Epilogue
SIX MONTHS LATER
Light is the head that forfeits the crown, and light is the heart that chooses real, tangible love over notional, punitive duty.
I should know.
My wife is immersed in a monumental task—a full-scale oil painting of Belvedere, commissioned by the new Duke and Duchess of Oxford—and I am tasked with the equally important role of keeping her plied with tea and fruit cake.
Painting, it seems, is hungry work, and I am a glutton for being of service.
These days, though, I only have one mistress.
We sit by the lake in our folding chairs, the parasols swaying above us, as Ivy applies oil to canvas and I watch, transfixed.
She fell in love with Belvedere in autumn, as the days shortened and the shadows lengthened on our sundial—and that’s how she captured it on my treasured miniature—but Ben and Selena want the house painted with the sun high in the sky.
So here we are, a week away from midsummer, when the rambling roses over the east turret are great, wild things and the stretch of grass leading up from the lake is a shade of emerald that should be impossible beyond the cliffs of Connemara.
The air is as thick with birdsong as it would have been forty or fifty years ago, thanks to the enormous efforts of our in-house avian experts and the RSPB to increase biodiversity and attract birds in far greater numbers and variety than we’ve seen in decades.
Somehow, the cacophony makes the fact of being here more relaxing, not less. More right, perhaps.
I didn’t have many regrets when I walked away from my engagement and my title and all the rest of it, but my main one was that I’d never be able to make Ivy the mistress of Belvedere.
No matter how clearly I could see us spending hours in the conservatory, tending to the ferns, or how badly I wanted her to be able to stare at her favourite Dürer hare over breakfast, my choice was always simple.
It was the estate or her.
And I chose her.
Ben and Selena, of course, moved into the main house immediately upon marrying.
My father lasted a full eight days after their wedding before succumbing to his hideous disease once and for all.
While he and I weren’t able to bridge the vast chasm I’d exposed between our value systems, I was at his bedside when he passed, alongside the rest of the family.
I will have to hope that, when the time came and words weren’t sufficient, my presence was enough of a panacea that he was able to pass, relatively untroubled, into the next room.
Ma, to everyone’s surprise, eschewed the dower house in favour of taking up residence in a lovely de Vere-owned former rectory in nearby Woodstock.
While it’s less convenient for her beloved horses, it’s far more sociable for her as a widow.
And it allowed my brother, to my great surprise and pleasure, to suggest the dower house for me, Ivy and the girls.
I hadn’t forgotten Ivy’s rapturous reaction when she caught sight of it through the trees on that fateful walk we took to the orangery.
She fell in love with the dower house instantly, which was far more quickly than she fell in love with me.
As soon as Ben suggested it, I knew it was where we were meant to spend our days: charming and secluded, with little of the startling burden of running an ecosystem like Belvedere.
It may not have a conservatory full of ferns, but once the hand-painted panels I’ve commissioned from De Gournay arrive later this summer, it will, at least, have a garden room papered with delicate tendrils of ivy.
I will never forget the look on her face when I told her we could live there if we wished. It was that of a little girl learning that fairytales can come true, after all.
Of course, we were largely based in London on account of the twins’ schooling and the importance for the three of them of being near Dawn.
So when Dawn came down with a brutal bout of aspiration pneumonia in February from which she never recovered, it was an enormous shock to all of us and a devastating blow for the three of them.
I’m not proud of everything I’ve done. I was far too slow in realising that my entire persona, my sense of purpose, my value system, was built on a deeply flawed foundation.
I should never have let Ivy down in the way I did before I finally found my courage.
But one thing that gives me great pleasure is that, in some small way, I was able to give Ivy the greatest of gifts: the time and energy to devote herself to Dawn in those final few weeks—and days.
Once they were all settled in the Little Venice house and the twins were back at school, Ivy handed in her notice at the caff and spent several hours a day with her stepmother.
From what I know, those hours were spent quietly: reading, mainly, or listening to music, or with Ivy relating old memories.
Dawn had taken to spending less time in the social areas and more time in her bed, even before the pneumonia.
The illness came on quickly, a result of her severely compromised swallow.
When enough food and drink goes down the wrong way, apparently, infection can set in very easily.
But the care plan that Ivy agreed with the home when we moved Dawn in was clear: in such an event, she should be kept comfortable where she was and not be subjected to the added trauma of hospital transfers and invasive interventions.
What counts was that, at the end of her life, she was not alone. She was safe, and well cared for, and every single day, a beautiful angel with the loveliest strawberry-blonde hair came to sit with her, and hold her hand, and read to her the books she had once treasured.
There are so many tragedies around the premature way that Dawn’s life deteriorated and then ended.
But, as with the father of my colleague, Stephen, the quiet days that preceded her final curtain were ones filled with peace.
Love. And memories that I hope she was able to internalise, even if her conscious brain was too badly ravaged to enjoy them.
Since she passed, we’ve largely been up here.
To my and Ivy’s intense surprise, the twins begged us to allow them to go to boarding school when I gave them the option of attending any school they wished—or any school their grades satisfied, at least. I’d thought they’d want to stay in the City.
They seemed like the ultimate London girls, and neither Ivy nor I were at all sure that the three of them should be separated while they grieved Dawn.
But no. They insisted, arguing with impressive eloquence that a full-immersion environment, with all the bells and whistles that a school catering for the most privileged pupils had, was exactly what they wanted and needed.
And so my family’s name—and money—paved the way for a smooth transition to nearby Hartwell House, where Selena’s sister, Octavia, also goes.
Thus Ivy and I find ourselves empty nesters at the dower house from Monday to Friday—even if that’s a situation I’d like to rectify as soon as I can get my young wife on board.
She’s lost in her painting, so she has no idea I’m eyeing her up as if she’s a particularly lovely broodmare.
She’s always been beautiful, every single moment I’ve known her, but I’d like to think that this lifestyle agrees with her.
Her skin is glowing and lightly tanned, smattered with freckles that might just be the most delicious things I’ve ever kissed.
Her astonishing hair gleams in the early summer sunlight, and don’t get me started on her bare, golden shoulders.
She may still be hanging out in ripped jeans and a paint-daubed white tank top—this is Ivy we’re talking about—but they’re designer ripped jeans from one of the many hauls we accumulate when I frogmarch her to various department stores.
These days, the bandanas she wraps around her head are silk Hermès scarves.
I’ve got her hooked on them. She can’t resist their lovely prints.
‘Feeling the pressure?’ I remark casually as she dapples the almost-finished trees with the lightest spring green touches.
‘Absolutely not. But some more cake would help.’ She holds her left hand out, and I laughingly deposit a slice of Cook’s famous Earl Grey fruitcake into her palm.
‘Think you’ll get it done?’
She scoffs. ‘Piece of cake.’ Holds her hand aloft. ‘Literally.’
‘Whatever you say, sweetheart.’ I rise and stand behind her, my gaze triangulating between the beauty on the canvas, the beauty of our home, and the beauty of my wife.
But it’s her my eyes keep coming back to.
I let my hands run over her shoulders and bend to kiss her.
She raises her face towards mine, and I marvel at all of it: the slender arch of her neck; the love in her pale blue eyes; the sensual purse of her lips.
Our mouths meet, and I’m instantly in free-fall.
Our tongues dance, and I know, with every primal fibre of my being, that betting on us was the best decision I’ve ever made.
I really should let her get back to her painting.
In four days’ time, a team is coming in to erect a whole fucking fairground in front of the house and ruin Ivy’s view in spectacular fashion.
In two weeks’ time, on Midsummer’s Night, the de Vere brothers and our wives will jointly host a huge party—far bigger than my thirtieth and, I’m hoping, far more debauched: for me, at least. This time, I intend to do a lot more than feeling up my wife’s breasts.
The party is ostensibly just a bit of fun, but really, Ben and I cooked it up as a way for us to introduce Ivy to our friends in grand style.
Our wedding in March was a quickie at Chelsea Town Hall, a way for me to seal the deal and ensure Ivy, Lily, and Rose would never go unprovided for.
That plan is nicely underway, and I’ll consider it a success as soon as my legal adoption of the twins goes through.
But Ivy and I have kept a pretty low profile so far this year, existing in our own little bubble, and that needs to change.
The sooner my friends and social circle get to know my wife, the sooner they will accept her as one of us and not a symptom of what some of them deem a kind of breakdown on my part.
If she can win Selena over, she can win the rest of them over. I know it.
The real question is whether my brother has won Selena over.
But that’s a story for another day.
THE END