Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 157450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
I swallow and change the subject. “When do you go back to work?”
“Monday,” Maryanne answers with a small, sad twist of her mouth.
Of all the Trevelyan children, it’s Maryanne who has excelled academically. From Wycombe Abbey School, she’d gone up to read medicine at Corpus Christi, Oxford, and is now a junior doctor at the Royal Brompton Hospital, specializing in cardiothoracic medicine. She had followed her vocation, a calling that was born the day our father suffered a massive coronary and died from a heart attack. She was fifteen years old—and she wanted to save him. Our father’s death rocked each of us differently, and Kit most of all, given that he’d had to drop out of college and assume the earldom. Me, I lost my only parental ally.
“How’s Caro?” she asks.
“Grieving. Pissed off that Kit didn’t leave her anything in his will, stupid bastard,” I growl.
“Who’s a stupid bastard?” A clipped mid-Atlantic voice demands. Rowena, Dowager Countess of Trevethick, towers above us, auburn-haired, groomed, and composed in her immaculate navy Chanel suit and pearls.
I stand. “Rowena,” I say, and give her a detached peck on her upturned cheek, then hold out her chair for her to sit.
“Is that any way to greet your grieving mother, Maxim?” Rowena scolds as she sits down and places her Birkin handbag on the floor beside her. She reaches across the table and clasps Maryanne’s hand. “Hello, darling, I didn’t hear you go out.”
“I just needed some fresh air, Mother,” Maryanne replies as she returns our mother’s squeeze.
Rowena, Countess of Trevethick, kept her title in spite of her divorce from our father. She spends most of her time between New York, where she lives and likes to play, and London where she edits Dernier Cri, the glossy women’s magazine.
“I’ll have a glass of the Chablis,” she says to the waiter as he delivers two Bloody Marys to the table. She arches a brow in disapproval as we both take long sips.
She is still impossibly slim and impossibly beautiful, especially through a lens. She was the “It Girl” of her generation and had become the muse of many a photographer, including my father, the Eleventh Earl of Trevethick. He was devoted to her; his title and money had seduced her into marriage, but when she left him, he never recovered. Four years after their divorce, he died of a broken heart.
I study her through hooded eyes. Her face is baby smooth—no doubt as a result of her latest chemical peel. The woman is obsessed with maintaining her youth, and she only deviates from her rigorous diet of vegetable juices or whatever her latest food fad is with the odd glass of wine. There is no doubting that my mother is beautiful, but she’s as duplicitous as she is stunning—and my poor father paid the price.
“I understand you’ve met with Rajah,” she says directly to me.
“Yes.”
“And?” She glares at me in her slightly myopic way, because she’s far too vain to wear glasses.
“It’s all in trust to me.”
“And Caroline?”
“Nothing.”
“I see. Well, we can’t let the poor girl starve.”
“We?” I ask.
Rowena flushes. “You,” she says, her voice frigid. “You can’t let the poor girl starve. On the other hand, she has her trust fund, and when her father shuffles off his mortal coil, she’ll inherit a fortune. Kit chose wisely in that regard.”
“Unless her stepmother disinherits her,” I retort, and take another much-needed sip of Bloody Mary.
My mother purses her lips. “Why don’t you set her to work—maybe the Mayfair development? She has a good eye for interior design, and she’ll need the distraction.”
“I think we should let Caroline decide what she wants to do.” I fail to keep the resentment out of my voice. This is my mother’s usual high-handed manner in dealing with the family that she deserted many years ago.
“Are you happy with her staying at Trevelyan House?” she asks, ignoring my tone.
“Rowena, I’m not about to make her homeless.”
“Maximilian, would you mind addressing me as ‘Mother’!”
“When you start behaving like one, I’ll take it into consideration.”
“Maxim,” Maryanne warns, and her eyes flash a fiery green. Feeling like a rebuked child, I clamp my mouth shut and scrutinize the menu before I say something I’ll regret.
Rowena continues, ignoring my rudeness, “We’ll need to finalize all the details for the memorial service. I was thinking we could do this just before Easter. I’ll get one of my lead writers to do Kit’s eulogy, unless—” She pauses as her voice cracks, causing both me and Maryanne to look up from our menus in surprise. Her eyes grow moist, and for the first time since she buried her eldest child, she looks her age. She clutches a monogrammed handkerchief and brings it to her lips as she composes herself.
Bugger.
I feel like a shit. She’s lost her eldest son…her favorite child.