Magnus left his Ferrari at the back of the property. The old mews and stables had long ago been converted into a multiple car garage, because no one used horses and carriages anymore in London. This might be Upper Brooke Street, where aristocrats had held pied-à-terre residences for the season in prestigious Mayfair, but they’d all moved with modern times. You’d also not see one aristocrat in the area—Russian oligarchs, Arab and other oil magnates, yes, but a titled Lord or Lady? Forget about it.
Though his family didn’t come from bad stock, they’d never been titled. His great-great-great-something-grandmother had been a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I, and the bloke she’d married had been an equerry of said court. Nobody really knew which of the two had borne the deeper pockets, but their son had had an eye for magnificent jewels dripping in precious stones and with almost no visible metalwork to hold them together, and had started Trammell’s back in the day. His brand had become the signature style of the shop which had originated from Daimsbury, where the first store still held pride of place.
And also where he’d met Megha.
He took a deep breath as he entered the house from the back door and stopped in the mudroom to remove his shoes. No one in their right mind would ever dare wear shoes in his Swedish mother’s house, so their households always had mudrooms attached to every entry and exit point. Teak wood parquet would run along the floors, all the walking areas covered in Persian carpet runners to help keep the chill away from exposed soles. And in places where the floor consisted of marble, his family had spared no expense—heating cables ran under said marble to heat the surfaces.
He breathed in deep while inside. A whiff of his mother’s perfume—he’d never found out what she used; most probably a mix designed only for her in Paris—tinged the air everywhere inside this place. Light, heady, like flowers but with a hint of musk or honey. She’d always smelled like that as far as he could remember. This scent, more than anything else, spelled out this place for him. It had been home for his first eighteen years, then he’d moved out to the Kensington flat after both Stellan and Lars had bought theirs in the same building. With the two young men his family had always seen as more mature than him around, they hadn’t had any reason to balk at letting him have the flat there.
Still, something always brought him back to Mayfair. And today, he would say it was Ona’s quail in cream sauce—his mother had called him earlier, passing on the open secret that their cook was making this rare family favourite that evening. He’d miss that for nothing if he happened to be in London whenever she made it.
Across the maze of stairs in the structure of the five-floor residence, he made his way to the main salon just off the front entry hallway. He smiled when he thought of all the times he’d played with his younger sisters in those spiral spaces; some led to dead end rooms, others to outside terraces, and not one spanned the whole house from top to bottom. They’d come across many a lost employee during their days. They’d also hidden from their parents more than once, too, in those darkened depths.
Why were the memories assailing him so much today? He could usually brush them off with a single wave of the hand.
But he had to reckon things had changed. Something—make that someone—had slipped under his skin, between the real him and the persona of the happy-go-lucky fool he loved to pretend being. And because of that, because of her, he could no longer hide. Could no longer play at make-believe.
Her call had come the day before, and just his luck, Stellan was in Göteborg at the seat of his family’s shipping empire at the moment. So Magnus wouldn’t have the backup of his friend to present his plan to his father. Still, he’d thought he’d come tonight—no point letting good quail go to waste—and test the waters with his father, and maybe, hopefully, see if he could broach this topic with him without the tactical support of his best friend.
He had to admit he also missed his sisters. Speaking of them, he spotted his favourite in the room and went up to her on tiptoes, making no sound with his bare feet, all so he could pull her long braid and surprise her.
“Magnus!”
She didn’t even turn, knowing full well it had to be him. He grinned and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “Hey, Pixie!”
She grumbled. “Stop calling me that!”
He chuckled. He’d never do that. His baby sister, Elin, looked like a Norse fairy, for sure, but the girl loved flowers and dreamed of opening her own shop in Daimsbury one day. What better name than pixie, then. That conveyed the idea of a flower-loving, spirited beauty more than the Good or Evil Nordic elves many people believed to also be fairies.
She laughed and turned around to hug him. Fourteen years separated them, but they were the closest. Elin had been the surprise baby who came along eight years after Elsa Trammell thought she’d borne her last child, Tindra. All the family had coddled and cooed over Elin as the baby, then the little girl and sweet teenager she had been.
Magnus had made do with almost the same kind of attitude from his family all his life, with a little dose of indulgence, maybe. The truth remained that he’d been born at twenty-nine weeks. Nobody had expected him to live, let alone to end up being a kid with fully functioning motor skills and cognitive abilities. He’d never understood why his parents were always so hard on his sisters when they brought home better grades than he had, but those hadn’t been good enough. He’d ascribed it to being something inherently different about what was expected of boys and girls. Until the day he’d ‘got’ it—he wasn’t even supposed to be making much sense of what he was learning, so whatever he did accomplish was lauded as a feat.
It hadn’t mattered that he’d passed secondary school with decent grades and had then gone on to achieve an MBA at university. Anything from him was more than had been expected, so there’d been no feeling of pride because he was never met with respect, just a gentle pat on the head before moving to something else.
The day he’d figured this out, he’d stopped caring. A-levels and uni had been more to stay together with Stellan and Lars than to really make something of his abilities. At eighteen, he’d started to party, hard, and it only got harder as the years went by, because, again, everything he did was met with indulgence. To this day, he couldn’t clearly state how and why he hadn’t fallen into the trap of booze and drugs from the lifestyle he’d favoured. Maybe women had been vice enough.
“Hey, Log Head. Where you gone to?” Elin asked him as she broke away from his embrace.
She was the only one allowed to chide him with a derogatory name. He snapped out of his spell and pulled her braid again. “Nowhere. I’m starving.”
“You are always starving,” Elsa Trammell said as she glided into the big salon that looked more like a room from the Ritz or a castle in France than a family house in London. “Where did you get your metabolism? Certainly not from me,” she continued.
He laughed and reached his mother to drop a kiss on her still-smooth cheek. “My life demands a lot of energy.”
As always, around them, he played the fool.
“Yes. All that partying sure uses up calories …” His mother let the words dangle.
She probably referred to all his female conquests. Contrary to public belief, he didn’t sleep with a new girl every week. Partied with them, yes. But sex? It had lost its appeal a while ago, the cheap thrill of being with someone new just because he could. Still, he kept the image up, not wanting anyone to know he could have even the tiniest bit of depth inside him. What would be the point, really?
The doorbell rang, and a few moments later, in stepped a tiny old lady wearing a pastel cashmere twin set over silk trousers, a long row of pearls separated by a glinting small ring of diamonds—the metal holding the stones invisible, of course, it being a Trammell’s masterpiece—dangling from her neck.
“Nammy!” Elin exclaimed, before enveloping their grandmother in her arms.
“I shall put this in the kitchen, ma’m,” Carson, their butler, said.
Magnus had always thought the very proper and stiff Carson must’ve been the inspiration for the Carson on Downton Abbey.
He eyed the butler as the stiff man made his way to the kitchen and then turned to Nammy. “Tell me that’s cake.”
The older lady smiled and winked at him. “Carrot cake with mascarpone topping.”
This was a secret Amelia Trammel shared only with her close family: her knack for baking that almost made her the body and cooking double of the renowned Mary Berry.
“My favourite,” Magnus muttered before he bent to kiss his diminutive Granma.
Trammell men had always been tall, and with his mother’s Nordic genes, even the girls flirted with six feet. But tiny Amelia didn’t top five-foot-one, and since she also always ditched her heeled shoes in his mother’s house, everyone towered over her. Still, that didn’t imply the older woman couldn’t stand her ground, and maybe even whip them into shape should she feel the need to.
He let go and then tumbled along another staircase hot on the trail of Elin. Both settled down at the massive wood table in the dining room adjacent to the kitchen where the staff took all their meals, and neither bothered to cut the cake before plunging their forks right in.
His mother and Nammy followed in soon after, Elsa berating them for their lack of manners in not getting individual plates. Nammy smiled on.
“Out of the way! Priority to the pregnant woman here!” Agneta, the oldest of his three sisters, chimed in as she bumped Elin from her seat on the bench and started in on the cake, too.
“Not fair! No one waited for me!” Tindra, their other sister, exclaimed as she came to the table, tumbled down onto Magnus’ lap, and directed his cake-laden fork to her mouth.
“Hey, get your own,” he complained.
Elin pushed back, winning her place again, and plunged into the cake once more.
“I swear, if this baby is hurt from you jostling me around like that—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Agneta. Stop using the health of that unborn kid as a threat every single time you want something to go your way,” Tindra said as she rolled her eyes.
Magnus unceremoniously dumped her on the spot next to him and snagged his fork from her hand.
“How dare you? In my delicate condition—”
“Cut it out, Agneta. That baby’s yours, eh? Means it already has a hard enough head. Add to that his father’s DNA …”
Magnus let the words dangle. Agneta had gotten pregnant from her brief fling with Premier League footballer Terry Gilliam a few months back—Gilliam, who played football more like rugby, and who hadn’t yet broken a bone in his body, let alone that thick skull of his.
Truth be told, he thought Gilliam a right bloke, pitying him even for having gotten embroiled with diva Agneta.
Nammy smiled at his mother. “Look, Elsa. All your children together again.”
His mum swiped her cheek as if she were wiping a tear. Okay, so they all knew where Agneta had gotten that side of her personality.
And truth be told, that’s how it should be—him with his sisters. Tonight would be the perfect evening.
The doorbell seemed to ring in the distance. What, now?
A sense of dread invaded Magnus as he sat there with his fork halfway to his mouth. Tindra took the opportunity to snag that bite and then his fork, too, as she still hadn’t gotten hers.
Two little blond towheads marched into the kitchen, docile smiles on their faces as they came up to Elsa and let her kiss their rosy cheeks, then they moved on to Nammy. After they were done, the little boy and girl eyed their uncle and aunts and gave a pert nod.
Magnus almost expected a curtsey to follow, so much they were stiff—and like zombies. Though, would zombies curtsey? None of the usual effervescence of family gatherings with that lot around. He’d always thought he’d shower love and hugs and kisses on little ones in his family, but it just wasn’t done with these two. He and his three sisters all wanted to love those kids, but they were the Devil’s Spawn, because the devil in their family actually wore Prada—Mary Margaret, Carl’s very proper English wife who’d had the misfortune of being born in the wrong decade; otherwise, she would’ve been a contender for the spot of Duchess of Cambridge. Or so she liked to let everyone believe.
However, in Magnus’ case, this applied double, because the devil he knew wore Savile Row suits and hand-made oxfords. Aka, Carl Trammell.
Indeed, the bane of his existence walked in, back ramrod stiff, followed by his witch-with-a-broomstick-up-her-arse wife.
Watching that family there struck him as utterly strange. When he, or his sisters, had been kids the age of twins Bernard and Catherine, they’d have jumped onto any cake in their vicinity inside their house or their grandparents’ dwelling. But no, these kids didn’t even bat an eye, as if they’d gone on stand-by mode once they’d expressed their perfect manners. How utterly creepy.
But speaking of them, what was Carl doing here?
“Nammy here ran into Carl at the Italian Cultural Institute and since she hadn’t seen the twins in a while, she asked me if I could extend the invitation to Carl as well when I phoned her to let her know Ona was making quail, her favourite.”
Magnus bit the inside of his cheek; he couldn’t fist his hands given they were on the table and everyone would see his frustration then. Why, of all days, had Carl needed to be in Belgravia today, where Nammy lived? Also, had his mother known about this before she’d called to invite him? A look at her placid face told him he shouldn’t put this ambush past her.
“Come along, children,” Mary Margaret said as she herded the twins to another set of staircases. These two would have their dinner before and away from the adults. Because, apparently, that’s the way it was done. Saintly Mrs. Carl Trammell wouldn’t let it slip that Elise, the family’s French au pair who should never be seen, would be the one handling the delivery of that meal. Like a good mother, she would make herself scarce until her kids were done and she could join the family for sherry in the drawing room before dinner was announced.
As Magnus stared at the mess this evening had now turned into, he contemplated leaving altogether. Pretend there was a party he had to attend or something. Though who would be partying so early in the evening? Nobody who wanted anyone in the party circuit to respect him. So he was well and truly fucked into staying here for this dinner. Even the very idea of quail now turned his stomach.
He lent a distracted ear to the antics of his sisters—the girls knew he tried never to stick around Carl, the one who always brought all of them down, but more so Magnus when he was present.
He moved to the dining room. Sat down. Fiddled with his food. Carl didn’t even speak to him. Just as well, as he had no intention of talking to that pretentious prick. How could that arsehole have come from the same womb and gene pool that had created him and his lovely sisters?
He’d exchanged a scant nod with his father after a handshake in the drawing room, and then, nothing. Just as it should be. The old man would never see him as anything but a party animal, and suddenly, he didn’t have any wish to change that state of affairs. No, he’d wait for Stellan to come back and then they’d present the clinic project together. As things stood, Megha didn’t need their intervention as she’d already gone ahead with her procedure, so no rush on that end, though he did wish to reimburse her all the money she’d had to spend. He had said his endeavour would take care of that, hadn’t he, and he was a man of his word when he gave it.
“Children, children,” Nammy started as she tapped her spoon to her champagne flute once the staff had cleared the dinner table and were supposed to bring out dessert. “I have an announcement to make.”
“Oh, pray tell, Nammy. Tell us you’re getting married, and we get to be bridesmaids!” Agneta trilled.
Tindra rolled her eyes at her. “Don’t be so daft, Agneta. Or is that the hormones talking?”
“Shut up, you cow!”
“Girls …” their mother said with a warning tone.
Across the table, Mary Margaret tried to hide the disgust and contempt on her face. Could it be the feeling had been so strong she hadn’t been able to hide them, or had she gone for Botox and now had features she couldn’t bring back into place fast enough? As for Carl, Magnus didn’t even bother looking.
“You were saying, Mother?” Ernest Trammell asked to restore calm at the table.
Nammy smiled. “I have decided to give away the cottage.”
Someone gasped, but on the whole, a thick veil of stunned silence fell on the room. Nammy adored that house, which was in fact the dowager residence of the Daimsbury property. Nobody would’ve even conceived of her parting with it.
But none of that registered on Magnus really, because something worse must be coming. Nammy having brought up this subject, would she let it drop without any resolution of the speculation—she often loved to stir the pot—or would she spill the beans and implicate him, in the process?
Fuck it, he wasn’t ready for this! He needed Stellan. He needed time. He needed to think this through much deeper so his father would have no objections to his project—
“To which charity are you giving it to, Grandmother?”
Of course, stilted Carl would use all the formality of a pompous arse, because that’s what he was.
Nammy turned an indulgent look on the eldest of her grandchildren. “What makes you think it is to charity, my dear? The cottage has been a family property for centuries. It is going to stay in the family.”
At the mention of this little fact, it seemed to Magnus that Mary Margaret appeared to perk up in her chair. Could that be a hint of a smile on her smug face? He wouldn’t have bet she even knew how to convey a positive emotion.
The hag must be thinking Carl would be getting the cottage. She was in for a rude awakening. He’d love to see that.
“As a matter of fact,” Nammy continued. “I have put the cottage, as well as thirty-five million pounds, in a trust. The money is to be used for a respectable pursuit, which I am sure Ernest will be able to ascertain as the trustee when any project is then proposed to him for approval.”
“Well, Grandmother, I can think of some very laudable avenues we could pursue—”
“I am sure you can, my dear. The trust is in Magnus’ name.”
Once again, stunned silence struck everyone. Magnus remained immobile, but inside, a storm raged. So she’d gone and done it. He had no way out now. Unless he played the fool and just upped and left … No, he couldn’t do this to her. It would be childish. He might act immature sometimes, on purpose, but he never behaved like a child, let alone a brat.
Carl recovered first, a small, sardonic smile on his thin lips. “What respectable project will your beloved cottage be used for, in this case, Grandmother? The new Château Marmont of very far west London?”
“Dear, as the oldest sibling, I expected more trust in your brother’s capabilities on your behalf.”
Another forced smile greeted that gentle rebuke. If Magnus weren’t enjoying himself so much watching Carl being put back in his place, he would’ve been cowering in his shoes. What to do now? He had no way out, did he?
“I do trust him, Grandmother. To come up with the most depraved party spot ever, in fact.”
“Carl …” Ernest Trammell’s turn to warn his son to not overstep his bounds. Carl was, after all, in his house.
Carl gave a short laugh. “I am merely stating the truth. Being diplomatic about it, too. We all know Magnus knows nothing of doing the respectable, let alone the responsible, thing.”
Magnus thumped down the urge to rise up and go punch his brother in that arrogant face of his. On either side of him, Elin and Tindra both put a hand on his thigh, squeezing gently in silent support and urging him to not lose his cool in front of their asshat sibling.
If only for them, he’d keep it together. Plus, Carl was the one making an arse of himself at the moment. They rarely got to see him lose it, so they must exploit that moment for posterity.
“I can assure you Magnus is more than capable of doing the responsible thing when the need arises,” Nammy continued. “Did you know that he single-handedly found out why our Daimsbury store was flagging? It had to do with the manager, someone I believe your darling wife recommended, Carl?”
Mary Margaret grew pink. Carl rushed to her rescue, though probably more to not lose face rather than to avenge her honour. “James Stilton came highly recommended. We had to fight to get him.”
“And maybe that’s where it hurt. He must have thought himself entitled to more than what we were actually giving him,” Nammy added.
His father choked. “You mean, he was embezzling us?”
Nammy turned to her son. “Fleecing, more like.”
Uh-oh, it would get to that … It should never have gotten to that. He really had no exit now.
“How did you find all this?” a stricken Elsa asked.
Nammy directed a beaming smile at him. “All thanks to Magnus’ dedication. That dear boy has been handling the managing of the shop since I gave him the all-clear to fire that nincompoop.”
You could now hear a pin drop. And he was screwed over. No more hiding under the disguise of the court jester now. Should he stand up and admit to all this?
He should. Because, ultimately, he wanted out of that costume. For her. It started now.
So he cleared his throat. “I have in fact appointed one of the sales staff there as the new manager, with Nammy’s approval.”
His father frowned at him. “Pray tell.”
“She has worked at the shop for over a decade, knows its intricacies inside out. However, we have a temporary setback with her appointment as she has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and thus needs medical leave.”
“That poor woman,” his mother stated.
Carl laughed. “Seriously, Magnus. So you left a full shop on a sick woman’s shoulders. What else had we expected?” He shook his head.
At this, his ire rose, blood boiling. Never mind that Carl was attacking him as a man and even as a person; he didn’t have the right to drag Megha into it.
“You’d never have expected me to help her, would you?” he burst out.
“You, help? Oh, Lord.” Carl rolled his eyes. “Troll,” he added under his breath, but loud enough for Magnus to hear.
The utmost insult from his brother—he’d always compared Magnus to the Nordic lore’s trolls, those ugly simpletons who lived high up mountains and who any human could best because they were so idiotic.
And that’s what did it!
Magnus threw his napkin down and stood. He turned to face his father and straightened his spine.
“A way to help her, and also other young women in her condition, is to use the cottage and the money for medically helping them. Furthermore, based on research I’ve conducted, it has become apparent that the area we can most help these women in, and also younger men undergoing adjuvant therapy that puts their fertility at risk, is to provide fertility preservation in a setting conducive to helping them battle with the plight of cancer.”
“What do you propose?” his father asked.
He took a deep breath. If he thought too long and hard that this was actually happening right then, he’d lose his train of thought and any bravado that had infused itself into his system.
“Setting up a fertility clinic. It would offer counselling services in relation to these patients being able to have children after their treatments are completed, as well as the structure and setup to harvest and then store ovum and sperm. The clinic would cover the costs for some patients who cannot afford the procedure as this isn’t covered by the NHS.”
There, it was out. Everyone seemed to be pondering his words. Stunned expressions marked his mother’s and sisters’ faces. Mary Margaret looked pinched, but she always did look like that. His father appeared pensive, while Nammy had a small smile on her face. As for Carl …
A clap. Then two. Three. Ringing in the room. Carl shook his head all while he tapped one palm against the other. “Bravo, Magnus.”
No hiding the derision and the contempt in that tone.
Magnus couldn’t take it anymore. He pushed his chair back and left the room, not even bothering to ask to be excused by his grandmother. He’d had it with that bastard, and he was out of there.
His steps took him down a flight of stairs, then up another hallway, then another … He wasn’t getting lost now, was he? Finally, he spotted the entrance lobby, Carson waiting faithfully by the front door.
His foot had touched the last step when he heard his name being called.
He turned to find his father coming down the steps. Ernest Trammell had followed him? Magnus stayed put, letting his parent take the lead. His heart hammered, and not because he’d been across stairs for full minutes at high speed.
“Son, wait.”
Hold it—his father rarely, if ever, called him son. Did that mean something good could be coming from the current encounter?
The older man, still tall and with a straight spine, joined him at the bottom of the stairs and faced him.
For once, Magnus didn’t get the feeling he should evade that frank gaze, as he’d done any time in the past because being before his dad usually meant he’d done something to be chastised for.
Ernest cleared his throat. “What you said back there … you mean it?”
He nodded.
“You’ve done the research, see if you’d even get a permit for that?”
“If it’s set up as a leg of a non-profit organization, then yes, it can be done. Same rules apply as to a private fertility clinic.”
“The money is not an issue, of course.”
Thirty-five million pounds should cover the costs, and then some, for sure.
“This is really doable?” his father asked.
“Yes. I even have a proposal I’ve drafted that needs to be finalised. I can send it to you when it’s done.”
He’d sounded like a proper businessman right then; where had such confidence come from? Just from the eyes of his father, which, for once, weren’t looking at him with patient exasperation?
“You do that. At your earliest convenience.”
He nodded. “Are we done now?”
Never mind that his father hadn’t rebuked his idea. Having Carl inside the same building meant his skin crawled, and he wanted out ASAP.
“That woman at the Daimsbury store,” his dad asked. “Who is she?”
“Megha Saran.”
Sheer surprise must’ve made his old man open his slate-grey eyes wide.
“Jari Saran’s daughter? And she has cancer? She must be of the same age as Elin.”
His father might be a business tycoon, but he tried hard to personally know everyone who worked for him.
“Same age as Tindra, actually.”
“Still, that’s too young for cancer. Is she going to make it?”
Something stuck in his throat. He didn’t like thinking of her battling such odds. “She’s expected to make it, yes. But she has a long, tedious road ahead of her.”
“Of course. Magnus, are we taking care of her? As an employee of Trammell’s, she is one of our own.”
He acquiesced with a nod. “She’s the first one who will benefit from setting up this organization leading to the clinic.”
“Good. And anything else she or Jari needs, you give it to them.”
“Will do.”
A lull fell between them, and he took this as his cue to leave. He outstretched his hand, shook his father’s, and turned to the door.
Carson waited there with Magnus’ brogues in his hand. “Your shoes, Master Magnus.”
When had the bloke found the time to go all the way to the back through that labyrinth of staircases in the short time it had taken Magnus to leave the dining room and get here? He accepted the footwear and quickly pulled them on.
On the threshold of the front door, he heard his father calling him again, so he turned in that direction.
“The Daimsbury shop,” his dad said. “It’s yours to run until Ms. Saran is back on board.”
For the first time in his life, he didn’t hear a do not disappoint me left unsaid in words his father addressed to him. That felt strangely enlightening, like a weight being lifted off his chest and allowing him to breathe with more ease.
“I won’t disappoint you,” he replied.
Behind his father, at the top of the stairs, he thought he saw Nammy standing there, looking down at them with her self-satisfied smile.
Had she concocted this meeting, planning in advance how she’d let it slip that he’d been entrusted with the cottage and the money? All so his father could then see he wasn’t a sad case simply out to sponge the family money, and that he could actually be trusted?
If yes, then he owed her even more now.