Chapter 25
Xavier
Men of honour are entitled to a little dishonourable conduct on the side. You could argue it’s obligatory if you’re to sustain a lifetime of unrelenting duty.
It’s practically a de Vere family motto, and it’s my comfort every time I berate myself for taking up with Ivy like this.
The behaviour of the Dukes of Oxford has, over the generations, modified in accordance with changing societal norms. Go back even a century and the unspoken quid pro quo was that an arranged marriage got you as many mistresses as you could handle on the side.
I choose to believe that Walter didn’t partake of this benefit. In my mind, he and Alice were blissfully happy and far too engrossed in their epic project of reimagining Belvedere for him to bother with any more carnally minded endeavours.
My father has, over the years, made several thinly veiled allusions to the fact that his father had a few women on the side, of various levels of respectability.
But I’m almost certain that he’s been faithful to Ma on that front.
My parents were promised to each other from a tender age—not quite as tender as Selena and I, mind you—and from this strategic alliance has come, as far as I can tell, much happiness and genuine affection.
Theirs isn’t the stuff of fairytales—I wouldn’t be able to cite a single instance of having seen them ‘loved up’ over the years—but it’s a good, solid partnership.
On all the fronts that count when raising a family and running a large dukedom, they’ve been a team, and I know Ma will genuinely grieve Pa when he’s passed.
It is precisely this precedent that has allowed me to feel remotely hopeful about what Selena and I can achieve together when our time comes.
What more can you ask for in life than good health and longevity, happy children, and a mate who is unerringly on your team?
This is what contentedness comprises, surely?
The rational. The strategic balance of a well-planned life that’s lived with one who shares your values and your priorities.
The kind of life that you structure around your purpose.
Ecstasy is a very different thing. Ecstasy does not a contented life portend. It’s heady and dazzling, sunlight catching a mirror in a blinding flash. It’s so mercurial and impermanent, in fact, that it may be an illusion from start to finish.
I have always grasped this; I’ve made my peace with it.
I understand that they’re mutually exclusive, ecstasy and contentment.
I understand, even, that pursuing one will likely rob you of your chance for the other.
And my choice has always been clear, even if it’s not one I’ve consciously made.
There’s been no single moment where I’ve chosen the contentment that comes from living your values and purpose over any other more fleeting delights.
It’s simply the way I am.
And yet.
And yet.
I drink in the sight of Ivy, lying back against a stack of pillows in my home, undone and bare-breasted and golden and radiant in the morning sunlight, and I swear that, if I permitted myself, I would see an entirely different world, a different future, a different galaxy, in which everything orbited around this woman: ecstasy, certainly, and bone-deep joy, and the kind of profundity that ignores the barriers of class and values and expectations we have so fastidiously constructed for ourselves.
It’s the most dangerous kind of navel-gazing, allowing yourself to contemplate an alternate universe.
It’s Pandora’s box; it’s the big red button marked DO NOT PRESS, the locked door marked NO ENTRY.
All of which make it, of course, a spectacularly bad idea.
I’m not an indulgent man. I don’t entertain impossible possibilities—that phrase alone should tell you what a supremely bad idea it is to engage with that kind of thinking.
But then I have the clearest vision, if you like, a vision so full of clarity that it feels more like a premonition, and it is this:
Ivy, lying back against these same pillows in this same house, topless, just as she is now, hair dishevelled, nursing an infant.
My child.
In this vision, she is the Madonna. A queen among women. Among mothers. She is the culmination of everything that nature and nurture and evolution and culture have taught men to crave at its most base and its most elevated: the most perfect, luscious, decadent embodiment of maternity.
And it wallops the air from my lungs so completely that I cannot breathe.
She doesn’t notice. Thank God.
‘Help me understand,’ she says instead of commenting, even though the impact of the emotional sucker punch I’ve just taken must surely be embedded like a tractor tyre print all over my face.
It’s with supreme effort that I wade through mental layers of mud and reeds just as thick and clogging as that time in the lake with my brother until I’m in shallow enough waters to understand that she’s referencing my engagement to Selena.
She misinterprets my silence and shoots me a cheeky smile. ‘I’m not being a stalker. I’m not asking you to dump her and marry me, obviously. I just want to know how the hell you’re okay with something like this.’
I sigh inwardly and nod outwardly, because it’s more than a fair question. I’m assuming she, like me, only knows casual sex, even if our reasons for evading true intimacy are very different.
And so I do my best to explain, haltingly and inarticulately, the reasons I’m at peace with a decision that may seem to her so extreme, so antiquated, as to belong in a different century.
I reference our ancestors. Ma and Pa. I speak in generalisations—the long-held belief of the upper classes that we should matchmake our heirs as intentionally as we breed our horses—and in specifics that aren’t common knowledge, even if they’re widely debated by the tabloids and the society rags.
My mother would be horrified if she knew I was airing our dirty laundry with anyone outside of our watertight social circle, but, for whatever reason, I trust Ivy implicitly.
Also, I’ve spent the past twenty-four hours ravaging her body. Call me old-fashioned, but I feel as though I owe her an explanation in lieu of any pretence that this thing between us has a future in the reality we inhabit.
‘Our fathers were best friends from prep school, and the families have had ties for a long time. When they both got married, our mothers got very close, too. It was a dream for the mums, apparently, that they’d have kids and the kids would marry.’
I clear my throat and permit myself to slide my fingers through her hair.
Only on Ivy could bedhead look so Bardot-esque.
‘But when my grandfather died, the estate wasn’t in great shape.
The inheritance tax nearly took us under.
The Wentworths stepped in with a kind of mates’ rates loan’—an extremely large one—‘and it very much saved the day. That stays between us, obviously.’
I pause, because her mouth has fallen open.
‘You’re not saying what I think you’re saying.’
‘Which is what?’
‘That they put you up as… collateral, or whatever they call it. Like, that you marrying Selena was part of the bargain.’
She’s not entirely incorrect. I grimace.
‘In a way. My grandfather passed before I was born—I missed him by five months. But he died suddenly, from a heart attack, so Pa was scrambling to get funds in place before the inheritance taxes hit. The engagement was mooted as a wouldn’t it be nice kind of thing.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we ended up having a girl to marry your heir, now that the two families’ fortunes are so intertwined? ’
She scrambles up onto one elbow, staring down at me in horror, and I make a genuinely valiant effort to keep my eyes on her face. ‘Fuck me. So it was a kind of blackmail? Tell me you paid off the loan. It’s not going to bite you in the arse again when your dad dies, is it?’
I’m not sure how to make her understand, and I have a moment of realisation that any explanation I give will sound like we’re in the Mob.
Perhaps the Mafia and the aristocracy aren’t so dissimilar after all.
After all, their priorities are the same as ours.
Family. Bloodlines. Territory. I’m even facing an arranged marriage, for fuck’s sake.
But I’d like to think our MO is less violent and more lawful than theirs—these days, anyway.
I press on. ‘I can see why it looks that way to you. And no, thanks. We’re in much better shape than we were. Ben and I redesigned the entire structure of the De Vere Estate to ensure adequate revenue streams to cover death duties, so there are no pressing problems there.
‘It’s more a matter of seeking out and building alliances, you see.
The Wentworths’ actions were a sign of faith in our relationship.
The great families of this country have a long history of building dynastic alliances.
It’s what the squirearchy does. You’re stronger, and safer, and more prosperous, together.
And a marriage cements those bonds even further, because it strengthens each party’s faith in the longevity of the relationship. ’
She’s frowning. ‘That’s nice for your parents. But it’s shit for you. What do you get out of it?’
It seems I’ve done a pitiful job with my explanation.
‘My job, as the man who’ll inherit this entire estate, with all the tens of thousands of people we employ across the Oxford area, is to do every last thing I can to preserve and steward and build upon it.
Everything. It’s the price I pay for this inordinate privilege, and I’d never begrudge it.
Cut it any way you like, but the Wentworths and the de Veres being intermarried makes us stronger.
The Wentworths’ wealth is far more liquid than ours, and the de Veres’ reach is far greater and better established.
I think it’s a jolly elegant solution, frankly. ’
I don’t much care for the defensive note that crept into my tone at the end there. It seems the condemned man doth protest too much.
‘Why should it all fall on you, though? Why can’t Benedict marry Selena?
Is there a son you could fob Flora off on?
’ I raise my eyebrows at her somewhat aggressive suggestions, and she sighs.
‘Obviously I’m joking about Flora. The last thing the poor girl needs in all her sad celibacy is an arranged marriage to some posh chinless wonder.
But your brother seems to get a whole lot of privilege without any of the martyrdom you’re facing, doesn’t he? ’
Of course that’s the way she’d see it. She’d see Benedict as the fortunate escapee and me as the beleaguered heir, when, in fact, I’m more of a crusader in my own mind. That somewhat grandiose term aside, this is my calling, and it’s an important one.
‘You’re getting it all wrong. It’s a privilege to be in my position.
I’ve been in training for this role since birth.
Standing in the shoes of my forefathers and taking on the mantle of nine hundred years of service to my country?
It’s my entire life’s purpose. My brother’s the unfortunate one, in my book. ’
She presses her lips together. Shakes her head. Don’t know if she thinks I’m pathetic or simply deluded.
‘What?’
‘No. There isn’t a single thing I can say to that that doesn’t sound rude, so I’m not going to say anything.
I’m sure it’s just because I’m really common, but I don’t get it.
I think you’re fucking barmy.’ She slides her hand down my chest and over my stomach, and my abs flutter at the pleasure of her touch.
‘What are you doing?’
She sighs again and wraps her hand around my semi-hard dick. ‘Well, clearly you’re hell-bent on a life without love or sexual pleasure, so the least I can do is give you a tit wank. Now, how do you want me?’