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She fiddled with a ballerina figurine, then her eyes slowly lifted to meet mine. A smirk took shape on her glossy red, collagen-plumped pout. “Why would you think that?”
I took a breath to process an explosion of thoughts. “Need I explain?”
“Oh, the Will incident?” She shrugged. “I did you a favour, didn’t I? Your fiancé is a step up. You look seriously in love.”
Our eyes locked, and my pulse picked up. “I ask again, what are you plotting?”
She chuckled. “I’m not interested in Cary, if that’s what you’re asking. He hasn’t even noticed me. He can’t take his eyes off you, it would seem.”
She stroked her long red nails. A habit of mine. Other than our physical resemblance, was that our only similarity?
If anything, her sardonic smirk reminded me of my rapist foster father. Her father.
Why had I allowed her into my home? Particularly after everything she’d done to me and my family.
It was Manon who’d brokered that truce, and I loved my granddaughter. In Manon, I saw myself at her age. Only I had been less outspoken and coarse. Which I put down to growing up during the eighties.
I had been more inspired by the poised and steadfast Queen Elizabeth rather than firebrands such as Germaine Greer.
While at college, I had shunned those students clutching copies of the Female Eunuch while proselytising in matching punchy prose, preferring high tea at Claridge’s instead. I’d soon learnt that the pampered wives of powerful men carried more clout than the braless brigade, campaigning raucously for a sexual coup.
Not that I didn’t believe in equality.
The queens of England were a clear example of how women could master the push and pull of power by using razor-sharp observation and juggling tasks as effortlessly as a trained dancer, while reserving their hearts for those trusted few.
My daughter reclined on the chaise longue, looking like the wealthy woman she’d clawed her way to become. Especially in that Versace sheath and blood-red Louboutins. She just had to keep her mouth shut.
At least Manon was working at removing that gutter accent. I’d gotten rid of mine after Reynard had recommended clipped articulation if I wished to become a woman of substance.
I’d even read the book with that same title after seeing it lying around somewhere. Despite finding it an inspiring read, I wasn’t about to traipse through the moors and work as a maid, only to get impregnated by the lord’s son.
I went about it the easier way, by affiliating myself with a slippery character possessing all the right contacts and answers for me—a naïve eighteen-year-old who thought she’d met the man of her dreams.
Yes, I had been head over heels in love with Reynard.
However, looking back, it wasn’t love that I’d felt, given that the sex was ordinary. It was his ticket into a glamorous world that I could only dream of inhabiting. A rich world, where intelligent minds mingled, dressed fabulously in designer, smelt like a heavenly garden, and spoke in clipped Queens English, uttering long, esoteric words. Back then, being that starry-eyed social climber, I had found a large word more of an aphrodisiac than the size of a man’s penis.
Cary had it all—brains, beauty, and a nice, big, overactive penis to match.
Considering my considerable carnal appetites, it was ironic that I should marry a homosexual who, at the time, had been bisexual.
We had three lovely children to prove Harry’s sexual fluidity, and paternity tests had confirmed his patrilineage. Something I’d done on the sly.
“Must I have a motive for being here? Can’t I just want to bond with family?” Bethany asked.
I studied her closely for a hint of sarcasm, but she returned a straight face. Something else she might have inherited from me.
“I need to know I can trust you, Bethany.”
“Then tell me about my father, and I promise to stay away.”
That winded me.
Though unexpected, her request shouldn’t have surprised me. It was only natural.
But how could I tell her?
The truth meant exposing my heart.
And showing one’s heart made one weak.
Something I’d learnt the hard way… early in life.
