“I handled it.” Sparing a final glance at my cousin, I amended, “I was handling it.”
“This—” he pointed a shaking finger at her remains, “—will start a blood feud. The Marchands will come for you, and this time the gloves will be off.”
“Funny,” I murmured, riveted on the hand still curled as if to hold an artifact she no longer possessed, “I don’t see any gloves.”
Dame Marchand’s interest in acquiring me had lit a torch within my heart. Maybe my parents had loved one another. Maybe they had both fought to keep me. Maybe the accident that claimed Mom’s life wasn’t so accidental. And if that were true, then how had my dad died?
“You could have been killed,” he rumbled.
“Yeah, you’re right.” I was done tiptoeing around the truth. “And there wouldn’t have been a damn thing you could do about it. Not even from across town.”
Calling him out had Boaz flinching. Hard. “How did you find out I was in Savannah? Amelie?”
Now it was my turn to flinch. “Amelie knew you were still in town, and she didn’t tell me.” The confirmation stung. “That’s why she’s got you on speed dial.”
“Don’t blame her.” He cast the house a lingering frown, searching the windows. No doubt for his sister’s silhouette. “I made her promise.”
“Why would you do that?” I voiced the conclusion I’d come to in Atlanta. “If the Grande Dame issued a gag order for you, you couldn’t have told Amelie. Since you obviously did, that means you decided to withhold that information. You both chose to keep this from me.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Are we together or not?” That’s what hurt most. The wondering. “I thought we were trying. I thought that meant something.”
“It did.”
Past tense.
That sick clench in my gut twisted. “Are you breaking up with me?”
Judging by the look on his face, I wondered if he had already, but I missed the memo.
“This is so fucked-up.” He stared at the ground. “The one time I want to stay with a girl, and…”
If this was the end, I wasn’t going to make it easy. I was going to make him spell it out. “And?”
“I can’t,” he rasped.
“Can’t or won’t?” I kept my chin from hitting my chest by sheer force of will. “I thought you were all in.”
For as long as it lasts.
“The deal changed.”
“When? And why wasn’t I told?” The way my palm itched, I didn’t trust myself to get closer without slapping him. “Is that what the secret phone calls have been about? Is that why you haven’t spoken to me unless I initiated contact?”
“Amelie put my family in a tight spot,” he said quietly. “We have one chance to dig ourselves out of the hole with the Pritchard name intact.”
An automatic step back bumped my hip against the van door. “You wouldn’t.”
He bowed his head. “I don’t have a choice.”
“Macon—” No, I wouldn’t throw his little brother under the bus. After counting to ten, I tried again. “You don’t care about reputation. You never have. You’ve spent your entire life cultivating an image, and newsflash—it’s not one of the dutiful son.”
“I hated being boxed in.” His head jerked up, eyes blazing. “I hated being told what my life would be and who I would spend it with. How many kids I would sire and how much money I was required to add to the family coffers before lining up a successor.” Muscle bulged in his jaw. “I wanted out, so I acted out. I tossed my good name in the mud and then I rolled around on it.”
A slow burn started behind my eyes. “You told me I would be the one to make choices to preserve my line, my home, and my legacy.”
“I also said you might not have a choice in the matter,” he bit back.
At the time, the comment wedged beneath my skin like a splinter. “Did you mean it as advice for me, or as a reminder for yourself?”
“You’re Dame Woolworth. That means you have the power. Whoever you marry will give up their last name and take yours. Whoever you wed will give up their family and become yours. Whoever I marry will take my name and my place. She will become the Pritchard heir. She will inherit my family, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
“You could say no.”
“You still don’t get it.” He threw up his hands. “I’ve been groomed all my life, not to take control of the family, but to be a guiding influence for the wife I would one day acquire. She’s a business decision, Grier. She’s three big, fat checkmarks in the columns that matter most to my parents.”
Tears veiled my eyes, and I couldn’t see him through them, but I would be damned if I let them fall.
“She’s an only child with a small family to support. She can afford to give up her name to take mine. She’s the best hope we’ve got of coming out the other side of this scandal.”
“What’s her name?” I noticed I was rubbing the skin over my heart and dropped my hand. “You haven’t spoken it once.”
“Does it matter to you?” His bitter laughter almost choked him. “As long as she shows up to the Lyceum on time, it doesn’t to me.”
“This is why you were pushing me away.” The radio silence was a precursor to this. “Were you going to tell me before I heard it from someone else? Before rings were exchanged?”
“Yes.” His fists tightened at his sides. “I’m not that cruel.”
“You got engaged behind my back. How is that not cruel?”
To think I had wanted a surprise in the romance department. Well, it didn’t get more shocking than this.
“Our situation is complicated.”
It hit me then, what he wasn’t saying. “You’ve known about this for a while.” It was the only thing that made sense, the only reason he wasn’t tearing everything down around him. He’d had time to get used to the idea, to make peace with it. “But you worried how I would take the news because of Amelie. You strung me along so I wouldn’t boot her to the curb when I found out.”
“You’re all she’s got right now.”
“What? Your darling wife won’t look kindly on her sister-in-law?”
“Amelie is part of the deal.”
Part of the deal. A deal. Not a marriage.
What a proper scion he was turning out to be. His mother must be so proud.
“She’s been disowned,” I rasped, shaking my head. “That can’t be undone.”
“I can’t give her back her name, but I can give her a place, a home, access to her inheritance.”
“Your mother—”
“Will no longer be Matron Pritchard.” His jaw set. “If I step up, she steps down. That’s my price.”
My lips parted, but nothing passed them.
“The best thing for the family is to distance ourselves from the atrocities that occurred during her tenure as matron.” How formal he sounded when he spoke, how practiced, as if reciting a speech. “The candidates they selected for me to choose from were desperate. Who else would marry into our line after this scandal? The former Matron Pritchard knew she had to act fast to mitigate the damage.”
“Amelie will still be ostracized.” Putting a roof over her head and money in her pockets wouldn’t change that.
Quiet stretched long between us, the silence filled with things unsaid that could never be spoken between an engaged man and his…
Girlfriend? Friend? Neighbor? No, I was nothing to him now.
“I read the family histories for all the applicants,” he began.
“Oh goodie.” I clapped for him. “You and your new family should have tons to bond over then.”
“The Whitaker matriarch died three months ago, and the title of Matron Whitaker fell to her eldest daughter. She’s aware of our circumstances, and…” He wet his lips. “She lost her younger sister last year. Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome kept her confined to the family home. She hadn’t been seen in public since she was a child.” His throat bobbed when he swallowed. “She was two years older than Amelie.”
While I pitied them such loss with one breath, I resented them with the next. But what he implied… It was an elegant solution. One that never would have crossed my mind. “She’s willing to let your sister masquerade as hers?”