For the first time that afternoon, Lucinda truly smiled. She had even, white teeth, and her eyes crinkled warmly. ‘Yes, you are.’
‘But you’re a baroness,’ Allie said accusingly. ‘I heard your guards call you that the night of the winter ball.’
‘I choose to use that title, rather than Lady,’ Lucinda said. ‘You see, I earned that one.’
Bloody hell, I’m a Lady. Lady Allie Lanarkshire Sheridan Something… Allie thought dizzily. That is so messed up. Wait until Rachel finds out.
‘You said the leadership used to just go from one to another of the families in Orion,’ Allie said. ‘It doesn’t any more?’
Lucinda’s smile disappeared. ‘No. I changed that. I thought the leader should be voted in. Some of our members are idiots and I couldn’t bear the idea of them making decisions about the future of the country simply because of who their parents were. It was an archaic system. One of my first acts as leader was to change the original charter. We all agreed. Now the chair is elected. I’ve been re-elected three times.’ She made a wry face. ‘I’d be rather surprised to be elected again under the circumstances.’
A sudden realisation struck Allie with almost physical force. ‘That’s what Nathaniel’s so angry about, isn’t it? You changed the rules. My brother Christopher said something about you throwing away our inheritance. That’s what he meant, isn’t it?’
‘Precisely so,’ Lucinda said. ‘He would automatically have taken over after me, as your mother would have refused, and he is her eldest child. Had I not changed the rules, all of this would have been his.’
‘But he can’t care that much,’ Allie said. ‘I mean, I don’t care. And I don’t get to do it either. Why would Christopher care so much?’
‘Christopher probably wouldn’t have cared at all, Allie, were it not for Nathaniel.’ Lucinda leaned forward, her face very serious now. ‘You see – despite everything you’ve personally experienced, Nathaniel is very charismatic. Very charming. Very convincing. And a fragile young man like Christopher, searching for a path to follow in life, is easily seduced. Nathaniel showed him how your mother deceived him about his own history. Convinced him he couldn’t trust his own family. Promised him a life of power and privilege. It is the traditional method – he broke him down. And then he built him up again. In his own image.’
As she spoke, Allie’s blood seemed to chill in her veins. Could her grandmother be right? It would explain so much. Christopher’s strange behaviour when she’d seen him last December. The way he’d seemed like a strange, angrier version of himself.
Remembering that day, the two of them standing on opposite sides of the running water, she felt colder. She tried to focus on asking more questions.
‘Why does Nathaniel hate you and Isabelle so much?’ Allie asked. ‘What happened? Is he just crazy?’
‘I’ve known Nathaniel since he was very young,’ Lucinda said. ‘I knew his father. We were… very close. Sadly, he died when Nathaniel was still a teenager. In those days, he was a frightened, lonely young man, who’d lost his mother when he was a child, and then his father died, too. All he had was his half-sister…’
‘Isabelle.’ Allie finished the thought for her.
‘Exactly.’
Allie picked up her cup. ‘So Isabelle and Nathaniel – they have the same father?’
Lucinda nodded.
‘And you knew their father well…’ Allie said. ‘How did you know him? Did you work with him?’
‘Not exactly.’ Lucinda’s smile was wry. ‘I married him.’
Allie, who had just taken a mouthful of tea, choked on it. Sputtering, she set the cup and saucer down and leaned forward trying to get her breath.
‘You married him?’ Allie croaked. ‘Are you Nathaniel’s mother?’
Looking supremely unruffled, Lucinda handed her a tissue. ‘Oh no. Their father, my ex-husband, had several wives – not all at the same time, of course. He never could settle down. I was his first wife. After we divorced, he married Nathaniel’s mother, who sadly died in a riding accident while still in her twenties. He then married Isabelle’s mother.’
Allie blinked. ‘Blimey, he must have been good looking to have so many women chasing him. Who was this guy?’
‘“This guy”, as you describe him, was Alistair St. John. He was a Scottish government leader and the owner of ILC, the biggest technology company in Britain,’ Lucinda said. She took a prim sip of tea. ‘He was very charming.’
‘Wait,’ Allie said. ‘Is he… was this St. John guy my grandfather?’
Lucinda rested her hand on Allie’s arm. ‘Oh no, darling.’
‘Then who…’ Allie held up her hands in frustration at the confusing maze of old people’s love lives.
‘Your grandfather was a lovely man – a good man – named Thomas Meldrum,’ Lucinda said simply. ‘He was my second husband. He was much older than me; he died before you were born.’