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DUNCROFT
“This makes me nervous,” Lou declared.
I didn’t know how to reply because I found what she said odd.
Though, thinking about it, perhaps not too odd.
Portia wasn’t Lou’s biggest fan, she hadn’t been since the very beginning. Even I was surprised my little sister asked Lou to spend this week in the country at the family home of Portia’s boyfriend.
Me? Yes.
The older sister. The only sibling. It made sense.
Portia and I had our times of strife (a lot of them), but like she always had her father’s devotion, she always wanted her big sister’s approval.
When Lou came along, she took some of the former, which was why Portia had never accepted Lou as part of our family. Dad had spoiled Portia, and when he took some attention from his youngest in order to shower Lou with his brand of love, Portia wasn’t happy.
As for my approval, it wasn’t often forthcoming, mainly because Portia didn’t often make decisions I approved of.
I wasn’t the stuffy older sister.
Portia was the mischievous younger one.
According to me.
Also according to me, that description was being nice.
In other words, Portia could often be a pain in my ass.
Lou’s invitation to this week in the countryside? The much-younger third wife of our now deceased father? A wife Portia had butted heads with for the last decade?
That made no sense at all.
Due to this, Lou feeling nervous wasn’t odd…as such.
However, she’d been a member of our family for a long time. She’d sat vigil at Dad’s deathbed right alongside Portia and me. And Portia knew I wouldn’t be thrilled if she cut Lou out of something as important as a meet-the-family with a man who Portia had been seeing for some months now, her longest-ever boyfriend.
So, Lou’s assertion was also odd.
I glanced from navigating the narrow, winding road edged in thick hedgerows to the passenger seat where Lou was sitting, and I saw she wasn’t just nervous. And it was important to note, former supermodel Louella Fernsby-Ryan didn’t often get nervous, or if she did, she knew how to hide it.
No, now she looked—there was no other way to put it—terrified.
Any normal person might be, considering all we were heading into.
That said, Lou wasn’t a normal person. She’d been hobnobbing with the rich and famous for the last twenty plus years. She was beautiful. She was confident. She’d been incredibly successful in her chosen career.
But we were to spend the next ten days at Duncroft House, the country seat of the Alcotts. That being Earl Alcott, Richard, his wife, the Countess, Jane, and Daniel, their youngest son, Portia’s new beau.
Then there was Ian, their oldest, the heir to the title, who Portia told me promised to make several appearances that week, but she and Daniel were hoping he’d spend the whole week and make it a real family affair.
Yes.
And then there was Ian Alcott.
Hmm.
