Jenny leaned back and her fingers curled around Abby’s upper arm. “It is but we won’t argue that.” Her hand tightened and she looked deep into Abby’s eyes. “You’ll get through this, girlfriend. You always do. I don’t know anyone on this planet who’s stronger than you.”
At that Abby laughed but there was not even a hint of humour in it.
Before more could be said Mrs. Truman descended on their tête-à-tête.
“What are you two whispering about?” she demanded to know.
Jenny turned to Mrs. Truman but caught Abby’s hand. “Nothing.”
Mrs. Truman eyed Jenny then she looked at Abby assessingly. “It doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
“It’s nothing,” Abby lied.
“Well,” she said on an angry-to-be-left-out humph, “you two were so absorbed, you haven’t noticed that something’s happening.”
Abby and Jenny looked into the room to see people were coming from all corners of the house, squeezing into the large space, making it small.
As she looked, Abby saw Cash arrive. His eyes scanned the room and for the first time in her life Abby wished both that she wasn’t so tall and that she wasn’t wearing a pair of elegant, expensive high-heeled shoes when Cash’s eyes easily found her.
She watched as his powerful body wended its way through the crush toward them and he arrived at the same time as Kieran.
Jenny dropped her hand as Cash got close, his arm moving along her waist, his chin dipped and she saw his brows draw together as he examined her face.
Then he asked, “What’s wrong?”
Abby swallowed then lied, forcing her voice to sound cheerful, “Nothing.”
His eyes shifted to Jenny for a mere moment then came back to her. They narrowed, his fingers dug into her waist and he started, “Abby –” but people were tinkling their champagne glasses and Abby tore her gaze from him to glance over the crowd.
They were all looking in one direction and she could see Nicola and Alistair standing in front of the fireplace, a small pocket of space in front of them.
Honor, Fenella and Suzanne were at the edge of the crowd closest to Nicola and Alistair.
As Alistair lifted his hand for silence, conversation in the room died away.
“Thank you, thank you,” Alistair’s voice boomed pompously from his position as lord of the manor, the smile on his face even at Abby’s distance not only looked false, it did not reach his eyes. He went on, “We, Nicola and I, thank you for coming. We thank you for being here to celebrate this, our special anniversary.”
“Hear, hear,” someone shouted and Alistair bowed his head in a farcical attempt at noble.
Abby turned her attention to Nicola who didn’t look thankful in the slightest. She looked pale, she looked tense and she looked weirdly expectant.
Alistair continued, lifting his glass. “Now, everyone, I hope you’ve charged your glasses so you can join us in toasting twenty-five years of –”
“One second,” Nicola’s voice cut in. It was pleasant as usual however it was also raised and it carried across the expanse.
Alistair hesitated and looked down at his wife who did not meet his eyes.
“I would also like to thank you for coming,” Nicola declared, “for it is, indeed, a special day.”
There was shifting of feet and smiles but something about the way Nicola looked, her tone, put Abby on edge.
Nicola kept talking. “I’ve been married to this man at my side for twenty-five years,” she announced unnecessarily, “twenty-five extraordinarily unhappy years.”
There were some chuckles and murmurs as many thought Nicola had flubbed her speech.
Abby, however, did not. Nor, she could tell by the way he tensed at her side, his arm curling her closer, did Cash.
“There wasn’t abuse, not overtly,” Nicola went on, Abby felt Cash’s body jolt and the chuckling and murmurs stopped immediately as the room grew silent. “Mostly neglect. And, on occasion, cruelty. Not only to myself, but to my daughters.”
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Truman muttered as the feeling in the room turned uneasy.
Alistair’s face, magnanimous a moment ago, had soured, indicating without words the veracity of Nicola’s awful speech.
His hand came up to curl around her arm and he muttered, “Dearest –”
She yanked her arm free and gave him a cold look.
“I’m not, nor have I ever been, your dearest,” she informed him and then looked back to the crowd. “I asked you all here tonight not so you could celebrate twenty-five years of a very, very bad marriage. But instead so I could publicly apologise to my daughters for being weak and not protecting them the way I should. For desiring for them a life without want and sacrificing a home filled with love in order to do it. And now what I ask of you is to lift your glasses in a toast, not to the continuation of that bad marriage, but to the end of it,” she turned back to Alistair and finished, “because, dearest, tomorrow morning, my daughters and I are moving out. I want a divorce.”
There were shocked gasps, excited murmurs and a good deal of uncomfortably shifting feet.
Except Mrs. Truman who was chuckling.
She turned back to Abby and Cash and muttered loudly and with authority, (even though she had none), “Met him and was in his presence for about two seconds. Didn’t like the look of him. Just deserts, I say.”
Jenny’s gaze shot to Abby’s and even with their heartbreaking conversation of moments before, they both emitted short, shocked but entirely unamused giggles.
Their giggles stuck in their throats and their eyes flew back to the fireplace when they heard Alistair’s voice vibrating with fury, demand, “How dare you!”
Nicola ignored him and lifted her glass, shouting, “A toast! To the end of the bad and heralding the beginning of the good!”
But she didn’t get her glass to her lips.
Alistair’s fingers closed around her wrist and he jerked her hand down, the champagne spilling all over Nicola’s throat, chest and down the front of her elegant, black, strapless, bias-cut gown.
There were more stunned gasps but Cash didn’t gasp. The instant Alistair’s fingers curled around Nicola’s wrist he moved, pushing forward through the crowd toward the couple on display.
“You bitch! How dare you humiliate me in front of my friends?” Alistair demanded, getting in another jerk, causing the rest of the champagne to splash against Nicola’s chest and also in her face, triggering another now-horrified murmur to race through the crowd.
Fenella got close to the couple, her body rigid, she demanded loudly, “Unhand Mummy!”
Alistair’s eyes sliced to Fenella and he barked, “This is none of your goddamned business!”
It was then Cash arrived at the scene. He moved between Fenella and Alistair, positioning himself in front of the three sisters, his back to the crowd.
Even so, his deep voice carried when he ordered, “Take your hand off her.”
Like a demented schoolboy who was abusing a toy, Alistair gave Nicola, who was now fighting his grip on her wrist, another hefty wrench and her entire body shook with it, so much she nearly came off her feet.
All three sisters pressed in behind Cash but at Alistair’s action, Cash’s deadly voice cut through the room. “Take your hand off her,” he repeated, “now.”
Alistair, clearly mad in the face of Cash’s warning, enraged tone, narrowed his frightening eyes at Cash. “Who do you think you are? This is my wife and my house. I’ll do what I damn well please and I won’t let the bastard son of a Scottish bitch-in-heat stand there telling me what to do!”