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It would be so simple to say yes, so Henry decided why not.  He finally relented. "You know actually I might take you up on that." Ellie couldn't believe, but before she could celebrate properly, he reminded her.  "It would be nice to accompany you as a good partner just as I am about to mail off the court filing.  It would probably be wish if we looked like we were getting along while the tabloids go crazy over our coupling."

It wasn't quite the reaction Ellie had wanted as she thought of what the media would say about them with trepidation, but, it was better than nothing from Henry at all.  He had said yes, that was enough for her so she turned to the house. "I still need to call Nona and tell him what has happened with our family. I will probably give him choice over what he would like to take from the inheritance.  I will probably ask Lopez what would be appropriate for me to give Nolan. But, I'm sure he will want to see what houses are available. I'm sure he will be bittersweet about this whole thing." She looked back at Henry who looked like he was about to follow her.  "Is it alright if I spend the rest of the say on my own instead of together like we planned? I need to visit an old friend from my childhood. She's here in the city, according to what my other friends have told me. I don't mind you meeting her, but with recent events, there are a lot of family things I would like her help with understanding."

Henry looked confused, but then just stiffened his emotions to cold indifference as he moved to give her space to go without him.  "Why would I want to go with you? It's a personal friend. You are free to come and go as you please. If she is a good friend, don't worry about using my credit card to pay.  Any friend of yours is also mine. I do enjoy your friends, I like seeing you happy while you here. But, I do understand as in this is a place that you'd rather not have everyone exposed to.  It's alright. I'm sure I'll meet her another time."

"Those are my thoughts exactly.  Thank you for understanding." She tried to give him a hug, but he was frozen.  Ellie just kissed his cheek and left. Henry was weird. The friend was a childhood friend from Rochester whom she had just wanted to reconnect with to ask questions about her childhood.  Sometimes she wondered if Henry was meeting her friends as an effort to find someone he liked before she left her. If a relationship did happen between Henry and her friend, she wondered whether she could accept it and move back?  It wasn't like they were getting much closer. Even if she had invited Helen here, just to talk to her, it probably wouldn't have made much difference.

It had been a long time since Ellie had taken the subway by herself.  She had decided to decline on Michael's offer of driving her as she wanted to keep her independence.  She liked to think that if she wanted to she could just walk away from everything, as she thought about the mess she had left behind at the Wong Building.  She still felt unsure about her sudden coming into so much money. Although a lot of perks had come, as in she didn't have to go back to racing professionally or head back to college -- to think she was filling an ancestral role was strange to her.  To think such a position was something she was going to hold for the rest of her life and pass on to her children was still something she had trouble accepting. Maybe it was because she had become an adult somewhere there was no aristocracy. Still, Ellie knew that it would be a challenge to generate enough revenue to cover the costs of running Stanford Hall.  It was a complicated affair as it was both a public museum that needed to bring in visitor and her house that she would like to live in.

It had also been perplexing that she had suddenly to learn about farming and land usage.  She wished that she had taken some classes in agriculture in her time in college. Ellie also wished that she had spent more than just her primary school years in English.  Although it was anxiety inducing to think of all the things she had to do, it would be something she would have a lot of help in tacking. It was of more concern to her as to how Henry was feeling now that he had unintentionally become an English baron by marrying her.  As much as her new titles were a shock to her, they were to him.

It had been such a long time that Ellie had come to a coffee shop and she found it to be a lot less enchanting as she had found it when she had been in college.  The place was busy and filled with people who quickly wanted their order and leaving. It took only a couple minutes for a spot to open up and Ellie to save it for her guest.  She was trying to filter out the harsh sounds of people finding with a book she had been trying to finish for a couple days now when she heard someone sliding into the bench on the other side of the table.  She was about to say something foul when she saw her friend, Helen, smiling with her fingerless gloves around an open cup of coffee. The smell was peppermint which instantly calmed Ellie as she looked into her friend's warm eyes.  Helen had one arm in a sling which Ellie remembered had come to be so because of her friends crazy decision to parachute. The parachute had not deployed correctly so Helen had been unable to use her arm for a couple months. But she was still chipper as she spoke about how annoyed she was that she could not work as a graphic designer for a while as her left hand was impossible to train.  "Cat got your tongue, Ellie? I thought you were going to bring your Henry with you when you came to see me? What's the change in plans?"