Three hours ago, when she and Cash finally drifted down to join the already-started proceedings, they were all there, drinking champagne, eating from the trays of hors d’ouevres that were being passed around and mingling with the guests.
The minute Abby’s eyes hit Mrs. Truman she thought the only thing missing was a priceless tiara extracted for the festivities from the Tower of London and a dozen bodyguards.
A waiter passed and Jenny expertly nabbed another glass of champagne like she’d attended champagne-glass-bearing-waitered-trayed-gala-affairs every weekend since birth.
Abby looked at Mrs. Truman and caught the woman’s eye roll as Trevor, Alistair and Nicola’s practically silent servant got close and said something in Cash’s ear.
Trevor then melted away and Cash’s hand came to her waist as his mouth went to her ear.
“James is at the door. I have to speak with him,” he murmured.
Abby turned her face to his. “Why is James here?”
Cash touched his nose to hers and whispered, “I’ll explain later.”
He pulled away and looked at Kieran.
“If Nicola leaves this room, you get Abby to safety. Our room upstairs is closest,” Cash ordered, Kieran nodded and Cash looked back at Abby, his voice gentling when he finished. “I won’t be a moment, darling.”
Then Abby watched him saunter away, his long legs carrying him across the room swiftly, his gait powerful, his strides wide and everyone he passed glanced at him with unconcealed admiration.
Abby sighed.
“Girlfriend, we need to talk,” Jenny muttered in Abby’s ear and Abby looked down at her friend.
Jenny was staring at her, eyes serious, the set of her face determined.
“What? Why?” Abby asked as Jenny took her hand, made their excuses to Mrs. Truman and Kieran at which both of whom scowled but, Abby thought, both for different reasons. Kieran, Abby suspected, because he knew what Jenny was going to say. Mrs. Truman, Abby guessed, because she did not.
Then Jenny led Abby to a large window that faced the tor at the side of the castle. It was quiet, secluded and felt somehow removed from the busy hall.
Once there she turned Abby so that Abby faced her and Jenny’s back was to the room.
“It’s not a good time but it’ll never be a good time and it’s looking like the sooner the better,” Jenny started ominously and Abby blinked at her.
“What’s not a good time?” Abby enquired.
“I’ve been thinking about this since it happened, wondering if I should say something, thinking I shouldn’t but I can’t help but think I should,” Jenny stated and Abby looked down at her friend, confused at her words and the tone of her voice which shook with emotion.
“Since what happened?” Abby asked.
“Since Cash and I had our little chat,” Jenny answered.
Abby stared at her friend, stunned.
Her voice was breathy when she enquired, “Cash and you had a chat?”
Jenny nodded and went on. “That night all the girls came to dinner, he and I talked. It wasn’t pleasant,” Abby sucked in breath at this news as Jenny carried on, “I can see it…” she hesitated and switched from nodding to shaking her head, “you, I can see you… I can see it happening.”
Concerned, Abby moved closer to her friend, a woman who rarely couldn’t find the words to express herself.
“Jenny, you aren’t making any sense,” she said softly.
“You’ve fallen in love with him,” Jenny blurted and Abby felt her eyes round.
“With who?” she asked stupidly.
“With Cash!” Jenny replied on a muted shriek then looked over her shoulder to see if anyone had heard to find that only Mrs. Truman had her eagle-eyes on them. Jenny turned back. “You’ve fallen in love with Cash.”
Abby felt her heart start beating faster but she went into denial. “Jenny, I’ve known him three weeks.”
“The night Ben brought you home from your first date you phoned me, woke me up and told me you were going to marry him. A year and a half later I was your maid of honour,” Jenny reminded her.
This was true.
It was also true that the minute she laid eyes on Cash in that pub, she’d had a feeling that she’d only felt once in her life. It was the same feeling she had when Ben’s eyes caught hers when she was standing at a coffee bar ordering her latte and Ben was standing at the end of it waiting for his.
Except with Cash that feeling was infinitely stronger.
Abby felt like someone threw a bag of bricks at her and it landed heavily against her belly.
“Jenny –” she started.
“Get out,” Jenny talked over Abby, her eyes reading Abby’s thoughts, her voice now urgent. “Get out now.” She came closer and her fingers curled around Abby’s. “Abby, honey, it kills me to tell you this but he doesn’t feel the same way.”
Abby felt her body jerk as if she’d been struck at the same time the room started spinning. She heard Jenny’s voice come at her from far away asking if she was okay. Abby blinked several times and with a good deal of effort, she focused on Jenny.
“How do you know?” she whispered.
Jenny got even closer and whispered back, “He all but told me, Abby. He cares about you, that’s obvious. He wants you to be happy, he even told me that. But he isn’t in this for the long run, he told me that too.”
Abby felt that bloom in her heart start to wither. “He mentioned something but –”
Jenny gave her fingers a squeeze, cutting off her words. “Then you’ve got to get out now, before it’s too late.”
Even though the hope she’d been feeling started to fade away, Abby still whispered, “I can’t.”
“You have to Abby,” Jenny’s other hand grabbed Abby’s and she held their hands tightly together between them. “He’s a… I don’t know. He’s a force of nature,” she said. “You’re going to… hell, you’re already caught in his magnetic field. When he cuts you loose, you’re not going to want to be let go but you won’t have any choice. Abby,” she shook their hands between them, “it’ll destroy you. You know it’ll destroy you,” she paused and her voice went low before she finished, “again.”
Abby closed her eyes and looked away.
She could try to fool herself that his behaviour meant they were developing something deeper.
What she couldn’t do was ignore the fact that Cash told her best friend of all people that their relationship was finite.
He would never do that.
Unless it was.
Even though she knew she was living on borrowed time, she’d been unconsciously holding onto that hope in her heart, wanting more, wishing the magic was real.
Instead of yet another path that led to heart wrenching despair.
But Abby knew better than that. She’d been taught that lesson time and again.
And every time Jenny had picked up the pieces.
She squeezed her eyes tight and clenched her teeth tighter as the pain of the dying dream of years filled with anguish ending in a life filled with magic seared through her soul.
She opened her eyes and looked at her friend’s concerned face.
“He told me earlier tonight we had to talk about our future,” she confided, her voice aching, her throat burning. “He’s very astute. I’m guessing he’s cottoned on to how I feel and wants to remind me where we stand.”
“Abby –” Jenny started but Abby kept talking as she squeezed their hands.
“Don’t worry Jenny,” she whispered. “Please, don’t worry.” Then she said out loud what she knew she had to do to guard her heart before, as Jenny surmised correctly, it was too late. “After tonight, it’s over.”
The word “over” came out in a croak as tears clawed their way up her throat and Jenny let go of their hands and got even closer.
Her friend put her cheek to Abby’s and in her ear, she murmured, “I’m sorry, Abby, so sorry. I started this and now here you are. I’m so sor
ry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Abby replied, gulping back tears, succeeding, in an extreme effort of will, at fighting them back before a single one was shed.
Jenny leaned back and her fingers curled around Abby’s upper arm. “It is but we won’t argue that.” Her hand tightened and she looked deep into Abby’s eyes. “You’ll get through this, girlfriend. You always do. I don’t know anyone on this planet who’s stronger than you.”
At that Abby laughed but there was not even a hint of humour in it.
Before more could be said Mrs. Truman descended on their tête-à-tête.
“What are you two whispering about?” she demanded to know.
Jenny turned to Mrs. Truman but caught Abby’s hand. “Nothing.”
Mrs. Truman eyed Jenny then she looked at Abby assessingly. “It doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
“It’s nothing,” Abby lied.
“Well,” she said on an angry-to-be-left-out humph, “you two were so absorbed, you haven’t noticed that something’s happening.”
Abby and Jenny looked into the room to see people were coming from all corners of the house, squeezing into the large space, making it small.
As she looked, Abby saw Cash arrive. His eyes scanned the room and for the first time in her life Abby wished both that she wasn’t so tall and that she wasn’t wearing a pair of elegant, expensive high-heeled shoes when Cash’s eyes easily found her.
She watched as his powerful body wended its way through the crush toward them and he arrived at the same time as Kieran.
Jenny dropped her hand as Cash got close, his arm moving along her waist, his chin dipped and she saw his brows draw together as he examined her face.
Then he asked, “What’s wrong?”
Abby swallowed then lied, forcing her voice to sound cheerful, “Nothing.”
His eyes shifted to Jenny for a mere moment then came back to her. They narrowed, his fingers dug into her waist and he started, “Abby –” but people were tinkling their champagne glasses and Abby tore her gaze from him to glance over the crowd.
They were all looking in one direction and she could see Nicola and Alistair standing in front of the fireplace, a small pocket of space in front of them.
Honor, Fenella and Suzanne were at the edge of the crowd closest to Nicola and Alistair.
As Alistair lifted his hand for silence, conversation in the room died away.
“Thank you, thank you,” Alistair’s voice boomed pompously from his position as lord of the manor, the smile on his face even at Abby’s distance not only looked false, it did not reach his eyes. He went on, “We, Nicola and I, thank you for coming. We thank you for being here to celebrate this, our special anniversary.”
“Hear, hear,” someone shouted and Alistair bowed his head in a farcical attempt at noble.
Abby turned her attention to Nicola who didn’t look thankful in the slightest. She looked pale, she looked tense and she looked weirdly expectant.
Alistair continued, lifting his glass. “Now, everyone, I hope you’ve charged your glasses so you can join us in toasting twenty-five years of –”
“One second,” Nicola’s voice cut in. It was pleasant as usual however it was also raised and it carried across the expanse.
Alistair hesitated and looked down at his wife who did not meet his eyes.
“I would also like to thank you for coming,” Nicola declared, “for it is, indeed, a special day.”
There was shifting of feet and smiles but something about the way Nicola looked, her tone, put Abby on edge.
Nicola kept talking. “I’ve been married to this man at my side for twenty-five years,” she announced unnecessarily, “twenty-five extraordinarily unhappy years.”
There were some chuckles and murmurs as many thought Nicola had flubbed her speech.
Abby, however, did not. Nor, she could tell by the way he tensed at her side, his arm curling her closer, did Cash.
“There wasn’t abuse, not overtly,” Nicola went on, Abby felt Cash’s body jolt and the chuckling and murmurs stopped immediately as the room grew silent. “Mostly neglect. And, on occasion, cruelty. Not only to myself, but to my daughters.”
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Truman muttered as the feeling in the room turned uneasy.
Alistair’s face, magnanimous a moment ago, had soured, indicating without words the veracity of Nicola’s awful speech.
His hand came up to curl around her arm and he muttered, “Dearest –”
She yanked her arm free and gave him a cold look.
“I’m not, nor have I ever been, your dearest,” she informed him and then looked back to the crowd. “I asked you all here tonight not so you could celebrate twenty-five years of a very, very bad marriage. But instead so I could publicly apologise to my daughters for being weak and not protecting them the way I should. For desiring for them a life without want and sacrificing a home filled with love in order to do it. And now what I ask of you is to lift your glasses in a toast, not to the continuation of that bad marriage, but to the end of it,” she turned back to Alistair and finished, “because, dearest, tomorrow morning, my daughters and I are moving out. I want a divorce.”
There were shocked gasps, excited murmurs and a good deal of uncomfortably shifting feet.
Except Mrs. Truman who was chuckling.
She turned back to Abby and Cash and muttered loudly and with authority, (even though she had none), “Met him and was in his presence for about two seconds. Didn’t like the look of him. Just deserts, I say.”
Jenny’s gaze shot to Abby’s and even with their heartbreaking conversation of moments before, they both emitted short, shocked but entirely unamused giggles.
Their giggles stuck in their throats and their eyes flew back to the fireplace when they heard Alistair’s voice vibrating with fury, demand, “How dare you!”
Nicola ignored him and lifted her glass, shouting, “A toast! To the end of the bad and heralding the beginning of the good!”
But she didn’t get her glass to her lips.
Alistair’s fingers closed around her wrist and he jerked her hand down, the champagne spilling all over Nicola’s throat, chest and down the front of her elegant, black, strapless, bias-cut gown.
There were more stunned gasps but Cash didn’t gasp. The instant Alistair’s fingers curled around Nicola’s wrist he moved, pushing forward through the crowd toward the couple on display.
“You bitch! How dare you humiliate me in front of my friends?” Alistair demanded, getting in another jerk, causing the rest of the champagne to splash against Nicola’s chest and also in her face, triggering another now-horrified murmur to race through the crowd.
Fenella got close to the couple, her body rigid, she demanded loudly, “Unhand Mummy!”
Alistair’s eyes sliced to Fenella and he barked, “This is none of your goddamned business!”
It was then Cash arrived at the scene. He moved between Fenella and Alistair, positioning himself in front of the three sisters, his back to the crowd.
Even so, his deep voice carried when he ordered, “Take your hand off her.”
Like a demented schoolboy who was abusing a toy, Alistair gave Nicola, who was now fighting his grip on her wrist, another hefty wrench and her entire body shook with it, so much she nearly came off her feet.
All three sisters pressed in behind Cash but at Alistair’s action, Cash’s deadly voice cut through the room. “Take your hand off her,” he repeated, “now.”
Alistair, clearly mad in the face of Cash’s warning, enraged tone, narrowed his frightening eyes at Cash. “Who do you think you are? This is my wife and my house. I’ll do what I damn well please and I won’t let the bastard son of a Scottish bitch-in-heat stand there telling me what to do!”
Abby felt as if all the air in the room was sucked away as, with a vicious tug, Nicola tore free of Alistair. She stepped aside and Abby watched in disbelief as Alistair, robbed of one victim, turned his eyes to another and he
took a swing at Cash.
Then two things happened at once.
One, Cash easily caught his uncle’s fist in his hand, twisted his arm, twirling Alistair so his back was to Cash and then he jerked Alistair’s arm up forcing him to emit an ugly grunt of pain.
Two, Vivianna Wainwright materialised in the air above Alistair, her dress and hair drifting and snapping about her. Her eyes, cruel and filled with venomous hate, were on Alistair.
As the room went entirely still, Vivianna opened her mouth and screamed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Showdown, Part One
Vivianna’s scream filled the room and with it mingled other terrified noises, muted shrieks and urgent voices.
Then, moving as one, the crowd shifted, panicked, toward the door.
Except Abby, Jenny, Mrs. Truman and Kieran who all stood frozen staring at the scene in front of them.
And Nicola, Fenella, Suzanne and Honor who were gazing wide-eyed up at Vivianna.
And finally Alistair and Cash, both immobile, heads tipped back, Alistair’s mouth agape, Cash’s jaw set.
Then Vivianna moved.
She trailed the length of the mantel, her phantom arm out, melting through the vases and figurines it displayed. Some of them rocked, several fell crashing to the floor.
Then she picked up speed, whipping through the room in a ghostly frenzy, causing screams from the edges of the crowd who had not yet acquired escape. She shot through the light fixture hanging from the ceiling rose in the room’s centre. The fixture swayed alarmingly, the crystals jingled, dust drifting down.
After that, she darted forward, toward Cash.
Abby strangled back a scream and barely checked an urge to dash forward as Cash released his restraining hold on his uncle. He bent into him, covering his uncle’s body protectively as Vivianna descended and made a pass. Abby was so terrified, she didn’t process the fact that she saw Vivianna’s trailing skirts drifting over Cash’s body, like they were real, not through it, like they were ethereal.