Chapter 24
Ivy
Ihaven’t felt this safe in a long time. Not in the years since Dad died, and definitely not since Dawn’s dementia gathered pace.
It’s not easy to feel safe when you’re responsible for everyone else, and it’s even harder when your flimsy front door opens directly onto the dodgy Harrow Road.
Bill may have added a couple of big deadlocks, but still, it always feels like an unconvincing barrier between me and the twins and the real world outside.
There was none of that last night. Knowing that the girls were (hopefully) safe, if not comfortable, in their tents helped, of course, as did knowing that Dawn was in the hands of professionals.
But I suspect it was more to do with the atomic bomb of an orgasm Xavier delivered and even more to do with the fact that he held me pretty much all night.
It’s been a few years since I spent the night with a guy. I’m used to lying in bed alone with all those anxious, spiralling voices in my head getting louder and louder and only my secret song to comfort me. Because I’m so bloody busy during the day, the loneliness is far, far worse at night.
I don’t like being on my own. I don’t like feeling isolated.
I’m not afraid of hard work—far from it—but it helps to know we have a bit of a support network around us, I suppose.
Bill and Jan. Our neighbour, Anne. The twins’ form teacher, Miss Grey, who’s been fantastic at keeping an eye on their wellbeing.
But, at the end of the day, I can’t overly rely on these good people. I’m a grown-up, and I have to pull my finger out and get on with it and stand on my own two feet like a big girl.
None of my problems have gone away. Oh no, they’ll all be waiting for me tomorrow evening when I get back to London.
But for now, they feel a bit fainter. More distant.
The here and now is this beautiful man and this actual four-poster bed and this idyllic stately home that’s the ultimate hideaway. The ultimate escape from real life.
More to the point, Xavier is everything I didn’t know I’d been missing.
On the odd occasion, one of the twins has snuck into bed with me, but they’re more likely to squeeze into each other’s beds than go to anyone else for comfort, even me.
So I’ve missed actual human body warmth, and it turns out I’d totally forgotten how incredible it feels.
It feels particularly incredible when the person in your bed is a gorgeous hunk of manhood with smooth skin, and soft body hair, and sculpted muscles, and a scent that makes you want to snort him like a line of coke.
I woke up a couple of times in the night and mainly marvelled at the sensation of lying there in his arms. At the simple pleasure of skin on skin.
At the joy of feeling the rhythmical rise and fall of his chest behind me.
Usually, when I wake up at three a.m., it’s with my heart racing and thoughts spiralling into outright catastrophe.
It’s absolutely not with my brain feeling all dreamy and swoony and cosy.
‘What would you like to do today?’ he asks me from the next pillow. ‘It’s a gorgeous morning.’ We’ve just had slow, deep morning sex so intense that he has my bite marks in his shoulder to prove it, and his postcoital grin is lazy and mischievous.
He looks exactly how I feel: blissed out and thoroughly fucked.
I smile back at him, stretching under the covers like a happy little kitten.
The fact that I have fuck all chores to do today is insane in itself.
No panicked dashes to Sports Direct because the girls are transitioning to hockey on Monday and forgot to tell me that they need mouth guards and shin pads and the rest of it.
No arguments over homework. No squeezing in extra morning shifts at the caff while the twins sleep. No visits to Dawn.
Okay, so the last one gives me a twinge of guilt, but the point is that I am officially obligation-free in the most beautiful place on earth, and that’s a pretty big win.
(As is the fact that I started my day with a most excellent orgasm.)
‘I dunno.’ I stroke my fingers over his very nice pec. ‘Whatever Flora wants, I suppose. What do you recommend?’
He shrugs. ‘The world is our oyster. We could go for a nice walk and find a pub lunch—the pub a couple of villages away is known for its pies. Go for a drive. See more of the estate—we’ve got an indoor pool in the old tithe barn if you fancy a swim.
You could keep going with your painting.
Find a sunny corner and curl up with a book. Whatever you like, really.’
I feel like he’s talking dirty to me. This is my new kink, having a gorgeous, naked man whisper phrases like pub lunch and curl up with a book.
I want to do all of it. Every single thing.
I feel like crying at the thought that this day won’t last forever, that I’ll have to choose between all these fancy, rich-girl indulgences.
I want to wallow in this idyllic corner of England and never, ever leave.
I never want to see needles or used condoms or human shit on the pavement again.
I want to pretend places as skanky as the Harrow Road don’t even exist.
I want to pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Just for one more day and one more night.
‘Um, any of it. All of it. A walk and pub lunch sounds good? I don’t have wellies, though. And I think Flora mentioned going to the pub tonight, too.’
Flora more than mentioned it. She roped me in.
She wants to go to some pub nearby—in the village that her family pretty much still owns, from the sounds of it—because it’s where the gardening staff hang out.
I have no idea how she’ll pull off a flirtation with some hot under-gardeners if Xavier is hanging around, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.
I’m sure I can distract him.
‘Bringing wellies to this place would be like bringing coals to Newcastle. We have dozens of pairs. And she’s probably talking about the Lamb and Staff.
The pie pub is the Stonemason’s Arms. Different villages, different pubs.
I’m confident we have the mettle to do both.
’ He stretches contentedly, rolling onto his back and tucking his hand behind his head, and I wonder why I suddenly find a dark thatch of underarm hair so erotic.
‘I agree. I’m hardcore.’
‘Do you know what time you’re due to head off tomorrow?’ Xavier asks. ‘I could drive you both back, if you want. I’m happy to spend a night in London.’ He pauses and glances my way out of the corner of his eye. ‘I don’t know if you have any plans tomorrow night, but…’
He leaves it hanging, and I swear I feel a rip in my heart.
This is so crazy. He’s engaged to some beautiful aristocrat, for fuck’s sake, and I have so much shit going on in my life that I may as well have RUN FOR YOUR LIFE tattooed across my forehead.
This was supposed to be sex—scratching an itch—and it is.
Xav and I have scratched some truly excellent itches in the past twenty-four hours.
But here he is, tactfully and charmingly suggesting we keep going with it, when taking ‘us’ out of this little rural bubble and transporting it back to London is categorically, one hundred percent impossible.
‘I’d love to,’ I say as gently as I can, because duh. Ain’t that the truth? ‘But I can’t. I have a… family commitment.’
He shakes his head quickly. Too quickly. ‘Not a problem. Don’t give it a second thought. I don’t know much about your family, except for your stepmother being a retired librarian. Want to tell me about them?’
When telling the truth is absolutely not on the cards, the only option is to give him another form of truth. ‘There is literally nothing I would rather talk about less right now than my family situation.’
That gets me a dry chuckle. He rolls towards me again. ‘Fair enough. Families are tricky.’
‘Yeah. Tell me about it. Your own situation seems pretty… messy? Or maybe it’s super tidy, I dunno.
’ Maybe having a fully arranged and totally loveless marriage lined up is precisely the kind of tidy solution he values in life.
I don’t know him well enough to say. In fact, the only thing that does surprise me, given what I know about him, is that he’s jumped into bed with me quite so happily.
‘Meaning…?’
‘Meaning that your dad’s dying, bless him, and you’re about to inherit his title and everything that goes along with it, and meaning the elephant in the room, obviously, which is that you’re engaged to be married.’
I don’t mention that I find it odd and a little creepy that, somewhere in this cavernous house, the duke is hiding away in his hospital room with his nurses and drips and whatever else, while the rest of them carry on drinking and horse-riding and fucking like nothing else is going on.
Xavier purses his lips in what looks like displeasure—not at me, necessarily, but at the situation.
‘It’s all part of the life. Part of the service. The contract, if you like.’
I screw up my face in confusion. ‘What contract?’
‘The contract we members of the nobility make with our various stakeholders from birth. It’s a contract based on assumptions and mutual responsibility. In previous centuries, the nobility has helped the monarch to govern, but now we have national and local government functions for that, obviously.’
I nod, not sure where this is going. I’m absolutely not about to tell him that, even if Dawn loved her Kate and Wills mug before she threw it at my head and even if I’m partial to a cheeky leaf through Jan’s Hello!
or OK! when I’m on my break, I’m really not a royalist. I mean, they’re cute and fucked up and pointless in equal measure.
We may all love a spot of pageantry, but it doesn’t mean we enjoy paying out of pocket for it, and it definitely doesn’t mean we need a monarchy.
Which presumably means we don’t need these endless layers of aristocracy, either.
Lovely though this weekend is, it hasn’t done anything except confirm that they all live charmed lives, sitting around on their arses while burning through endless inherited money.
‘We still have important functions as landowners, though,’ he continues, ‘and patronage and charitable works and commercial development all play a big part. But my point is that the gilded cage you see around you is just that—a cage. You don’t get the splendour without the responsibility.
With privilege comes great civic duty. My life is not really my own. ’
I work very hard to resist rolling my eyes.
Come on, he’s hot and charming and sweet.
He seems well-meaning, if a little self-important, but, the creepy arranged marriage aside, I honestly don’t see anything that tells me his life is not his own.
These de Veres are a bunch of hedonists.
Benedict is the worst of them, obviously, and Flora could do with loosening the apron strings a bit if she wants to really let loose and enjoy her privilege, but Xavier seems to operate on a long leash.
Flora has mentioned that he works really hard, though fuck knows on what, but his life seems pretty golden to me.
Yeah, he may need to show up to the odd board meeting at his various charities and trusts, but it all feels…
fluffy. I suspect the guy has zero clue what real graft looks like, and, desperately ill though his dad is, they all seem to have delegated that unpleasantness pretty fully.
I’d bet his form of caregiving doesn’t stretch to wiping your parent’s arse because they can’t remember how to wipe it themselves or doing a two a.m. dash to comfort them because you’ve had a call from their care home that they’re sundowning again.
‘That all sounds very important,’ I mumble, not sure if I mean it or not.
He shrugs. ‘You may think so, you may not. But for me it’s non-negotiable.
It’s what I was born into, and I’ll accept that weight gladly when I have to succeed my father.
’ He pauses and licks his lips. When he speaks again, it’s gentler.
‘Including committing to a woman I don’t love for the rest of my life. ’