Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 126850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 634(@200wpm)___ 507(@250wpm)___ 423(@300wpm)
It was also the one thing that had gotten me through it, even when I’d felt like I couldn’t carry on any longer.
I’d worked too hard to fall at the last hurdle, and if she’d been sitting there, she’d have told me to keep going, she’d have been whispering to me that I could do it, and I could.
I did do it.
I was officially Lady Grace Montgomery-Brown, PhD, and I could use the title of doctor if I wanted to.
I didn’t.
For the first time in a long time, I’d become comfortable with using Lady, the way everyone else just used Miss or Mrs. I no longer hid that part of who I was behind a curtain, and the past thirteen months had been a journey of self-discovery, peace, and happiness that had been peppered with a lot of anger and tears.
The weekend Dad and I had spent in Coventry for Eric’s funeral had changed a lot of things between us. He’d asked me if I would consider attending some family therapy sessions with him again, and I agreed. We had a lot still to work through, but his impending divorce from Carmen had brought us closer together than ever.
Seven months ago, I’d gone to Loxford House with William for dinner. He and Dad got along famously, and he’d taken to tagging along, mostly for moral support, but also to help Vincent.
Apparently, Vincent was interested in accounting. That was something I hadn’t seen coming, even though he’d always been a bit of a numbers whiz. I’d assumed my brother was going to become a professional video gamer or something, but no. Accounting.
He was even going to talk to Stuart about working with them at their firm.
That family dinner, only Dad had been at Loxford House, and he informed us that he and Carmen had filed for divorce. It was mutual and amicable. I guess after eighteen years they didn’t really love each other as much as I’d thought, and with Vincent no longer a minor, it was an easy break. Something to do with them both wanting to find true happiness again.
I was sorry—I knew how hard it was, but Vincent had taken it in his stride. According to him, they hadn’t been happy for a long time, and he knew it was coming as soon as he turned eighteen. Dad was dating again, albeit casually, and he looked happier than he had in years.
It wasn’t only my family that had mended some trauma, either. After Freya’s wedding, Angus had realised how horribly he’d treated Katie over the years and had set about to make amends with his daughter-in-law. It was very much a work-in-progress for them. I didn’t know if they’d ever have the kind of relationship they could have once had, but they had a lot more in common than he’d once thought. Needless to say, trips to Scotland were no longer a chore for the Glenroch family, but something to look forward to—and that included me, too.
Amber had moved out two months ago. Because she’d never paid rent, only split the utilities and groceries with me, she’d finally saved up enough for a deposit on her own house. That had always been the goal, and we’d spent hours upon hours poring over houses for sale while William talked us down from dream houses to ones that were actually in her budget.
We’d still set the prices from highest to lowest, just in case. House hunting was more fun if you could look at weird, expensive mansions that were terribly decorated.
For the first time in my adult life, I lived alone, and I was kind of enjoying it. It was freeing to have a space that belonged solely to me, and I was seriously considering getting a cat.
William and I had spoken about living together, but we weren’t rushing it. He spent three or four nights a week at my house anyway, and he was happy at his parents’ place. It wasn’t like they were cramped—they had a whole estate they intended for Freya to one day inherit, and he practically had a whole wing of the house to himself.
That didn’t stop him cooking in my kitchen, though.
Our relationship had swept me back into the society life I’d long tried to ignore. My house was like another world from all the glitz and glamour of upper-class functions and weddings, and I suspected we both liked retreating to the normalcy of my little cul-de-sac just outside Oxleigh.
We’d taken it slow and stripped it back at first. Dates, getting to know each other, just seeing where it went, and neither of us could pinpoint a day or time where we’d changed from just dating to something serious.
We didn’t need to.
What I did know was that throwing caution to the wind and taking a chance on him was the best thing I’d ever done. Even though those seven days in Scotland had been so short in the grand scheme of things, they’d been so intense that our feelings had grown at a different pace, and since then, we’d spent a lot of time with our friends, reminiscing about our childhoods, and I’d unlocked so many memories my brain had kept squirrelled away.