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“I’ll shoot it over now. It sounds ominous. Not like Harry at all.” Whatever is in that email clearly has Casper worried from the way he’s talking in short snappy sentences that mimic his mission strategy tone. “I just forwarded it. Fleur is getting ready, and we’re heading back into town. We need to get on this. Fast,” he stresses.
“I’ll look through the email now.” We end the call as my phone pings.
“Is he all right? Fleur and Grace?” Georgina asks as Francis stands from the table and gestures at me, Christopher, and Leo to follow him out into the hallway.
“They’re fine. He’s on his way back into town,” I tell her with a light brush of the backs of my fingers on her cheek as I get up and head out of the dining room.
The second I step out in the hallway, Francis blows out a deep, perturbed breath.
“They found Harry,” he says.
What is it with people and blanket statements that mean fuck all. “You need to elaborate because I didn’t know he was missing.”
“With everything that’s been going on with him and Sarah, he was incommunicado for the last couple of days. Benedict has been standing in for him.”
“And you didn’t tell us this because?”
“It was a family issue, and you had your own personal matters to take care of. Lucian, Benedict, and I were handling it and—” He pauses as the dining room door opens and Aunt Penny steps out with four glasses of assorted liquors in her hands.
“You all right?” she asks him, offering him a healthy measure of scotch from the Herald’s Hold distillery. The smoky scent is unique to the liquor from our estate. It’s what Grandad loved most about it. “Maybe you need to take a minute to digest the news.”
“I’m perfectly fine, Penelope,” he grumbles, taking the whiskey and throwing it all back in one before walking off in the direction of his office.
“Fran—”
“I said I’m fine,” he calls over his shoulder. “Just take care of the girls.”
“What’s going on?” Christopher looks on at Francis as he takes one of the vodkas from Penny and hands it to Leo before taking one for himself.
When she offers me the one left in her hand, I decline it. I’ve been anticipating this moment for too long, and I can’t cloud my head with anything. “You look like you could do with it more than I do.”
“Freddie.” She smiles a world of sadness at me. “Take your girl and go home. Okay?”
“Not okay.”
“It’s for the best. Let Casper handle this.”
“Mum, you know that’s not how this works.”
“Even if it did, I’m not leaving anything to anyone. What the fuck is going on?”
“Harry’s dead,” Leo says, holding up his phone to show his text exchange with Lucian.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out why she was fretting over me and why Francis said they found him. It’s a simple conclusion, but it doesn’t exactly make it an easy one to swallow. Although it’s nothing related to the past, the images conjured by the news chill me to the core.
“Who found him?” I ask.
This can’t be another wound Lucy suffers. Although I’ve made the decision to step away from her, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care. Georgina might be my priority, but Lucy is still a concern of mine.
“Penny…”
“Laura found him. Sarah and Lucy have been staying at the family home since she was discharged from the hospital. There was a massive to-do with Lucy’s injury from where she was taken from the clinic, and Sarah lost it with Harry for trying to get another psychologist involved.”
There’s nothing new about what she’s said, except for the injury. Admittedly, I haven’t looked into anything to do with Lucy the last couple of weeks. The clean break seemed best for her, for Georgina, and the guilt that was fucking with my head.
“What was the problem with the injury?” I ask her, and she gets that conflicted look about her that tells me she’s either not meant to know this or she’s not meant to share it with us.
“Mum, if Dad’s head is fucked about this, we need to know everything so we can step in.”
