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Maybe then he could learn how to make Daisy and Ryan’s better, too.
‘Tell me.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
HEATHER’S HANDS SHOOK at the very idea of sharing her past with this man. But if it was the only way to get Cal to open up about his own childhood then it was the right thing to do. For Daisy and for Ryan—and maybe even for Cal himself.
Taking the glass of elderflower cordial from him, Heather allowed herself a small sip before she started talking.
‘I grew up in a little Hertfordshire village,’ she started. ‘You know the sort—where everyone knows everyone else and all their business.’
‘Sounds like Lengroth. Well, mostly,’ Cal amended.
She wondered what that amendment was for. She could well imagine how difficult it must have been for Cal and Ross, growing up in a small community where everyone would have been watching them even more closely than most young boys, waiting for them to screw up or do something worth reporting back to the Earl—or the newspapers.
‘Anyway, my father was leader of the village council, and he ran the post office and corner shop on the high street, and my mother was a teacher at the nearest secondary school.’
They might not have had aristocratic status, but her parents’ jobs and roles in the community had made them more than high-profile enough for Heather’s liking.
‘So far so idyllic,’ Cal commented. ‘Go on.’
What came next? The fall from grace, of course. The point where everything had gone wrong. But the words stuck in Heather’s throat even as she pushed herself to say them. She’d never needed to tell anyone this story before. Either they already knew it or they had no need ever to hear it.
Until now.
‘My mother...she taught the sixth form, mostly. Seventeen-and eighteen-year-olds.’ Heather swallowed. ‘She fell in love with one of her students—a seventeen-year-old boy. Only seven years older than I was. They started an affair.’
With a wince, Cal topped up her elderflower cordial.
She took another gulp. ‘They got caught, of course. In the classroom, in fact, by the head teacher. The news was around the village before she’d even made it home to tell Dad.’
‘What happened next?’ Cal asked.
She could hear the tension in his words. He obviously knew it wouldn’t be good. ‘Mum was suspended from her job immediately, of course. His parents talked about pressing charges. But the boy—John, he was called...’
Oh, hell, her eyes were burning now. Could she blame the pregnancy hormones for the tears on her cheeks? Probably not.
‘He told everyone who would listen that they were in love. That Mum loved him far more than her husband or me. Mum...she said it wasn’t true. That John had made it all up—that it was all a misunderstanding and there was nothing between them.’
‘And was it untrue?’
‘No. But even after everyone knew she kept on lying. Until...’
Cal’s eyes fluttered closed, as if he were feeling her pain. Heather was just glad he wasn’t looking at her as she told him the rest of the sordid tale.
‘Two nights later they ran away together. Just disappeared in the middle of the night. I... We never heard from Mum again. Not in the last eighteen years.’
Cal’s eyes flew open. ‘Never? She didn’t leave a note or anything?’
Heather shrugged. ‘She did. Just a short letter, saying she was sorry, but she loved John and that was more important than anything.’
‘How did your dad take it?’
‘Badly.’ Which might be the biggest understatement of the year. ‘He was destroyed. He loved her so much, and it broke him when he realised she loved someone else.’
Broke her, too—not that she intended to mention that. Cal already had the pitying look in his eyes that she’d grown so used to seeing from the villagers. Well, the ones who weren’t giving her knowing looks and talking behind her back, anyway.
‘He started drinking,’ she went on. ‘Lost his place on the council, his reputation... Almost lost the shop, too. People felt sorry for him, of course, but the scandal was too juicy for them to resist gossiping about it. He grew paranoid, started thinking everyone was talking about him all the time. He’d be walking down the street and he’d hear someone say something, and then he’d be yelling at them, threatening them—all sorts. It was...horrible.’
