Chapter 45
Xavier
Champagne and seafood: a dangerous combination if ever there was one. But if I hurl before the night is out, it’s unlikely to be from dodgy oysters or excessive champagne.
Not at this fine establishment.
Nope.
The only ailment afflicting me, as I spend the evening bidding my bachelor days farewell with my closest and most boisterous friends, is that time-honoured scourge called heartsickness.
We’re gathered at a champagne bar in the basement of a Knightsbridge hotel, my best men—my brother Ben and our mate Pieter van Praag—intent on filling me up until I’ve shed all dignity and pissed my pants.
I’m making a valiant effort not to be a miserable git, even if it hurts beyond belief to be in the same city as Ivy.
I could sneak out on the pretext of going for a slash and show up at her flat. How easy it would be.
Luckily for me, my friends are under no illusions as to what a boring bastard I am at the best of times, so they don’t seem too shattered about tonight’s personality deficiency.
Quite a few of them are already married, or at least in serious relationships.
Several even have small children at home.
All of which is to say that I’m merely the pretext for tonight.
I’m the convenient excuse that affords them the permission to escape and get absolutely rat-arsed.
They also, almost to a man, seem far more stoical than I am about the imminent prospect of my loveless marriage. While they think it’s weird at best and batshit crazy at worst, Selena is objectively stunning; ergo, their sympathy is limited.
Eventually, my brother corners me. He’s on good form tonight, holding court: doing what he does best. He’s a natural, if light-hearted, leader. Sometimes I think that his position as the second-born son—the spare—has done him a disservice. Benedict is far more competent than he lets on.
‘So,’ he says, slinging an arm around my shoulder, then thinking better of it and tightening his embrace into an actual headlock, ‘what’s crawled up your arse, and does it share a name with the creeper on the north turret?’
I stare at the floor, which is about all I’m capable of in this position. Ben’s known about Ivy since we came face to face with Mum and Flora in the kitchen in the London house.
‘No comment.’
‘I take it Venice was fun, then?’
I haven’t seen much of my brother this past week. He’s been in London, and I’ve been licking my wounds and attempting to spend time with my ever-deteriorating father while avoiding my ever-spiralling mother. Her focus is far more on my upcoming nuptials than on his imminent demise.
‘Fun,’ I say, ‘is a grotesque understatement.’
‘Ahh. Got an Ivy hangover, have you?’
My only response is a sigh so deep and shuddering that he releases me and crouches so he can meet my eyes, his expression alarmed.
‘You all right, mate?’
I swallow. ‘I’m in love with her. Completely in love.’
He winces. ‘You sure it’s not just the great sex?’
‘No.’ I laugh mirthlessly. ‘It’s not just the great sex.’
‘Oh, fucking hell,’ he groans, sinking into one of a pair of armchairs just behind us. ‘Shit. I feel responsible.’
I join him. ‘You are.’
‘You were supposed to just shag her at your party and move on.’
‘Well, if you recall, I didn’t actually manage that. But I did manage to track her down and fall hopelessly in love with her.’
‘Jesus. Are you going to keep seeing her right up until you… you know.’
‘No,’ I say shortly. ‘We decided on a clean break after Venice. End things on a high, and all that. And I’m fucking destroyed.
It doesn’t help that she’s going through a seriously rough time of it.
I’m sure Flora mentioned she has two little half-sisters.
Both her parents are dead and her stepmother has advanced dementia. ’
He’s silent for a moment. Then: ‘Christ. That’s tragic.’
‘Yeah. Her stepmother was in some godawful institution—a fucking nightmare. I got her moved last week to somewhere with decent care. It’s a nice place.’
‘We paying for it?’
I nod curtly enough to show I’m not inviting feedback at this time.
‘Good. That was decent of you.’
‘Selfish, really. I couldn’t walk away and leave her with that. Fuck knows how she’s making rent on top of everything else. It’s impossible not to worry. She has two fourteen-year-olds to feed. I can’t imagine the benefits she’ll get will touch the sides.’
‘Will she go back to Alchemy, do you think?’ I can hear in his voice that he’s unsure whether to ask.
‘She’s given me her word that she won’t. But she won’t work with Flora anymore, either. I’m at my wits’ end.’ I hang my head and press the heel of my palm into my forehead. ‘I don’t know what to fucking do,’ I admit brokenly.
‘About the wedding?’
‘Christ, no.’ I glance up to find him looking at me strangely.
‘About being able to live with the fact that Ivy’s out there, struggling to make ends meet and being crushed by all these generational needs on both sides, and I’m sitting in the lap of fucking luxury, drinking Bolly and eating fucking langoustines. ’
‘It’s not fair,’ he says quietly, looking down at the tumbler of scotch he’s nursing. ‘We live a charmed life. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. She seems like a lovely girl.’
He doesn’t know the half of it. ‘You know, I bang on and on about duty and service and sacrifice, as if they’re some sort of birthright, and I can be so fucking pompous.
’ I don’t miss his wry smile, nor the amused way his eyebrows arch.
‘Fuck off. But, honestly, I look at someone like Ivy and think, That’s service.
That’s sacrifice. Her stepmum was ill for two years before she was institutionalised, and Ivy had to look after her while caring for her little sisters and fucking rich pricks at Alchemy every night.
And she never fucking complained to me, not once.
God, it makes me feel like such a pathetic fraud. ’
I tip my head back, willing the tears to stay put.
‘It’s okay for there to be different types of duty, I think,’ Ben says softly. ‘Sure, Ivy’s making the ultimate sacrifice, by the sounds of it, but look at you. You’re marrying one woman despite the fact that you love another. That’s a hell of a sacrifice, if you ask me.’
I’m silent. He’s not wrong, but for the first time, my life choices feel not noble but wasteful. Foolish.
‘Have you ever considered walking away? From Slinky?’
‘The wedding is in twelve days,’ I reply woodenly.
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘I can’t. You know that. We’re too close. It would be the height of disrespect to Selena and her parents.’
He doesn’t say anything but waits for me to work through my shit.
‘The thing is, though, we both know that Selena would be fine if I didn’t marry her. Humiliated, yes, of course. Heartbroken, no.’
‘I’m going to say something, and I say it with love, so please don’t punch me.’
I raise an eyebrow.
‘Sounds like Ivy needs you a hell of a lot more than Selena. Is that what this is about—Save?’
At the sound of my old nickname, I glare at him. Blood rushes, fast and fierce, to my face. ‘Don’t you fucking start.’
He holds his hands up in surrender. ‘I’m not. I’m trying to work out your motives here. For Christ’s sake, put your ego aside for a minute and think about the question properly. Is this your saviour complex rearing its ugly head, or are you doing her the courtesy of loving her like an equal?’
‘I’m sorry, since when have you been a shrink?’
‘It’s a hell of a lot easier to be wise when it’s someone else’s car crash,’ he says affably, leaning back in his armchair and crossing one ankle over its opposite knee as if settling in for a fireside chat.
Ben can be a bit of a Jack Russell at times, pulling on your trouser leg long after he should have got the memo to knock it off, so his lack of antagonism is disarming.
I also have to give him credit for not coming up with the obvious concern, which is that Ivy is a gold-digger, preying on my so-called ‘saviour complex’.
She couldn’t be further from that, obviously, but he can’t know that.
So I suppose I should do him the service of answering his question in the manner in which it’s been asked: with sincerity.
‘I do feel protective of her, obviously,’ I say. It’s strange, having a heart-to-heart with my brother instead of our usual ribbing and banter. ‘It’s always deeply upsetting when someone you love is struggling, and you feel helpless.’
That gets me a sympathetic nod.
‘I want to help her because I love her. I don’t love her because I want to help her. Does that even make sense?’
‘Sure.’ He’s nodding like a proud shrink.
‘Look. The thing about Ivy is that she’s very fucking frustrating.
She won’t take anything for herself. She just about accepted my paying for the care home, but that was only because she knew it was in her stepmum’s best interests.
I bought her a coat for Venice, and she made a huge fuss until she looked up the weather forecast and saw how freezing it would be. ’
He shrugs. ‘She’s independent. I like that.’
‘Exactly. And proud. I think it’s a point of pride to her that she can handle all this on her own, that she’s responsible for everyone else’s happiness.
And accepting help would feel like a personal failure, you know?
Like, she hasn’t managed to do everything on her own, so she’s failed in her duty. ’
‘God, that sounds familiar,’ my brother says, pretending to scratch his head. ‘So, she’s basically you, except she’s actually getting her hands dirty, and then you come along and try to save her. No wonder she told you no way.’
‘She doesn’t get that part of me,’ I say drily. ‘I suspect she loves me despite the fact that I’ll be a duke, rather than because of it. I think she finds the de Vere definition of duty pointless and self-indulgent and a not a little bit tiresome.’
He snorts. ‘She’s not wrong. Smart girl.’
She is smart. She’s smart, and strong, and independent.
She’s given herself over to relentless duty and shitty circumstance without a word of complaint, while I whine to my brother about the fact that I’ll spend the rest of my life in the lap of luxury with one of the most beautiful, accomplished women in the country.
‘She sees right through me. But she still loves me. She’s blocked me, though, and I don’t blame her.’ Her insistence on a clean break is yet another example of her superior strength.
He’s quiet again. ‘I’m truly sorry, mate. It’s beyond rough. I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes.’
‘Yeah, well, I just have to get through the wedding and then I’ll figure it out, I suppose.’
The wedding. The tidy, convenient, material proof to my dying father that I’ve completed the single task that has been required of me since birth.
That he can pass to the next realm in the knowledge that the line of succession, as well as a nice line of credit, has been secured for the future of the dukedom of Oxford.
My brother snorts. ‘You seem very focused on getting through the ceremony. If I were you, I’d be far more worried about the next fifty years.’