the end,” Brandon said, “We really wanted it.”

 
I grinned. “We did. We really did.” 

Books, TV shows and movies would have you believe that the lives of the rich and privileged were wrought with scandals and secrets.

I thought that too, and decided that most of them probably just liked living their lives as if they were in a bad daytime soap opera—or a good one if the goal was to have a plot so full of twists and turns you couldn’t keep track of whose adoptive daughter turned out to be the forbidden love of the man who came back from the dead after his bad twin pretended to be him all this time and destroyed the real biological family of the woman who now carried the baby of a taxi driver who wasn’t really a taxi driver because he might be the long-lost heir to a large and old family fortune. 

Caught your breath? I did say it was complicated.

Anyway, I once wondered why anyone would want to live with so much drama. It wasn’t until this week that it occurred to me that the answer might be simple—the rich and privileged may just be way too busy to take the time to untangle the mess in their lives.

When a princess sat on a throne with the entire kingdom looking on, waiting with bated breath for her next command, she couldn’t really keep excusing herself to go to the bathroom so she could splash some water on her face and give herself a little pep-talk to get it together. 

Secrets, scandals, betrayals and guilt—they all had to wait for the duties that came first.

At least that’s been my excuse—the one I preferred over the other, which was me feeling terribly guilty and wimping out by avoiding everyone in the know.

Guilt is like gravity—it keeps your head down.

The weekend that followed my come-to-Jesus moment at the Maxfield’s, Brandon and I skipped the usual family brunch.

I didn’t say anything, hoping I didn’t have to face anyone anytime soon but also not wanting to deprive Brandon of his family either.

He may have noticed my reticence but Brandon said nothing of it when he declared that we were driving out to the beach house that weekend. He insisted it was going to be one of the last few quiet weekends we’d have together before the holiday madness took over. After glancing at the Championettes’ itinerary in the coming months, his prediction was spot on.

In two weeks for example, was the Arts Appreciation dinner—the first of the Society’s four big charity fundraisers in the year.

It was held the same weekend every year, with the same concept, at the same venue—the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum which was a stunning piece of architecture, aptly fitting its namesake who was a highly-esteemed patron of the arts and a philanthropist. Inspired by Venetian palaces, it housed an old-fashioned courtyard in the center of three levels of galleries that looked over it. From the glass window that streamed light into the impeccably manicured garden, to the arched balconies, to the lavish details, the place was romantic and inspired, fitting into the Championette ideal of elegance and grace.

Each year, the Society held a fancy dinner event, inviting fresh talents from all over the city to showcase their work to a prestigious guest list that was made up of the press, influential members of the city’s art foundation, and most importantly, well-paying art connoisseurs and patrons from all over the country.

The dinner venue would be surrounded with a variety of art displays, from paintings to stained glass creations to mixed-media sculptures.

Guests wrote big, fat checks to purchase a spot on the guest list, the funds going to the many art programs offered in the city. The other hope was that by the end of the evening, most of the displayed works would be sold off and participating artists would go home with big paychecks and more lucrative future commissions.

Even though Layla only got officially crowned chairwomanship of the Championettes’ this summer, she’d been prepped for the position in the last couple of years. Since she was a bit of a control freak, she’d already planned out all the major fundraisers the Society was doing this year, booking venues, caterers, event-planners and such.

While I was secretly relieved I didn’t have to start from scratch, planning events that could make or break the Championettes’ this year, it also rubbed raw that it felt like I was an inconvenient bit of baggage heaped on to the load while the rest trudged through with plans they’d already made way before I even came into the picture. 

I was already taking a crash course in socialite duties as it was but it didn’t mean I could be let out on the road on my own just yet.

The only thing I was tasked with, other than trying to keep everyone from killing each other every time we had a meeting, was to come up with the charity to champion this year through a masquerade fundraiser Layla had named Masquerade Magnifique.

Some members of the board had voiced their doubts about doing another masquerade, which was apparently an overused formula in a society who threw so many damned parties, but Layla gave them all a dainty death stare and proclaimed that it would be the mother of all masquerades because she was planning it.

In all honesty, Layla was a good planner.

But then, dictators didn’t really have a problem giving orders and putting your neck on the chopping block if you failed, which was the reason I’d been playing referee.

The board was made up of individuals with extremely strong personalities. Head-butting, I discovered, was a classic Championette-assembly style. For a bunch of people who were as thick as thieves when they were plotting for my downfall, they were just as ruthless facing off each other. I had to intervene.

I’d rather push heads apart than collect them in a bag later.

Which was why I found myself arriving at the LeClaire’s impressive townhouse in Beacon Hill, Boston’s most prestigious neighborhood. The small but historic and highly-prominent area boasted of postcard-perfect colonial row houses, brick paths and gas-lit streets.

Layla and I were going to be interviewed for a segment in the city’s top morning news show and she wanted us to rehearse our answers together.

I didn’t think it was a bad idea because the last thing I wanted was for us to do a showdown on live TV instead of promoting the Society’s upcoming fundraisers.

An aging doorman with a dour face greeted me and directed me to the sitting room to wait for Layla. I was about half an hour early so I didn’t mind but it struck me as odd that the man practically dragged me into the room and promptly left me with barely any acknowledgement or the typical offer of refreshments, which I was taught was a common courtesy an expert hostess such as Layla would never forget.

It was my first visit to the LeClaire household so I didn’t dare make any presumptions as to how Queen Layla ran her kingdom. 

The thing about being in a lion’s den is that manners don’t matter as much—not when you’re about to be served for dinner. Yum.

I wasn’t scared of Layla but I was nervous for some reason.

This house was like a crypt—too quiet and too empty you could almost hear the ghosts walk.

I had just sat down and started leafing through a large coffee table book about rare diamonds in the world when I heard a small scraping sound in the other room.

I was just kidding when I thought about ghosts.

I paused and held my breath, and the scuffing sound of shoes filled the stretch of silence.

I got up and poked my head through the archway that led to what looked like another sitting area, catching a short, lanky figure hovering by a bureau decorated with picture frames and small art figures. 

“Hey, you!” I said, narrowing my eyes as I watched the boy, somewhere between ten and twelve, shove something into the pocket of his oversized black hoodie. 

Gasping, he snapped his head up and caught sight of me. His eyes were wide with alarm and panic, his hand shoving deeper into his pocket.

With his worn sweater and jeans, he didn’t look like he belonged in Layla’s museum-like house. He looked a little too rugged—and a little too guilty.

I tensed, aware that I was alone in the room with a possible underaged burglar. “Listen. I think you—Hey!”

He bolted into a run and zipped past me, knocking over a small side table that sent a few glass displays crashing to the floor.

“Now you’ve asked for it,” I muttered right after a hissed curse as I took off running after the little rugrat.

As I headed for the main hallway, I heard a woman’s shriek and a man’s shout echo down the grand staircase.

I couldn’t tell who they were but they probably just realized that the house had been broken into.

More determined to catch the kid who was probably dragged along into this heist, I broke into a run again, nearly crashing with the doorman who came out of nowhere with a stupefied look on his face.

“Call the cops!” I practically shouted in his face before I steered him out of the way to continue my pursuit of the young boy.

I was in dressed in a casual pair of low-heeled ankle boots, brown wool tights and a sweater dress which were just comfortable enough for me to race my way out of the hallway and down the front steps of the townhouse.

“Hey! Get back here!” I yelled, before lunging for him as he paused in sprinting down the brick sidewalk at my shout.

His eyes widened as he stood frozen for a moment, when he realized I was coming down on him like a freight train. 

I groaned and hissed as my knees and elbows made contact with the ground but I didn’t budge an inch as I held the boy down with my arms and a crooked leg.

He was a few inches shorter than me, his frame slight and scrawny but he was flailing his arms around like a bug on its back. I kept my eyes on his hands, briefly remembering to check if he had any sharp objects he could slice me up with. So far, so good.

“Hey, kid. Stop wiggling!” I told him as I loomed over his ashen face. “I’ve had to wrestle down men easily three times your size before when they were so drunk they thought they were in a petting zoo with a free pass. You’re not going anywhere until I let you go and that’s not happening until you hand over what you filched.”

The boy kept trying to twist free and I looked up and down the sidewalk to see if we’d attracted attention.

The LeClaire residence was in a quieter street in Beacon Hill and while there was an endless line of cars parked along the narrow street, the area was relatively empty. The perks of a weekday afternoon.

I glanced down at the boy again. “Hey, I don’t want to turn you in but I will if you don’t return what you stole. I know life is tough but the first thing you need to learn is that crime isn’t a way out—it’s a way in. A way in into one of those horrible orange suits, a way into your new home of concrete and steel bars with thugs for roommates, a way into a fate worse than the one you’re imagining today.”

I looked into his frightened pale blue eyes and my voice gentled. “So give it up, whatever it is that you stole. It’ll never be worth your entire life.”

His chin trembled and his eyes watered but he pressed his lips together in a valiant effort to hold back his tears. “I didn’t... I’m... I...”

There was hardly anyone walking down the sidewalk right now but I couldn’t pin the kid down to the pavement forever without drawing attention so I sighed out loud and reached into the pocket of his hoodie. “Fine. If you’re going to play hard to get, you leave me no choice but to...”

My voice trailed off and I frowned as my hands wrapped around a small square shape.

I pulled it out of his pocket, my brows drawing together in confusion as I stared at a small, palm-sized wooden frame with a portrait of Layla in it. The frame was nice and pretty but it wasn’t worth a fortune.

“Okay. Now, this is just weird." I looked at the boy but he wasn’t paying attention to me.

Tears were making their way down his face as he squeezed his eyes shut, muttering, “...should’ve never come here... he always gets mad... But we came back early...”

“Hey, kid!” I told him with a hard tug on his elbow. “What in the world is going on with you?”

He kept shaking his head, biting his lip as he tried not to cry. 

In that instant, I knew there wasn’t a burglary.

I eased off him and grabbed him by the elbow to help him up. He pulled himself up to a sitting position on the curb, burying his face into his hands as his shoulders started shaking with silent sobs.

I stared at him for a long moment, watching but saying nothing as he cried. I eventually crossed my legs together as I sat next to him on the sidewalk. 

I propped up my arms on top of my knees and stared at Layla’s smiling face on the picture frame. She looked very pretty but as I stared longer at her expression, it became easy to see that her smile didn’t quite reach her pale blue eyes.

“If I give you the picture back, will you stop crying?” I asked the boy, gently nudging him on the arm with my elbow. 

He shook his head, his face still buried in his hands. “Give it back to her. Tell her I’m sorry. When he finds out... he’ll be m-mad. Tell her I’m sorry...”

If the world had altered in the last ten minutes, I just realized it now.

“What’s your name, kid?” I asked, waiting patiently as it took him a moment to lift his head of shaggy white blond hair, his cheeks flushed and tear-stained, his winter blue eyes even more luminous with a fragile sadness.