Page 33 of Happily Ever After
15
THE PRIORY – FOOTSTEPS IN THE DARK, GEORGETTE HEYER
Hugo had brought a few bottles of wine up to the Yellow Room and we were sitting on the floor getting slowly drunk.
‘It’s Oswald Day tomorrow.’ Hugo stretched his legs out and stared admiringly at his feet, clad now in a pair of Dior heels. The rest of him was wearing Chanel, and I told him that it was tacky to mix-and-match designers, but he didn’t care.
‘Yep. I even washed my dress.’ I poured myself another glass. I had never really had much chance to drink alcohol. My parents didn’t drink, but Jude had introduced me to WKD on one of her visits home from school, and I quite liked the buzzy relaxation it gave me.
Hugo nodded in appreciation. ‘You could always wear one of mine, you know. If you were careful.’ He waved an expansive, and slightly drunken, hand at the wardrobes, which all stood open to display their jewel-coloured contents, like three boxes of Quality Street.
‘Wasted on me.’ I rolled my glass between my fingers. ‘But why don’t you wear one?’
He tipped his head back in surprise. ‘But Mother would see!’
‘She has to find out sometime, Hugo. You can’t live like this forever. And don’t you think you’d stop resenting Jasper so much if you could come out and say, “This is me, I like couture dresses and I look pretty bloody good in them as well”?’
Hugo pulled his legs up under his chin, digging the heels into the carpet. ‘Andi. You know my mother. She’d disinherit me faster than you can say “Balenciaga”.’
‘But would that be so bad? You don’t want the estate anyway. You could travel, go out, wear what you want and not have to be restricted to this one little room.’ I held up my glass and mock-toasted him. ‘Be your own person.’
‘You don’t know what it was like.’ He wrapped silver-clad arms around his knees, sitting like a small, scolded child, only much better dressed. ‘When Jazz came out, when he told her that he wouldn’t take over the estate, she wasdistraught.Almost as bad as Mrs Compton described her when Oswald died. Mother has – expectations, you see. She likes life to go the way she has it planned out in her head and she doesn’t deal well with deviations. That’s why she reacted so badly to Oswald dying in Switzerland – not so much because he died, but because he was supposed to come back and marry her. She can be rather – rigid in her thinking. Her father was a duke, you know,’ he finished, as though this explained everything about his mother.
‘Yes, she said,’ I muttered vaguely.
‘Anyway, if she disinherits me, I will have to go out and get a job.’ Hugo sounded rather more prosaic now. ‘All I’ve ever done is help Mother manage the estate. Like I told you before, I’m not exactly overwhelmed with qualifications, and I think I’ve just spent too much time at Templewood.’
He sounded so hopeless that I put my head on his shoulder. ‘There’s a whole world out there, Hugo. Allegedly.’
‘I’ve got nothing else.’ He was staring out, past the colourful fashion collection, through the night-darkened window. ‘Mother sort of gathered me in, if that doesn’t sound too weird. When Jazz… once she knew that he didn’t intend to inherit, it became her project to turn me into the Lord of Templewood.’ Earnest eyes found mine. ‘It’s just notme, Andi.’
‘I don’t suppose it’s Jasper either. I’ve never met him.’
Hugo sighed so deeply that my head bounced. ‘He’s around, somewhere,’ he said vaguely. ‘He works from home, but he’s often down in London. I wishIcould go to London.’
‘Then go. Tell your mother you’re away one weekend and go.’ I patted the general direction of his arm.
He shrugged now and patted me in return. ‘Not sure I’ve got the confidence for that, Andi. I’ve always been a bit – well, shy. I’m afraid prep school didn’t toughen me up as much as my parents hoped. I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to get about in London or where to go or stay.’
Unworldly, I thought, that was Hugo. Unworldly and his mother wasn’t doing him any favours trying to keep him close. She was just making him lonely and isolated and unfit for life beyond the estate. Poor Hugo, who wasn’t so dissimilar to me, apart from looking a whole lot better in designer wear. Unfit for life. I nudged him with my shoulder. ‘You and I are a right pair, aren’t we?’ I said.
‘You could take me to London,’ he said eagerly. ‘Show me the sights. I’m fine if I’ve got someone with me.’
I thought of being Hugo’s personal tour guide and minder. Steering him around the city like an eighteenth-century earl dropped into the twenty-first century. Fine for a time-slip rom-com but I had the feeling that in real life it would just be annoying. Hugo might be gorgeous, but he was foppish and ineffectual and I didn’t want to have to become a bossy organiser like Jude just to get from place to place.
The sudden thought that perhaps my sister hadn’t wanted to be bossy and controlling either, hit me. Perhaps Jude had had to become what she needed to be. If she hadn’t channelled her inner Miss Trunchbull she’d be in the same position as me, so she’d done what she had to do, despite the upset it had caused. Just like Jasper.
‘We reallydohave a lot in common,’ I blurted out.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I’ve never been to London either,’ I improvised, not wanting to even try to explain my thought processes. ‘So I’d be no good as a guide. I went where my parents decided.’ All my life, dictated by my parents. No education, no job prospects, just bumbling through life with a vague hope that it would turn out all right in the end. Shit.
‘Yes. I have a lot of sympathy for your position. Which is why I’ve always talked Mother into keeping you on, when she’s been, well… having one of her moments.’
I froze. ‘She’s talked about firing me?’
‘Sometimes. Oh, not often! Just – sometimes. She mutters about you not doing your job and how you haven’t found what she wants you to find. I think she may be trying to get you to look for books that are valuable? That she can sell to raise money for the estate?’ He looked at me quizzically. ‘Mother is only really interested in Oswald’s books, anything else is disposable. Besides, a lot of it is Father’s collection and she and Father – well, it wasn’t the mostaffectionateof marriages, from what I remember.’
