He Hid Our Marriage for Two Years, So I Told the Whole Ballroom novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: The Clause

I closed the folder and stood up.

"Thank you for dinner," I said. "The salmon was excellent."

"You haven't had coffee," Rosamund said.

"I'll have it somewhere I can breathe."

I took the blue folder with me.

Lachlan was already on his feet, and for once he did not look at his mother before he moved.

We walked out of the dining room and down the long hall together, past portraits of men with his ears.

On the front steps I turned on him.

"You knew."

"Ione," he said.

"You didn't blink. Your mother pulled out a paternity clause for a baby the size of a lime, and you didn't blink."

He stopped on the walk under the oak.

The streetlamp showed me his face, and what I saw there was worse than surprise.

It was relief.

He was relieved that the secret was finally out of his mouth.

"I knew," he said. "Not about tonight. About the clause."

"Since when?"

"Monday. Last Monday. A lawyer at the trust called to tell me my mother had filed an amendment. I've been fighting it ever since."

"For a week," I said.

"Yes."

"You didn't tell me," I said.

"I didn't want you to hear it from her," he said. "I thought I could kill it before it reached you. I've spent four days on the phone with two trustees. I thought if I stopped it first you'd never have to know your child was being put through that."

"So you decided what I could carry."

"I wanted to protect you."

"That's what you said about the marriage," I said. "It's the same sentence, Lachlan. Word for word."

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