THE BLACKWOOD BROTHERS

Author's Note: This prelude has little to nothing to do with the actual story, ha. Just wanted to give you a peek into the family before everything kicks off. Hope you've read Chapter 1 already and enjoyed it 🌸 Let me know what you think of Grandma Evelyn! A LETTER TO EDWARD My darling Edward, It's the fourteenth of September again, and you're not here to tell me I've put too many candles on the cake. I write to you every year on this night, before the house fills up with people who never knew you and will spend the whole evening pretending they did. Call it a habit if you like. I've buried better men than most of the ones downstairs, and I've never needed their permission to keep faith with one of them. The house is already glittering below me. The string quartet is warming up, the caterers are arguing about ice, and there's that particular hush that falls the second the first important guest arrives. You always said galas were funerals with better lighting. Thirty years on, I still can't watch the cars come up the drive without hearing you say it. I still can't decide if you meant it as a joke. Let me tell you about them, Edward. Our family. There's no one downstairs I can be honest with. They all want something from me. You're the only one who never did. Our eldest is the richest man in the country now. I watched Arthur straighten his cufflinks tonight before he'd even said hello to his own mother, and I thought of what you used to say, that the poorest man alive is the one who has nothing but money. I'll admit I enjoyed watching him prove you right. Some boy with a lanyard tried to hurry him along earlier, told him a minister was waiting. "These days, we're the kings," he said. "Kings don't wait for ministers." Said it the way you'd order a second scotch. Like it cost him nothing. I raised him to be formidable, Edward. I didn't raise him to mistake cruelty for the same thing. He hasn't worked out yet that I can tell the difference. Our younger boy has spent his whole life being mistaken for the better man. Maybe that's because Arthur makes the comparison so easy. Richard gives money away before it's finished counting itself. Tonight it's some foundation for children who'll never know his name, and he'll spend the evening at the edges of his own party pretending he doesn't want to be thanked for it. "You can't fix everything," someone told him tonight. "I know," he said. "But I can try." A lovely answer. Maybe too lovely. I'll admit something to you I wouldn't admit downstairs. I sometimes wonder if even his kindness has become a performance, another thing he's learned to wear well. Arthur doesn't bother hiding what he is. Richard has always been harder to read. And that worries me more than either of them realise. Because I know my son. Or at least I like to think I do. There's something underneath that kindness, Edward. Something he keeps carefully tucked behind good deeds, soft words, and a reputation people are far too eager to believe. I hope I'm wrong. I run this family as though I'm not. They had words again tonight. The old business. I won't risk writing it down even here. "You can buy silence," Richard told him. "You can't buy someone's memory." He walked off before Arthur could answer, which is the only kind of winning either of my sons has left to give the other. I've watched them do this dance for thirty years. I stopped waiting for it to end a long time ago. I've just made sure the empire survives it either way. And then there's Richard's boy. My grandson. You'd have adored him, and he'd have run rings around you the way I never quite managed. Your stubbornness, none of your patience. Dangerous, in a man who now runs half of what we own. He cares about exactly two things: this family's name, and the brother he'd burn the house down for. Everything else, he's taught himself not to need. That's not weakness, Edward, whatever it looks like from the outside. That's a man who worked out early that needing things is how you hand people power over you. He learned that from watching this family. Possibly from watching me. I don't worry about him the way a soft woman worries. I watch him the way I watch a market before I move on it, closely, and without sentiment I can't afford yet. Though I'll allow myself a bit of it now, with you, since you're the only one who was ever allowed to see it. I looked out at the moon just now and thought of that ginger cat your grandmother had in Cornwall, the one that turned up half-starved one winter, picked your family's door out of every house on the street, and never left. You always said the right ones find you. You don't go looking for them. You just leave a window open and trust that something worth keeping will climb through it. Sebastian would hate that comparison. He'd probably call it sentimental nonsense. Which is exactly why I won't tell him I still think of him that way. My ginger cat. Too proud to ask for anything. Too stubborn to admit when he needs it. So determined to believe that nothing in this world could ever get close enough to matter. Maybe one day something will prove him wrong. I hope so, Edward. God knows he's been polished enough for one lifetime. The candles are lit. Time I went down and reminded this family whose name is actually on the door. I love you still. and I always will. - E.