Lydia was in the shower when the doorbell rang, trying to wake herself up after a nap. Of course my mother was early.

“Hello, darling,” she said in her saccharine way, waltzing in with a newspaper tucked under her arm and her sunglasses still on. It meant the shield was firmly back in place.

“This better be good,” said Emily, traipsing in behind her, looking like she’d been out all night.

“Did you just come in from Cambridge?” I asked.

She shrugged and yawned, even though it was midday.

“I stayed at a friend’s in town last night.”

Friend in town? I gave her a look that suggested she’d better fess the bloody hell up if there was a sodding male around. Spent the night?

She rolled her eyes dismissively. My mother was already in the kitchen talking sternly to Molly about the proper way to make Yorkshire pudding, which was a joke since I doubted my mother had ever even used an oven. I’d have to apologize to Molly later, although she was used to my mother by now. Emily glanced towards the kitchen and then back to me. “Like I said, this had better be good.”

She started to walk past but I grabbed her arm, and she turned to me. I flashed her my wedding band surreptitiously before sliding my hand back in my pocket. Her eyes widened. Bloody enormous. Then her jaw dropped. I loved shocking my sister. I so rarely got to do it. In fact I couldn’t remember the last time I’d genuinely surprised her.

She got a huge smile on her face and then charged passed me, up the stairs, presumably to find Lydia.

“I’m going to kill you two, you know,” she shouted over her shoulder, but she didn’t sound the slightest bit mad.

I chuckled as I walked into the now silent kitchen, but I stopped when I saw my mother staring at me.

“I can’t imagine you’ll defend her now, Dylan.”

What?

“She’s finally showing her true colors. It was only a matter of time.” At that moment too many things happened at once. My mother held up the newspaper she’d come in with, the morning edition, and Lydia and Emily came bounding down the stairs, chattering and laughing. “And I can’t imagine what business you had in New York—I’d hate to think you ignored business here for weeks for some kind of pleasure trip.”

It was as though the images in the paper were glowing. Two large color photos, side by side in the society section. In the first, Lydia and me, in New York, outside the museum, kissing. And in the other, Lydia and Eric, kissing.

Fuck.

“Oh god.” Lydia’s voice was fragile, muffled as her hand went to her mouth.

“What do you have to say for yourself, dear? You’ve successfully made my son look like a fool. No small, feat, I assure you. He managed to keep an impeccable public image before you came along, and now, well, I can’t imagine how you’ll justify this.”

“Oh god,” Lydia said again, and began to turn. She was going to run.

“No,” I said firmly, and I marched over to where Lydia stood and held her hand firmly in my own. “Mother, you’ll stop right now. Not another word. You want the story, you ask us the story. You should know better than anyone that newspaper articles don’t reflect reality. Your own efforts last year with Amelia should tell you that—only that time the papers said what you wished had been true. That lie hurt me, hurt Lydia, and you don’t appear to have lost a wink of sleep over it. So get off your high horse and listen to me.” Emily stood by the kitchen door, attentive, probably ready to launch into one of her speeches should it be called for.

I was furious. I was gripping Lydia’s hand so tightly, I hoped I wasn’t hurting her. I couldn’t look at her, because if I did, I knew I would just wrap her in my arms, sweep her up the stairs, and protect her from this preposterous cruelty. And I needed to do this—my mother needed to know that she was done. I would no longer allow her to be an emotional terrorist in my life. I would no longer allow her to use her grief and the years of being mistreated by my father as an excuse to forget who she was: my mother.

She was staring at me, mouth hanging open just slightly.

“It ends now. Do you understand? You will no longer be anything other than polite and kind to Lydia.”

“And why on earth should I do that, Dylan?”

Emily stood behind me, Lydia to my side, and I could feel them frozen in anticipation.

“Because she’s the woman your son loves, Mum. Because she’s my wife.”

My mother froze, and I took it as my cue to bring Lydia into the hug I’d been longing to give her. She let me kiss the top of her head, but then she pulled away. She continued to hold my hand, but she stood on her own.

“Charlotte,” she said, and I knew she used my mother’s name not out of disrespect but because they were technically family, and to Lydia that meant something. “I don’t have a mother. I never have. And even if I had had one, I wasn’t raised in your family, or with the responsibilities or privilege of Humboldt Park. So I won’t pretend to know what your relationship with Dylan is or should be. But I know how much I love him. I know how much he loves me. And I know how important you and Emily are to him. I know you don’t think much of me. But I assure you,” she said, pointing at the newspaper, “that I have never and would never be unfaithful to your son. Dylan knows the story behind that picture, and he knows that while it’s unfortunate, it’s not what it looks like. The one of Dylan and me, however, is exactly what it looks like.”

Emily scoffed behind us—I could practically hear her making fun of me for the public display of affection. It turns out that we hadn’t been as safe from the press as we thought—I couldn’t believe the photos had been leaked almost three weeks after the fact. It probably took that long for someone to realize what they had.

She sighed next to me, and I could feel her shaking slightly in my hand.

“We did get married without you, and without you,” she said, turning to Emily, “and I’m sorry for that. It was what was right for us, and it allowed me to say ‘I do’ to the love of my life in the place where my father had raised me and was laid to rest. And even though my father wasn’t alive to be there himself, your son made sure he was as present as he could be. He did that for me.” She squeezed my hand. Fuck, she was stunning right then. In her jeans, bare feet, and a loose sweater, her damp hair in a braid over her shoulder. Not a lick of makeup. She was perfect. She was herself, and she was defending us, with all of herself. “And I will be forever grateful. And I’m so grateful to you.” That caused my mother’s brow to crinkle—Lydia’s generous honesty was disarming her. I could see it happening. “You raised a good man, Charlotte. You raised the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. I hope one day, you’ll be able to accept me as your son’s choice. We want a wedding here in England, and of course we want you there.”

Christ, I loved her. But fuck all, at this moment, I wanted my mother as far away from her as possible. It took everything I had not to physically protect Lydia from my mother, but I knew she could hold her own. My mother remained silent for a moment longer, until Emily spoke up. “Mum, don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know what—”

My mother held up her hand, and Emily stopped speaking. Mum stood and walked towards the door. She paused for only a moment. “Of course I’ll be there. You haven’t given me much choice, have you? What’s done is done. Plus, what on earth would people think if I wasn’t?” And then she was gone, sunglasses in place, the door shutting firmly behind her.

I looked down at Lydia, and I caught the tear rolling down her cheek before she wiped it away.

At first, I didn’t know which part had upset her the most, but that question was soon answered. Lydia grabbed the newspaper from the kitchen island, and sighed.

“I’ve really done it this time, haven’t I?” She wiped another tear away from her cheek. “Emily, I swear this isn’t what it looks like,” she said, holding the paper up. Then she looked back to me. “And I guess there goes any hope of your mother ever liking me.”

I tried to pull her into me, comfort her, but she pulled away. She silently poured herself some coffee and retreated upstairs. Fuck, this was not what I wanted her homecoming to be like. Our homecoming. How had that gone even worse than I’d expected?

Emily stood there staring at me as though I’d lost my bleeding mind and like she didn’t know where to start when it came to handing me my arse.

“You know she’s already up there reading every sodding wanker on the Internet right now, don’t you?” Emily had her hands on her hips. I was still rather stunned by everything that had happened this morning, and we hadn’t even had lunch yet. “And you know they’re calling her horrible things, right?”

Oh, fuck.

I bolted up the stairs behind Lydia.

“Exactly, you idiot!” Emily called behind me.

Lydia hadn’t been reading the Internet, thankfully. Or she had, but she said she’d stopped when she saw that there were as many people who claimed to disbelieve the story as there were calling horrible names. It “gave her hope,” she’d said and then sighed, regrouped, and we’d decided to try to pick up the scraps of the morning.

By three in the afternoon we were sitting back at the kitchen island, eating a quiche Molly had made and attempting to make sense of everything. We’d filled Emily in on the story about Eric, the wedding, all of it. Lydia even managed to get lost in the moment enough to recount Jake’s toast from our informal reception, but within a minute her somber frown was back. We had to fix this.

Emily slapped her hands on the counter and slid her plate away from her. “Okay. I have a plan.”

“You do?” Lydia asked, looking up hopefully.

“You do?” I asked, incredulous. “I was thinking I would just give my PR team a call—they can a release a statement about this all being hog’s wallop, per usual.”

Emily rolled her eyes and looked at me as though I were a moron.

“You moron,” she said, rolling her eyes. “That won’t work this time. There is an actual photograph. Of Lydia. Kissing another man. And they are vicious. They called her a whore, Dylan.” I fumed and Lydia cringed. I fucking hated what they were saying about her on the Internet. And “whore” had been the least of it.

Emily looked to Lydia apologetically. “Sorry, but it won’t help to ignore it. And it’s bloody obvious by the picture of you two that you’re not just “casually dating” or whatever it is you’ve been trying to pull off for the last six months. Look, you two need to come clean. And not after a wedding. Not with some quiet private ceremony. Not with a fake engagement leading up to a fake wedding. You need to come out, and big-time.” Lydia and I looked at each other, bracing ourselves. This wasn’t exactly what we’d been imagining. “Instead of avoiding the press, you need to get them on your side. First, you need to announce that you’re already married. Come out and say that this bloke Evan—”

“Eric,” Lydia corrected her. “I believe him when he said he didn’t leak this.” I looked at her skeptically. We’d called him—he was the most obvious source—but he’d claimed he hadn’t, and what motivation would he have had for planting a photographer to catch him kissing her? It didn’t make sense. I admitted there was a part of me that would have been happy to have another reason to despise that nitwit, but I had to agree with Lydia that it didn’t seem like he’d been behind this. Bad luck is what this was. The only good thing to come of this was that we didn’t have to give him an exclusive anything anymore—he’d gotten his own bit of fame by association, and at this point it would just look odd if he were reporting on our wedding.

“Whatever. Eric,” Emily continued, waving her hands about. “So come out—and Dylan you should say this—come out and say Eric didn’t know Lydia was engaged, and how you set him straight, and how Lydia was taken off guard. Tell everyone how you romantically eloped. People will love it. They’ll fall in love with you two.”

“Really?” Lydia asked. “I feel like it’s going to take more than an elopement to win people over. Your mother, in particular.”

“First,” Emily continued, “you’re right. Which is why you also have to give them a big, lavish wedding to anticipate. And you’ll have to leak the best details leading up to it—people will go absolutely mad. They’re hammering for more of Richard and Jemma, but in the absence of that they’ll take you two.” Prince Richard and Jemma were getting married at the end of the summer, and the public was insatiable for anything about the “wedding-of-the-century.” After a debacle in which a wedding atelier had been broken into by some clearly insane people looking for sketches of Jemma’s dress, the palace had become an inviolable vault when it came to details about their impending nuptials. Emily was right—we could fill that void, and people were primed to forgive when a wedding was on the table. “And as for my mother—she’ll follow the public, unfortunately. All she cares about right now is herself. She’s not in a good place. If Dylan looks good, if the Abingdon name looks good, she’ll be pleased. Plus—”

I cut her off. “Plus, I don’t give a rat’s arse if she never comes around.” I pulled Lydia onto my lap, balancing us on the bar stool. “You and me, remember?” I whispered into her ear. I tucked my hand between her crossed legs and gripped her thigh under the counter.

“Dylan, don’t be daft. It’s sweet that you don’t care, but that’s a horrible position for Lydia to be in, for about eight billion reasons.”

Lydia giggled, actually giggled, for the first time that day. It wasn’t a long giggle, mind you, but it was there.

“Fine,” I said, exhaling. “So, what do we do, if you’re so smart?”

Emily beamed, so fucking pleased to have me deferring to her.

“You,” she said, pointing to me, “call that chap at the Guardian and fix this bleeding mess,” she said, pointing to the paper. “No PR people—they’ll want it from you. Don’t forget the part where you tell them you already swept her off her feet and married her. Everyone’s going to think you’ve gotten her pregnant, but who cares.”

My heart beat out of my chest. I looked to Lydia immediately and saw she was pale as a ghost, and her eyes were wide. Fuck, she really wasn’t ready to have babies with me, was she?

“Christ,” I muttered under my breath and rubbed my forehead with my fingers.

“And you,” Emily said, directing her attention towards Lydia, “are going to plan a wedding.” This time Emily was practically giddy, jumping up and down. “And get that boss of yours on the phone. You’ll need a proper dress this time.”