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No one could.
‘Sorry.’ Pulling herself together, Oti wiped her arm across her eyes. ‘It’s just been a long couple of days. But it’s done now. So let’s get back to the rehab after your operation.’
‘The gruelling bit, you said.’
‘True. But since when were you ever bothered by a little hard work, Edward?’
‘I’m not.’ He blew out a frustrated breath. ‘But do you really think they’ll take me on, Oats? The candidates they’ve chosen were all less than eighteen months post-spinal-cord accident. I’m nearly five years.’
‘They’re making strides with it all the time, Edward.’ She focused on her brother. ‘The experiences they had with the first few groups have informed their understanding of the procedures. Of nerve topography itself.’
‘Which means...?’
‘It means they studied how spasticity allows preserved muscle function and stops atrophy.’
‘I have no idea what you’re saying to me.’ Edward frowned. ‘You might as well be speaking Sudanese for all I know.’
‘Nuer,’ she corrected absently. ‘Or Dinka.’
‘Which raises another question,’ Edward cut in. ‘These trials are new, and I don’t qualify for any current clinical trials, which means we’d have to pay for this surgery.’
Oti schooled herself not to panic. ‘No, there’s a new trial...’
‘There isn’t.’ He stopped her again. ‘How are you intending to pay for this, Oats? Because volunteering as a doctor in Sub-Saharan Africa might feed your soul, little sister, but it doesn’t do much for your wallet. And I don’t have anything since Father seized control of my company after the accident. If I hadn’t had private insurance, I wouldn’t even have this place.’
‘Father will...’
‘Spare me,’ Edward snorted. ‘He wouldn’t throw a pound my way even if he had it. Which he doesn’t, given that he’s gambled away everything owned by the Sedeshire estate, bar the damned Hall itself.’
‘He’s...made some money.’ Oti tried to sound convincing, but she’d never found it easy to lie to her big brother.
It was one of the reasons she worked in Africa—to avoid having to lie to his face. That, and the fact that he’d banned her from visiting for the first couple of years after the accident, and she hadn’t been able to stand being just down the road from his hospital whilst he’d refused to even see her.
The fact that their father had been only too inexplicably happy to wash his hands of a tetraplegic son had only heightened her sense of injustice.
As though, somehow, the Earl felt that Edward’s lack of mobility might somehow reflect on his own image of apparent virility.
How many more ways could their father have left to disappoint either of his children?
‘No, he hasn’t,’ Edward contradicted smoothly. ‘If he had, he’d have gambled it away again faster than you could say Quit whilst you’re ahead.’
He pinned her with a sharp stare, and it was all Oti could do not to squirm. She smoothed down her grey jersey trousers, picking off a sliver of some imaginary lint.
‘What gives, Oats?’
A hundred different excuses darted around her head, though nothing that she thought her brother might believe. But then he spoke again, his voice cracking as he asked her not to bring him hope of an operation there was no chance they could afford.
‘Of course not. I wouldn’t...’ The words tumbled out in her horror. ‘Trust me. We can afford the operation.’
‘How?’
Another skewering gaze. Her heart pounded in her chest. There was nothing else for it but to come clean.
‘I got married.’
He didn’t answer; he simply stared at her. And that was worse, somehow. Without knowing what she was doing, Oti reached inside her pocket and retrieved her wedding rings and slid them nervously back onto her finger.
It shouldn’t have felt so...comforting to do so.
