Cal was looking at her as if that was exactly what he thought she was, now she came to mention it. Heather couldn’t really blame him. She was not good at this.
‘Oh! I have one thing that might help...’ She pulled her phone from the pocket of her dress and scrolled back through the photos to find the one she wanted before holding it out over the desk to show him.
His eyes darkened as he stared at the photo of her and Ross, surrounded by the dim lights and noise of that London bar, both grinning into the lens as he’d held the phone out to snap the picture. Something to remember him by, he’d said.
Turned out she really didn’t need the photo.
Cal sat back, looking up again, over her shoulder, and Heather took the phone back. This couldn’t be pleasant for him, either.
Although, he wasn’t the one who might throw up the sandwich she’d eaten on the train any second now, because of a load of stupid hormones, so her sympathy only went so far.
‘Do you believe me?’ she asked quietly, when he still said nothing.
‘Yes,’ Cal replied. ‘The lawyers will want the test, of course, but, yes. I believe you. I’m just trying to figure out what to do next.’
Heather gave him a small, lopsided smile. ‘You and me both.’
He wasn’t that much like Ross, now she’d got past the looks, Heather decided. Ross hadn’t stopped talking the whole time they were together—about himself, about her, about places he’d been or wanted to go—yet he still hadn’t managed to say any of the things that really mattered.
Cal, after his initial pitch for the nanny job, had been practically silent ever since she’d broken the news.
But he believed her. That was a big thing. She was clinging on to that.
‘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.’
‘But you came anyway?’
‘But I came anyway.’
Cal eyed her across the desk. She seemed genuine. Sincere. But then, people always did—until they screwed you over.
Then his gaze landed on the duck again. ‘I have to ask...’ He gestured towards it.
Spots of pink appeared on Heather’s cheeks. ‘Oh! It sort of...appeared in the moat as I was approaching the door. It seemed wrong to leave it there so I brought it in with me.’
Daisy, Cal was willing to bet. After tossing a bucket of water out of that nursery window a rubber duck was nothing. Practically a step down, in fact.
Cal thought wistfully of the time when he’d honestly believed that his niece and nephew were delightful, well-behaved children. When he’d lived thousands of miles away and only seen them for an afternoon at a time.
‘How do you imagine the duck got there?’ he asked Heather. ‘In the moat, I mean?’ An idea was starting to form somewhere in the back of his brain. It was entirely possible that it was a terrible idea, but it wasn’t as if he had any better ones to go with. Especially since it seemed that the latest nanny from the agency hadn’t even made it as far as the castle gates.
‘Oh,