“Is that the same Griffin you tag teamed your wife with?” With this, she pulls against me and tries to stamp on my foot.
“Yes,” I answer simply, sidestepping her efforts. “We were both different people then. I didn’t know he was my brother. He was just a pretty face in a club we used to play at.” Should I tell her the whole truth? “A club I once owned a very long time ago.”
“Oh, you just keep setting them up for me, don’t you?”
“Reasons to leave?” I find myself asking. “Except you forget,” I whisper a touch threateningly, “I’m not letting you go.”
“You can’t keep me here.”
“I beg to differ.
“You have to let me go.” This time, her words are a little plaintive.
“You are better than this, Holland. We both are. I know we both want, on some level, to be seen as someone else. Someone better. Someone stronger. Someone without a past. I’m no innocent, and I’ve been guilty of bad judgement and bad taste. Of living in fear of becoming just another in that long line of men who came before me, instead of recognising myself for who I truly am. I’m done with that. There’s no hiding from our experiences and there’s no denying who we are. But we can be better, stronger, more. Because together, you and I, we’re a whole new entity.”
“But if I leave,” she says in a small voice, “she has no hold over you, and you won’t be seen as that man.”
“But I am that man. I was that man. If you leave, my heart will break. There’s no contest, my love. And this is monumental.” I press a kiss to her cheek as I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. “You remember I said I was going to do something monumental this morning?”
“Yes,” she whispers, taking the phone from my hand and staring down at it.
There on the screen is the photograph I’d taken this morning. We’re in bed together, white sheets and wide smiles, her dark hair in disarray and my jaw covered in sandy bristles. There will be no disputing the facts; it’s perfectly obvious what we’ve been up to. Our smiles. The sheets. Her hair. And though there’s little flesh on show, it’s obvious we’re both naked.
“Now, this,” I say, sliding the image closed and opening the newly installed app, I navigate to Kilbair Castle’s Instagram page.
“What are you doing?”
“Isla gave me the login details. I have more followers than you. Are you jealous?”
“Alexander, what are you doing?”
“See, I’ve already loaded the photograph. Isla tried to talk to me about hashtags, but we’ll ignore that for now, and I’ll just finish up with my post. Post?” Over her shoulder, I tilt my head in question.
“Yes, it’s post,” she murmurs.
“Good. I’ve got the lingo down. It’s a good photograph, isn’t it?”
“It’s wonderful, but if you post it—”
“Oh, I’m not going to post it.”
Holland stills in my arms, her fingers infinitesimally tightening around my phone.
“I think sometimes our lives have to be shaken and thrown about like a leaf blown from a tree if we’re to get to be where we’re meant to be. Where are we meant to be, Holland?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers.
“I think you do. We’re meant to be in each other’s arms. I think you know that, too. But the rest is up to you.”
With that, I leave her in her messy room with my phone still in her hand.
Epilogue
Holly
“So, do you consider yourself a Scot or an American?”
I pretend to consider the question like it hasn’t been asked already a hundred times.
“I guess I’d have to call myself an Americot, mainly because the alternative sounds like a spinal complaint.” Scomerican? Sometimes I say, “sounds like a haemorrhoid cream”, but I’d judged this crowd a little more sophisticated than that gag.
Queue a round of husky chuckles and rasping giggles from the participants of Grey Nomad Tours. Well, it is Wednesday, and Wednesday at Kilblair Castle is our senior specials day. As well as hump day, but that usually comes after the castle has closed for the day to visitors. Because the Duke and Duchess of Dalforth are nothing if not conventional.
My ass.
Anyway, I like Wednesdays because I get to hang with this crowd.
“And do we address you as your grace or your ladyship?” asks another of the crowd.
“Just Holly will do.” Anything else sounds a little ridiculous, quite honestly. Technically, I’m Her Grace, the Duchess of Dalforth. Because almost a year ago, as I’d stood in my bedroom with Alexander’s phone in my hand, I truly debated how I’d felt like that leaf. Tossed about in the wind, shaken in more ways than I thought I could deal with. I’d imagined myself as that tiny piece of foliage being swept from problem to problem, from catastrophe to catastrophe. And then I thought of where I’d landed. Of where I belonged. And Alexander was right. I belong in his arms.
Leonie left. Without money and without a reason to come back. Before Alexander’s foot had reached the bottom step of the grand staircase, I’d pressed the little button to send the Instagram post live. I’d outed our relationship to the world in a monumental fashion, just as he’d planned.
Meet the future Duchess of Dalforth
was all the post read. Just that and our smiling faces. It wasn’t quite a wedding announcement in The Times, as is the usual way. And it caused an internet sensation, making the front page of most of the European newspapers. A couple of US ones, too.
It turned out that Leonie had become involved with a high-powered criminal, and the attention a divorce would draw was not to his liking. So, she’d faked her death to slink off with him. But when the relationship soured, she needed money to escape.
If you ask me, I think she has a few screws loose in her head.
But she left knowing full well her sordid tales would never provide her with money from the Dalforth estate because Alexander had reached the point when he no longer cared if the truth of his past came out. He’d laid it to rest that morning as he’d held me in his arms, trusting me to do the right thing for us both. If she wanted to throw stones that resulted in her incarceration, well, all the better. Pseudocide is a very serious offence. I understand Griffin stepped into his own at that moment, and the brothers have begun to take steps to mend what’s between them. Which can only be a good thing, I think. Because he was right about us being stronger together. The concept doesn’t just relate to us.
But we are stronger together, Alexander and me. And we’re stronger as individuals because of the support and love we show each other.
“And here we have the castle’s pride and joy,” I say as my little band of grandparent types gather around the painting in a small semi-circle. “A landscape scene by the 17th-century painter Paul Peter Rubens. I mean, Peter Paul Rubens.” Ack! I always get his name the wrong way around.
“I read on the website that there is some contention regarding the providence of this piece,” says an elderly man in a green turtleneck and houndstooth jacket.