‘And then you backed your way out of the door as quickly as you could?’
‘You guessed,’ he said, omitting to tell Lizzie that her mother’s expression had hardened as she’d regarded him coldly.
‘This isn’t a free choice, Chico,’ Serena had informed him. ‘You’re a groom here at Rottingdean, and as such you’re a servant who will do as you are told.’
‘I’m afraid not, my lady,’ he’d replied. Being innocent of such things back then, he had no doubt that his eyes had been wide as saucers.
‘You will be afraid if you don’t do exactly as I say,’ Serena had promised. ‘You’ve seen too much, so if you leave now I’ll say you raped me—and I have at least twenty witnesses to back me up.’
At that point he’d noticed Lord Fane for the first time. The grand aristocrat had been seated in a chair that looked something like a throne, with a naked girl kneeling at his feet. As their eyes had met across a scene more reminiscent of Sodom and Gomorrah than the respectable stately home Chico had thought he was staying in, the expression in Lizzie’s father’s eyes had assured him that what Serena said Serena would make good on, and that Lizzie’s father would have no hesitation in backing her mother up.
She suspected there might be more Chico could tell her, but was holding back, because it would damn her parents, rather than Chico, and the last thing Chico wanted was to hurt her. The idea of her mother hitting on Chico when he had expected so much more of the aristocracy sickened her. She was determined to get right to the bottom of it now. ‘Is there anything else?’ she asked him bluntly. ‘Anything you’re not telling me. You might as well get it all out now. Remember what I told you—I’m not that same girl now, and we trust each other, don’t we?’
‘What do you want me to tell you? I was naïve.’
‘And I was fifteen,’ she countered.
‘I had no excuse,’ Chico insisted, still determined to beat himself up. ‘I grew up in the barrio—I saw my brother killed in front of me—I had a father in jail and a mother on the game, and still I came here to the Highlands, and allowed myself to be seduced by the beauty of the countryside, and the kindness of the people, and I failed entirely to see the same rot in this grand old house that had existed in my tin shack.’
‘Only because you expected so much more of us,’ Lizzie argued, ‘and in the end we’re just people. It doesn’t matter where we come from. We’re all human beings—some flawed, some not. I’m only sorry that, having escaped the gutter, you found yourself here, mired in another type of filth. I’ve been surrounded by lies all my life, Chico. Tell me we’re not going to lie to each other now.’
‘You’re right,’ he agreed, ‘except for one thing. I don’t regret coming here with Eduardo. If I hadn’t come here, we wouldn’t have met.’ His lips curved in a smile and then, seeing her expression, he turned serious again. ‘Are you still worried about me buying the estate?’
Lizzie thought for a moment, and then said honestly, ‘I can’t deny it will take some getting used to—and I’m not sure where it’s going to leave the people who work here, and that’s what concerns me.’
‘It will leave them exactly where they’ve always been. This will be my tribute to a very special lady—your grandmother. I think she would be very pleased to know that more children from the slums will be coming here as I did.’
‘So that’s your plan?’ Lizzie exclaimed.