"When people have these titles and long names, I always assume they're old."
"A fair assumption," responded Farah, judiciously. "In any event, Henry arrived at Amanda's hotel to find an exclusive ball in progress. Her parents, Lord and Lady de Waynflete, had thrown it to entertain the top British and American brass. He wasn't an officer, so the guards wouldn't let him enter the hotel. He was on the point of leaving when Amanda saw him and escorted him in. Her parents were furious."
"A bunch of stuck-up snobs," I snapped, angered on behalf of my newly discovered grandfather.
"Indeed. All societies are like that, the sooner you learn the better. Thanks to your mother's success, you're upper class, and won't have to fight battles like that."
"Mom's success is all because of Jack," I said.
"The fates were cruel," said Farah sadly. "They allowed Jack to elevate and rescue everyone around him. But not himself. All he owned when he died was his father's watch."
"My dad was a prince," I said fiercely. "No matter what anyone else says about him."
Farah reached over and petted my hair.
"Your mannerisms are so like his," she said. Her voice was soft, and her eyes were moist. "No one could doubt you're a Grierson." She cleared her throat. "To go on. When Amanda stopped her parents from having Henry thrown out, they got her to take him out of reception hall, out of sight."
"How kind of them," I said, sarcastically.
"She took him up to their hotel suite. Once there, she tried to get Henry to agree to apologize and get off. 'I won't apologize,' he said. 'Not for beating up your brother, and certainly not for fucking you.' He knew she wanted him -- and he acted on his instincts. She fought him, but he mastered her at the cost of being raked and bloodied with her nails. He carried her to her parent's bedroom -- it was the biggest one -- rucked up the skirts of her evening gown, tore off her panties, and went down on her with his mouth to her nether lips."
"How did reporters get these details?"
"Her maid was there. She sold her story to the papers. She said her mistress was wiggling and struggling in Henry's grasp. When they asked her why she didn't summon help, she said, 'But my lady was crying out, Oh my heavens! What are you doing to me? I'm cumming!' Then Henry moved up on her, and her maid described his erect organ as being the largest she had ever seen -- gigantic, veined, more like metal than flesh. 'I feared for my lady,' she said. 'When he began to push that massive phallus into her. She screamed and screamed, but then he smothered her mouth with his and muffled her.' They asked her what she thought she was seeing, and she said her mistress had orgasm after orgasm, over and over. Thrashing, sweat covered, her gown around her waist, her bra pulled down, her stockings undone."
"You sound like you know what you're talking about," I said.
"Jack fucked me so many times," said Farah. "I know what it's like to be cum so hard and repeatedly that time and space lose meaning."
"You're such a good storyteller, Farah," I said. "You've got me excited."
She laughed before going on.
"Lady de Waynflete came up to find what was keeping her daughter. She arrived just as Henry climaxed and began gushing his heavy load of semen deep into Amanda. His cock was buried deep in her daughter's pussy, and his tongue probed deep into her daughter's mouth, as she twisted and bucked and came yet again with him. Lady de Waynflete shrieked her outrage, Henry and Amanda had to come down to earth quickly, get their clothes back on as best they could. Her daughter immediately claimed she was sexually assaulted, and Lady de Waynflete was absolutely beside herself with rage. However, she was an experienced society lady -- she knew that no lawful punishment meted out to Henry was worth the ensuing scandal and the damage to her daughter's reputation."
"So everything was just smoothed over?" I asked.
"Not at all," said Farah, her anger evident. "Amanda wanted him, there could be no doubt of that. It's why she invited him, why she took him up to the privacy of the suite. I'm willing to bet he gave her the most pleasure she has ever had in her life. But she couldn't bear the thought of people knowing she was with a man she considered so far beneath her. She fell in completely with her mother. Lady de Waynflete had Henry spirited out of the hotel through the service entrance and returned to his barracks. She swore her daughter to secrecy and kept her husband and son in the dark. She was unaware that Amanda's maid had witnessed the whole thing."
"Good for the maid," I said. "She got the whole story out in public."
"Yes and no. The maid sold the story to the papers, so she made money. But the Beaumonts are a powerful family. They got the story killed to protect their daughter -- it was never published."
Farah paused, poured herself a glass of water from the carafe on her desk and drank before going on.
"Both Henry and Amanda were strongly affected by the encounter. He tried to see her again, and she tried to send him messages. But her parents would not allow it. Neither of them could get through the cordon of security her parents put around her. He accepted what she wanted him to do, swallowed his pride, and apologized to her brother. His disciplinary hearing was canceled."
"But I get the feeling all was not well," I said.
"No, it wasn't. A few weeks later, Amanda discovered she was pregnant. Her parents put enormous pressure on her to have an abortion. But she must have had strong memories of how she had conceived the child. One can only assume that these memories were not unpleasant. She flatly refused to terminate the pregnancy. Her parents took her to Switzerland under the pretext that she had contracted a rare illness. They kept her sequestered in a private Swiss clinic. That's where she gave birth to Jack. The only record he kept of his origin is his Swiss birth certificate. It's got his official name, the one his mother wrote down for him -- John Henry Beaumont Grierson."
"My father was born in Switzerland? And carried Beaumont in his official name?"
"Yes. The Beaumonts repudiated Jack, but they can't deny his Beaumont blood -- he can trace his descent to King Edward III, just like they can."
"Wow!" Royalty was just theoretical to me, the sort of thing I saw in movies. But my father actually was descended from the kings of England! And through him, so was I!
"Amanda's parents took the newborn from her -- they literally tore baby Jack from his mother's bosom -- and brought him back to England. They gave the baby to Henry saying, 'This is yours.' That was it. Jack never saw his mother again."
"Didn't she try to see him?"
"At first, she was prevented from seeing him by her parents. But as the years passed -- I'm conjecturing here -- she began to think it was best for her to pretend she'd never had a child." Farah paused and cleared her throat. "As soon as Henry got Jack, he was posted to a non-family high-risk station in the Middle East. Even as a baby, Jack spent considerable time in Army foster care. Even so, by all accounts, Henry was a model father and Jack worshipped him. The Beaumonts used all their influence to get Henry rotated to high-risk locations -- again and again. Despite that, he was with Jack at all his R&Rs, his leaves, and in between rotations. But continually put in harm's way, the odds were against him. Eventually, his luck ran out. He was killed in a terrorist encounter when Jack was eleven."
"The fucking bastards!" I cried.
"Yes, that's exactly what I said when I found out what they had done."
"Jack had no one in the world, so he was placed in a military orphanage. Losing his beloved father understandably embittered him. He began acting out, running away, causing damage and trouble. He was disciplined, severely -- I've seen the records. He suffered from depression his whole life. He managed to control it enough to graduate from high school with high honors. He did well enough to be accepted into a prestigious Ivy League university and his father's death entitled him to a military college scholarship that enabled him to enroll. It was in college that he met the woman who would become his wife -- Carmen St. James. Like his father before him, he knew she wanted him and they soon became a couple, much to her parents' dismay. Jack impregnated Carmen very soon after they met. Jack has always had a strong sense of responsibility and moreover, the two were very much in love. They got married without telling her family. Then he had to leave college as a sophomore because of the false charge of sexual assault. He joined the army, it was all he knew."
"He had always been an exceptional athlete and was soon selected into the Special Forces. His father-in-law, Reginald St. James, did everything he could to get Jack posted to active war zones. He hoped Jack would be killed and free his daughter from what he considered a disastrous marriage. But Jack was tough and resourceful. He was in countless battles, wounded so many, many times -- but he was a survivor."
"Not anymore," I said, my voice tight.
"Of course, you're right," said Farah, tearing up. She took a tissue from the box on her desk and wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry to keep crying like this, I can't help myself. I just miss him so much."
"I never got the chance to miss him," I said. "I don't know which is worse."
"Jack's women, his children, well, all that is a story for another day. But I will tell you that his first child was with the woman who got him removed from college, Elizabeth Anne Smythe. A son, Jonas Portius Smythe. He's thirty-one now."