“The usual. He put a two-second teaser of our sex tape on his show, so I dumped him. You couldn’t see much of anything, but it was the principle of the matter. He ended up being a right bastard, but he’s a connected one.”
“Oh my God! I can’t go on his show,” I said. “On principle.”
Brontë patted me on the back. “Yes, you will. I’m the one who decided to wear deer antlers and paint my face like that one Snapchat filter.”
“This just gets worse.”
“You’re telling me. He was wearing a hunter outfit.”
I gave her a sideways look. “So, obvious question: are you a fuzzie?”
Brontë whacked me on the way out of the library. “He wishes.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Finn
Despite not responding to my texts or calls, Poppy soldiered on. I ravenously watched every video she posted, including an announcement about a segment she secured on a major news outlet with the help of Brontë and her media wanker boyfriend, much to my annoyance.
I tried not to let it, but the thought of my little sister provoked an immediate, visceral reaction. I kept telling myself it was all about mental control. I just needed more of it.
Hating Brontë wasn’t fun. She was the last piece of my mother I had left and she looked so much like her. While I had inherited my father’s dark hair, she’d gotten our mother’s fair, porcelain skin and green eyes.
But she was the secondary reason Mom was gone, plain and simple. Worse, Brontë resented me for my treatment of her. She knew I was a shit older brother who should have protected her from our father’s indifference.
I hadn’t, of course. She had every right to hate me. I remained silent when Father cast her off to nannies and nurses, to boarding schools and boredom. I’d applauded when she failed, smug that I was the heir and she would receive nothing. In my foggy mind, she deserved no less for killing our mother.
A newborn. A tiny newborn who never even had the chance to read under the petals with our mother. I hated how despicable I’d let myself become in my grief.
Poppy’s segment would air later in the day. It was a live show hosted by Jaspar who got celebrities to do ridiculous stunts and suffer practical jokes all in the name of promoting their latest work. The previous week had been Fluffy Monkey, and let’s just say it’d involved pawning a fake, fluffy monkey off on random people walking the streets while the celebrity of the day pretended it was real. Jaspar hooted in an earpiece, barely able to contain himself the whole time as he urged the celebrity on with more and more ridiculous antics.
God only knew what he’d make Poppy do.
It started out with a hidden camera in the hallway where Poppy was grinding to her favorite Lizzo song, “Good as Hell”, apparently in an attempt to psych herself up. I could tell even from miles away that she was nervous.
She wore the white spaghetti strap dress she’d worn the first night I saw her with her hair in long waves down her back. Bubbles of emotion welled up. While she looked beautiful, I couldn’t help but wonder if she had worn it because she didn’t want to wear anything I’d gotten her. Maybe I was overthinking it and she just liked the dress, or maybe she hated me so much for not being honest again that she refused to touch anything I had touched.
Or, again, maybe I was overthinking it.
Or not.
Jesus, this woman was driving me mad.
Her voice streamed fuzzily through the hidden camera. “Walk your fine ass out the door!” She attempted to dance. “Yeah, tequila shots.” Fist pump! When the production assistant walked into the hallway, they had a short conversation before he pointed to the camera. Poppy blushed adorably red, but he swiftly swept her into the main recording studio before she had time to back out.
I should have been there, helping her. These shows were ruthless when they lampooned celebrities, and aristocracy in particular. Her target wouldn’t have been easier to spot if she were painted in red and white rings or had a Kick me sign taped to her back.
Jaspar invited her to sit down in a chair, and after a brief whoopie cushion moment, got down to introducing her, Clarion Abbey, and her goal of making it a profitable dinner business that would impress the fictional Crawleys.
“Since it seems you don’t know the show”—here there were manufactured boos—“let me explain it. Today on Chummy Chums, we’re going to have a bit of a medley. I’ll ask you to do various accents from around the British Isles while trying different native foods. Sound fun?”
From Poppy’s raised eyebrow, this was not her definition of ‘fun’, but Jaspar handed her a blindfold and sat her down before she could protest. Then he unveiled a table full of delicacies. I nearly vomited looking at the whole fish heads sticking out of a pie crust.
“Here on Chummy Chums, it’s only the best production money can buy!” He winked for the camera, and I attempted to talk myself out of punching him in his dated, spiked boy band hair the next time I saw him. “Sound fun, love? First, let’s start with this.” He held up something minced to the in-studio audience with a sign that said Haggis. “It’ll be easy down the hatch, love.”
Poppy winced a little but didn’t miss a beat. After a few careful minutes of chewing, she ventured, “Haggis?”
Jaspar pulled a surprised face. “Correct, and do you know what’s in this beloved Scottish dish?”
She shook her head. “No, but I’d love another bite. It was magnificent. Perhaps I should ask them to help cook my Battle of the Nile dinner,” she mused.
I grinned. Poppy was killing it! She’d have the audience eating out of the palm of her hand in no time. She’d even managed to sneak in another reference to her own event. Brilliant.
“Sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs, packaged into a sheep’s stomach to cook. Lovely, no?”
Poppy gave a sarcastic thumbs-up while the audience chortled.
Next, he did mushy peas as some sort of palate cleanser, and then black pudding. Poppy nailed them all. The fourth dish was just evil, though. I stared at the screen, arms crossed, a scowl on my face. Nobody ate that medieval shit anymore.
“Are you ready for our next up?”
“Can I say no?” she joked.
“No.”
Poppy took a healthy bite of jellied eels, chunks of eel heads with their eyeballs staring out from clear jelly. The only mercy was that she couldn’t see that.
She was squirming, and sweat sheened on her upper lip. “I’ve got some boob sweat going on.”
“Makeup? Anyone from makeup to help with some knocker sweat?” Jaspar squeezed out, tears running down his cheeks as Poppy chewed.
“How about I throw you a question?” Poppy gasped, holding on to the table as the jellied eels did their worst. “Why did you think your intimate acts with Lady Brontë were fit for public consumption? Was it because she’s aristocratic? Is it your own insecurities?”
I saw red. That prick was dead. I was on my way to grab my coat and storm the studio like a one-man battalion when I saw live-television Poppy grab the edge of her blindfold and rip it off. Her eyes sparked.
“I know you were planning on airing more of your sex tape for ratings, and you can try—over my dead body.”
Jaspar laughed nervously. “You Americans are so dramatic! Dead body. Ha ha.” He looked around the quiet studio audience. “I think it’s time for a commercial break.”
I dialed my sister and, to my surprise, she answered on the first ring. “Ciao, brother. See our lovely Poppy on Chummy Chums today? I assume that’s why you’re calling. Just so you know, she wanted this.”
“I’m not calling to argue,” I said when she finally took a breath. “Join me for dinner? Here in the City.”
She paused. I wondered briefly if she’d hung up.
“Brontë?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be grounded or something at home?”
“I won’t tell the Duke about the sex tape if you don’t tell him about London, eh?”
She let out
a sigh. “Oh, why not? I’ll be there in a few hours. Text me a place.”
I arrived at the pub house early and settled in with a pint to wait for my sister. Brontë liked to enter with dramatic flair and she didn’t disappoint, almost thirty minutes late, wearing platform shoes, a fringed top that showed half her stomach, and a neon pink miniskirt. Everyone’s head traveled around to watch her lean over the bar and order a Pimm’s Cup. She sauntered over with her drink, well aware of the adoration and set down her Hermès bag.
As for me, I was very proud things were starting out so well. I hadn’t even rolled my eyes yet.
“I can’t believe you told Poppy to go on that absolute wanker’s show,” I said.
“And I can’t believe she agreed! Americans are wild. She apologized, saying something about ‘no such thing as bad publicity’, but she’s clearly not familiar with Jaspar. He’s going to parody her for the rest of the month.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I promised. Jaspar wouldn’t be able to piss for a week once I finished with him.
With a nod, Brontë looked satisfied. “Actually, I’m glad you asked me here. I have to break some rather large news to you, and I wanted a public atmosphere. You understand?”
I rolled my eyes. “My worst offenses are ignoring you, not harming you.”
Brontë flipped her hair over her shoulder. “You clearly don’t appreciate my brand of humor. It’s probably because the Duke isn’t my father. We only share half the same humor, and mine is clearly superior.”
The restaurant around Brontë wavered as my vision went in and out. “Repeat yourself,” I ordered, slipping into my RAF voice.
“Same mother, different father. Need me to write it down? Do some rather large sky writing? I could probably find a yodeler in a pinch.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded, her face framed by her latest chopped bang look. “I think this means the Duke is bluffing. He’ll never truly disinherit you.”
The world sounded as if we were underwater.
“Finn, do you need me to call for a physician? Someone to jumpstart your heart?”
I could still hear Brontë talking, asking me a question, but everything I knew about my parents’ behavior tumbled neatly into place. The time spent in the rose gardens, the muffled yelling, the vindictiveness. It was all about the Duke’s bruised ego and my mom’s lonely heart. She had a void not even I could fill. I was a kid, always wanting to go play with my friends in the woods, barely making time to read until she was so sick I become sufficiently terrified of losing her. It made perfect sense…too much sense.
“Where’s the proof?” I demanded.
Brontë brandished a set of documents, but the words ran together. She seemed reluctant to hand over a neatly tied stack of what looked like handwritten letters. I yanked them from her, immediately recognizing my mother’s hand on many of them, vines and petals interspersed between her familiar looping capital letters and tightly scrunched lowercase ones.
It only took a look at the roses doodled in the spaces to know I was looking at evidence of her affair—love letters—and my world was turned upside down. In that moment, I had a bit more sympathy for Poppy and what she must have been feeling when she found out her beloved father was a cheater, except I was in a dark pub, not at a huge public event.
Poppy.
This changed nothing of my love for my mother. She had been abused and forgotten by the Duke. Everyone knew that. If she’d found a shared love of flowers and rose bushes with our head gardener, who was I to judge the past? I was focused on the future.
And my future was Poppy. I had one last thing to do in London: fuck over the Duke. Getting a private solicitor and private investigator was the best move I’d made. Now, thanks to them, the Duke would be declared mentally incompetent and his threats made null and void.
“What are you going to do?” I finally croaked, flipping through the pages with my heart in my throat. “This last letter makes it sound like the Duke fired him almost immediately.”
“I don’t know. I think I’m going to sit on the knowledge for a while. I told Poppy I’d processed it, but I don’t really know how one goes about that. Maybe I’ll go to Paris for a while, eat a lot of macarons. That sounds nice.”
“Will you try to find him? Do you think he knows?”
She lifted her shoulders and downed the Pimm’s Cup in one go. “Questions for some other time, dear half-brother. What about you? Will you confront the Duke?”
I smiled a feral smile, all teeth. “You can count on it.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Poppy
Chef Robinson was young and hungry. I could tell the minute he bounded into Clarion that he had a million ideas and a real love of historical dining. He came dressed professionally in his chef’s whites and his signature spiked locks. With a grin, he set down his knife bag and began examining the kitchen. He had two pens in his breast pocket and a handheld notebook in his sleeve pocket, which he took out to jot things down now and then. I appreciated the enthusiasm.
“Beautiful!” he said, examining the stove. “I love these details on old hobs. Looks like Clarion updated to gas in, what…the 1960s?”
I nodded. “My grandfather finally converted the kitchen. I think he died a little on the inside doing it, but as one of the last original owners of the great manor houses, he knew he had to change or decay.”
“Good chap,” Robinson said, opening a few drawers and making notes. After a few minutes, he flipped through his notebook. “I looked over the preliminary menu you emailed me. Are you sure you want to do engastration? Not only is it complicated, it’s not exactly appetizing to the modern palate.”
I put my hand over my chest. “Where are my smelling salts? Blasphemy! What type of showcase dinner would it be without stuffing a whole goose with a whole chicken with an ox tongue wrapped with sage and apricot stuffing?”
“A modern showcase dinner,” Robinson said. “Since engastration is from the Middle Ages, where I wished it would have stayed.”
I laughed. A food genius and funny. That was a good combo for the reporters and bloggers who would be interviewing him.
“Just think of it like the American turducken. You know,” I said at his blank face, “a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. It’s a Thanksgiving staple.”
“Oh, your made-up American holiday. Right.”
When he still looked dubious, I brought his attention to all the copper pans I’d scrounged up at a flea market and some vegetables from the local farmers’ market. I couldn’t wait until Clarion was able to supply vegetables from her own garden, but these were beautiful, especially all the spring fava beans and delicate parsley microgreens.
“As you wish, Lady Perrinton,” he teased.
“Poppy. Just call me Poppy.”
“Of course, Poppy. Shall we go over the courses and events?”
We pored over my notes, and I let him taste each of the wines I’d brought back from our winery excursion. Watching him sniff and swirl was almost a knife to the heart. Chef Robinson couldn’t have been more different from Finn’s rigid military background if he put on a fly suit and jumped in the cockpit, although I doubted he’d have sex with my friend while inside.
Robinson was professional.
Finn was a devastation.
I yanked myself back to the list of dishes. “So let’s start with the hors d’oeuvres. I have red, white, and sparkling wines that will be circulating with servers—local village kids, of course—and I was hoping to serve fried oysters and chicken mousse with truffles. It’s not traditional to have a standing cocktail hour, but I want everyone to be able to walk around and tour the grounds.”
Robinson took notes while I talked, sketching little morsels of food that already had my mouth watering. “Great thinking.”
“The first sit-down course will be served Downton Abbey-style. That is to say, Finn’s assistant agreed to walk around and serve everyone with
tongs off a silver platter.”
“Wow, his man must really like him to agree to that.” I rubbed my fingers together to indicate cash, and Robinson laughed. “I see.”
“For the first course, we’re going to do a chicken and sorrel soup with a poached egg. It will lull everyone into a false sense of comfort, since it seems so modern.”
“Oh, you’re evil.”
“Thank you. Next, a tort de moy: bone marrow torte. I printed out some period-specific recipes here.” I handed him a sheaf of papers with complicated-looking recipes, happy it wasn’t me cooking. “Then, we’ll race on to the pan-fried turbot with tarragon and white wine, followed by another palate cleanser of fresh fava beans ragout with cabbage and a parsley sauce.”
Robinson sketched some cute fava beans with faces and then drew a river of sauce in which they were drowning, holding their imaginary throats with little stick hands.
I gave him a playful shove. “Hey! This is how they ate. It’s not my fault Georgians and Victorians and pretty much everyone in history didn’t understand the concept of moderation, those gluttons. Be happy there are vegetables.”
He held up his hands, twirling his pen between his fingers. “I kind of quite like it. Only teasing.”
“Good, because then comes the engastration. Ox tongue, chicken, goose, apricot stuffing. And don’t worry about making it dull and bland. They would have used plenty of spices, since they would have considered spices ‘exotic’ imports and had them caravanned in from the Silk Road to prove their wealth.”
He sketched a goose drowning in gold coins. “And after you’ve stuffed them with your stuffed roast? Any dessert, or just a quick kick out the door?”
I grinned my most evil grin yet. “Chantilly baskets. A piped meringue filled with Chantilly cream and fruit. Feel free to go crazy here. Whatever fruit, even a sauce or compote to compliment all this gluttony.”
He finished the last of his notes and put away his pen. “You’re a natural at this event planning, Poppy. I have a feeling it’s going to be a smash.”
A Manor of Faking It (The Clarion Abbey Series Book 1) Page 17