He stared at her, nonplussed. ‘Nae, Mrs Campbell, of course it’s not Andrew. It’s me. Colm MacKenzie.’
The sound of shattering glass and Pen’s cries soon brought the others hurrying in from the dining room to see what the commotion was.
‘Colm!’ Helen exclaimed as she saw Pen’s stricken expression. ‘What’s happened?’
Archie pushed his way through to his wife’s side. ‘Pen – my God, are you all right? Are you hurt? What the devil’s going on—?’
He broke off as he caught sight of Colm, and blanched. ‘No,’ he whispered, his expression as shocked as his wife’s. ‘No, by God...it cannot be.’
Colm glanced at Helen’s questioning face. ‘Mrs Campbell seems to think I’m her son, Andrew,’ he said, his words measured.
‘Andrew’s dead, mother,’ Tarquin said to Pen, his words gentle but firm. ‘You know that.’
‘Of course he is,’ Helen said quickly as she joined Colm. ‘The resemblance is just a – an odd coincidence,’ she added, and threaded her fingers through his. ‘Isn’t it, Colm?’ Her eyes sought his, looking for reassurance, for denial – for answers.
He said nothing. His expression remained inscrutable.
Pen shook her head in bewilderment. ‘But you look so like him! Why did I never notice it before? The nose, the hair, the line of your jaw – it can’t be a coincidence! Who are you, then, Mr MacKenzie?’ she demanded, suddenly overcome with anger. ‘If you’re not my son, why do you look so much like him?’
‘Yes,’ Archie agreed grimly. ‘I’d like the answer to that question myself.’
Colm’s eyes moved from Archie to Pen. ‘I’m not Andrew, no. But I am your son.’ His hazel eyes, turned green-gold thanks to the dark green of his tie, were hard. ‘I’m the son you gave up for adoption thirty-eight years ago.’
Graeme Longworth, who’d stood silently on the edge of the group, made his way forward. His face was ashen. ‘I can scarcely believe it. You’re the reason I came here today. You’re...you’re my son,’ he marvelled.
‘Well, then ‒ it looks like you’ve found me, Dad.’ Colm invested the word with undisguised contempt. ‘Pity it took you so long to do it.’
Rhys, who’d gone through a similar experience with his own father Alastair only the year before, watched the proceedings with mixed emotions. He was scarcely aware of Natalie’s hand slipping into his, squeezing his fingers reassuringly.
‘I...I’m sorry, Colm.’ Longworth’s face twisted in pain. ‘I know how empty and useless those words are, especially coming so late. But I am sorry. I was a fool. A complete and utter fool. I put my political ambitions ahead of you...ahead of your mother...and in the end, it didn’t matter. I still lost everything.’
‘I hope you’re not expecting sympathy,’ Colm said. ‘You’ll not get it from me.’
He scowled at the avid faces surrounding them. ‘Might we finish this conversation later, in private? I’ve no desire to air my personal business in front of everyone. And I’ve no wish to spoil the festivities.’
‘Bit late for that,’ Gemma retorted.
Colm took the box he held and stepped forward to thrust it into her arms. ‘I apologise.’ His words were stiff. ‘I hope this’ll make amends. It belongs to you.’
‘What?’ Confused, Gemma stared at him, then down at the box. Her confusion turned to surprise as she saw the Prada logo stamped on the box’s lid. ‘Oh my God. Is this…’
‘It’s your wedding gown, Miss Astley,’ Colm confirmed. ‘Helen and I went into Northton Grange to fetch it for you.’
‘I can’t believe you did this,’ Gemma marvelled, touched. ‘But why?’
‘I can answer that,’ Dominic interjected. ‘We were all bloody sick of hearing you whinge about that damned Prada gown. So I asked Colm if he’d fetch it back here before the wedding, seeing as I couldn’t do it myself.’
‘Oh, Dom,’ she breathed, ‘that’s…I don’t even know what to say! Thank you.’ She turned to Colm and Helen, her eyes shining. ‘And thank you, both of you, for doing this. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.’
“Cannae have a bride without a wedding gown,’ Colm observed, and smiled. ‘Happy Christmas, Miss Astley.’
‘Come along, everyone,’ Mrs Neeson announced, and shooed them all off towards the dining room with a flap of her apron. ‘I’ve spent a great deal of time fixing a first-rate Christmas feast, and I’ll not have it go uneaten!’
‘How did you figure it out?’ Pen asked Colm later, when dinner was over and she, Helen, Archie, and Graeme were seated behind closed doors in Archie’s study. ‘My affair with Graeme was never made public.’
‘No. But Andrew’s drowning was in all the papers. It was his death that helped me make the connection to you.’
‘His death? But...how? I don’t understand.’
‘When the story ran, so did Andrew’s photo. I couldn’t help but notice we had the same colouring, the same build – even our noses were similar. And it struck me that we looked too much alike for it to be a coincidence.
‘So I did some digging,’ he went on, ‘and I found out you modelled in the seventies, and that you’d quit to get married. Andrew was born a year after me.’
‘What made you think I might be your mother?’
‘Your eyes,’ he said. ‘You have those odd hazel eyes that adapt to whatever you’re wearing – just like mine.’
She glanced at her husband. ‘Archie always says my eyes change like my moods.’
‘Then I found a photo of you in London with Graeme Longworth, at Annabel’s,’ Colm went on. ‘It was nothing, really...just the two of you talking and laughing.’
Longworth slanted a glance at Pen. ‘I remember that evening very well,’ he said softly.
Archie scowled but said nothing.
‘Not long after,’ Colm told Pen, ‘Longworth stood down from the election, and you disappeared from the fashion magazines.’ He glanced at his mother. ‘For a year, you vanished. Then you came back ‒ married to Archibald Campbell.’
‘So you figured it out,’ she murmured.
Colm shrugged. ‘It wasn’t difficult. You had an affair with Graeme Longworth, got pregnant with me, went off somewhere to give birth in secret, and then put me up for adoption.’
Pen began to weep, overcome with a welter of emotions. ‘It was the best I could manage at the time. You have to understand, Colm – I was barely eighteen. I was alone, and frightened, and there was no possible way I could raise a baby on my own. I lived in a tiny bedsit, my work was demanding and required frequent travel, and my career would’ve been over if word leaked out I’d had Graeme’s baby out of wedlock. Things were very different in those days...’