Chapter 8: What James Knows

They left the Cotswolds on Sunday afternoon.

Eleanor hugged Cara at the door for a long time. Long enough that Cara had to concentrate on her breathing to stay composed. Sophie waved from the window. The dog sat at Eleanor's feet and watched the car until it disappeared around the bend in the road.

James stood on the front steps with his hands in his pockets.

He didn't wave.

The drive back to London was quiet for the first hour.

Ethan worked on his phone. Cara watched the countryside flatten gradually back into motorway and then into suburbs and then into the familiar grey press of the city reassembling itself around them.

She had been thinking about James since breakfast.

"Your brother knows something is off," she said.

Ethan didn't look up from his phone.

"James always thinks something is off."

"This is different." She turned from the window. "He wasn't just suspicious. He was calculating. Running through something specific in his head."

Ethan set his phone down.

"What makes you say that?"

"The way he watched me when he thought I wasn't looking," she said. "It wasn't personal. It was more like — he was checking me against something he already knew."

Ethan was quiet for a moment.

"James has people," he said carefully.

Cara stared at him.

"What kind of people?"

"People who find information." A pause. "He's used them before. During a board dispute two years ago. He researched three of my senior directors looking for leverage."

"And you think he's researching me."

Ethan looked at her steadily.

"I think it's possible," he said. "Yes."

Cara turned this over carefully.

"Then he already knows I'm a waitress," she said. "That I live in a one bedroom flat in Bethnal Green. That my mother is sick and I have no savings and six weeks ago I had no reason to be anywhere near your world."

"Yes."

"And that makes the engagement look—"

"Convenient," Ethan said quietly.

The word sat between them with its full weight.

Cara looked out the window.

London was coming back in earnest now. Traffic thickening. Buildings pressing closer. The anonymous rush of a city that didn't care what you were carrying.

"What do we do?" she said.

"Nothing different," Ethan said. "We continue exactly as planned. James having suspicions is not the same as James having proof."

"And if he finds proof?"

Ethan was quiet for a long moment.

"There is no proof," he said. "There's a contract between two people that is nobody else's business. What he finds is a woman Ethan Blackwood chose. That's all."

Cara looked at him.

The way he said it — flat, certain, final — made something settle in her chest that she hadn't expected.

"Alright," she said.

She turned back to the window.

Neither of them spoke again until the car stopped outside her building in Bethnal Green. The contrast with Knightsbridge was immediate and total. Cara was used to it. She noticed Ethan noticing it and appreciated that he said nothing.

She reached for the door handle.

"Cara."

She stopped.

"The weekend," Ethan said. He seemed to be choosing his words with more care than usual. "You were — it went better than I expected."

She looked at him.

"Better than you expected," she repeated.

"That's not—" He stopped. Started again. "You were good with my grandfather. With my mother." A pause. "With all of it."

Cara held his gaze.

"Is that a thank you, Ethan?"

Something moved across his face.

"Yes," he said. "It is."

She almost smiled.

"You're welcome," she said.

She got out of the car and walked to her building without looking back.

Upstairs, her mother was awake. Sitting at the small table by the window with a cup of tea and a crossword she hadn't made much progress on.

Margaret Bennett was fifty-four and looked older than that now in the ways illness made you. But her eyes were the same — clear and warm and sharp in the way Cara had inherited without fully realizing it.

"Good weekend?" her mother asked.

Cara set down her bag and kissed her forehead.

"Fine," she said. "How are you feeling?"

"Don't deflect." Margaret studied her daughter's face. "You look different."

"I look tired."

"You look like something happened."

Cara moved to the kettle.

"Nothing happened."

"Cara."

She stopped with her back to her mother.

"I met some people," she said carefully. "For work. They were — unexpectedly nice."

Margaret was quiet for a moment.

"And the man?" she said.

Cara turned around.

"What man?"

Her mother smiled into her tea.

"The one making you stand like that," she said. "Like you're holding something in."

Cara looked at her mother for a long moment.

Then she sat down across from her and wrapped both hands around her mug.

"He's nobody," she said.

Margaret nodded pleasantly and returned to her crossword.

"Eight letters," she said. "Stubborn refusal to see the obvious."

Cara stared at her.

"Denial," she said flatly.

Her mother filled it in without comment.