Chapter 29
Xavier
Ipride myself on my willing adherence to duty.
It’s a character trait I’ve cultivated as purposefully as my ancestors cultivated their prized ferns a hundred or so years ago.
From an early age, I’ve steeped myself in learning about the de Veres’ history, in studying the individuals who have stewarded this family through centuries of headwinds, from the foibles of each monarch and the endless pendulum of their preferences for certain religions to agricultural blights and local uprisings.
I’d like to think I’ve reflected on their mistakes as well as their successes and drawn equally from both in strategising on how I plan to take the dukedom of Oxford forward.
Given all this, you would think I’d take a small adjustment in the date of my nuptials on the chin.
Such a minor thing in the scheme of things.
In the annals of our history. Yet my father’s carefully phrased demand has all but winded me, and I’d be grotesquely lacking in self-awareness if I didn’t admit to myself that the impact of this setback has very little to do with my fiancée and everything to do with Ivy.
I’m on borrowed time with her; I realise that.
I’m playing a dangerous game; I realise that, too.
What the actual fuck I’m doing, messing around with another woman when I’m this close to marrying, I have no clue. I tell myself it’s a bachelor swan song, a last dalliance, but I’m delusional.
It’s Ivy.
If I hadn’t met her, I wouldn’t have looked at another woman. I would have felt no burning desire to sow those last few oats. I would, in all likelihood, have made peace with my impending marriage and committed to focusing my energies on building intimacy with my wife once the rings were exchanged.
I could have told myself this weekend that I was trying to get Ivy out of my system, but we all know that’s not how addiction works.
We’re fully aware that when you open up your veins to something, someone, as intoxicating as Ivy, the honeyed sweetness that steals into your bloodstream is impossible to withstand.
Which is why, four days after I waved her and my sister off from Belvedere, I find myself standing outside Jan’s Caff like the addict I suspect myself to be.
She’s due to meet Flora at two p.m. back at our place; this much I’ve surreptitiously gleaned from my sister.
I wanted to surprise her—hoped, of course that it would be a good kind of surprise—so I’ve driven down to London this morning on the off chance that I’ll find her at the caff.
My plans beyond this are nebulous: ill-formed wisps of hope and fantasy and cold reality.
But I know I’ll take what I can get.
It’s particularly chilly this morning, and the caff’s windows and doors are steamed up on the inside in a way that suggests warmth but does not entice.
I think it’s the fear that one will be enveloped in a clammy, school-dinner-scented fog upon entering.
I push open the door and find my fears unfounded.
The space is warm and smells, if anything, of filter coffee and cheese toasties.
Not a whiff of over-boiled cabbage to be found.
There are a few more patrons today—mainly solo, except for two older women chatting happily near the door. I spot Jan at a nearby table and she gives me a nod that’s somewhere between reserved and curt. First Genevieve, now Jan. It seems none of Ivy’s bosses approve of me or my intentions.
But it’s not Jan I’ve come here to see. I scan the room as I shut the door firmly behind me.
‘Ivy!’ Jan shouts over her shoulder. ‘You’ve got a visitor, love.’
She appears from the doorway to the kitchen, and the warmth of relief floods my veins, syrupy as oxytocin.
There she is.
‘What’re you doing here?’ she murmurs as we happen upon each other in the middle of the room, but her grin doesn’t suggest displeasure. Not at all.
I’m just so damn glad to see her, and it seems she feels the same way.
I stoop to kiss her chastely on both cheeks. It’s the way I kiss everyone, the way I kissed my fiancée the other day, but with Ivy it’s an experience unto itself, soft and delicious and plump with promise.
‘I came to see you,’ I whisper in her ear as I finish my greeting.
When I pull away, the pleased grin is giving way to distress.
‘But I’m working till one thirty.’
‘It’s okay.’ I brush my hands fleetingly down her upper arms. She’s in a long-sleeved top and leggings under her Jan’s Caff apron, her bright, glorious hair secured with a perky, retro-looking bandana, and she looks perfect.
‘Don’t worry. I meant it literally. I came to see you.
I’ll just sit and stare at you like a total creep for a few hours, and then I’ll walk you back to ours. ’
She casts her eyes downwards and then back up to my face. ‘You came for a fish-finger sandwich, didn’t you.’
‘Got it in one. I couldn’t stay away. Had no idea you’d be here.’
She breaks into another grin, hands twisting in her apron, and her obvious pleasure makes me brave.
I lean forward. ‘I meant it. I couldn’t stay away.’
The fish-finger sandwich is just as excellent as the last one was, even if my and Ivy’s circumstances are a world away from that last, excruciating visit of mine.
True to my promise, I sit at a table near the kitchen and watch her intently as she works.
She moves unselfconsciously, which amazes me, given I’ve spent years marvelling at quite how performative my fiancée’s every step, every word, is.
Jan’s husband Bill comes to join me for a chat at some point. He’s reading a doorstopper of a book entitled Heirs and Graces, which is, in my humble opinion, a spectacularly clever name for a book about modern British aristocracy.
It seems Ivy’s filled her bosses in on my identity, because he brings it over with his mug of tea and proceeds to drill me by way of verifying its mentions of the de Vere family: whether my grandfather really dated a Mitford (he did; it was pretty serious) and how Belvedere fared during its stint as a World War One army hospital (it emerged relatively unscathed thanks to my ancestors stripping the place of all spoilable treasures, from Alice de Vere’s diaries to every last Sèvres cup-and-saucer set.
Even the illustrious ferns were clipped for samples that were carefully planted offsite).
He’s a thoroughly decent bloke: thoughtful and clearly cerebral, and it strikes me again that this cast of characters in whose orbit Ivy lives and works share an integrity, a gravitas, even, that may not be obvious at first glance.
In any case, he seems genuinely pleased to have the chance to burrow deeper down this particular rabbit hole, to expand upon this secondary research with some primary research of his own, and it has me checking my privilege.
I’m fortunate enough to be in a role that fills me with purpose, that feels like destiny.
The subject of my marriage aside, I have immense agency.
Meanwhile, guys like Bill run businesses that keep the lights on and are altogether admirable but perhaps don’t fill their souls with the same fire that their hobbies do.
I am blessed, and I’d do well to remember it.
In the end, Bill and Jan tell Ivy to scarper a good three hours early, which is immensely decent of them.
Perhaps it’s my relentless puppy-dog eyes, following her around her place of work, that have propelled them over the edge.
She dons a shabby-looking coat that I’m not convinced will keep her warm as the temperature drops, and we walk outside together.
The sun is out in its winter guise: watery in theory but low enough in the sky for its glare to hit you bang between the eyes.
As I usher Ivy through the door, she stands in the street, squinting and clutching at my arm as the screwing up of her sweet little nose tells me she’s chasing what my family calls a sun-sneeze.
I observe in amusement as her mouth opens, and then she finally lets rip.
‘Better?’ I ask her.
She sighs happily. ‘Much. That was almost as good as an orgasm.’
‘Clearly I’ve been doing something wrong.’
‘I said almost, didn’t I?’ But the smile she gives me is knowing enough, conspiratorial enough, to telegraph to me that a crisis of confidence on my part is unfounded.
It’s so knowing, in fact, that it has me pulling her towards me so I can do what I’ve wanted to do since I walked into the caff.
I find her mouth with mine. Relief is a flood of warmth as I touch my lips to hers.
Equally warm: the inside of her mouth, silken and sweet-tasting.
It’s a gamble, diving on her on the street like this as if she’s my girlfriend and not a young woman with whom I have no technical relationship.
But fortune favours the brave, and it favours me in this moment, as Ivy finds my tongue with hers and her body grows pliant within the confines of my arms.
When I break the kiss, because public decency is a real thing, our breath escapes our bodies in little tufted clouds of happiness. I stay stooped, rolling my forehead dreamily against hers. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
The next words out of her mouth give me pause.
‘Is this a booty call?’
I spring back, horrified. ‘Jesus, no. Of course not. I would never—I told you. I just needed to see you.’
‘“Needed”?’ Her mouth twists. I’ve pleased her, or at least tickled her.
‘Needed.’ No point in disowning it.
‘So not a booty call.’
My face twists with distaste. I want her; of course I do. I’m only human. I’ve thought of little else but fucking Ivy since she left on Sunday. But the idea that she believes me capable of tracking her down at her place of work in an attempt to bundle her off to bed is loathsome. Loathsome.
‘No. I just want some time with you—preferably alone, at our place. I’ll make you a sandwich. Give you a foot rub. Run you a bath. Whatever you want.’
She moans a little then. ‘You always do this. You talk dirty to me. Country walks, and pub lunches, and foot rubs, and baths and… you know.’
‘That shouldn’t be abnormal for you.’ I raise my eyebrows to ram home the seriousness of my message.
I may still know next to nothing about her home life, but I’m displeased that these basic acts of care are so foreign to her, so exotic.
‘You’ve been on your feet all morning—you deserve to be pampered. ’
‘You know what else is pampering?’ She takes hold of my coat’s lapels. ‘Bloody hell, this is soft.’
‘What?’
‘Orgasms.’
I grin now. Shake my head. ‘It’s almost as if you want me to exploit you.’
She lets out an exaggeratedly happy sigh. ‘Finally, he gets it.’
‘Come on.’ I crook my elbow and extend it. ‘Let’s get you warm.’