And the Bride Wore Prada (26 page)

He said nothing. His expression remained inscrutable.

Pen shook her head in bewilderment. ‘But you look so like him! Why did I never notice it before? The nose, the hair, the line of your jaw – it can’t be a coincidence! Who are you, then, Mr MacKenzie?’ she demanded, suddenly overcome with anger. ‘If you’re not my son, why do you look so much like him?’

‘Yes,’ Archie agreed grimly. ‘I’d like the answer to that question myself.’

Colm’s eyes moved from Archie to Pen. ‘I’m not Andrew, no. But I
am
your son.’ His hazel eyes, turned green-gold thanks to the dark green of his tie, were hard. ‘I’m the son you gave up for adoption thirty-eight years ago.’

Graeme Longworth, who’d stood silently on the edge of the group, made his way forward. His face was ashen. ‘I can scarcely believe it. You’re the reason I came here today. You’re...you’re my
son
,’ he marvelled.

‘Well, then ‒ it looks like you’ve found me,
Dad
.’ Colm invested the word with undisguised contempt. ‘Pity it took you so long to do it.’

Rhys, who’d gone through a similar experience with his own father Alastair only the year before, watched the proceedings with mixed emotions. He was scarcely aware of Natalie’s hand slipping into his, squeezing his fingers reassuringly.

‘I...I’m sorry, Colm.’ Longworth’s face twisted in pain. ‘I know how empty and useless those words are, especially coming so late. But I
am
sorry. I was a fool. A complete and utter fool. I put my political ambitions ahead of you...ahead of your mother...and in the end, it didn’t matter. I still lost everything.’

‘I hope you’re not expecting sympathy,’ Colm said. ‘You’ll not get it from me.’

He scowled at the avid faces surrounding them. ‘Might we finish this conversation later, in private? I’ve no desire to air my personal business in front of everyone. And I’ve no wish to spoil the festivities.’

‘Bit late for that,’ Gemma retorted.

Colm took the box he held and stepped forward to thrust it into her arms. ‘I apologise.’ His words were stiff. ‘I hope this’ll make amends. It belongs to you.’

‘What?’ Confused, Gemma stared at him, then down at the box. Her confusion turned to surprise as she saw the Prada logo stamped on the box’s lid. ‘Oh my God. Is this…’

‘It’s your wedding gown, Miss Astley,’ Colm confirmed. ‘Helen and I went into Northton Grange to fetch it for you.’

‘I can’t believe you did this,’ Gemma marvelled, touched. ‘But why?’

‘I can answer that,’ Dominic interjected. ‘We were all bloody sick of hearing you whinge about that damned Prada gown. So I asked Colm if he’d fetch it back here before the wedding, seeing as I couldn’t do it myself.’

‘Oh, Dom,’ she breathed, ‘that’s…I don’t even know what to say! Thank you.’ She turned to Colm and Helen, her eyes shining. ‘And thank you,
both
of you, for doing this. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.’

“Cannae have a bride without a wedding gown,’ Colm observed, and smiled. ‘Happy Christmas, Miss Astley.’

‘Come along, everyone,’ Mrs Neeson announced, and shooed them all off towards the dining room with a flap of her apron. ‘I’ve spent a great deal of time fixing a first-rate Christmas feast, and I’ll not have it go uneaten!’

‘How did you figure it out?’ Pen asked Colm later, when dinner was over and she, Helen, Archie, and Graeme were seated behind closed doors in Archie’s study. ‘My affair with Graeme was never made public.’

‘No. But Andrew’s drowning was in all the papers. It was his death that helped me make the connection to you.’

‘His death? But...how? I don’t understand.’

‘When the story ran, so did Andrew’s photo. I couldn’t help but notice we had the same colouring, the same build – even our noses were similar. And it struck me that we looked too much alike for it to be a coincidence.

‘So I did some digging,’ he went on, ‘and I found out you modelled in the seventies, and that you’d quit to get married. Andrew was born a year after me.’

‘What made you think I might be your mother?’

‘Your eyes,’ he said. ‘You have those odd hazel eyes that adapt to whatever you’re wearing – just like mine.’

She glanced at her husband. ‘Archie always says my eyes change like my moods.’

‘Then I found a photo of you in London with Graeme Longworth, at Annabel’s,’ Colm went on. ‘It was nothing, really...just the two of you talking and laughing.’

Longworth slanted a glance at Pen. ‘I remember that evening very well,’ he said softly.

Archie scowled but said nothing.

‘Not long after,’ Colm told Pen, ‘Longworth stood down from the election, and you disappeared from the fashion magazines.’ He glanced at his mother. ‘For a year, you vanished. Then you came back ‒ married to Archibald Campbell.’

‘So you figured it out,’ she murmured.

Colm shrugged. ‘It wasn’t difficult. You had an affair with Graeme Longworth, got pregnant with me, went off somewhere to give birth in secret, and then put me up for adoption.’

Pen began to weep, overcome with a welter of emotions. ‘It was the best I could manage at the time. You have to understand, Colm – I was barely eighteen. I was alone, and frightened, and there was no possible way I could raise a baby on my own. I lived in a tiny bedsit, my work was demanding and required frequent travel, and my career would’ve been over if word leaked out I’d had Graeme’s baby out of wedlock. Things were very different in those days...’

Chapter 47

‘It all started because of that damned model’s bag,’ Penelope said.

‘Model’s bag?’ Helen echoed.

She nodded. ‘Every girl carried one with her to photo shoots. Mine was a huge, battered old carpet bag. I had all of my makeup, and false eyelashes, and things like costume jewellery and shoes and hairpieces inside. Back then,’ she added pointedly, ‘a girl almost always did her own hair and makeup. There were no stylists or makeup artists to do it for her.’

‘What happened to your bag?’ Colm asked.

‘It was stolen! Who would’ve wanted it, except perhaps another model? There was nothing of value inside ‒ only my accessories, a tuna fish sandwich I’d brought for lunch, and a Mills and Boon romance I brought to pass the time. But someone snatched my bloody bag right out of the photographer’s studio.’

‘What did you do when you realized it was gone?’ Helen asked, leaning forward.

‘I panicked, of course. Thankfully, it disappeared during the last shoot of the day. But I knew I had to replace everything inside straightaway – no small expense for a girl already on a strict budget – and I had no money to pay my fare home. The photographer took pity on me and loaned me enough for the cab fare home.’

‘Oh. So you never got it back?’ Helen prodded. ‘Your bag, I mean?’

‘Oh, but I did get it back. The very next day, as a matter of fact...’

At nine-fifteen, the door buzzer went. Penelope pushed up her pink satin sleep mask and sat up sleepily. Who on earth would be downstairs at this hour, ringing her buzzer on a quiet Saturday morning?

She threw the covers aside and made her way to the living room. ‘Yes?’ she said irritably as she pressed the intercom button that connected to the lobby downstairs.

‘Miss Park?’

The voice was male, posh and unfamiliar. ‘Yes?’ she said again, guarded. ‘Who is this, please?’

‘You won’t know me,’ he said, ‘but my name is Graeme Longworth. I found your bag yesterday, abandoned on the pavement in front of my townhouse. Although I found your card inside – forgive me, but I needed to find the bag’s owner ‒ I regret to say your money, if you had any – was gone. But everything else seems to be intact, including,’ he added with a twinge of amusement, ‘a slightly squashed ‒ and rather pungent ‒ tuna fish sandwich.’

Relief flooded her. ‘Oh, thank goodness you found it! The bag, I mean, not the sandwich,’ she hastened to add. ‘Hold on, I’ll buzz you up. It’ll be a few moments before I open the door, though. I only just got up.’

‘I can leave it at your door, if you like.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to thank you in person. Just give me a few minutes.’

‘Of course, I didn’t invite him in; a properly brought-up girl simply didn’t let men, strangers or otherwise, into her flat. Otherwise,’ Penelope added with a glance at Longworth, ‘I might’ve been very tempted to throw caution to the wind and invite him in.’ She gave Archie an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry, darling, but it’s the truth.’

Although he returned her smile, it was tight.

Graeme Longworth, quite simply, was the most attractive man Penelope had ever seen. He had all the requisite male things – roguish smile, dark hair, and a very fit physique – designed to make a woman’s pulse race and her knees – her own very much on view, thanks to her bright-orange mini-skirt ‒ tremble.

‘But I know who you are,’ Penelope blurted as she stood staring at him. ‘You’re that Tory. You were photographed with the prime minister only last week.’

‘Yes. Perhaps the less said about that, the better.’ He smiled and extended his hand. His clasp was warm and firm. ‘Graeme Longworth. I’m very pleased to meet you, Miss Park.’

‘Of course,’ Pen said with a sniff, ‘it was all nonsense, in the end.’

‘What do you mean?’ Helen asked, puzzled. ‘He wasn’t who he said he was?’

‘Oh, he was everything he said he was, and more. Graeme was a well-respected Tory, House of Lords, titled, wealthy... But he lied. No one stole my bag; he arranged to have it taken. He’d seen me in some magazine or other, and was determined to meet me. And returning my “stolen” bag was the perfect way to do it.’

‘That’s either the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard,’ Helen declared, ‘or the most stalker-ish.’

Penelope laughed and met Longworth’s eyes. ‘He was terribly romantic.’ Her smile faded. ‘He was also, as it turned out, married.’

‘You didn’t
know
he was married?’ Colm’s expression was sceptical.

‘No. I knew he was in politics, in a vague sort of way, but I never paid much mind to details in those days.’ She paused. ‘I was incredibly trusting,’ she added with a shake of her head, ‘and incredibly stupid.’

‘You were young,’ Graeme said kindly. ‘You had no basis for comparison for a seasoned rogue like me.’

‘True,’ she agreed. ‘We fell into an affair. How could we not? I was away from home, alone in London for the first time; he was handsome, worldly, charming...it was inevitable, I suppose. Our time together was infrequent, but perfect. Until I began to notice that he was never available at the weekend. And that we always had dinner in his room at the Dorchester, never anywhere public. ‘I want to keep you to myself, darling,’ he’d say. ‘I can’t bear to share you.’ And for a bit, vain creature that I was, I believed him.’

‘How did you find out he was married?’ Helen wondered.

Penelope sighed. ‘In the worst possible way – some muckraking journalist got a photo of the two of us leaving my flat together. I remember it was raining, and we were sharing an umbrella. This
journalist
,’ the word was etched with contempt ‘contacted Graeme and showed him the photo, and threatened to splash it all over the newspapers the very next day.’

Helen, all too aware of Tom’s involvement, scarcely dared to breathe. Thank God no one knew she worked for the
Probe
but Colm.

‘I was blackmailed,’ Longworth said. ‘I was told that if I resigned my post quietly, without a fuss, the affair wouldn’t be made public.’

‘So it was politically motivated.’ Colm regarded him expectantly.

‘Oh, yes – there was no question. But there was another reason, as well.’ Longworth levelled his gaze on Archie, scowling down into his whisky. ‘Wasn’t there, Archie?’

Penelope’s husband looked up. ‘Yes, damn it, there was.’ His words were belligerent. ‘I found out about your affair – never mind how – and I didn’t like it. You were a candidate for prime minister, for God’s sake, and you were married. I thought the public had a right to know. So I hired a young reporter, eager to make his mark, and had him stake out Pen’s flat until he got the goods – a photo of the two of you leaving the premises together.’

‘Then he blackmailed me,’ Longworth said evenly. ‘He claimed he wanted to let the British public know what sort of man was standing for office. But that wasn’t really it, was it, Archie? Your real motive was to get me out of the picture and turn Penelope against me...so you’d be in with a chance.’

Penelope went pale. She turned to stare at her husband. ‘You? But, Archie – why? Graeme was
married
, for God’s sake! We had no future together. Even I knew that.’

Archie shook his head. ‘You’re wrong. My source – the same source who told me about the affair – said Longworth was quietly planning to divorce his wife Anne and marry you. I had to put a stop to it. Otherwise, I’d have lost any chance I had with you...for good.’

Chapter 48

Penelope stared at her husband as if seeing him for the first time. ‘Graeme accused me of setting him up and working with the opposition to get him ousted from office,’ she said slowly. ‘He was furious. I told him it wasn’t true, but he didn’t believe me. And it was all because of
you
,’ she exclaimed. ‘How could you, Archie? You didn’t even
know
me!’

‘I loved you, Pen.’ Archie’s eyes met hers. ‘I can’t explain it, but I loved you from the second I laid eyes on you. I won’t apologize for what I did. I’d do it again.’

Longworth set his glass down. ‘I’m sorry, Penelope. I should’ve known you’d never have done something like that to me. But Archie made such a compelling case against you, I believed him.’

‘And so you made it plain to my mother that you wanted no part of her, or me,’ Colm finished evenly, his eyes fixed on Longworth. ‘And then she went away, and gave me up for adoption.’

‘Yes.’ Pen’s voice was a thread. ‘Yes, that’s it exactly.’

‘How did you end up here?’ Archie asked. ‘How did you track your mother down?’

‘Six months ago,’ Colm answered, ‘purely by chance, I saw an advert for a groundskeeper at Draemar.’ He lifted his gaze to Pen. ‘It was the perfect opportunity. I decided to apply for the post. With my beard and my scruffy clothes, I knew I’d not be recognized.’