Page 55 of One Night in Glasgow (The Scottish Billionaires #15)
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
BETH
The hotel suite felt like a cage, albeit a very luxurious one.
Sean was across the room, on the phone with Danny, his voice a low, controlled murmur as he explained the new, complicated legal situation.
But I couldn’t hear him. All I could hear was the echo of my father’s words: “She made a thirty-minute call to Stewart right after we left her.”
My mother. She hadn’t just been a bystander or a disappointed parent. She had been an active conspirator. She had heard my pain and had immediately picked up the phone to help the man who had caused it all, to help him lay a trap for me and the man I loved.
The pieces clicked into place with a horrifying, crystalline clarity. The cameras. Stewart’s smug confidence. I walked to the window and stared out at the city, my city, seeing nothing but the reflection of my own naive, foolish face.
I had spent my entire life reacting to my mother’s manipulations by rebelling, running, and hiding.
But reacting to Fiona Anne MacLeod was a losing game.
The only way to win against a master manipulator like my mother was to change the game entirely.
She expected me to be emotional, to be the “wild child” she had always painted me as.
She would never expect me to use her own tactics against her.
A new resolve, cold and sharp as a shard of glass, settled in my heart. I wasn’t going to let Sean go to prison for protecting me. I couldn’t let my mother win. Her greatest weakness was her own arrogance, her unshakable belief in her own intellectual superiority. She would never see me coming.
I turned from the window, my mind clear, my purpose absolute. I knew exactly what I had to do.
An hour later, I stood before the full-length mirror in the hotel bedroom, dressed for war in a simple but elegant cashmere dress.
Sean had just left to meet my father and the lawyers, giving me this time alone as I’d requested.
My plan was set. My performance was rehearsed in my mind.
But as I looked at my reflection, my hands began to tremble.
The sheer, audacious scale of what I was about to do was insane.
I planned to walk straight into my mother’s home and play the “defeated child”, a part of a lifetime.
Could I do it? Could I lie that convincingly?
Could I hold my nerve against the one person in the world who knew how to dismantle me with a single, well-placed word?
I had to now, with Sean’s freedom as the stakes.
And my old life had an answer for this. A chemical solution for a nerve-wracking performance.
My fingers, acting on years of instinct, went to my designer handbag on the bed.
I pulled out my makeup bag and, from a hidden pocket, a small prescription bottle.
Adderall. Prescribed years ago for a “focus issue” I never had, it had become my secret weapon for enduring endless society functions, for being “on” when all I wanted was to be invisible.
Just one pill, and the trembling would stop.
The fear would be replaced by a sharp, laser-like focus. It would make this so much easier.
I shook one of the small, orange pills into my palm and stared at it. This was the old Beth’s way. The easy way. A way to numb the fear and get through the ordeal.
But I thought of Sean, of the trust in his eyes when he’d said, “I’ll be waiting.” He didn’t love the chemically enhanced version of me. He loved the messy, flawed, real me. And it was the real me who had to win this fight. Not for him, but with him. For us.
My hand closed into a fist around the pill.
I walked into the adjoining bathroom, my steps firm, my resolve hardening with each one.
I opened my hand over the toilet bowl and watched the pill drop into the water.
Then, with a decisive push of the handle, I flushed it, and all the ghosts of the woman I used to be, down the drain.
This battle, I would fight on my own. Clear-headed. Terrified. But completely, utterly me.
As I walked up the familiar stone steps to the MacLeod manor, my heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, audible drumbeat against the silence. The door swung open before I could reach the handle. Angus stood there, his posture as impeccably straight as ever.
Fuck. I braced for the judgment, but then I noticed the usual stoic granite of his expression had a crack in it.
“Angus,” I said, managing a small, tight smile.
“Miss Elisabeth,” he replied, his voice the same formal baritone, but his gaze was different.
It wasn’t weary or long-suffering. It was direct, observant.
He stepped back to let me in, closing the door behind me and shutting out the world.
For a moment, we stood in the quiet of the grand entryway, the ticking of the grandfather clock the only sound.
He looked me over—not my dress or my hair, but my eyes. “You look different, Miss Elisabeth.”
I braced myself again for the usual back-handed critique. Different how? Less like a disaster?
“Your fire is back,” he stated, as if observing the weather. “We’ve missed it.” His eyes held a flicker of something more, a hint of shared memory. “It reminds me of this one time... well, let’s just say some of your mother’s garden parties were made all the more memorable for it.”
His dry remark was a key turning a lock in my memory, and suddenly I wasn’t standing in the hall anymore.
I was twelve years old again, huddled in the pantry, hiding after my mother had hissed at me for laughing too loudly during one of her stuffy garden club luncheons. “Children should be seen and not heard, Elisabeth. You are embarrassing this family.” I had been crushed by her icy disapproval.
Angus had found me there, my face streaked with tears.
He hadn’t offered platitudes. He’d simply been polishing the silver, preparing for the afternoon tea service.
As he worked, he’d glanced at the crystal salt and sugar shakers on the tray.
“Sometimes, Miss Elisabeth,” he had said, his voice a low murmur as he buffed a sugar spoon to a high shine, “a lady must make her own... seasoning in life. A little unexpected spice can liven up the dullest of parties, wouldn’t you agree?
” He’d given me a slow, deliberate wink before continuing his work.
He meant it metaphorically, I knew that even then.
A nudge to not let them dull my spirit. But my twelve-year-old, heartbroken mind took his words as a literal call to arms. An hour later, her high society friends were spitting out their salted tea and sputtering over salted scones, and Mother’s face was a perfect mask of horrified fury.
She never knew who did it. But it was the first time I felt a surge of power, the first time I realized I could fight back in my own way. My first real act of rebellion.
My focus snapped back to the present. I stared at Angus, a new, dawning understanding in my eyes. He had been there all along.
“The salt,” I whispered, my voice barely audible. “ You gave me the idea about the salt.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips, a secret shared between us across more than a decade. “A most... seasoned performance, miss,” he said, the dry wit in his eyes confirming everything. “One of your best, if I might say.”
Bloody hell. Angus, my mother’s stoic butler, was on my side. He’s always been. The realization was a shot straight to the soul. Warm and fortifying. The nervous tremor in my hands stilled. He hadn’t just witnessed my rebellion; he had quietly nurtured it.
“Thank you, Angus,” I said, and the smile that broke across my face was real, not one of the thousand fake ones I kept for society. “That... means a lot.”
He gave me a single, almost imperceptible nod, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. “Your mother is waiting in the drawing room, miss,” he said, his tone returning to its usual neutrality, but his eyes held mine for a second longer than necessary. It was all the backup I needed.
With Angus’s words as my secret superhero armor, I walked toward the drawing room. My mother was sitting on the sofa, sipping tea, the picture of serene, unnerved composure. She looked up as I entered, a small, triumphant smile touching her lips. She thought she had won .
“My dear Elisabeth,” she said, her voice smooth as silk. “I was wondering when you’d come to your senses.”
I walked to the armchair opposite her and slowly sank into it.
My rehearsed plan, my confident strategy, suddenly felt flimsy, ridiculous.
My hand, hidden in the deep pocket of my coat, fumbled for my phone.
My thumb found the record button, but my nerve was failing.
For a moment, it felt like I was going to chicken out.
She’s my mother. A master of manipulations.
Who am I to think I can go up against Fiona Anne MacLeod?
The voice in my head screamed at me to run.
Then I pictured Sean’s face in my mind. The look in his eyes as those handcuffs clicked shut. The quiet, absolute way he had sacrificed his freedom for me. That image was the steel that went straight through my spine. I took a slow, steadying breath.
“You were right,” I whispered, my voice a broken, trembling thing. I conjured a single tear, letting it trace a path down my cheek. “You were right about everything, Mother.”
Her smile widened. My capitulation. This was the moment she had been waiting for.
“Sean… he’s a violent, impulsive man,” I continued, the words tasting like poison. “I see that now. What he did to Stewart was gruesome.” I looked up at her, my eyes pleading. “Things are over between me and Sean. I’ve ended it.”
I watched as she basked in her triumph, smiling. “That’s absolutely wonderful, dear. We should start planning an engagement party for you and Stew?—”
“No, Mother,” I cut her off, my voice gaining an edge of steel. “I could never marry Stewart now.”