Chapter 27
Xavier
If anything about this situation could be considered lucky, you could say that I’m in luck. Selena, who lives in London, is at her family’s estate this weekend. My take is that it feels an awful lot like the universe is conspiring against me.
The turn of the screw, if you like.
The Wentworths live in Gloucestershire, one county over from us.
Their place is only a forty-minute drive from Belvedere through the winding back roads of the Cotswolds.
I send a furtive text to Ivy, letting her know that I’ll be out for a few hours and can’t accompany her and Flora on a walk, but that they should count me in for the pub this evening.
My parents have just robbed me of four months of freedom, yet somehow it’s the smaller, immediate loss of a stroll through the fields and a relaxed pub lunch with Ivy that I feel more acutely as I drive away from the woman I had in my bed last night and towards the woman with whom I will soon, unimaginably, share a life.
You would be forgiven for assuming that the Wentworths’ country pad, Millbrook House, is a set piece, an impeccably staged advertisement for their staggeringly successful lifestyle brand.
And it is, in a way, or at least, it has become so over the years, as Wentworth has grown in both breadth of offering and international scale.
They bought the house two generations ago, I believe, when Selena’s grandfather was knighted for services to British industry.
Back then, it was a gentlemen’s coat manufacturer, but the expansion under Selena’s parents has been so apparently effortless that, with hindsight, its success seemed inevitable.
Millbrook is the perfect poster child, decked out for Christmas with just the right balance of taste and extravagance that has earned the family’s brand endless nods as the British Ralph Lauren—even if it is only the beginning of November.
I’m aware that the immense budget for the festive treatments the house and grounds are so graciously bearing has come from the Wentworth marketing department, as the house itself will host many a press event this Christmas.
Full brand immersion, Selena tells me it’s called.
Some of the most enjoyable chats by far with my fiancée have been discussing business strategy.
And the immersion idea is smart. Let their customers soak up Millbrook in all its tastefully curated glory, if it means that they believe a hundred-quid scented beeswax candle or six-hundred-quid cashmere sweater will get them one step closer to their aspirations. To this dream lifestyle.
It’s to that end that every conifer lining the sweeping gravel driveway is dressed with white fairy lights, that the bay trees flanking the front door in their oversized stone tubs bear flawless little red velvet bows, and that the wreath adorning said door is an abundant concoction of eucalyptus and mistletoe.
The Wentworths are selling the dream with aplomb at every turn.
My future wife answers the door herself.
I called ahead, of course, asking if I might drop by, and she, naturally, agreed.
As ever, she looks the perfect ambassador for her brand: dark hair pulled sleekly back; a fine camel-coloured polo neck and matching trousers showing off her slender figure; the family pearls in her ears.
Classic rather than ostentatious. She is, on paper, an equally perfect ambassador for our brand: for the dukedom of Oxford and the estate of Belvedere, and I marvel once more that my parents foresaw this.
She smiles at me as if she’s charmed to see her inattentive fiancé, and I dutifully step forward and kiss her on both cheeks.
The thing with Selena, you see, is that she never sets a foot wrong, and yet you can’t help but feel as though everything you get from her is precisely what she wants to give and not a jot more.
‘Sorry again for rocking up on such short notice,’ I say, bending to greet Rocco, the Wentworths’ beautifully trained and indecently photogenic chocolate Lab, with a good old rub of his jowls.
‘No need for apologies.’ She spins elegantly on the highly polished floor and heads in the direction of the drawing room. ‘Mummy and Daddy are thrilled. As am I, obviously,’ she adds, a little too quickly.
‘Obviously,’ I echo, my tone teasing.
‘Seriously. I think you’ve made Mummy’s day.’
I follow her through to the drawing room, noting without any interest whatsoever that her figure really is perfect and that I should be feeling a hell of a lot more invested than I am in the fact that she’ll be a sure thing once the bells ring in the new year.
Greetings—effusive on the part of Constance, Selena’s mother—are exchanged.
Rocco is made a fuss of and then bidden to sit nicely by the fire.
Tea is brought in and served on what I know to be Wentworth-branded china.
And finally, a pause announces itself with the subtlety that our mutual good breeding and well-honed conversational skills would suggest. It allows me to arrive at the real reason for my visit.
‘So, unfortunately my father’s prognosis isn’t looking so good,’ I begin, to a chorus of softly concerned oh dears and how terribles.
‘The doctors’ best guess is that he has three months left, if that.
And he has expressed that it would be his greatest wish’—I clear my throat—‘that Selena and I tie the knot before he passes. He says it would remove a great deal of stress for him, knowing that the line of succession is one step closer to being secured, and his and Ma’s preference is we move the wedding up to New Year’s Eve. ’
I address all three of them, but I’m looking at my future bride when I say the words.
Selena is one of the most studiedly implacable people I’ve ever encountered.
Her ability to keep up a facade is, quite frankly, staggering.
It’s also not a little unnerving, so I can’t resist throwing her a curveball in real time and watching how she handles it.
She goes utterly still. It’s less of a shocked freeze and more of an intentional lowering of the blinds until she’s been able to process my words and produce the most seemly reaction. Her face shutters to a calmly blank look, even as, next to her, her mother gasps.
‘New Year’s Eve? Why—that’s so soon!’
I incline my head in silent acknowledgment that, yes, it is far too fucking soon.
Constance’s reaction seems to galvanise Selena. ‘From the perspective of us marrying, I’d be happy to accommodate, of course,’ she tells me with a beatific smile. ‘I wish the circumstances weren’t what they are, but it’s no hardship to marry you sooner, darling.’
Never has an endearment sounded so utterly devoid of emotion. This is like The Age of fucking Innocence, where not a single person says what they’re actually thinking. I smile back at her, but it feels tight.
I’m not as good at this stuff as my future wife is.
‘The wedding itself…’ she continues in a thoughtful tone, and I have to hand it to her for not going full bridezilla upon being asked to accommodate a four-month advancement on an event that has already taken years plus a high-six-figure budget to organise.
‘Well, obviously there are a lot of moving parts, but there are very capable teams organising both the clothes and the events, so I don’t see why they can’t rise to the occasion like the professionals they are. ’
She drums her fingers on her thigh and licks her lips as she presumably works through the mental maths of it all.
‘It helps that the main features are indoor-focused, but we can obviously tweak some of them to match the New Year’s theme.
Fireworks on the lawn at midnight, et cetera.
I’ll have a sit-down with the events planners on Monday and we’ll send out a new Save the Date immediately.
I’m assuming our guests will be accommodating, given the circumstances. ’
That’s somewhat disingenuous. She’s alluding to my father’s state of health, but really, she knows that no one will turn down an invitation to the wedding of the decade, no matter how inconvenient the date.
I manage a warmer smile this time, even if, somewhere deep down, I was hoping she or her parents would push back. A Wentworth-led stay of execution was my only real hope.
‘Well, thank you for being so gracious about it all. I can’t imagine this is remotely good news for you. Flora was most concerned about your dress.’
She tilts her head prettily. ‘Ahh, dear Flora. What a sweetie! Please tell her she mustn’t worry. Dior has had it ready for weeks now, as they have hers.’
‘And David, Constance—you’re all right with it too?’ I ask her parents.
‘The most important thing is to honour your father’s wishes,’ Selena’s dad says with a firm nod. ‘Really, everything else is just details. I hope you know that we’re all on your side. You both have two great families fully behind you.’
Yes, we do.
That’s what I’m most afraid of.
Selena sees me out. As I shrug on my coat in the hallway, I turn to her.
‘I’m truly sorry to blindside you like that. It can’t have been good news. You handled it like a champ.’
She seems genuinely taken aback by my words. ‘There’s nothing to handle, Xavier. Logistics, yes. But nothing else. We’ve spent our entire lives knowing this was going to happen. Moving it forward a few months doesn’t change anything.’
It’s the oddest thing, but I feel simultaneously close to her and light-years away.
In many ways, I barely know her, yet she’s the only other person who knows how it feels to face this…
arranged future. Transactional, even. My mates don’t understand.
They think I’m deranged to be going along with it, even while they rate my fiancée highly in the basest, most shallow of ways.
It seems doubly cruel that Selena should have to bear this as well as me.
‘Are you sure?’ I whisper urgently. ‘Are you really, really sure about all this?’
She blinks and stands up straighter. I’m giving her an out, attempting to forge a level of trust here that will engender some honesty from her, but if anything, she looks affronted. ‘I’m perfectly sure. Is there something I need to know?’
That takes me aback. ‘No—of course not. No. I just—I just wanted to check in. I realise I rather put you on the spot in there, in front of your parents.’
The perfect smile is back in place. ‘Well, I appreciate it. But you know you don’t have to worry about me. I’m all in. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to take a run through the wedding spreadsheet and work out our highest priorities, logistically speaking.’
‘Of course.’ I kiss her lightly, respectfully, on both cheeks and wonder for the millionth time how she and I are ever going to feel relaxed enough around each other to attempt the intimacy that procreating will necessitate.
As I drive back down Millbrook’s beautiful driveway, I’m reminded anew of my own double standards. Lord knows, I made a judgmental fuss around Ivy’s previous career. And I have my reasons for marrying Selena: loyal, noble, dutiful reasons.
But the transactional nature of this particular relationship leaves anything Ivy’s done looking downright authentic.