Authors: Vanessa Fox
Alex raised her eyebrows. Right now, seeing Sebastian Wingfield sentenced to seven years in Mountjoy Prison wasn’t such an unattractive prospect.
‘
And he’s getting married girl. We can’t ruin all that with a lawsuit.’
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Can’t we? We’ll just have to see what he says then, won’t we?’
TWENTY SIX
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Thank you so much for the flowers.’ Caroline’s voice, jarring like an inexperienced violinist tuning up, was dripping with sarcasm. Tearing himself away from the series of doodles he had been creating in the margins of his desk calendar, one hand reaching to massage his pounding head, Sebastian adjusted his mobile against his ear and thought fast. Was she ringing because he’d forgotten to send her flowers (why should he have remembered??) or because she didn’t like the ones she’d got, assuming them to be from him?
They’d hardly spoken since lunch yesterday, had hardly spoken at all during the meal. A tense affair, the idiot wedding planner gushing about lilies, about organza, about pink champagne, his grandfather appearing blissfully unaware of any tension, smiling at Caroline like she was Helen of Troy, occasionally reaching out to pat her arm which was resting on the table beside him, the Wingfield Sapphire displayed to its maximum advantage.
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Weren’t you listening to anything I said yesterday?’ Without waiting for him to answer Caroline barrelled on. He was tempted to say ‘I heard you loud and clear…’ but she didn’t give him a chance, ‘I very clearly said that I hated yellow, and obviously if I don’t like yellow any fool would know that I wouldn’t be keen on orange either...’ Any fool? Yellow and orange? ‘…and to be honest, parrot flowers are quite grotesque.’
Parrot flowers? Then the penny dropped; Joss. Joss loved parrot flowers…Joss must have sent them…but how on earth did she know they’d had a row? Sebastian suddenly realised that she had stopped speaking, the silence growing between them like a vacuum.
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Sorry, I missed the bit about the yellow…’ it sounded hopeless, even to him, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Caroline didn’t answer but let out a sharp breath like an escape of steam from a piston. Sebastian tried again, ‘You know flowers aren’t really my thing…’
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I’d noticed.’ Her retort was short and piercing. He winced.
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I hope you’ve done a bit better with the rest.’
The rest? The rest of what? The rest of the flowers? Hardly. Glancing towards the door of his office, willing Joss to come in and rescue him, Sebastian said the only thing he could think of, finding himself using the exact phrase that that fool in Cannes had been spinning out for the past six months:
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Of course darling, everything’s under control.’
Perhaps it was the empty tone in his voice that she picked up on, or maybe she found the choice of words as shallow as he had done, but her reply came out in a hiss.
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You’ve forgotten – you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about do you?’
There was a pause while Caroline waited for him to react. He didn’t; still didn’t know what he’d done wrong, what she was talking about.
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How could you?’ Caroline’s voice was rising, ‘So, who sent the flowers? Oh my God, it was Joss wasn’t it? That woman’s mad; she’s just the type to think I’d like those hideous parrot things. I cannot believe it.’ Her last words came out as a screech, gears jamming in an engine room. And she wasn’t finished. ‘After you were so beastly yesterday, how could you forget my birthday?’
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I…’
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Don’t bother making excuses Sebastian Wingfield. You’ve just been too wrapped up in that bloody gamekeeper and his precious daughter to think about me, haven’t you? Alex Ryan with her red briefcase and her bloody blonde curls. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you look at her.’
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What? What do you mean the way I look at her, don’t be ridiculous…’
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Ridiculous, me? You’re the one mooning over the staff, making a complete idiot of yourself, and I’m quite sure that I’m not the only one who’s noticed. I won’t be made a fool of Sebastian. I will not, do you hear me? You’re just going to have to get rid of her and find someone else to do the ballroom.’ Caroline paused for breath, continuing with a sneer, ‘Ask Joss, she’s very efficient. I’m sure she can find another painter and decorator.’
And with that, Caroline slammed down the phone.
Reeling from the vitriol in her voice, astonished, Sebastian clicked his phone off, laying it down carefully beside his desk pad. His PA had sent her flowers and she didn’t like the colour. And okay, with everything on his mind, he had forgotten that it was her birthday. Big deal! There were children dying of hunger in Africa, suicide bombers attacking shopping centres in the Middle East, and Caroline was having a fit about the colour of a bunch of flowers.
Straightening the phone, shifting it slightly so that it lay exactly parallel with his desk pad, Sebastian took a deep breath. His world was cracking apart. Spectacularly so. Cracking and breaking like ice, huge sections of it floating away from him, gathering speed as everything that was happening caught hold of them, spinning them out of control in a torrent of secrets and accusations.
Had it started with the accident?
The gut-wrenching horror of seeing Tom lying there hit him full force all over again; his desperate radio call to the house; the whup-whup-whup of the blades of the rescue helicopter pounding the cold air, mirroring the beat of his heart; the race to the hospital; pacing outside the operating theatre, disinfectant catching in his throat, the lights too bright, nameless, faceless people passing him like zombies in some awful B movie. And then seeing Tom sitting up in bed, his face drained of colour; fumbling for the right words, not knowing where to start, how to make things right.
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It’s all right son, accidents happen.’ It’s all right son…
And then there was Alex. Walking right back into his life as if she didn’t know him, as if they had no connection. The memory of that kiss gave him a physical pain in his gut, sent another chunk of his carefully balanced life spinning into oblivion. He’d had a feeling she might come, if he was honest with himself, knew she would come as soon as she heard Tom was in hospital, but in the whirl of events that had followed, between Caroline’s non-stop plans for the wedding, the mess that that idiot had made of the business in Cannes, Jackson’s negotiations with New York, he’d pushed it to the back of his mind. He hadn’t wanted to see her, was firmly decided on that. She was the one who had left. Left him in bits.
He’d eventually found a way to deal with the loss, the hurt, to build a barrier to protect himself, a shield around his heart that allowed him get on with his life, to focus on the estate and his business. But no matter how strong Sebastian thought he was, he couldn’t stop the memories gushing through fissures in his armour every time he heard a particular song on the radio, smelled perfume that was vaguely like hers, heard a blackbird call. And with every fissure that appeared, despite his efforts to repair it, despite the distance of the years, his protective wall had weakened. And then Alex Ryan had walked into his office and the whole lot had started to shift alarmingly, fault lines rippling out in every direction.
Sebastian picked up the fountain pen on his desk, ‘with all my love’ engraved along its shaft, fed it through his fingers. He’d come into the office early this morning, waking at four, cold, unable to sleep, a nagging ache to the left of his forehead. Caroline, thankfully, had taken herself off to spend the night at her apartment so, instead of tossing and turning, he’d decided to get up, had grabbed a coffee and come straight to the office, frightening the cleaners half to death when they’d arrived with their trolleys laden with mops and brooms and mysterious sprays. And he’d been sitting here ever since, trying to sort it all out in his head, blissfully unaware that he should have been at Caroline’s apartment at the Four Seasons Hotel with flowers (pink) and a rock from Weir’s. But he’d probably have got that wrong too, gone for emeralds when she wanted diamonds, earrings when she wanted a necklace. They didn’t seem to be on the same wavelength at all.
Sebastian groaned half to himself, remembering the feeling of horror as Caroline had revealed the truth about Tom’s accident. Like the start of an avalanche, he had heard the laughter in her voice before she came out with it, had felt as if chunks of rock and snow were sliding past him in slow motion as she continued, gathering momentum as they crashed to earth. What on earth had possessed her? He rolled the pen between his fingers again. He only had a few minutes now before Joss would be up with the coffee, before Jackson would be on the phone, before the Minister arrived to talk about this bloody shopping centre. Why on earth would Wingfield Holdings be interested in a shopping centre? The pen felt solid in his hand, heavy, comforting, the light from the chandelier catching its fluted surface, dancing, teasing him with memories.
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I’ve got something for you.’
Eyes sparkling, Alex had glanced at him over her shoulder as she pushed the peeling door of the Mill House open, the sound of the hinges creaking over the rush of the water tumbling beside them, gushing through the wheel, stuck tight after so many years of neglect, weed streaming from its paddles like mermaids’ hair. He’d followed her into the darkness, the windows boarded now against the elements, the only light from the hole in the roof, the smell of rotting leaves and damp pervading every crevice. They’d secured the ladder in place, prevented it from falling with an old piece of nylon rope, red and scratchy, and nails that she had found in her dad’s tool kit. Sebastian had been surprised – he hadn’t told her it was his birthday, somehow afraid that slipping another year ahead of her would make him too old for her, would turn her off him. But, as they scrambled up to their dry corner, he saw she’d already pulled the old tartan travelling rug straight, had piled the cushions into a heap, a bottle of Asti Spumante and a pair of glasses set ready on a battered tin tray, a chocolate cake from the village bakery safe from the mice in its glossy white cardboard box.
Laughing, she’d insisted he sit, let her uncork the bottle with a pop, pour them both a glass, fizzing and spitting, before she’d produced his gift. Wrapped in shiny silver paper, criss-crossed with a bright blue ribbon, the tag written in her distinctive bubbly hand, ‘For when you go back to Uni, so you don’t forget me…All my love A’, followed by one firm kiss, rich, full of promise, like the one he’d given her, pushing her backwards onto the cushions, their souls soaring as their tongues had met, hungry, eager, connected.
Where had he heard that it only takes a minute to form a friendship, an hour to fall in love, but a lifetime to forget someone? Joss probably, reading from one of her women’s magazines as they had waited for a plane or had sat in the back of the car on the way to a meeting. It never ceased to amaze him the rubbish they printed, but that little gem had stuck with him, had penetrated his armour with diamond-like clarity, forming another crack that had deepened and grown without him being conscious of it, leaving him exposed, vulnerable.
Sebastian had protected himself over the years by maintaining his distance; people said he was stuck up, unfriendly, but it suited him. Even Caroline had thought he was an emotional cripple for years, had treated him like a rather irksome addition to their family – until she’d come to that dinner of course. He’d winced when she told him how much the outfit had cost, but he had to admit she had looked devastating, her heart-shaped face set off by the plunging neckline of her dress, black, something floaty over a tight silk sheath, an emerald green bag flung over her shoulder in a surprising splash of colour. And she’d charmed the Chinese Minister for Trade, had held him in the palm of her hand like a tiny bird, feeding him compliments like crumbs. And Caroline had charmed him, shown him a side of her he’d never seen before, sparkling and funny, her eyes meeting his as the steward poured the champagne, suggestive, brimming with promise. And at the end of the night, when he’d dropped her off, Caroline had leaned across the car, running a manicured fingernail along his cheek, down the front of his shirt, slipping her hand between his thighs, her lips fluttering over his like a butterfly. And the next thing he knew they’d been at that friend of hers wedding and she’d caught the bouquet, and somehow she was trying on his mother’s ring for size. Ever since they had started seeing each other, his grandfather had been making comments about him not getting any younger, about it being time he got married, about maintaining the family line…and then it had all just sort of happened
Cormac had been delighted of course, had roared down the phone, his parents laughing in the background at the union of the two ancient estates. And Caroline had immediately wrapped his grandfather around her finger, the old man chuckling at her innocent enquiries about the estate, charmed by her ignorance.
Had he got carried away on her family’s wave of happiness, swept along by his grandfather’s enthusiastic approval of the match? Had he really thought about Caroline as the Lady of Kilfenora, about whether she’d be up to the job? A chasm of worry gaped open inside Sebastian as another chunk of his carefully balanced life broke away. Was he really doing the right thing? Was Caroline the woman for him? And what would Cormac say about his qualms? Pre-wedding jitters or something more serious? Cormac, his best friend. How could he tell him? How could they stay friends if Sebastian broke his sister’s heart, made a total fool of her by breaking up with her this close to the wedding?
Because in the exact moment that Caroline had started talking about the accident, and more importantly, hadn’t stopped, Sebastian had seen his mistake, realised that she could never live up to the reality of being his wife. She just wasn’t right. For him or for Kilfenora.