Chapter 12 - Family Dinner

The Sinclair townhouse looked less like a home when Ailsa knew she was being evaluated inside it.

Callum met her in the entrance hall. He was already dressed for dinner, dark suit, no tie, every inch the man who had walked through cameras beside her that morning as if public scrutiny were another meeting he could survive.

“Any last instructions?” Ailsa asked.

“My mother specifically told me not to rehearse you.”

“So you’re obeying her?” Ailsa asked.

“Temporarily.”

His hand settled at the small of her back as footsteps approached.

The touch was light. Expected now, at least when there was an audience.

Ailsa let it remain.

Moira Sinclair appeared in the doorway and looked first at Ailsa, then at Callum’s hand.

“Come in,” Moira said. “Before my husband decides dinner should have an agenda.”

From inside the room, Alistair said, “It does.”

Moira sighed. “You see what I live with.”

Dinner began politely enough.

Moira asked about Exit without pretending she had not read everything available about it. Alistair asked about the funding structure before the first course had been cleared.

“Sinclair support remains separate from the engagement,” Ailsa said.

“So Callum tells me.”

“It was a condition.”

Alistair looked at his son. “One of hers?”

“One of ours,” Callum said.

Ailsa glanced at him.

Moira caught the look.

Alistair returned his attention to her. “You understand why the family would prefer a cleaner relationship between the two?”

“I’m not sure what cleaner means.”

“If you are entering this family, there will be situations where private interests and public ones overlap.”

Entering this family.

The phrase arrived as casually as the wine.

Ailsa set down her fork. “I’m engaged to Callum.”

Alistair did not smile. “Which generally carries implications.”

“Not all of the ones you’re assuming.”

Good.

Alistair leaned back. “Then let us be specific. Exit may receive material support connected to Sinclair resources. You will also be publicly associated with this family. What happens when Exit takes a position that damages Sinclair interests?”

“If Exit’s mission requires that position, it takes it.”

“And your loyalty?”

“To the work I’m responsible for,” Ailsa said.

“That is not an answer about Callum.”

“It wasn’t a question about Callum.”

Silence.

Moira lifted her glass and watched them both.

Alistair tried again. “If a client came to Exit seeking help to leave a member of this family?”

Ailsa answered before Callum could.

“Exit would follow the same privacy and service rules it follows for anyone else.”

“You would not tell Callum.”

“No,” Ailsa said.

“Even if the matter could affect him.”

“Especially then.”

Alistair’s gaze sharpened. “You expect to sit at this table while building a wall around information that may concern the people at it?”

Ailsa looked around the room. The old portraits. The quiet assumption that belonging came with access.

“Yes.”

Moira set down her glass.

“Alistair.”

“I am asking what the arrangement means.”

“No,” Moira said. “You are asking whether engagement changes her job.”

Ailsa looked at her.

Moira shrugged. “I listen.”

Alistair ignored the comment.

“Sinclair communications could at least review public statements where family interests overlap.”

“No,” Ailsa said.

She had no intention of softening it.

“Exit does not submit its positions to Sinclair approval,” Ailsa said.

“Review is not approval.”

“It becomes influence the moment we have to wonder what happens if we refuse it.”

Callum put down his glass.

“That wasn’t part of the agreement.”

Alistair looked at him. “I did not ask you.”

“No. You asked her to accept something I already agreed she would not have to accept.”

Ailsa stayed still.

He had not told his father what she thought. He had simply placed his own promise beside her refusal.

Alistair’s face hardened. “You are very willing to bind Sinclair resources while insisting Sinclair has no corresponding voice.”

“Because I committed to support Exit without buying a voice inside it.”

The distinction sounded cleaner to Ailsa than anything Alistair had called family.

Alistair’s attention moved between them. “You have become careless about where your obligations sit.”

Callum’s expression changed by a degree.

“I know exactly where they sit.”

“Do you?”

“Alistair,” Moira said quietly.

This time he stopped.

Her phone lit beside her plate.

She looked at the screen. “Eilidh.”

Everyone went still.

Moira answered. “Hello, darling.”

Whatever Eilidh said softened her face.

“Yes. We’re at dinner.”

A pause.

Moira glanced at Ailsa. “Yes, she’s here.”

Then she held out the phone.

“She wants to say hello.”

Ailsa took it. “Hi.”

“You survived the interview,” Eilidh said.

“Debatable.”

“I watched the clip where Callum got your coffee order wrong.”

Across the table, Callum narrowed his eyes.

Ailsa smiled. “He’s learning.”

“I heard that,” he said.

Eilidh laughed.

She did not sound hidden. Or broken. Or like a problem waiting to be returned to the proper place.

“I just wanted Mum to know I’m fine,” Eilidh said. “I’ll come by Sunday if nobody turns it into a summit.”

Ailsa looked at Moira.

“I think she can agree to that.”

Moira nodded immediately.

Alistair said nothing.

Ailsa handed the phone back.

For a few minutes, dinner became almost ordinary.

Then Alistair looked at Callum.

“I had intended to review the Campbell-linked mandate with you after the engagement announcement settled the immediate issue.”

Callum’s shoulders went still.

Ailsa remembered the authority Alistair had stripped from him after he backed Eilidh.

“That review can wait,” Alistair continued. “The mandate remains with me.”

Moira’s expression tightened.

Callum did not argue.

“Understood.”

He could command rooms she would never enter without him. He could move money, lawyers, statements.

And his father could still close a hand around part of the family machinery and keep it from him.

His father was withholding it for the opposite reason: Callum had refused to control the women inside the crisis.

After dinner, Moira caught Ailsa near the drawing-room door while Callum spoke to his father.

“He doesn’t usually leave silence for other people to fill,” Moira said.

Ailsa glanced toward Callum. “That sounds like criticism.”

“It’s observation.”

Before Ailsa could answer, Callum joined them.

He walked her to the front hall, his hand returning to her back while his parents could still see them.

Beyond the drawing room, Ailsa stepped away.

His hand vanished immediately.

No question. No attempt to keep the performance alive in private.

Distance restored.

At the door, Callum reached for her coat.

“You didn’t have to do that in there,” she said.

“What?”

“Make the Exit boundary yours,” Ailsa said.

“I didn’t.”

He held her coat out. “I made my promise mine.”

Annoyingly precise.

She slipped into the coat.

Behind them, Alistair’s voice carried from the drawing room, asking Callum to come back when he had seen her out.

The evening was not over for him.

Ailsa understood that surviving the Sinclair family test had not meant winning it.

Callum opened the front door.

Cold Edinburgh air cut into the hall.

“Good night, Ailsa.”

She stepped outside.

“Good luck,” Ailsa said.

“With my father?”

“With your family.”

His mouth shifted.

The door closed between them.