To his surprise, it was Reginald who spoke first. Drawing himself up, Lord Fane said slowly and with considerable deliberation, ‘You don’t belong here, boy. This is a time of family grief, and if you had any decency at all you would realise that and leave.’
‘So, you’re not here to strip the place bare?’ Chico enquired mildly.
Serena erupted. ‘How dare you?’ she flared. Coming to stand in front of him, she lowered her head like an angry bull. ‘You’re just an urchin from the slums.’
He almost laughed. He certainly had no answer to Serena’s accusation. Firstly, he was hardly an urchin as he towered over everyone in the hall—and though he would never have mentioned it, he could buy and sell Rottingdean ten times over out of his petty cash.
‘Isn’t it rather vulgar to discuss class at a time like this?’ he murmured, fixing Serena in his mocking stare.
‘It’s never the wrong time to discuss class,’ Serena assured him, drawing herself up. ‘I see you don’t deny the charge?’
‘Why should I deny the charge, as you call it, when I’m proud of where I come from? My goal has never been to deny my background, but to build on what I’ve learned from it, so I can help others in the future.’
‘Like you tried to help me?’ Serena demanded, her voice turning weepy now she had realised that her bullying tactics wouldn’t work on him.
‘Since you mention it, yes, I did talk to you to begin with,’ he admitted. ‘I even sympathised with your so-called plight, until I realised what you were really like, and what you were after.’
‘What I was after?’ Serena demanded haughtily. ‘Would you care to explain that?’ She glanced at Lizzie, perhaps thinking he wouldn’t sink to discussing sex in front of her daughter.
And she was right. Chico’s attention was wholly focused on Lizzie now. ‘Your mother kept those letters from you, because she felt bitter towards me for not falling for her as she expected me to. I needed you to speak up for me, Lizzie.’
‘And I would have done,’ she said fiercely, holding his stare for the longest time.
‘I never replied, because I never got the letters, because you kept them from me,’ she accused her mother.
‘I was protecting you, darling,’ Serena insisted.
‘From this terrible man?’ Lizzie gazed at him, with a plea for forgiveness in her eyes.
Her parents, on the other hand, couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, he noticed. It was hardly surprising, when they had been well and truly brought to book.
‘You were trying to lure me into your vile world, Serena, and when I refused to have anything to do with you, you made false accusations against me.’
As Lizzie’s mother drew her head back in a mockery of surprise he thought Serena had lost her way. She should have been on the stage.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she protested, clutching her chest as if she were about to faint.
‘Serena!’ Lizzie’s father exclaimed. ‘There’s no point in lying about it now. We just need him out of here, and if an apology is all that’s required, then please do it.’
‘Please, just do it,’ Lizzie added quietly, as if she couldn’t wait for this to be over and for her parents to leave.