The morning sun, pale and watery, filtered through the mullioned windows of the grand hallway, casting long, distorted shadows on the polished oak floor. It was a light without warmth, a fitting illumination for the task ahead.
Alistair felt as though he hadn’t slept in a week, though it had only been a single, transformative night. The exhaustion was a heavy cloak on his shoulders, but beneath it, a strange and unfamiliar clarity hummed in his veins.
He looked at Chloe, standing beside him outside the heavy mahogany door of Matilda’s private study. Her dress from the previous night was rumpled, her carefully constructed poise replaced by a quiet, raw resolve that he found more beautiful than any polished facade.
The frantic energy of their midnight confession had settled into a solid, shared purpose. They hadn’t solved the problem of Caleb, but they had found the solution for themselves: the truth.
“Are you sure about this?” he murmured, his voice raspy. “We could just… leave.
I can find another way to save the library. I can sell my first editions. It might take years, but…”
Chloe turned to face him, her hand finding his. Her fingers were cool but her grip was firm, an anchor in the storm of his anxiety.
“Alistair,” she said, her gaze unwavering. “You’ve spent your whole life hiding behind books.
Last night, for the first time, you decided to write your own story. Don’t close the book now.”
He squeezed her hand, drawing strength from the simple contact. She was right.
Running away was the old Alistair’s solution. The man who stood here now, the man who had kissed her in the garden and confessed his deepest fears in the dead of night, was someone else.
He was terrified, but he was no longer a coward.
“Together,” he said, more a statement than a question.
“Always,” she confirmed, a small, weary smile touching her lips.
He nodded, took a deep breath that did little to calm the frantic thumping in his chest, and raised his fist. He knocked three times, the sound echoing in the silent hall like a judge’s gavel.
A moment passed, stretching into a small eternity, before a calm, clear voice called from within. “Come in.”
The study was Matilda’s sanctuary, and it reflected her perfectly. The room was ordered and elegant, smelling faintly of lemon polish and old paper.
Books lined the walls, but unlike Alistair’s chaotic stacks, they were perfectly arranged, their leather spines gleaming. Matilda Finch sat behind a large, ornate desk, a pair of reading glasses perched on her nose as she reviewed a ledger.
She looked up as they entered, her expression as unreadable as ever. She removed her glasses, her sharp blue eyes assessing them with an unnerving stillness.
“Alistair. Chloe,” she said, her tone neutral.
“An early visit. I trust you both slept well.”
The lie was so readily available, the polite, socially acceptable response he had used his entire life. Yes, thank you, Grandmother.
But the words caught in his throat.
“No,” Alistair said, the single word hanging in the air. He felt Chloe’s fingers tighten around his. “No, we didn’t.”
Matilda’s eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch. She gestured to the two wingback chairs opposite her desk.
“Then please, sit. You both look as though you’ve wrestled with demons and lost.”
They sat, a united front of rumpled clothes and exhausted determination. Alistair let go of Chloe’s hand, placing his own on his knees to stop them from shaking.
This was his confession to make. He had started this mess, and he would be the one to lay it bare.
“Grandmother,” he began, his voice steadier than he expected. He met her gaze directly, a feat he’d rarely managed for more than a few seconds in his entire life.
“I have come to tell you the truth. All of it.
I have been dishonest with you, and I owe you a profound apology for the deception I have brought into your home.”
Matilda simply watched him, her hands folded on the polished surface of her desk. Her silence was a command to continue.
“When your lawyers informed me of the… stipulation… regarding my inheritance, I panicked,” Alistair said, the words coming out in a rush of honesty. “The Blackwood Library… it’s everything to me.
It’s my life’s work, and it’s failing. I saw the inheritance as its only salvation.
But the condition—a stable, committed relationship—seemed an impossible hurdle. I am not… I have never been adept at matters of the heart.”
He chanced a glance at Chloe. She gave him a tiny, encouraging nod.
“So, I approached the problem as I would an academic one,” he continued, a note of self-recrimination in his voice. “I sought a logical, contractual solution to an emotional problem.
I decided to hire someone to play the part of my fiancée.”
He watched for a reaction in Matilda’s face—shock, anger, disgust. He saw nothing but calm, intense focus.
It was more unnerving than any outburst would have been.
“That is how I met Chloe,” he said, gesturing to her. “Chloe runs a business.
She is a professional, hired to accompany people to events. My arrangement with her was purely transactional.
I offered her a significant sum of money, which she needed to save her own business, in exchange for her portrayal of my loving partner for this weekend. The contract we signed was… detailed.”
A humorless smile touched his lips. “It included clauses on conversation topics and acceptable proximity.”
He finally paused, the bare, ugly facts of his scheme laid out on the gleaming desk between them. The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner.
“Every part of the story we told you was a fabrication,” he said, his voice dropping. “Our meeting, our courtship, our shared history.
It was all a lie, conceived by me, out of desperation and cowardice. Chloe was simply fulfilling her end of a bargain I proposed.
The fault for this entire charade is mine and mine alone.”
He had said it. The weight that had been crushing his chest for weeks began to lift, replaced by the terrifying lightness of having nothing left to hide.
Chloe spoke then, her voice soft but clear, drawing Matilda’s gaze.
“He’s not entirely correct, Matilda,” she said.
Alistair looked at her, his heart lurching.
“Everything Alistair just told you about the contract, about the beginning of our arrangement, is true,” Chloe continued, her eyes fixed on the matriarch. “I agreed to this because I was in financial trouble, and this was a lifeline.
It was a job. I came here to give a performance.”
She took a small breath. “But somewhere between the ridiculously detailed contract and the disastrous game of croquet, the performance stopped.
And the one part of the story that wasn’t a lie… was the way we came to feel about each other.”
Her honesty was a physical blow, more powerful than any rehearsed line she had ever delivered. She was laying her own heart bare, not for money or for a contract, but for the truth.
“I came here to fool you,” Chloe admitted, a blush rising on her cheeks. “But I ended up fooling myself.
I didn’t expect to find a man who cares so passionately about preserving history that he would do something this insane. I didn’t expect to see a kindness and a vulnerability beneath all the academic jargon.
What started as a lie for me, Matilda, became real.”
She reached over and placed her hand on Alistair’s arm. Her touch was electric, a current of pure, unscripted support.
They were no longer employee and client. They were a partnership, forged in the crucible of their ridiculous, wonderful lie.
Alistair looked at their joined hands, then back at his grandmother. “She’s right,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.
“The objective of my contract was to secure an inheritance. The unintended consequence was that I found the very thing the contract was meant to simulate.
I fell in love with Chloe. That, Grandmother, is the only truth I can offer you.”
They fell silent, their confession complete. They had presented their case, a united, honest front.
They had walked willingly into the lion’s den and laid their heads on the block. There was nothing left to do but await the sentence.
Matilda Finch remained perfectly still, her gaze moving between them. Her expression was still unreadable, a mask of aristocratic calm.
But Alistair, who had spent his life trying to decipher her, thought he saw something new in the depths of her sharp blue eyes. It wasn’t anger.
It wasn’t disappointment. It was something that looked, impossibly, like appraisal. The quiet in the room stretched on, the ticking clock measuring out the final seconds of their hope, or their ruin.