Chapter 197

[ 1,025 words ]

Julian’s POV

I woke up at seven.

Saturday. The house was quiet in the way it was quiet on weekends — no staff moving through the corridors yet, no cars on the drive, just the estate doing its slow morning thing while the city beyond it woke up at its own pace.

I showered. Got dressed. Went downstairs.

Delia was at the dining table.

She was in her robe, coffee in hand, scrolling through her phone with the slightly unfocused attention of someone who had not been asleep long before they got up. She did not hear me come in.

I went to the coffee machine.

“Morning,” I said.

The scrolling stopped.

I did not look at her, but I heard it — the small pause, the recalibration, the silence of someone who had received unexpected information and was deciding what to do with it. In one year of our arrangement I had never once greeted her in the morning. I had walked past her. I had nodded. I had occasionally acknowledged her existence with the minimal effort required by basic civility.

I had never said morning.

“Morning,” she said. Her voice was careful.

I poured the coffee. Black. I stood at the machine and drank the first mouthful and looked out the window at the garden.

“I did not know you take your coffee black,” Delia said.

“Well,” I said. “Now you know.” I actually wanted to say, ’If you were my wife, you’d know,’ but then I needed her to do something for me; that’s why I greeted her today and the reason behind me being so polite to her.

She was quiet for a moment.

I turned and leaned against the counter and looked at her properly for the first time in a long time. She looked the same — composed, put together even in a robe at seven in the morning, with the composure of a woman who had been trained since childhood to present herself correctly in all circumstances. She was watching me with the careful attention of someone who did not know what the rules were this morning and was waiting to find out.

I cleared my throat.

“I need you to do something for me today,” I said.

She waited.

“Invite your family to dinner tonight,” I said. “Here. The Kensingtons.” I paused. “I will invite the Windsors. Both families. Tonight at seven p>

Delia stared at me.

“Both families,” she repeated.

“Yes p>

“Tonight p>

“Yes p>

She looked at me for a moment. “Why p>

“Because I said so,” I said. Simply. Without elaboration.

She absorbed this. The Delia I had known for a year would have pushed — would have asked what this was about, would have wanted to know the agenda, and would have found a way to make the invitation about herself.

This Delia looked at me and seemed to understand that the version of Julian sitting across from her this Saturday morning was operating differently than the one she was used to and that pushing was not the right move.

“Fine,” she said. “I will call my mother p>

“Good.” I picked up my coffee again. “One more thing p>

She waited.

“What dish does your sister like?” I said.

Delia blinked. “Katia p>

“Do you have another sister?” I said.

She looked at me. Something moved across her face — not anger, not hurt. Something more complicated than both. The expression of a woman who was putting pieces together and not entirely liking the picture they were forming.

“I don’t really know,” she said. “To be honest p>

She said it without thinking. And then I watched her realise what she had said — that she did not know her own sister’s favourite meal. That she had just admitted, without meaning to, how little she actually knew about the person she shared a family with.

I said nothing about it.

“I will tell the kitchen to prepare a meal for two families,” Delia said. Recovering. Professional. The Kensington composure snapping back into place. “Whatever they need p>

“Good,” I said.

I finished my coffee. Rinsed the cup. Put it on the rack.

“Julian,” Delia said.

I stopped.

“What is this dinner about?” she said.

I looked at her.

“It is a family dinner,” I said. “Both families. That is all you need to know p>

She held my gaze for a moment. She wanted to push. I could see it — the question forming; the instinct to demand more information; the eight months of being kept in the dark sitting in her chest and pressing outward.

She did not push.

“Seven o’clock,” she said.

“Seven o’clock,” I confirmed.

I left the dining room.

In the corridor I pulled out my phone and sent a message to Gail.

Me: Family dinner tonight. Seven PM. The estate. Tell Grandma. Both families.

Gail’s reply came in thirty seconds.

Both families, meaning the Kensingtons?

Yes.

Julian, what are you doing?

I put the phone in my pocket without responding.

I went to my study. I sat at my desk. I looked at the biometric lock on the door — the one I had installed after Delia had been through my laptop — and then at the marriage certificate in the safe and the file I had been building for months.

Tonight.

Both families at the same table.

Katia Kensington would walk through the front door of this house tonight as a dinner guest, and she would leave it knowing who she was. She has never been to my house, but she has been to the Windsor family house. I picked up my phone and replied to Gail’s message.

What is Katia’s favourite dish?

Gail: Seafood boil

That’s weird. I went downstairs and told Delia to let the kitchen add seafood boil to the menu.

I had been patient long enough.

Seven years was long enough.

I opened my laptop and started working.

There was a dinner to prepare for and a conversation that had been waiting since a night in Las Vegas that neither of us could fully remember, but that conversation requires action, and Katia was going to find out today how her husband tastes.

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