The house on the Bray estate, County Wicklow, was anything but modest. Great grey stone walls, an ivy-covered castle that in the distance could blend into the green of the Irish pastures.
Carmen had seen Bray only once before, the summer she married Benjamin, when the estate had seemed to her like something out of a fairytale. She remembered the sea glittering beyond the lawns, the clipped hedges, the proud way Benjamin had shown her every room, telling her it would be hers one day.
Now, as the carriage rattled through the iron gates, she felt no such wonder. The place was magnificent, yes, but it was also heavy, full of ghosts and silences.
She pressed a gloved hand to the window, watching the drive wind past the formal gardens. The house rose ahead of her, its grey stone gleaming faintly in the mist. She felt an unexpected twist in her chest: this was her house now. Hers, and yet not hers.
The staff lined the steps as she descended, curtseying stiffly. Carmen could feel their eyes on her back as she entered the hall — judging her, perhaps even blaming her for the master’s death, as though she had drained the life out of him like some foreign enchantress.
Inside, the house smelled of beeswax and sea air. Carmen stood in the entrance hall for a long moment, letting her fingers brush the banister. Benjamin had touched this wood a thousand times, she thought.
And now he is gone, and it is only me.
A ripple of defiance rose in her, a feeling hot, sharp. If Arthur and the others thought she would hide in Merrion Square like some forgotten widow, they were wrong. This house was part of her inheritance, and she would not creep through it as a guest.
The maids did their work in absolute silence, leaving her alone in the music room. Benjamin had forbidden her to take the pianoforte to Dublin, on the grounds that it would distract her from her other duties.
As if she had many.
But in Bray, she could do what she wanted. She and her then husband only visited the estate in a situation of "necessary escape from the barley and my children", and there, the old tycoon didn't seem to mind a bit of music.
Now she didn't feel like playing. Carmen felt empty, not sad or desolate, she had cried fragile tears at the funeral in the city. As she attended the condolences of all the guests with an elegant, thick veil covering her face, she could see how the guests narrowed their eyes to try to catch a glimpse of whether she was really crying.
Viejas arpías hipócritas
The young woman had gone to confession, in a humble Catholic church in the city, but still attended to the rites and customs proper to the faith of her late husband and his family.
The Guinness. The brewing titans, Ireland's most important family.
She didn't like them, and the feeling was quite reciprocal. While Carmen had arrived just three years ago from the warm, sunny lands of Spain, on what had been Benjamin Lee Guinness's last overseas voyage, relations with her new husband's family were frivolous to say the least.
With Arthur, there was no need to even try. She had met him briefly during a stopover in London before arriving in Dublin to settle down with her husband. Carmen heard the shouting and swearing from the tearoom. How the old man had decided to bring from Spain not only a deal with investors from the capital but also with... if memory was correct, a new little cunt.
The rest was at least more discreet. Benjamin, Benjamin's son, was a boy barely a year older than she was. Drunk as a skunk, but Carmen expected no less from the son of a brewer. His manner was that of a sleepy shy boy and every word out of his mouth was perfumed with a strong smell of liquor.
Anne was strange. Pale and disturbing. Carmen knew from the moment Anne's eyes fell on the medal of the Virgin Mary around her neck that they were not going to get along very well. Strange thing, the Protestants. Carmen thought they all worshipped the same God, but apparently the Guinnesses' was more austere and rather duller.
And then there was Edward. Carmen didn't have to be the brightest to realise that this was Daddy's right-hand man. Always in business, always with his head in the brewery. Not even Benjamin was so obsessive about his beloved stout company.
Everyone despised her. It was clear to Carmen, from the moment she was introduced. They looked askance at her crucifixes and medals, sideways at her Spanish and French cut dresses. She knew they laughed at her accent when she spoke and thought that if they whispered, she wouldn't understand them. But she did.
She was as refined a lady as any Irish prude, if not more so. And they could all mock and ostracise her if they liked, but she knew they would gain nothing.
Literally, she knew it.
Because Benjamin told her about his will before he died. How he planned to divide the company without breaking it up, how he was going to carry on the family legacy. How he intended to "save" his younger children from the enormous burden of the fortune for which they were obviously not prepared.
"A well-timed slap in the face might have saved them sooner," she thought of telling him once.
Carmen's father would have been stricter. Don Ignacio did not believe in post mortem justice, but rather in settling things during life. Carmen's older brother, José Ignacio Hidalgo Villalba, inherited everything, a man of law and relations with the new establishment that was changing with the revolutions in modern Spain. An assured future in an uncertain future is achieved by being as stable as that future.
And for his sister Mariana, well.
If you go against your father, you're on the losing side. An affair, with a man from the south, a merchant. Carmen still remembers the bloodstains in the courtyard and Mariana's cries as they packed her up to take her to the convent.
Carmen's passivity was no surprise when Benjamin Lee Guinness asked for her hand and took her away from her home.
"What are you doing here?"
The voice snapped her out of her thoughts. The music room suddenly had a new presence. Tall and serious. Edward Guinness stands in the doorway. Country attire, not as refined as his suits and shirts for being in Dublin, in the brewery and the offices.
Carmen didn't bother to get up from her seat. Bray was hers, so the will said so.
"It's my house," she replied simply, "Do you like it?"
Edward made a noise of annoyance. He was always irritated. Carmen liked to compare him to a steam engine, or more often to a teapot about to burst.
He despised her, as did his siblings. This papist gold digger who had arrived in the last years of their father's life and had taken it upon herself to fill his head with fairies and nonsense. Now she gets to keep his childhood estate, an inordinate widow's allowance and a token share in the company.
For him, Carmen was a parasite. A blot on his plans for the future because now she had a say in decisions, just a little. She had come here, younger even than him, on his father's arm. A beautiful, radiant and rather wealthy young woman for what Edward expected from a country in turmoil as Spain was now.
Edward knew her best of the four Guinness brothers. He had spent the most time with her in Dublin during her marriage to her father. It was three years since he had arrived with his mischievous smiles and slurred English.
A viper, some had said.
A siren, according to Uncle Henry.
A bitch, as far as Arthur was concerned.
Edward’s jaw tightened. “It was my father’s house...” He stopped, as though to speak further would be indecorous.
She then crossed the carpet, glancing at the piano with the faintest smile.
“But it's mine now, isn't it? To my beloved wife, I leave the summer estate of Bray," she said with a tinkling accent, stretching out the a too long.
"It's pronounced Bray"
"It's the same thing" she said with a painted smile "You do understand me, don't you?"
Edward did not answer, standing stiffly in the doorway.
"Then you must understand it is mine now. Legally, wholly. A widow’s rights, I believe you call it.” She let her fingers trail across the closed lid of the instrument.
He flushed, half with anger, half with something he could not name. “You are mocking me.”
“Not at all.” Her eyes gleamed, enjoying his stiffness. “It is just… curious, how much you bristle when I remind you of the truth. Why should I not enjoy what is mine?”
He wanted to order her out, to reclaim the space, yet all he managed was: “You do not belong here.”
Carmen tilted her head, her smile deepening. “Oh, Edward. You will find I belong wherever I choose to stand.”
Edward stayed rooted where he stood, rigid as a column, watching her glide past him as though she owned not just the house but the air in it.
She paused by the window, fingers brushing the heavy curtains, as if inspecting them for dust. Then, as though suddenly bored with the room, she turned toward the door again and toward him.
He did not move aside.
For a moment, they stood barely a foot apart, his shoulders tense, her dark eyes calm and unblinking. The silence stretched, filled only by the faint ticking of the clock on the mantel.
Then Carmen smiled, in a soft, devastating way.
“You must not glare so at me, Edward. It gives you lines here.” She lifted a gloved hand, almost touching the corner of his eye, and he flinched back before she could.
She swept past him, skirts whispering against the doorframe, but just as she crossed the threshold she half-turned, looking over her shoulder.
“We should share dinner tonight,” she said lightly, as though they were not at daggers’ points. “Let me be a good host.”
And then she was gone, her footsteps fading down the corridor, leaving Edward staring after her, more unsettled than he cared to admit.
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The first chapter takes place only a couple of days after the events of the funeral and the will. Don't worry, I intend to follow the order of the series. But English is not my first language and I go a bit according to inspiration.
Let me know if you like it or what direction you think it will take. Im open to ideas and requests.
i just finished House of Guinness, who already saw it all knows why I AM SHOCKED AT THE ENDING- but apparently i finished it too early because the fanfictions for it aren't out yet
logging into tumblr and basically finding ZERO works for Edward x reader truly put dread in me i didn't think it was possible
now i'm waiting for all the wonderful and lovely fanfiction writers to become obsessed with this show cause the premises for another Peaky Blinders obsession wave ARE THERE‼️🫂
Any show about siblings who are dysfunctional yet stand by each other and love each other like their lives depend on it is automatically my favorite show
