Lady Bridget Beames assessed the situation. The private investigator had found out almost everything there was to know about Lucy Summers. Somehow, she’d gone to a decent boarding school, though why in Kent when the family lived in Scotland she had no idea. Very suspicious. The carpenter who was the dad of her half-sister hack, Max, wasn’t hers. The private investigator still hadn’t been able to track down her own father as he wasn’t on the birth certificate. But the investigator had travelled to Broughty Ferry and taken pictures of her stepdad leaving their local, the Ship Inn – very original – at closing time. The investigator had also managed to pull his birth certificate and the stepdad was born in Ireland.
Perhaps Blondie had got a scholarship because she was brainy and had her fees paid; she’d got straight As at A level and studied English at Oxford. How unbelievably working class, though, for her mother to have two kids so close in age by two fathers. Dundee had the highest teenage pregnancy rate of any city in the UK. Perhaps their family was normal there but it was not acceptable for someone of Hartley’s standing to be associated with them.
It made Bridget’s stomach flip when she found out Lucy was five years younger than her. Having children had become somewhat of an obsession, with her mother pointing out only the day before that fertility rates fall dramatically when women hit thirty-five. Mother could be such a cow. But she hardly ever questioned giving Bridget money whenever she asked for it, so she had her uses.
It pained Bridget to admit that Lady Barbara did have a point. She desperately wanted a baby and she had set her mind to it that it would be with Hartley. Lucy might be more fertile than her, and at thirty-one she no doubt wanted babies, but over Bridget’s dead body would they be Hartley’s.
Most of her friends had married well and had children, or soon would. She felt they were secretly laughing at her whenever they asked how her love life was or if she’d heard from Hartley. She was sure she had seen a look of pity flash across her friend Natasha’s face last week at lunch. How fucking dare they! When she had been with Hartley, they had been the most celebrated couple in their set, indeed in London.
When they had broken up Bridget knew the importance of saving face and told her friends they had agreed to a break because they were both busy, but that there was every chance they would be back together before long. Bridget knew Hartley was too much of a gent to divulge the actual, awful truth of how one-sided it had been. But she was certain their friends knew what had happened. After all, she had told them just days before she was sure he would propose.
She desired with all her being to be the Earl’s wife, with the prestige and recognition it would bring. Her mother had brought her up with a clear message: she should marry well and have children to make her family proud. The cooking courses and finishing schools that had peppered Bridget’s teenage years were all booked by her mother with the intention of making her a desirable wife.
Yes, she had loved Hartley. She still did. When they split up a friend had drunkenly asked if she would love him if he had nothing, not a penny or title to his name. She had feigned a look of hurt and said of course she would. She almost convinced herself it was true, but of course it mattered – the peerage, the wealth, the family history. She had always wanted to find someone with all of that and so Hartley was her dream man. Anyone else who talked about finding the man of their dreams was deemed to be in love.
Now Hartley was with Lucy, she felt utterly humiliated.
Bridget’s own bloody hairdresser, Pierre, had been gushing over a picture he’d seen of Lucy in Hello!. Style icon this, gorgeous hair that. She must remember to find a new hair stylist and tell her friends to do the same.
Lucy might have had a lucky start, having been to a good school and mixing with the right people, but she was sure Lucy had been sparing with other details of her past.
It was time Hartley knew everything. But perhaps that wouldn’t be enough. She had to be sure he was put off her for good.