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What is she doing here? The question turns around in my head as Jess locks eyes with me. Her face morphs from morose to angry with a bat of her lashes. The force of her stare is unwavering in its hold as she walks with Sterling’s named successor. Behind them, his rightful heir follows with his wife and their son.
“It’s a wonder that woman shows herself here,” my mother says with a look of repugnance as Grania sits in the front row on the opposite end of the pew with Ryan and Jess beside her and Luke Sterling and his wife between them and Catrin.
“The shame of it,” she continues hissing. “What was Alastair thinking? This is no place for—”
“Hush, Mother.” I interrupt her venomous snipes. “You’re in no place to judge.”
“You can’t begrudge me forever,” she tells me, turning back to the front. “I did what I had to do. Like you should.”
I know what I have to do, and she won’t like it when she’s replaced and retired in one of the country estates. Somewhere she can’t stir any more shit or cause problems.
“Careful what you wish for,” I say, blowing out a breath as the bagpipes start the coffin’s procession into the chapel and everyone rises to their feet.
It’s here the intrigue dies with the echoes of “The Flower of Scotland” reverberating around the stone walls. I zone out, keeping my eyes on the ground, while I try not to think too hard about the people I’ve buried. Every funeral is the same; the hymns change, but the passages stay true to the tradition of the Wolfsden Society.
It’s while I sit here, blocking out the present, that the past collides with the future. One segues into the other. If this is the rest of my life, I don’t want vipers at my side. There’s only one person that should be with me right now, and I think it’s time it happened.
I look beside me at Julian as he flicks through the order of service with shaky hands. This isn’t easy for him either. Sterling may have been a bastard on many fronts, but he was good to him.
“We’ll make it right,” I tell him, leaning close.
“It’s too late for right,” he whispers back, nodding towards Simon on my mother’s other side. “And it’s not his fault.”
“My father…Sterling, they might still be alive if it wasn’t for them.”
“My father might still be alive, if he wasn’t dead,” he grits back almost silently. “The reason we’re here is because people die. It’s a fact that will never change.”
“One day, you will hunger for blood like the rest of us.”
He turns his face to mine, lifting his hand between us so that the ring on the small finger of his left hand, beside his oath ring, is in clear view. The initials KF are worn but still legible. Kit Fairfax. The day he died was the day that Julian changed; he’s never been himself since.
“I do,” he says below a whisper, fisting his hand before he presses a reverent kiss to the ring. “More than you will ever know.”
I silently pray that’s true. I pray that I’m enough to keep Eve safe. To keep her breathing come what may because she’s my be-all and end-all. The beginning and the end and everything in between.
The service began with a eulogy from the Sterling heir and ended with a reading by Sterling’s successor. It’s not the tradition that we normally see, but Sterling wasn’t a traditional man. Perhaps it’s why he’s heading to his grave early.
My phone vibrates as the church is emptying. I’m checking the message when a black envelope pushes into my view.
“This is for you,” Jess tells me when I look up. As I try to take the envelope from her, she pinches it tighter in her grip, stepping closer so that her narrowed stare is daggering right up at me. “Hurt Eve again and the next funeral you’ll be at will be yours. Do you understand, Your Grace?”
“I have no intention of hurting Eve.”
“Your intentions don’t matter. If you so much as ding her heart one more time, that man over there”—she points at Ryan as he watches us intently—“will kill you.”
“Are you threatening me, Ms. Cameron?” I take a step forward, but she holds her ground.
“No, Your Grace. This is a warning, and you only get one.” Jess releases the envelope when I tug it from her grip this time. Turning on her heels, she glances over her shoulder with a top-to-toe glare. “I’ll be seeing you around.”
I pocket my phone as I head towards my car, with my mother following behind me along with her bodyguard.
“Henry,” she calls as I get into the Defender.
I don’t look back or acknowledge her as I slam my door shut and open the envelope. The angry rhythm of my pulse trips over itself as I pluck the lock of hair from inside. It’s so damn soft that I can’t stop myself from stroking over it with my thumb while I wrap the short length around the tip of my finger and hold it to my nose.
Eve’s scent fills my lungs, soothing over the unrelenting chaos of the last week. The void her absence has clawed out from my chest pulls itself a little more closed. For the first time in days, I’m not holding my breath in abatement; I’m holding her in, letting her scent warm through my veins a beat at a time. The overwhelming hit of her makes all the wrongs in this world fade into insignificance.
“Henry,” my mother calls through the glass, rapping her knuckles on it as if it will make her any more heard.
