Chapter 16
Gideon faded from relevance.
Not existence.
He still sent opinions through mutual relatives.
Nobody carried them to me after a while.
Irrelevance works slowly.
Marcus eventually returned as family elder without operational authority.
He was better at being uncle than adviser anyway.
Catherine Vale visited once.
She brought a photograph of my father laughing.
Not meeting.
Not dying.
Just laughing beside a lake.
That image mattered more to me than all the evidence.
For years, every conversation about Alistair turned him into a political corpse.
Catherine returned a piece of him that had nothing to do with succession or Cross.
I framed that one.
Not the burning contract photograph.
That stayed archived.
Celia became director of household events two years later.
She still corrected me.
Too often.
Her mother moved into a home she owned herself with help from Celia.
No employer leverage.
Good.
Vivienne and I became engaged again eventually.
Quietly.
No reception.
No family announcement until afterward.
She wore the old ring.
I wore no special watch.
Beatrix asked:
“Party?”
“Later.”
“Cake?”
“Yes.”
That was all she needed.
This time no Cross relative planned the guest list.
No inherited contract haunted the room.
No one interpreted our marriage as fulfillment of an agreement two dead people burned decades earlier.
May you like
It belonged to us.
Finally.
