AN: Mara and Luke's wedding in Italy, at Lake Como, will be in late May, about a month and a half after Chiara and Drew break up, okay?This will be one of those timeline things I'm talking about. At first, I had their wedding pegged for August or something, but I went back and checked, and I couldn't find any mention of a date, so I think I'm okay. At any rate, everything you're reading is happening in May, and all of this is wrapping up soon. I'm not responding to comments, but I'm reading all of them, and I can see that you're all so very upset, and I'm really sorry! It's ending really soon, though, promise, promise! I'll have to have some info dumps, just to get everything explained, so I hope you'll forgive me for the Agatha Christie ambience, but there's really no other way, unless the story's to be much, much longer, and that just can't happen, because I'm on such a tight deadline with the sequel to The PA...Just five or six chapters left, and only a couple are bad...

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"Drew? Hey, mate?"

Drew sat up from where he was drowsing in the rose garden. He liked to sit out among the newly leafing bushes, even though there were no blooms yet. He felt comforted by their presence, their waxy canes and glossy leaves, the feel of Chiara's love and closeness in her tender care of them.

"Yeah? Luke? Out here."

Luke stuck his head out the French doors.

"There are a bunch of people out by the front gate," he told Drew. "Looks like fans? I thought no one knew where you lived."

"No one did," Drew said. He ran inside and upstairs, followed by everyone else. He went to the second floor landing with the huge front facing window and pulled out his phone, using the zoom feature on his camera for a close up look at the people who were gathered by the gate. There were about ten or fifteen of them, and he could tell, even at this distance, that they were young and female.

Fans.

How had they been found?

"What's going on?" LeeAnne came out of her room to see what all the noise was.

"Nothing, we've just finally been discovered, that's all," Mara told her, gesturing at the cluster of girls down at the gate. "We just can't figure out how."

Luke and Mara's wedding was little more than a week away, and Mara was packing in her room for the momentous event.

"Oh." LeeAnne bit her lip. "It might be from the wedding announcement."

Wedding announcement?

"I put an announcement in a few newspapers, you know, so people would know where to send congratulations and gifts and stuff."

"What?" Gary was staring at her. "We don't do that shit, we leave it to management, and the people who handle publicity."

"What papers?" Drew asked, cold with dread.

"The Times?"

"Which one?"

"Uh, LA, New York, and London?" Now LeeAnne sounded unsure of what she'd done. "And the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times."

"Are you fucking joking?"

"Dear Jesus."

"What? I didn't do anything wrong. All big society weddings do that," LeeAnne defended herself.

"Except that all society weddings don't have every girl in England under the age of twenty wanting to know where the groom lives so she can go and spy on him, do they?" Ned asked rhetorically. "By sundown there are going to be about a thousand girls out there, plus a few news crews, all wanting to catch a glimpse of Drew in his pants. And once they find out all four of us are here, that's when the real fun will begin."

"Look, at least we can thank god and the angels that no one knows she's pregnant yet," Mara said, trying to calm things down. She looked sharply at LeeAnne. "Right? Please, please tell me you haven't run a birth announcement or some such tripe?"

"No!" LeeAnne was indignant. "The baby's not even born yet! I'm not even four months along."

"Thank god for small favors," Mara murmured.

Just then Drew's phone pinged with a text.

"Shit. I guess my mum's seen the paper." He looked around. "She's on her way."

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"Whoa, Drew, your mum must've flown in her car," Ned said, awe in his voice. "She should barely be in London by now, but here she is already."

Drew looked out the window, and sure enough, there she was, in her SUV, driving slowly through the mass of girls, who had swelled to well over a hundred since they'd first begun to arrive.

He'd already warned LeeAnne that it would be best to let him do the talking, and LeeAnne, showing more sense than he'd given her credit for, had meekly agreed to leave them alone after greeting Ellie.

"Mum!" he said."You remember LeeAnne," he said, gesturing in her direction.

"Hello," LeeAnne called with a little wave as she turned and went upstairs.

Drew leaned in for a kiss. "Good to see you," he murmured.

All in all, the only one who seemed happy was William Wallace, whom Ellie had thought to bring with her. He loved car trips, and he loved to see Drew. He cavorted around the house as soon as he took care of business in the bushes.

"Mm hm," was her only response. "Tea please," she continued as she walked into the kitchen. "Neddy, hello, darling," she said. He was just going up the kitchen stairs to give them privacy. In fact, everyone was upstairs, with the strict dictum that no one was to come down unless Drew called for them.

"Hello, mum," Ned called cheerfully as he disappeared.

"So," she began as she sat down with her mug, "why don't you tell just what in the holy hell has been going on round here while I wasn't looking, hm?"

Drew took a deep breath.

"Mum, I'm so sorry I didn't tell you," he began.

"It would be more to the point if you were sorry for whatever mess you've made than the fact that you didn't let me know you'd made it," she said, taking a sip of her tea. She gave him a serious look out of the eyes she'd bequeathed him. "First of all, is it true? Are you really marrying that horrible girl?"

Drew looked away and swallowed before looking back at her. "Yes," he finally said.

"Why? In the name of all that's holy, why?"

Drew felt like he was going to vomit, and concentrated with all his will on not letting that happen.

"She's pregnant, mum."

"Oh god, Drew," she said, her voice soft with agony. "How could you let this happen? When all that hell and mess happened to poor Gary Pillsbury last year, I remember thinking in a tiny horrible, glad corner of my heart, 'Well, awful for him, but thank heaven it will never be my Andrew, he has more sense than that.'"

She covered her eyes and let out a sob that sounded remarkably like her son's voice when he cried, and Drew didn't think he could bear to sit there and listen and watch.

"What are we to do?" she asked, removing her hand to look at her son with wet eyes. "And now she's somehow forcing you to marry her? Your life is ruined, it's over, you realize that? You had a chance to be so happy with Chiara, and now it's gone forever, and you're to be tethered to that horrible bit of stupid, selfish misery for the rest of your life, or at least until she tires of messing about with your life and takes everything of yours worth having and divorces you so she can do the same thing to someone else? And when she does, she'll take your child, my grandchild, with her..."

"Mum, stop, please," Drew begged. "I've done the best I could with an untenable situation--if you only knew the position I was put in--I'm trying to put our family first, I'm really trying--"

"How can you say that?" Ellie threw across the table. "Have you had a thought for your brother? He's only just turned fifteen! He's away at school! He wants to go to Cambridge or Oxford. He'll be competing against people from Harrow, Eton, Ampleforth, Westminster--what chance will he have with you for a brother? Can you imagine the scandal?"

"What scandal?" Drew was beside himself. "It's the new millennium, not Victorian era England, having a child is nothing, people do it all the time, especially in the entertainment industry! Plus, I'm marrying her, mum! I'm doing the right thing, the honorable thing, what more can I do? There's no scandal," he repeated.

"For all we know, Mara could be pregnant right now," he theorized. "What would be the difference? They're getting married in nine days, it's all perfectly above board."

"She's a tart, a trollop who already has a baby with another member of your band," Ellie nearly hissed. "It's so sordid, it's like a movie you'd see on telly, isn't it? I mean, just look at her, with her too tight clothes and her miles long nails."

"A trollop?" Drew repeated incredulously. "Mum, no one uses that word anymore. Please, join the twenty-first century, okay? I really think you're making something out of nothing." He took a deep breath. "I--I was attracted to someone, I spent the night with her, we were careless, and now we're taking responsibility for it. That's all." He stared resolutely at his mother across the table.

"That's all."

"That's not all, Drew." Ellie's mimicry of her son was remarkable. "He wants to be a barrister, to possibly be a diplomat, to work for the United Nations or the World Bank, you know the kind of ambition he has. Everything matters to them. Even if you weren't thinking of yourself, couldn't you have thought of him?" She slapped the table, hard enough to make her teacup move. "You, Noah, the poor, defenseless baby, even me--" she stared at her firstborn. "You've ruined four lives, and for what? Twenty seconds of physical pleasure? Well done, Andrew, well done."

Drew stared at her aghast, unable to talk, finally.

Ellie let out another long breath, shaking her head. "God, Drew, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, son." She gestured for him to come to her, and he rose, going to her side and kneeling so she could hug him.

"We'll get through this, we will," she said as she held him.

"How's Chiara?" she asked as she stroked his head.

At first he just shook his head. "You'd have to ask Ned," he finally said in a choking voice. "He's really been there for her, and they've gotten very close. I'm not sure the status of their relationship, but whatever it is, Ned deserves her, more than I do, I suppose."

He cried a little into his mother's neck.

"I just miss her so much, mum. I loved her, so much, you don't know."

"I do know," she corrected. "Who else but a girl you cared about more than life itself would make you hit someone you loved like a brother, hm?"

He lifted his head so he could stare at her in naked wonder.

"You knew about that?"

She smiled. "Of course I knew. I'm your mum, I know everything."

Drew smiled a small, rueful smile. "I wish you knew how to get me out of this mess."

"I wish I did as well. But there's nothing to be done, it seems."

She continued after a brief silence.

"Does Noah know about all this?"

"The bare bones, yeah, he knows. I didn't want to bother him too much, it would affect his studies, his grades, you know?"

Ellie nodded as Drew rose.

"Well, William Wallace and I'd better use the facilities and get going," she said. Drew himself had to have a wee, desperately, but he knew he could wait until his mother was gone. This always happened to him when he was nervous. Plus, he'd had three cups of tea while talking to his mother.

"Oh, you should spend the night," Drew protested. "It's a long drive back, it'll be dark."

"No, I don't want to spend the night," Ellie said. "I'd probably say something I'd regret to that poor girl, and I don't want to make things worse. I'll see you next week in Italy at the wedding, all right?"

Drew finally nodded and kissed her good bye, waving to her from the front door. He hadn't thought it would be possible, but knowing that his mother knew, and seeing her in person, had somehow made him feel better.

Drew called up the front stairs on his way to the bathroom that she was gone and everyone could come down if they wanted.

He thought he heard something while he was in the toilet off the mudroom, so he quickly washed his hands and went out to the kitchen, though he knew what he'd find before he got there.

He could hear LeeAnne crying long before he found her, in the middle of everyone. Mara was already on the phone with 999, arranging for an ambulance. LeeAnne was on the small landing at the spot where the narrow kitchen stairs turned sharply, bleeding from a gash on her head.

"Oh god, what happened?"

"She was running down the back stairs and tripped and fell," Ned said, concern making his voice harsh. He was holding Sienna, who was sitting up alertly in his arms holding a little ball, staring with wide eyes at everyone.

"Is she okay?"

"Dunno."

LeeAnne's eyes finally focused on her daughter and cleared a little from the pain that was glazing them.

"Sienna," she called. "Sienna, your ball, Sienna baby, ball, beautiful baby, come here--" then her eyes slipped closed.