‘What did you hope to get from coming here today?’ Cal asked finally.
Heather shrugged one shoulder. ‘I’m not sure. Mostly I just wanted to tell Ross about the baby. I knew...’ She swallowed. ‘After I took the test, and he didn’t answer his phone, I looked up the castle he’d talked about online. I saw the photos of him and his family on the website. He didn’t... When we met he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and he didn’t say anything to lead me to believe he was in a relationship, let alone married with kids.’
Cal’s eyes fluttered shut for a second. ‘No. I suppose he wouldn’t have.’
‘So I wasn’t coming here for a happy-ever-after, or to demand that he marry me, or anything. I was sort of expecting him to throw me out, to be honest, so in some ways this is already going better than that.’
Apart from the bit where his brother was dead, of course. Oh, she was really screwing this up.
‘Basically, I knew the right thing to do would be to tell Ross that he was going to be a father. Again. That’s all I wanted. After that... Well, it would have been up to him. I just wanted to do the right thing.’
Because that mattered. She needed to be able to look her reflection in the eye when she caught sight of it in the mornings. She needed to know she’d done the right thing for her child.
The way her own mother hadn’t.
And now she’d done that.
Which meant she had to figure out what the hell happened next on her own.
* * *
‘The right thing?’ Cal repeated the words with an ironic smile. As if there was such a thing in a woeful situation like this one.
He pitied that baby, being born into the Bryce family, with its legacy of screw-ups, scandals and sadness. What chance did it have?
Or perhaps he or she would be luckier than the rest of them. After all, this baby wouldn’t have to grow up in Lengroth Castle, surrounded by reminders of the expectations the world placed upon it and knowing that if he or she didn’t want to meet them, they’d have to learn how to hide the truth.
And, most of all, this baby would have Heather Reid, which was more than Ross’s other two kids had. They were stuck with Uncle Cal, screwing them up for the rest of their childhoods.
Cal knew what Ross had been thinking when he’d named him as guardian—he’d been assuming it would never be needed. And who else was there, really? Who else would be able to understand the legacy of the Bryce family well enough to try and fix things for them all—or at least hide the truth a little longer?
Heather Reid wouldn’t understand that, he’d bet. She was probably an honest, good girl, out of her depth in the pool of Lengroth scandals.
Of course, he could be overestimating her. Because, really, who travelled all the way from London to the wilds of Scotland just to ‘do the right thing’? Nobody in Cal’s family, that was for certain.
He wasn’t sure any of his ancestors or relatives would even know what the right thing was, if it came calling. Not even Ross.
So, as trustworthy as Heather seemed, Cal knew better than to take those wide, innocent eyes at face value.
‘Did you hope he’d support you financially?’ he asked. That had to be it, right? Ross had told her he lived in a damn castle—of course she was after money. ‘Or buy you off, so he didn’t have to tell Janey?’
The worst part was that was probably exactly what Ross would have done. What Bryce men had been doing for generations to cover up their misdemeanours and betrayals. Hiding their scandals away under a blanket of hush money.
It was just that Cal had been so sure that Ross was different. And that if Ross could be different maybe he could, too. Maybe the scandal gene had skipped a generation, or something.
But here it was, fresh and revitalised for a whole new era of Bryces, ready to bring the Earldom of Lengroth into disrepute once and for all. Hiding bad behaviour had been a lot easier before the advent of social media.
Across the desk, he saw Heather’s eyes had widened with shock. ‘I didn’t... No. Like I said—I have a job of my own. Supply teaching might not pay brilliantly, but I like working with the kids and it’ll pay enough to support me and this baby, just. So, no, I wasn’t expecting money. As I told you—if anything, I was expecting him to throw me out.’