The Sins of the Fathers

Chapter Thirty-One

The Stoddart Residence

Boston

Massachusetts

"Self-discipline is required...you have to really want to do this...for me...for us...for the future of the whole country, potentially? I shouldn't have to make you...I shouldn't have to even ask you...you should want to do it because it is what you signed up for?" Brett Stoddart said as he paced up and down the drawing room, trying to keep his temper. "But all you have is...attitude...and this selfish arrogance that everything has to be about you?"

"You really can be a prick at times?" Grace snapped back, sitting on the sofa with the skirts of her green damask gown crushed around her in an ungainly mess. She waved a mittened hand at him to emphasise her point, resenting the fact that she was still wearing them. Mena had removed the collar at least, but then Brett had dragged her off to lecture her as if she had done something wrong. And she had not misbehaved, in her own opinion. She had let Pamela Cartwright humiliate her and she expected some sympathy, not a telling off more appropriate for a naughty child. But he had received a report on her from Reece Cartwright, just as his sainted mother had from his wife, and he was tearing into her as if she had let him down, for some unknown reason. She thought that it was so unfair and she did not intend to let him get away with very much more of it. "And you have a pretty high opinion of your prospects...you don't get to be President just because you plan for it? You have to not be a prick as well you know?"

"Except it's not just my plan, is it? Ultimately, it's your late grandfather's strategy to make sure that his foundation has people with proper influence in the Republican party...hopefully as President...like your uncle...but Secretary of State works, like my father...and your father and your uncle selected me...and your brother...to do our bit for the next generation...and to get into positions of influence, you have to make sacrifices?" Brett insisted, clearly just as furious as she was and not backing off an inch. "I might not make it...I won't make it if you can't keep your promises to support me...but I am fully committed to doing my best to get at least somewhere...because wherever I get to, hopefully I can do something for the cause I believe in? I thought you believed in that cause? I thought you wanted to do your bit too...that we were in this together?"

"I let that bitch Pamela Cartwright demean me today? I let her fucking keeper lead me all over town like a fucking poodle?" Grace pointed out, matching him for both sheer volume and ferocity, whilst adding some unladylike language for good measure. "She has no right to examine me...to make a report?"

"She was acting on behalf of the bank...who ask for reports on all the wives of their rising stars...because...as I've told you a million times...BIB look at us as a package? The sort of people I work with and for don't do all their business in an office...they work at their dinner parties, at sporting events, at balls, the opera...wherever? And they do business with people who impress them, and reassure them that their investments are in safe hands? And according to Mrs Cartwright, you wouldn't impress anyone?"

"I only said one little thing to her...over dinner last week...and she deserved it?"

"And it really pissed her off...which is probably why she tried to provoke you today...but you know how important this all is?" Brett said, leaning down and smashing his fist onto the arm of the sofa, right beside her, shouting in her face. "You promised to act like a daughter towards my mother...and you know how to do that in a place like this? You've even got a bloody degree in it? All I am asking you is to pretend, Grace? It is an act...and yes, I get it that you won't like some of it...believe me, I don't like some of the things that I have to get involved in...but if you believe in the cause, you have to play the game?"