Chapter 1

“ S uch a shame. Would have been a beautiful wedding. I read in Hello! that it cost a million?—”

“All those flowers?—”

“Such a shame?—”

“What did they say?”

“Nothing, just that there’s been a change in destination, and passenger manifest?—”

“No Caroline Montegue?”

“No Caroline Montegue?—”

“And we’re not going to the Maldives?”

“Aspen—”

“But I haven’t packed for snow?—”

“We can go shopping?—”

Lando groans next to me and utters something indecipherable under his breath. If I were one of the twins, I’d leave them to carry on a little longer, just so they can really dig themselves into a hole of embarrassment. But I don’t get off on causing mischief like my younger brothers do.

Plus, time is of the essence.

I’m about to alert these two overly chatty stewards to our presence when someone with much more skill and practice at pointed throat-clearing does exactly that. He’s also excellent at suddenly appearing at your side, as silent as a ninja, given no one had heard him come in. But James Winters prides himself on discretion, which is exactly why he’s been with our family for two decades.

“When you’ve finished gossiping, there are tasks to complete that require you to do more than stand around,” he snaps, dropping two heavy duffle bags onto the floor.

The two air stewards spin around so quickly I’m almost impressed neither of them fall over. As predicted, their eyes widen in surprise, though they manage to recover themselves quickly enough that their mouths stay closed.

But then I realize they haven’t noticed Lando or me, only James.

“Mr. Winters, we do apologize. We were just saying…”

This time, I clear my throat, because I really don’t want to hear any more about their shopping plans or their disappointment the Wedding of the Year —as one of the newspapers dubbed it—was called off. And given my eldest brother is drunk to the point where he’s bumping into me while standing, I need to get him settled.

This is the level of drunk usually seen on Miles.

It’s comical how slowly their bodies move in sync. I can almost hear the prayers that they won’t find Lando and me standing here. Too bad.

“Oh, Your Grace. Lord Burlington…” starts the one on the left, her eyes nearly falling out of her head. The one on the right composes herself much quicker.

James holds his hand up to silence her, allowing me the opportunity to speak instead. He already knows I’m not interested in hearing their profuse apologies, and I don’t think he is either. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve walked in on people talking about my family, it won’t be the last.

“Are my brothers here? Has the plane been cleared?”

Their look of genuine confusion has me cursing the twins. Again.

One job. They had one bloody job, which was to get here before Lando and me, remove all the paraphernalia I know they’ve decorated the plane with, and restore it to its former beige glory so no one was any the wiser.

“No, my lord. We were only informed this minute there was a change of plans. We weren’t expecting you quite so soon. But the pilots are on board running through their checks, so we’ll be ready to leave imminently.”

James’s eyes dart from a swaying Lando and back to me, along with a slight purse of his lip. “Lord Alex, give me five minutes, we’ll clear the plane and then get you settled. I’ll find out the ETA of your brothers. I believe Lord Miles went back to fetch his snowboard.”

I hold in the eye roll and check my watch. I thought two hours was plenty of time to get here and get organized. Pulling out my phone, I dial Hendricks, the more responsible one of the two, but only by a sliver on the very best of days if you catch him in the right light. Though it’s possibly only the illusion of responsibility that has shone on him since he became a father.

Lando veers into me again. I hang up before it rings out, turning to James, who, I can tell, is seething.

As the Burlington family director of operations, he oversees the team managing the day to day of our lives. He joined us after serving two decades in the armed forces, and he’s never lost the military precision with which he expects everything to run. It’s highly probable our entire family would implode if he ever left, which is why he’s earning the salary of a multinational CEO, because my mother’s greatest fear is that one day James might decide he’s had enough of our bullshit and quite sensibly leave.

After the last few months, I definitely couldn’t blame him.

After the last twelve hours, I’d send him on his way myself with a massive severance, and a case of whiskey.

I clap a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, they’ll be here soon. I’m going to go ahead and board, then we can be wheels up as soon as they arrive.”

“Yes, my lord.” His mouth rolls into a hard line. “I should point out I’ve not actually been in the plane yet…”

The way his sentence tails off tells me Hendricks and Miles were let loose in there.

Give me strength.

I turn to Lando, resisting the urge to lift his sunglasses and check he’s still conscious. “Can you wait here with James?”

“No.”

I sigh, because I should have known better than to ask. Pushing through the big swing doors to the hangar where our family plane is kept, Lando is hot on my heels. Stopping before I jog up the narrow stairs, my foot hovers over the first step and I try again. “Lan, seriously, just wait here, will you?”

“This day isn’t going to get any worse by whatever’s in that cabin,” he snaps, marching past me.

He stops dead in the entrance, which is exactly what I was afraid of, and it takes me three giant strides until I’m standing beside him. I can’t help it. The moment I lay eyes on the cabin, a laugh belts out of me. The twins have truly outdone themselves.

A huge banner with the words Too Late Now painted across it drapes along the length of the plane, above the sofa. Down the other side hangs one that reads R.I.P. Lando . Five huge cock-shaped balloons float above each table and—I squint—areheld down with testicle weights.

Every window blind is covered with a blown-up photo of Lando and Caroline, though on closer inspection, they’re not that flattering. Especially the one of Caroline almost face-first in the snow from a family ski trip we took a few years ago.

She refused to join us again after that.

“Jesus,” I mutter, holding a small breath and side-eyeing Lando for his reaction—it’s possible there’s a smile almost curving the left side of his mouth, though it could just be a burp.

For the first time since this entire shit show of a day began, he pulls off his sunglasses.

“This was what we’d have been greeted with pre-honeymoon?” he croaks eventually, knocking a cock balloon out of the way, only for it to bounce back and narrowly miss hitting him in the face. A slow, steady hiss passes through his lips. “Caroline would have lost her shit.”

“She would.” I nod, snatching up a napkin with glad you got the prenup scribbled over it in Miles’s distinct scratchy black writing before Lando sees it.

Not that it matters anymore. At least the wedding was called off before the vows.

Glancing around the cabin, I have a feeling if Caroline had seen this, she likely would have called for a divorce anyway. No doubt exactly what Hendricks and Miles had planned.

Lando removes his morning suit jacket and tosses it onto the chair opposite, his dress shoes are kicked off next and fly through the air, landing unceremoniously under one of the tables. Picking up a boob-shaped cushion I hadn’t noticed, he lies back on the sofa, tucks it under his head, and replaces his sunglasses.

I’m currently debating whether to join him or start on the job I gave the twins to do, but I have no idea how much longer they’ll be, and I really don’t want to be sitting among a plethora of phallic-shaped objects. Though I’d take these over Christmas decorations any day of the week.

Yanking off the R.I.P. banner, I toss it through the doors and go back for Too Late Now , but the sound of footsteps and a door clanging has me spinning around.

“Where’ve you two bloody been?” I grumble at Hendricks and Miles as they saunter into the hangar like they have all the time in the world. Certainly enough time to change out of the penguin suits Lando and I are still wearing. “You were supposed to be here before us.”

Identical twins, rarely told apart by anyone outside of our immediate family, Hendricks and Miles are a law unto themselves. They work off their own time—as the present situation attests—and are seldom apart. It was only during the summer before last that they stopped living together, when Hendricks was finally granted full custody of his son, and promptly moved back into Burlington Hall, where we were all raised. Miles’s cottage—albeit still on the Burlington estate—wasn’t deemed suitable enough to raise a child in.

Miles props up his snowboard. “You gave us thirty minutes’ notice, and we went back to get some clothes for us all. Can’t exactly go in morning suits, can we?”

I roll my eyes. “I told you James was getting our clothes. I was with Lando and working on getting us the fuck out of here as quickly as possible, and you two were supposed to clear the plane.”

“But James didn’t know where my snowboard was,” Miles shoots back, and I realize his snowboard is all he’s carrying. There’s nothing to suggest he brought anything else.

“So where are all our clothes?”

Hendricks drops his head, though it doesn’t disguise the amused curl of his lip.

“Yeah. About that?—”

“You’re bloody unbelievable.”

“Hey! I got you a hoodie.”

“ Thanks .”

“You’re welcome.” Miles grins. The grin that always gets him out of trouble, because no one—and I mean no one —can resist it. Even now, when I want to throttle him, I can feel the amusement rolling up my throat. “Where’s Lan?”

I nod toward the cabin.

“How drunk is he?”

“Drunk enough that he thought the floating cocks were funny.”

Hendricks barks a loud laugh. “You don’t need to be drunk for that. Cocks are funny all the time.”

I shake my head, but the main doors into the building swing open again before I can add anything else. James marches across the hangar, only halting his pace for a fraction of a second as he spies one of the cock balloons, and gives it a wide berth. The two stewards and three of his team follow, carrying the duffle bags of clothes, several shopping bags, and four sets of skis.

James might not be too happy with his staff, but we’re leaving him and his team to clear up the chaos we’re creating by escaping, so I’d say they’ve done an excellent job on two hours’ notice, especially as it’s not even lunchtime yet.

“My lords, we’re ready to leave when you are. Flight path has been logged and cleared.”

“Great stuff. Saving the bloody day again, James.” Hendricks slaps a hand on James’s thick-set shoulder. “Let’s go.”

The three of us make our way up the steps. Lando hasn’t moved from his position on the sofa, except he’s now hugging the boob cushion.

“Nice. Knew they’d come in handy.” Miles chuckles.

“Lan, you need to sit up for takeoff.” I try shaking him, but once Lando’s asleep, it’s easier to wake dead people, and that’s before he’s drunk half a bottle of whiskey. “Lando. Sit up, will you?”

The two stewards are fussing around in the galley, readying the plane. James has just removed the final cock balloon, and the cabin almost looks like normal.

I’m still trying to wake up my eldest brother. “Someone help, will you?”

Hendricks moves behind Lando, ready to hoist him up under his armpits, when he bolts upright.

“Lan, how’re you doing?” he asks quietly.

Lando peers around the cabin. A look flashes across his face like he’s wondering where he is and how the fuck he got here. Somehow, he manages to stand, but it’s akin to watching a baby take its first steps before he drops into one of the seats.

“Lando?”

“Well, I was supposed to be getting married and instead I’m on a plane with my three younger brothers.”

“Sounds like a bloody good change of plans to me.”

I pin Miles with as stern a look as I can muster and take the seat next to Lando. “Milo…”

“Sorry…” he replies, not sounding sorry in the slightest, “but you’ve had a lucky escape. We all know it, and you know it.”

“Miles, give it a rest. Just for today, okay?”

“Your Grace, my lords, everything’s set,” James announces as he re-enters the cabin. “Your luggage is in the back. A car will be waiting for you upon arrival at Aspen airport, and we’re in contact with Mr. Williams’s team—the house will be open and ready for you. And there’s a car in the garage for you to use at your disposal.”

I smile up at him; there’s literally nothing the man can’t do.

“Thanks, James,” everyone cries, except Lando, who’s facedown on the boob cushion.

“One last thing, my lord. The press office has drawn up a press release for you…” He opens the thick leather folder wedged under his arm and passes me a piece of paper. “Perhaps”—he glances at Lando’s head—“you could sign it off?”

I scan over it.

Orlando Burlington, the eleventh Duke of Oxfordshire, and Caroline Montegue have regretfully decided…blah blah blah…love and support for one another…blah blah blah…they thank everyone…blah blah blah…

“Thanks, James, looks fine to me.” I pass it back to him. “Sorry we’re leaving you with all the shit to deal with.”

“Plus, Clemmie and Mum,” mumbles Miles.

“It’s what I do best.” James smiles sincerely, before exiting the cabin with a “See you in a week.”

Five minutes of safety checks and taxiing later, the front wheels lift from the runway. There’s a sigh of relief as we speed through the gray London clouds until it’s impossible to tell where we are, except on the plane, leaving the mess behind.

“Okay.” Miles claps his hands together. “We all need a drink, then you two are going to explain to Hendricks and me why the fuck we’re on a plane over the English Channel instead of walking down the aisle next to some of the hottest bridesmaids I’ve ever seen.”

“Not that we’re not relieved at the turn of events, mind you.”

I nod in agreement to Hendricks, before my eyes flick to Lando and back to the twins, who are eagerly waiting for an explanation. I’m suddenly filled with gratitude at the urgency with which my brothers responded to the no-questions-asked message I sent on the family group chat telling them the wedding was off and to meet us at the plane.

“Drinks first.”

“Maybe not such a large one for the duke,” mutters Hendricks, thumbing to the mop of Lando’s hair, which is all we can make out until he lifts his head.

Pushing his sunglasses up, we’re greeted with his very bloodshot, formerly Burlington-blue eyes; the anger and hurt palpable to all of us. “Look,” he croaks, “before we start on everything, can I just say one thing?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you, thank you for getting me out of there.”

Miles jumps up from his seat and wraps him in a hug. As annoying as he is, our baby brother is the biggest softy to anyone in his orbit, and tears are his kryptonite. “It’s okay, Lan, we got you.”

“Thanks, Milo. I appreciate it.”

By the time the stewards have delivered a round of drinks and brought some much-needed snacks, Lando is looking slightly less worse for wear.

“Lan? You want to begin?”

He waits until the cabin is just the four of us and lifts the glass to his lips, only to put it down again without drinking.

“Last night, I went over to Bluebell Cottage, where Caroline was staying before the wedding. I wanted to see her one last time…” This time when he picks up his glass, he downs the contents in one without so much as a wince. “I found her screwing someone.”

I watch the twins for their reaction, because I’m expecting something, anything , but they sit there passively, and I’m sure I catch Hendricks side-eye Miles, but I blink and he’s staring at Lando again.

“Tell them who it was,” I say quietly.

“Jeremy.”

“Jeremy?” spits Miles. “Jeremy Glenroths?”

I nod.

“What the fuck?! Lando!” they shout in sync.

This is the reaction I’d originally been expecting, not that Lando notices anything unusual. He’s too drunk, steadily becoming more so since he found his fiancée and best friend in bed. Or, more accurately, against the wall.

“Hang on,” Hendricks interrupts before Miles gets there first. “If this was last night, why are we only on a plane now? Why are we only finding out now?”

I look at my watch. “Because I only found out approximately four hours ago. We were meeting for a morning ride, and I discovered him like this in Thunder’s stable. Drunk and fully dressed.”

Miles’s gaze goes from me to Lando and back again as something dawns on him. His mouth drops. “Don’t tell me you were still going to marry her?”

Lando looks down into his empty glass, turning it round and round in his fingers.

“Lan!?”

“What was I supposed to do?” Lando snarls, though it’s more of a slurry snarl. He clenches his fist, highlighting the cuts and faint bruises across his knuckles. “The entire country is watching this wedding.”

“Um…not marry her.” Miles rolls his eyes straight up to the clouds, like it’s that easy. “Who gives a fuck how many people are watching?”

“Spoken like a true little brother.”

Before Miles can tell Lando he’s too weighed down by his responsibilities as the duke, which is what got him into this mess with Caroline in the first place, Hendricks slaps a hand over his mouth. Because if we’ve heard this argument—the one where Miles doesn’t know the meaning of responsibility, and Lando’s got a stick up his arse—once, we’ve heard it a thousand times.

“So what happened?”

I shrug. “I told him he wasn’t marrying Caroline. And made some calls.”

It’s a very rough summary of events. But I don’t have the energy right now to go into how I found Lando slumped against the wall of the stables and blathering on to his favorite horse. We would have left sooner if it hadn’t taken me an hour to understand what he was saying.

“Do Mum and Clemmie know the full story?”

I shake my head. “We’ll tell them once Lando’s sobered up. They just know the wedding is off. Did you see Mum?”

“We did, when we went back to pick up the snowboard,” says Hendricks.

“And…”

Hendricks’s mouth is doing that thing where he’s trying really hard not to laugh. “I think she’s relieved you didn’t propose with Granny’s ring.”

Even Lando smiles at that, not that he found it funny at the time, because Caroline wanted a new diamond not a dusty old stone, regardless of whether it was a priceless, seven-carat, antique-cut diamond ring that had once belonged to Anne Boleyn. In fact, I almost feel sorry for Caroline. Almost, because once the Duchess of Oxfordshire finds out what really happened, she will have to deal with her wrath.

If beheading were still a thing, Caroline would be marched straight to the guillotine. Just as the ring’s original owner had.

As though Lando senses this, he turns to me with a grateful, if solemn, expression. “So, what’s the plan then?”

“Called in a favor. Murray Williams has lent us his Aspen place for the week,” I reply, mentioning one of my best friends. “We’re going to distract ourselves with a fuck load of freshly fallen snow.”

“We’re going skiing?”

My heart squeezes tight at the look of gratitude on Lando’s face. That one look tells me he knows how desperate I was to get him out of England. I never ski before Christmas. It’s far too fucking Christmassy. I don’t have the heart to tell him that in all the hurry of getting us out of the country to faraway refuge, I’d forgotten that Aspen isn’t the place to go if you want to avoid Christmas. Too late now.

“Al…” he whispers, and I’m forcing the ball of tears back down my throat, though thankfully the moment’s lost when Miles pumps his fist in the air.

“Can’t wait. I fucking love Aspen, and I love pre-Christmas skiing. Maybe I’ll get some snow polo in.” He tilts his head at me with a curious quirk of his eyebrow. “Al, does this mean you won’t be quite the miserable Grinch you usually are this time of year?”

The temperature in the cabin drops significantly, or it might just be me.

“I’m not miserable, I just hate December.”

“Dad loved December,” Miles reminds me unnecessarily.

“I know .”

“He’d hate that you were like this.”

“Enough, Miles!” Lando almost shouts.

Wisely, Miles stays silent. It’s not the first time he’s brought up our father’s love for Christmas, it won’t be the last. But I definitely don’t want to hear it today. Not that I ever do.

As if sensing my descending mood, Hendricks bangs his hands on the table. “It’s the Burlington brothers together again. This week’s going to be amazing.”

“Can’t fucking wait. Aspen has no idea what it’s letting itself in for,” adds Miles as the plane begins swaying through a thick cloud, and Lando erupts from his seat.

“I’m gonna be sick.”

He makes it to the bathroom before the retching echoes out, which I should probably take as a sign that—Christmas or not, called-off wedding or not—this trip isn’t going to be a total disaster.