Saint Kate of the Cupcake: The Dangers of Lust and Baking (23 page)

“Kate, let’s start with you. Can you tell me what brought you here?”

“I had an affair.” There was no point in trying to avoid it. “I’m here to try to see if we can work things out.”

“Jack, why are you here?”

“She made me.”

“You walked in here on your own, so there must be a reason for you to come to counseling.” She gently pried away at his defensive attempt at humor and left him time to answer.

“I don’t want to get divorced,” he said after a long pause. “I want to know why she did this to me.”

“All right. So, we want to explore why Kate went outside the marriage and the issues that led to this. That is our goal. What about an end point? What do you both want at the end of these sessions?”

Jack and I stared blankly at her, but she squared her shoulders at our lack of self-awareness and plowed on. After a good ten minutes, we came up with our finish line: we would work toward resolving our issues of trust and individual needs in the marriage so that we could achieve our ultimate goal of reconciliation. It sounded impressive. It also sounded exhausting.

“There is a lot of work to do for you to repair your relationship, and you need to both be committed to work at it.”

“But I’ve done nothing! She was the one who had the affair.”

“I hear what you are saying, Jack, but something must have been not right before the affair for Kate to want to be intimate with another man,” she explained with not even a hint of exasperation. “Are you both committed to working at this?”

“Yes,” I said firmly.

Jack paused, and then nodded.

At our next session, the real work commenced.

“Let’s start by looking at something positive. What about the relationship is worth saving? Jack, you first.”

“Our family being together.”

“That’s good. What about something relating to just the two of you?”

“Umm…her cooking, I guess.”

I snorted with disbelief. He couldn’t come up with anything!

“Kate, how about you? What would you like to save?”

“It’s easier to think about the things I’d like to change, but I guess I miss jokes we used to share and how comfortable we used to be with each other.”

Jack stared at me, finally looking me in the eye, but his expression was unreadable.

We put our beautiful house up for sale. Part of me was hoping that it wouldn’t sell and I’d have a legitimate excuse not to move. Unfortunately, the opposite proved true. We had a three-way bidding war and sold it way too quickly and for more than we’d hoped. I cried as I packed away memories of happier times and all the small reminders of moments when our children were growing: the chip in the bookcase where one of the twins had thrown a toy truck, the faint remnants of red crayon behind the door from early artistic endeavors, their bedrooms which still smelled faintly of their warm and wiggly childhood selves. It was like saying goodbye to the best part of us, the part where we had been secure in our happiness. Now we were launching out into the great unknown, the worn vessel that was to carry us already sporting a poorly patched hole in the hull. I couldn’t help but be aware that this last-ditch effort to save our marriage was likely to end badly.

It was with a heavy heart that I drove through the gates of Clouston Hall, the moving van behind me, blocking my retreat. Edwina was waiting in the informal drawing room with her usual disapproving scowl. Jack was supposed to be here with me, but as usual when there was a difficult personal matter, something had come up at work and he was coming later.

Forcing my lips into a smile, I greeted her with a kiss on her reluctantly proffered cheek.

“You’re here at last.”

“Yes.” I couldn’t think of anything else to add.

“It will be good to have Jack here to help out.” She frowned. “It’s been terribly hard on his father, you know.”

“Hmm,” I murmured noncommittally. I ignored the inference that it was only Jack who was required.

“We haven’t had a moment spare to move to the Old Manor, so I’ve told them to put your things in the barn for storage.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but my stomach sank to an all new low. They weren’t moving out. I thought it was out of character for Edwina to agree to step back as lady of the house, and I should have known that she would hold on to her position with a death grip.

“Well, now that we’re here, it should take some of the burden from you and give you more spare time to yourself,” I said sweetly.

Edwina looked at me sharply but managed to twitch her lips into the semblance of a smile.

“Yes, we’ll see,” she answered stiffly.

I’d have to wait for Jack to work out a strategy to deal with this, because there was no way in hell I was going to live with Edwina, and it was obvious she had no intention of going anywhere.
Game on, bitch
, I thought as we gave each other a hard stare.

Edwina and I spent the next couple of days circling each other, waiting for the opening volley. We were hosting a pheasant shooting weekend in three weeks, which was going to be interesting. While most of the plans for the seven or so hunting weekends this season were already finalized, we had to plan for the next year as well.

“Now you are the lady of the house, it will be your responsibility to make the arrangements,” she announced over breakfast. Surprised that she was willingly handing over control, my instincts were telling me that she wouldn’t really be stepping back. That or she had an ulterior motive.

“Yes, thank you, Edwina. Of course, I’m sure I’ll still need your help and advice, seeing as this is the first weekend I will have hosted.”
En garde
. She gave me a false smile but said nothing more. Her strategy was not hard to figure out. She wanted me to fail, spectacularly, so she could step back in and save the day.

First thing I did was corner every staff member I could find, from the house manager, butler, Head Gamekeeper, and functions coordinator to the dailies and gardeners, learn their names and find out what they did. I’d thought I had an idea of what it took to operate what was essentially a business, but the scope was at once much larger and smaller than I had assumed. While the detail was immense, overall it wasn’t a particularly diversified operation.

The main task was to maintain the house and grounds in good order so as to maximize the revenue the Hall could bring in through tourists, film crews, and weddings, paying guests on the shooting weekends, and the odd festival. The rest was just support functions, like marketing the Hall as a venue and providing food and merchandise to maximize profits, the bulk of which were plowed back into maintenance, which was ongoing and exorbitantly expensive, given the heritage listing and the age of the building. As a secondary branch, there were the estate farms and village housing, as many of the long-serving staff still lived in houses provided by the estate. These also needed to be administered and maintained.

Once I had a handle on what most people did, I decided to tackle this as I would a work meeting. I called together the staff and Edwina to start planning. Because everything was organized so far in advance, we were working on finalizing repair projects for the winter, when the house was closed, and what would be done the following year. We also needed to cover the final arrangements for the upcoming shooting weekend.

The Head Gamekeeper, Mr. Watkins, had started his preparations long ago, rearing the birds, laying out the drives, and controlling the pests. He would be responsible for coordinating the Beaters, who would drive the birds toward the Guns. They would use sticks to beat the bushes, while others acted as Flankers to direct the birds or Stops to prevent them going in the wrong direction. Some of them would be paid, but most would be the more industrious wives and older children who were happy to help out.

Invitations had been sent and acceptances received weeks ago, so I just had to finalize sleeping arrangements and the menu for the weekend. Edwina sat silently throughout, which I was glad about, though it made me wonder what she was up to. I didn’t have to wonder for long.

Every time I spoke to one of the staff and asked them to do something, Edwina went behind my back and changed the order.

“Excuse me, madam,” Mr. Watkins said in his quiet gravelly voice. “I hate to bring this up, but I thought you should know that Lady Preedy is changing your arrangements. It is upsetting the staff, who don’t know what to do, caught in the middle as we are.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Watkins. I will talk to her. I understand how difficult this transition is for everyone.”
Fuck,
I thought,
how do I make Edwina behave?
We were going to have to talk, but how to make a dent? I needed something big to make an impact, but I had no idea what. She was determined to make me look like a fool, and I had little leverage with the staff. They might like me, I hoped they did, but Edwina had been their boss for years. Running to Jack would solve nothing. I needed to sort this out on my own, but how?

The answer came the following week, in a form I could never have imagined, even in my darkest thoughts, during one of our sessions with Faye.

Chapter Twenty

“J
ACK
, H
OW
I
S
Y
OUR
R
ELATIONSHIP
with your mother? Are your parents still together?”

“Yes, they’re not divorced, but they were never that affectionate with each other. I don’t really know what their relationship is like.”

“You don’t think they have sex?”

“They probably do,” he said, huffing uncomfortably, “but not with each other.”

“Do they have affairs?”

“I don’t know about my father, but my mother did.”

“How do you know that?”

“She told me.” He coughed to clear his throat. “She told me when I was younger that she had been in love with another man and my brother was his.”

I gasped, completely shocked, but at the same time not. It explained why she treated Crispin differently and why he didn’t look like Jack or his father.

“Why would she tell you that?”

“Because I asked her why she didn’t love me as much as she loved Crispin,” he said, breaking down, his chest heaving. “She was always touching him and hugging him and telling him how wonderful he was. Nothing I ever did was right.”

My heart broke for him and the difficult childhood he had endured.

“One night I saw something.” His voice had lowered to a whisper. “I saw my mother touching Crispin…inappropriately.”

“Jesus!” I murmured, feeling sick.

Jack wept uncontrollably.
Oh my God!
How fucked up was his family!
It explained so much, about him and about Crispin. I broke out in a cold sweat, as an unimaginable possibility occurred to me. I raced through my memories, trying to recall if there was ever a time I had left the boys alone with Edwina. My chest eased slightly with the realization that we had never left them with her for any length of time, and she didn’t treat them the same way she did Crispin. They seemed well-adjusted and happy, but I was going to talk to them—carefully, of course.

“Jack, I am so sorry.” I put my arms around him tentatively, trying to comfort him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid you would leave. I’m still afraid of that,” Jack admitted, and my heart leaped in response. “You and the boys are the best part of my life.”

“I moved to Gloucestershire. I wouldn’t have done that if I wasn’t committed to staying,” I explained gently. “But we have to get Crispin some help. What he’s been doing…” There was no argument that Crispin was deeply disturbed, and despite the family’s denials, there was little doubt in my mind that the rumors were true.

He nodded. I reached over and squeezed his hand. He returned it, gingerly at first and then with great fierceness, as if he were trying to hold me there forever.

I returned to the Hall on my own, still in shock. I didn’t see Edwina, for which she should be thankful. I went up to our room and sat down heavily on the window seat, feeling lost, sickened, and out of my depth, not knowing what to do or say that could make this any better or easier.