A Secret Ambition

XXIX

"To be wronged is nothing, unless you continue to remember it." Confucius

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XXIX.

"I still cannot believe that this girl is our Lily." Fionn was holding the newspaper that Callan ought to have burned. It was the paper that detailed the glittering array of women who had arrived in London for the marriage meat market that was the Season.

And Lily was the biggest prima donna of all, or whatever it was that they called the prized catch.

Callan could not think of them both as one in the same. He could not think much of anything in that moment. He had consumed far too much whiskey to form a coherent breath, let alone a coherent thought.

He had never been much of a drinker. But he had broken that fast overnight. He would rather have been drunk then forced to be alone with his pain.

And rather than deal with the aftermath of his drinking throughout the night, Callan had elected to keep drinking.

"She seemed so normal," Fionn continued. "Well, as normal as an English lass could be. Never had any airs about her. Never turned her nose up at the work. Never behaved as though she'd been fed the world on a silver spoon."

"If you don't shut up, I'll ram this bottle down your throat, you bleedin' eejit," slurred Callan angrily, clutching the bottle to his chest which had indeed lost three quarters of its contents in the last few hours.

Perhaps Callan hadn't eliminated all of his thoughts as he had hoped. Were he not so angry, and not as hurt as he was, then he would have been having the same curious thoughts about Lily as Fionn was.

Callan took another deep swig from the bottle as he felt the pain creeping back, and the whiskey burned his throat on the way down to his stomach. He was so angry, so hurt, and he couldn't make it stop.

And that very thought killed him. Because, underneath his raging pain, Callan wanted nothing more than to love Lily. His Lily. The Lily he knew. Not theirs. Callan did not recognise the Lily the newspaper described. But that was who she was. The Lily he had known might as well have been a character from a children's story. She was as fictional as the fairies the old women in his village talked about.

Lily was one of them. And her father was one of them. And Callan was a blithering eejit.

Callan knew that this ... this charade ... would be something that they all laughed about one day.

"Do you remember, Princess Lily-kins, how you pretended to work for that pathetic Irish boy years ago? Huzzah, what jolly time was! Now, would you prefer the diamond or the emerald letter knife to open your invitation to the Queen's Garden Party?"

Callan drained the bottle.

"Have you had enough?" Fionn murmured.

"No," Callan snapped as he threw the bottle away from him. Remarkably, it did not shatter. It rolled across to the other side of his office. Callan rested his head down on his desk and he closed his eyes.

Why did she have to be one of them?

"It could be worse."

Callan's head was so heavy, and yet he managed to sit bolt upright to glare at his moronic cousin. Either Fionn was dancing from side to side, or Callan was heavily intoxicated.

Nevertheless, Callan growled, "How on earth could this get any worse?"

"Lily?!"

For a moment, Callan did not trust that he had not just cried out Lily's name into the abyss in hopes that he would wake up and this had all just been a very vivid nightmare.