Whit nods, rubbing his chin. “She’s free now, you know?”
“Your mother?”
“No. My sister. Our mother can no longer wield her control over her. I know Sylvie was beginning to stand on her own two feet, but I don’t know if she would ever be able to do it completely. Not with our mother always around. She couldn’t stay out of Sylvie’s life, not that she ever tried. Look at how she showed up at the house yesterday.” Whit shakes his head.
Her obsession with my fiancée turned into her detriment.
“She was working with the servants. She’d paid one of them off to tell her when Sylvie would arrive,” I explain.
“Are you serious? Which one? I’ll fire them. All of them,” Whit says vehemently.
“I don’t know. Sylvie doesn’t know either. And you don’t need to fire them. Sylvia isn’t around any longer to pay them for information.”
“Still means we can’t trust them, which I won’t have. I need to know who did this.” He clenches his jaw, seemingly furious. “I’ll fire every single one of them if I have to.”
“Relax. You don’t want to march in there and make wild accusations. Your mother could be very charming when she wanted to be. She probably convinced them they were doing a good thing, helping her. And she most likely made an offer they couldn’t refuse.”
Whit sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “We need to break the Lancaster curse.”
“And what exactly is the Lancaster curse?”
“The manipulative tactics we use to get what we want. I’m not a good person, Spence. None of us Lancasters are, but we’re trying to change. I want to be a better person for my children,” Whit says, sounding pained.
“You’ve changed over the last few years,” I tell him, reaching out to give his shoulder a shake. “Thanks to Summer and your son.”
“Yeah.” He nods, casting his gaze downward. “That’s the plan. I want to be a better person for my wife and my children. I’ve done some shitty things because I believed the world owed me. My father is the same way. So was my mother.”
“Sylvie has changed too,” I tell him. “She’s much more honest than she used to be.”
Whit actually chuckles. “She used to tell some tall tales.”
“Unfortunately, most of those tales I think were actually true.”
Whit immediately sobers. “Fuck, I hate that.” He stands up straighter. “Whatever happened yesterday with my mother, I want you to know that you did the right thing.”
“You don’t even know what I did,” I say, my voice low.
“And I don’t need to know. You were protecting the woman you love. My sister. And for that, I thank you.”
He pulls me in for another quick embrace, and this time, there’s no clapping on the back, no immediate pulling away from each other.
No, we actually hug, clinging to each other for a moment. I love this man like a brother. And, soon enough, he will be my brother through marriage.
And he just basically forgave me for accidentally killing his mother.
“I’ll be in touch,” Whit says when he withdraws.
I walk him to the front door. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will.”
The moment he’s gone, Sylvie emerges from the bedroom. “Did my brother just leave?”
I nod. “Yes.”
She practically runs toward me, wrapping her arms around my waist, and I pull her in as close as I can get. “Did he say anything to you?”
“No,” I lie, keeping my own secret from her.