“There's something you're not letting on,” she said to herself, leaving the room. There was. With any luck, we would get through this whole night of Niall being here without me having to reveal anything, to her or to him. I went to the kitchen to start preparing Niall’s dinner. Riley bounced into the room and came up to me.
“Are you ready to eat love?”
“Who was the fancy man with the fancy car?” he asked.
“That man is a friend of Mummy's.”
“Where is he?”
“He's spending the night in the cottage.”
“Can I go and say hello to him?”
“That's not a good idea, Riley.”
“Why not?”
“Because it's raining just now and I don't want you to get sick.”
“But you went out in the rain,” he said. He was right. Do as I say and not as I do, I thought. How did I tell my son that I didn't want him to find out the truth of his paternity? Not like this.
“I did, and now I'm all wet. You don't want to get wet.”
He looked thoughtful. “I get wet when I have a bath.”
“Of course, sweetheart, but this is rainwater, it's different. Come now, it's time for you to eat.”
I supervised Riley's dinner, using his incessant questions and very passionate argument to be allowed into the rain to stop thinking about Niall outside in the cottage. Oh, excuse me; not Niall, the Earl of Arden. The fabulously wealthy Earl of Arden. When was he going to tell me that? I felt like he knew far more about me than I did about him, and he had barely scratched the surface. This complicated things. I needed to go back out there.
Tonight was going to be a long night.
15
Niall
I opened a cupboard. The hinges creaked and I was hit by the smell of stale, old fabric. I was right though; it was a linen cupboard. Not much linen to be found inside though. There were a couple of moth-eaten blankets, a duvet which seemed to have lost a lot of its stuffing and a couple of thin-looking towels. I grabbed one of the towels and wrapped it around my waist. The fabric was kind of scratchy and it did close to nothing as far as getting me warm or dry, but it was better than putting my clothes back on.
I walked back to the sitting room and sat next to the radiator. I had put my wet clothes on the backs of a couple of chairs and they were drying out next to the radiator too. The cottage was taking a little time to heat up, but it was getting there. It had been two hours since Eddy had left. I had explored the entire place up and down a couple of times by now and the searches had turned up nothing too shocking. There were no rats or other wildlife that had taken up residence in the abandoned cottage. It wasn’t necessarily clean but I’d survive a night here. Under more savory circumstances, the place must have been downright cozy.
Staying in the house must have been much cozier, however.
I wasn't expecting Eddie to take so long. I knew that she had her son in the house so I tried not to be bitter about it, but it would have been nice to have something to do. My phone wasn't getting reception and the old TV in the living room looked like a relic from the late Stone Age. I hadn't even tried it because what was the use? I was partly scared it might erupt in flames.
I wondered what Eddy was doing at the house. Truly, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that she was someone's mother. I had never thought about her family life with the Baron too much, but everything that had happened since I had gotten to Belshire was bringing to light the fact that I didn't know much about her at all. I wanted to see the child. I wanted to see her as a mother, see her in her house playing with the boy, see how they related to each other. I had had more contact with my nannies than my parents growing up. A revolving door of women, local and foreign that dealt with my tantrums on their behalf. Received payment for offering me some approximation of parental love. I liked to think that Eddy was a hands-on mother. Her boy wouldn’t grow up a bitter cynic because she didn’t hug him enough when he was a child.
There was a short knock at the door, and then it's swung open. I was sitting on one of the sofas in the living room as Eddy walked in. She was dry, even though the rain was still coming down which meant that she had used an umbrella and she had a basket under one arm. I watched her, slightly amused as she let herself into the house, took off her muddy shoes and then set the basket on the small dining table, all before noticing me. She jumped, bringing her hand to her chest.
“Oh my God, I didn't see you there.”
“I was starting to think that you forgot about me. I got up and walked to the table. I caught her eyes scanning me head to toe in my towel before she looked away.
“I'm sorry about that. I just got a little held up in the house.” She pulled containers of food out of the basket along with cutlery and two plates. “I guess it was a good idea for you to stay since the rain isn't getting any better.”
I wasn't thinking about the rain. I was thinking about her and her little boy, eating dinner together, her reading him a bedtime story before putting him to sleep.
“What did you bring me?”
“Probably not what you're used to, but this is what we eat.” In one of the containers was a hearty stew of meat and potatoes with biscuits. In another were still warm Yorkshire puddings. I watched as she made me a plate and then made herself one.