Chapter 4
Xavier
Everyone at my birthday party appears to be having a far better time than I am, which I know is a direct foreshadowing of how I will feel at my wedding.
Our wedding, I mean.
Mine and Selena’s.
God help us both.
Objectively speaking, my fiancée may just be the most beautiful woman here tonight.
She’s undeniably stunning. Not for Lady Selena Wentworth the bourgeois compromise of rented threads.
Rather, she’s in a custom gown from Wentworth, her family’s eponymous luxury goods empire.
It’s light pink and works very well with her pale skin and shiny, nut-coloured hair and amber eyes.
She has impeccable breeding, and impeccable taste, and she leaves me utterly cold.
Is this how it’ll be for the rest of my life? Standing by Selena’s side in relative joylessness, observing from behind an invisible veil as our friends gorge themselves stupid on the bountiful fruits of the de Vere family’s hospitality?
It is wonderful to see all my old mates, of course.
I have to admit that my brother’s done an admirable job of rallying the troops.
The invitation was extended strictly to the under-forties.
No old fogeys welcome. The younger generations have flocked to the revelry from across Europe with the unwavering orientation of migratory birds.
They’re mainly nobility or minor royals: friends from school or distant relatives.
My old pal from Eton, Pieter van Praag, whose family dates back to the time of the Burgundian Empire, has rocked up with his band of tall, blond brothers and some gorgeous socialite hangers-on whom they probably picked up in Monaco or Montenegro this summer.
Those guys always have an entourage. Some of Selena’s polished, well-bred girlfriends from her time at Le Rosey are here with boyfriends and husbands, but my and Benedict’s mates are undoubtedly wilder than hers, more hedonistic.
‘They really should have set the bar up further away from the Rubens,’ my fiancée murmurs beside me, wafting her ostrich feather fan and observing as one of the mixologists throws a shaker around with unnecessary abandon in front of frolicking nudes of incalculable value.
I turn and give her a smile that’s as relieved as it is grateful. Whatever deficit of feeling I have for my future wife, comments like this give me reassurance.
We’re in this together.
Have been since birth.
And she gets it. She understands that a position like the dukedom is a matter of stewardship, not ownership.
That Belvedere is, above all else, to be preserved.
That its extraordinary beauty and priceless contents must live on for generation upon generation.
If nothing else, I’m unshakable in my confidence that Selena will be a perfect partner with whom to captain this ship.
The music tonight is excellent, I must say. My brother has leaned into the Grosvenor theme with a string quartet that’s really getting into the show’s famous arrangements of pop classics. They’re currently playing ‘Bad Guy’, and both the musicians and our friends are going for it big time.
Despite myself, I tap my foot to the beat and look out at the crowd on the dance floor.
Everyone has made a tremendous effort. What is it about the upper classes and our love of a good costume?
I suppose it’s been going on for centuries.
The debauchery surrounding James I’s masques was legendary.
There are probably still bodily fluids secreted under the floorboards at Hampton Court Palace.
The ballroom at Belvedere is a room we don’t use much.
Of course, in my forefather Walter’s time, that was the entire point.
As Edith Wharton mused in The Age of Innocence, having the wherewithal to justify an entire room that was sequestered for three hundred and sixty-four days a year was the ultimate status symbol, whichever side of the pond you were on.
Indeed, for most of the year, this room is closed up, blinds down to protect the Old Masters.
Bit of a shame, really. Though Ben and I did have a marvellous time of it riding our bikes up and down here on rainy days when we were boys.
One of the Chippendale chairs still has a gash on its leg from where he careened into it, I believe.
But tonight, the room is alive, and it’s beautiful.
The chandeliers are off, the enormous silver candelabra, liberated for the evening from their exclusive prison adjacent to the kitchens, the only light in here.
It would be easy enough to allow oneself to believe that we really are back in that chaotic period of a severely maladjusted king and his prince regent, even if this physical version of Belvedere didn’t exist back then.
The dance floor is candy floss spun from twirling pastels and silks and wigs, while the dances our friends are doing are grossly anachronistic.
I don’t remember seeing any twerking on Grosvenor, or reading about it in my ancestors’ diaries, for that matter.
Thank fuck Flora is in London this weekend and oblivious to our antics.
There’s no way I’d let our mates get anywhere near her.
I haven’t forgotten my brother’s threat to invite along the whole of Alchemy, nor have I forgotten my attempt to forbid it.
But, as the temperature rises on the dance floor from amiable flirting to vertical foreplay, I wonder if he hasn’t somehow snuck a few randoms in.
I certainly don’t recognise everyone in here, though it’s difficult to tell when everyone is in their Regency disguises.
And, given he encouraged me to head out for a long tour of the estate this afternoon with the head gardener, I haven’t had much insight into how he and the events team he hired have pulled all this together.
Speak of the devil. Benedict glides up to us, looking particularly pleased with himself. If I were wearing fake sideburns as farcical as his, I wouldn’t be quite so smug.
‘Come on, Slinks. Let’s boogie.’ He grabs Selena’s hand. ‘Can’t have the hottest woman in here standing on the sidelines while everyone else is getting down and dirty to Billie Eilish. It’s fucking criminal.’
To my surprise, my fiancée flushes and goes with it.
I’ll never understand her relationship with my brother.
She wouldn’t entertain that kind of talk from anyone else, but somehow he gets away with it.
I think it’s because he’s so ridiculous that she takes it at face value: shameless, harmless flirting that means absolutely nothing.
He grins at her. ‘That’s my girl. Hang on a sec, darling.’ He leans in towards me and hisses in my ear. ‘The lilac bedroom. Now. Go. You can thank me later.’
Decorating—and defining—the eighteen primary bedrooms at Belvedere using the estate’s flowers and plants is a longstanding tradition for which we have, once again, Annabel de Vere to thank.
My mother has always thought it enchanting.
I have no view except to find it tritely convenient.
I trudge upstairs, unsure what the hell my diabolical brother is playing at but finding my tread lightening as I move away from the noise and towards the relative quiet.
As I advance intrepidly down the corridor, I notice Grosvenor signs hanging from some of the doors.
Lord knows what that’s all about, but it wouldn’t surprise me if my brother has arranged for some of the bedrooms to be kept free for fuck fests.
That’s just the way his mind works. A faint but unmistakable moan from behind one door seems like all the confirmation I need.
I reach the lilac room, identifiable by the enamel lilac plate on the door, and halt when I see that its sign is turned to Do Not Disturb. I knock.
‘Come in,’ a female voice calls softly, and I frown to myself as I turn the brass doorknob.
The room beyond is dimly lit. It has, unfortunately, taken its theme seriously and is unrelentingly lilac.
But I don’t notice that, because a woman is standing by the window, looking out over the floodlit grounds.
She’s slim, wearing a long, pale blue dress, and it’s light enough for me to see that the hair piled into a historically convincing updo is strawberry blonde.
I clear my throat. ‘Hi. Um—I was told to come up here by—’
She turns around, and my breath catches in my throat.
I’ve never seen her before.
I’m sure of that.
I’d remember.
She’s lovely. Lovely. Pale-skinned and luminous, somehow, and Jesus—that’s a lot of skin on display north of her neckline. I swallow.
‘Close the door,’ she says softly. She sounds uncertain, which she probably should be, because she’s in my house and she’s giving me orders.
‘Who are you?’ I ask, aiming for polite rather than confrontational, which I’ve been told I can be. But she has me at a disadvantage, and I don’t like that. It may explain why my heart is hammering away beneath the laughable armour of this costume.
She doesn’t answer, but she jerks her head towards the open door behind me. ‘Please, sir.’
I suck in a ragged breath. I’m called sir every day, of course, by every member of staff in this estate, and it doesn’t particularly register. But she says it awkwardly, and I have no idea if she knows who I am or if she’s just playing into this Regency dynamic.
I kick the door shut without turning around.
While she’s leading with her extraordinary breasts, she is a timeless beauty.
And I don’t mean like my fiancée. Selena is a marble statue; this woman is well and truly alive.
Sections of hair fall in charming rose-gold tendrils around her face, her skin looks so, so soft, and her cheeks are flushed.
Don’t get me started on her eyes, which are fucking huge, or her mouth, which looks like the inside of a perfectly ripe fig.
I know, I just know, that if I were to suck on that full upper lip of hers, it would be every bit as soft and wet and delicious as said fig.
‘Do you know who I am?’ I ask, trying to sound neutrally curious and not like a monumental twat.
She nods once.
‘Good.’ I lick my lips. I have no earthly idea what is going on here, but my blood is coursing hotly through my veins, and I feel vital, human, for the first time all blessed evening. ‘Then I’ll ask you again: who are you?’
Another few steps from her and she’s no more than a couple of feet away from me.
I gaze down at her, my eyes flickering over her upturned face, at that indecent mouth and guileless eyes and prettily flushed cheeks.
She’s a little Fragonard shepherdess. She should be frolicking on a swing, immortalised at The Frick or The Wallace Collection.
Instead, she’s standing in front of me.
She gives me a little smile—her first—but she still doesn’t answer me. I watch, in what feels like slow motion or an epic fucking trip, as she lifts one hand up to push the opposite sleeve off its porcelain shoulder and then does the same with the other.
I’m vaguely aware of my lips parting and my dick stiffening even as my brain wades through treacle in a vain attempt to catch up.
She hooks her fingers into the precariously low neckline of her dress and shoves it down.
I let out a shocked, strangled sound as her magnificent, magnificent breasts come into full display, all creamy plumpness and taut nipples that resemble the prettiest pink snowberries, and holy fuck.
My dick thumps against these ridiculous breeches like one of our spaniels demanding attention, and my mouth waters.
It’s only then that she speaks.
‘Your brother sent me up here. I’m your birthday present, sir.’