“Good.”
“I know I have no right to ask for anything.”
“That’s the first thing you’ve said today that sounds true.”
Rachel touched my arm. “The children have been traveling for hours. They need something to eat and a quiet place.”
I nodded.
There was a small guesthouse beyond the gardens, usually used by visiting relatives. I had arranged for a caretaker to open it before we arrived. Rachel led the children there with the nanny who had accompanied us from Switzerland, while I remained on the lawn.
Julian watched them go.
His eyes followed Lily until she disappeared behind the ivy-covered archway.
Then he looked back at me.
“I want to meet them properly.”
“Wanting something doesn’t make you entitled to it.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to walk into their lives today because a document told you they’re yours.”
“I know that too.”
His answer was immediate. Not defensive. Not angry.
That unsettled me more than an argument would have.
“I’m not trying to take them from you,” he continued. “I would never do that.”
“Your family might.”
Charles turned sharply. “No one is taking anything from you.”
I faced him.
“You paid me twelve million dollars to disappear.”
His jaw tightened.
“That agreement was made under circumstances none of us understood.”
“No. The circumstances were perfectly clear. You wanted Vanessa and her sons protected from scandal. You wanted me removed before anyone could ask difficult questions.”
“We believed Julian had fathered her children.”
“You believed three unborn boys were more valuable than the wife he had already married.”
Charles glanced toward Julian.
“I made a decision based on the information available to me.”
“And I made one based on the information available to me,” I said. “I left.”
A silence settled between us.
It was not the silence of the wedding anymore. It belonged to the past, and for once, the past was no longer something I had to carry alone.
Margaret began to cry.
I had never seen her cry before. She had always been composed, elegant, and careful, even when she was insulting someone. Now her mascara had begun to smudge beneath her eyes.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
I looked at her.
“Didn’t know what?”
“That you were pregnant.”
“You didn’t ask.”
Her face crumpled slightly.
“You were so quiet that day.”
“I was waiting for your son to speak.”
