Chapter 31

THIRTY-ONE

V iscount Ortham finally left after another celebratory drink and our assurances that a contract for his oversight would arrive in Kendal within a few days. Xavier and I finally crawled into bed together sometime near midnight. He had been quiet all evening, even more so after Ortham had departed. My man was deep in thought, and I knew better than to try to pull him out of it.

I yawned, nuzzling into one of the down pillows, unable to hold my exhaustion at bay any longer. Though I wasn’t as tired as I’d been during the first trimester, this baby was definitely taking more out of me than Sofia had. Or maybe it was just the stress surrounding his conception and everything that had happened since.

“Go to sleep, babe,” Xavier said as he reached out to stroke my hair. “It’s been a long day.”

“It has not,” I argued with a sleepy grin. “We played games with Sofia, you made the world’s easiest ramen, and then we watched a movie this afternoon before Bernard dropped by. We’ve basically been on vacation.”

“Convalescence is not the same thing as vacation. We’ve all been recovering. That will tire you out.”

I couldn’t really argue with that. Even so, sleep didn’t quite come peacefully after the events of the evening.

“I’m glad she didn’t get what she wanted,” I said a few moments later. “Georgina, I mean. Taking away your title.”

“Mmm. I suppose.”

He was agreeing with me. Sort of.

Maybe not really?

“You don’t sound very convincing,” I pointed out.

Xavier sighed and rolled onto his back. “I am glad she didn’t succeed. I wouldn’t have liked losing the title. That way, at least.”

“What do you mean ‘that way’?”

Xavier cast me a sidelong glance. “Can you really tell me there isn’t a part of you that wouldn’t like to leave it all behind us?”

I pushed myself up on one arm so I could look down at him face-to-face. “If you are suggesting for one second that I ever hoped that horrible, traitorous woman would win ?—”

“No, Ces.” Xavier was oddly calm, though the dimple in his left cheek appeared. “But I do appreciate the loyalty.”

I slumped back onto my pillow. “You’d better. You’re stuck with it for life.”

His smile warmed me to the core. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? I chose you, babe. And you chose me. ’Til death do us part, but we chose that vow.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want Georgina to rip away the title. But either way, it was out of my hands. I had no choice in the matter. No part of my future with the British aristocracy was ever up to me. Not when I was nineteen. Not now either.”

“You have a choice,” I insisted. “After all, no one says you absolutely have to take a seat in the House of Lords, right?”

He just stared at the ceiling. “Ah. No, not officially. But the evidence that Georgina offered them was obviously enough to warrant a hearing. Should they ever decide to, it could easily be brought up again.”

“Do you really think Lonsbury or Ortham, or any of the others who have chosen to look the other way, would refuse a quid pro quo ?”

We both knew the answer to that. Throwing out Georgina’s absurd claims was the gentry’s version of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” Prior to last week, the committee had been split, and the half that had defended Xavier had done so with the presumed expectation that the errant son of Rupert Parker, His Grace the Duke of Kendal, would be taking up his father’s former position as one of the remaining hereditary peers. They couldn’t afford to lose positions. Any more than Xavier could now afford to displease them.

Just another day at the office.

“You could abdicate,” I said, though even I knew that wasn’t really a viable option. “Or whatever the term is. But you could tell them to take it away. You told me yourself the same committee has the power to do that.”

“I could slap the monarchy in the face too. They who bestowed the title and the lands on my ancestors more than a thousand years ago. It would have about the same effect, I think.”

I shuddered. “Please don’t slap the Queen of England. That would be very, very bad.”

We both lay still, ruminating under the reflections of London’s lights blinking across the ceiling. I had a feeling we were thinking the same thing. If Xavier was going to be called back eventually, there was no way we could make the life in New York we wanted. An active member of the House of Lords couldn’t exactly conduct Parliamentary business from Brooklyn or wherever else we ended up. I couldn’t be an active duchess from New York City, either.

Xavier turned onto his side, then pulled at an errant curl tickling my cheek. “It’s not too late for you and the babes, you know. We could get an annulment, Sofia can’t inherit the title anyway, and the little one here could still be born out of wedlock…”

“After all that consummation?” I joked. “I don’t think so. Besides, this one needs his father.”

I pulled his hand down to rest atop my belly, which had only just started to poke out considerably this week, like a flower that knew it was safe to bloom.

Xavier’s palm flattened over it, as if to cover the evidence of our coming child. His coming heir.

“I know you don’t want to live here,” he said. “And I don’t want to force you and the kids into a life you didn’t choose. But honestly, Ces, I don’t know how I can get out of it. Hereditary positions…fuck me, it’s a life term. Maybe after a few years they would allow me to step down and come to you, but that’s years of you waiting in New York. And then there is always the possibility they’d call me back.”

“I would never do that,” I said automatically, even as the dream of our home in New York, surrounded by family and friends, slipped away. “If you have to stay, you have to stay, but that means we stay with you. We’re a family. No matter what.”

“You didn’t choose this, though. Neither of us did.” His entire body tensed at the thought of it, making the dragon’s claw over his chest grip the skin.

“But I chose you , Xavi,” I told him. “And you me. Yes, I want to be in New York. Yes, I would prefer to raise our family there with my siblings and my grandmother around. But I chose you . That means taking things as they come together. As a real team.” I reached over to cup his face, urging him close so I could kiss the end of his long nose. “If you have to stay, we all have to stay. We’ll work it out in the end. I know we will.”

He examined me for a long time, then slipped his own hand around my head to deliver a long, bittersweet kiss. His tongue twisted around mine in a terrible, sad dance that still made my breath come up short.

God, I loved him.

Perhaps life as a duchess would be hard, but it would never hurt so much as being without him.

I knew that now.

“I am so fucking lucky to have you,” he whispered against my lips. “So bloody fucking lucky.”

“We make our own luck, Your Grace,” I whispered back before licking the edge of his mouth with my tongue.

He laughed and kissed me again.

“Well, there’s no law that says a duchess can’t be a professor.” He shrugged. “The upside is that I suppose every university in the country will be scratching their eyes out to have you. Might as well take advantage of the benefits, yeah?”

I tried to look hopeful. He wanted so badly to give me something to be hopeful about.

And so I kissed him again, willing myself to get lost as his big hands slid around my waist, pulling me into the shelter of his body.

Whatever the future, we’d be hopeful about it together.

Hope wasn’t enough to help me sleep, though. After showing me just how lucky he felt to have me—twice—Xavier fell into a deep sleep, arms crossed over his chest like a carved knight atop a medieval sarcophagus. I, however, tossed and turned until finally, I padded out to the kitchen, made myself a cup of herbal tea, then sat on the couch in the hopes that Henry’s journals might lull me into some kind of slumber.

“What were you hiding here, Henry?” I murmured as I pulled the first out of the bag and flipped it open.

I expected something about Rupert. Maybe complaining about his older brother’s partying ways, his irresponsibility, perhaps his demeaning manner—all the things that had lurked in subtext before. Maybe I’d get lucky and discover Henry’s true thoughts at last.

I had no idea.

30 March 1986

Masumi had the baby this morning. Five-fifteen. Fourteen hours of labor—she was brilliant.

I know all fathers say this, but he really is perfect.

We named him Xavier.

“Wait, what ?” I squeaked into the night.

The apartment didn’t answer. No one did, to the point where I thought I might have imagined what I’d just read.

Masumi, it said. Not M. And Henry had referred to him self as a father.

I read the passage again. Then read it again. And read it again.

And then, finally, I kept reading.

I shouldn’t be writing all of this down, I know. God knows it could ruin everything if anyone ever finds it. But I can’t shake the idea that the boy may never really know who he is. That he had a father who truly loved him.

Masumi was in love with Rupert. That much was never a lie. Poor girl never had a chance, of course. She was a plaything like everyone else in his path.

In the end, it was as much my fault as it was hers. She wanted to make him jealous by taking up with his brother—she knew him well enough for that, at least. Rupert never has liked to come second in anything, even with the assistant cook.

And I took advantage. I was so desperately in love with her myself. I was willing to take scraps.

I offered to marry her when she learned she was pregnant. Of course, I did. I’m not a monster.

She refused until I brought her back to Japan, and her parents refused to take her in. She was a rebel already, having left Japan against their wishes to come to England on her own. Even more for deciding to have the child.

Why should she settle now and marry a second son she could never love? When she has no other options for respectability, I suppose. In the end, though, I convinced her it was for the best, even if it was on paper only. Insurance for the child. And for her, though she’d never accept it.

She’s already told me she regrets it. That she won’t stay in Kendal.

I shan’t give her the divorce she wants, though, even if she refuses to have anything to do with me.

Xavier, after all, needs a father.

Xavier. Good lord.

I have a son.

“Insurance?” I murmured. “Insurance for what?”

Eagerly, I paged forward.

The entries were shorter and further apart than the original journals. There were months between them—sometimes years—before he had anything more to say, providing a narrative that moved quickly through Xavier’s life. Sometimes they lasted a while, Henry bemoaning his frustrations with Masumi’s distance and the fact that she wouldn’t let him see Xavier more often. Others were more like addendums to the original journals that covered the day-to-day life of Kendal, filling in the backstory of things that couldn’t be recorded for public knowledge.

It was as if Henry couldn’t help it—he had to add the corrections somewhere to the official record for someone’s sake. For Xavier’s, it appeared. It was as if he knew at some point his son would be lost in an identity crisis of his making and would need the truth more than anything else.

I read on through the night, plowing through the first journal, then the second, until the sun was starting to peek over the buildings of East London. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, feeling like I’d just passed through a hurricane.

The entire story was utterly unbelievable. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t.

But it was.

And Xavier had no idea.

Just after I finished the final page, written just after Xavier’s nineteenth birthday, I sprang from the couch, clutching both journals as I raced to the bedroom and jumped into bed.

“Xavi,” I said, grabbing his shoulder to shake him awake. “Xavi, wake up!”

“Mmmph,” he grunted and rolled onto his side.

“No, you stubborn man.” I yanked harder on his arm. “Xavier, get up! You need to get up right now !”

“Hmm? What?” His expression opened when he caught an eyeful of my likely frazzled appearance. “Ces, is everything all right? Christ, the baby?—”

“The baby’s fine,” I assured him. “Sofia’s fine. We’re all fine. But Xavi, listen . I couldn’t sleep, so I read Henry’s journals, and you’re not going to believe?—”

“You didn’t sleep?” He pushed himself up to sitting and shoved his deliciously dark and slightly overgrown hair out of his face. “Ces, you’re pregnant. You need your sleep, you and the baby both?—”

“I’ll nap later.” I waved away his comment. “Xavi, just listen. I found out that?—”

“No, you listen,” he insisted. “You have to take care of yourself, babe. You can’t just stay up all night and shout at me and forget about?—”

“Xavi!” Unable to think of anything else, I scrambled onto his lap, grabbed his face, and kissed him to make him shut up.

It worked.

“Are you listening now?” I asked a few minutes later as I nuzzled my nose to his.

Blearily, he nuzzled me back and then nodded his head. “Yeah. All right.”

“Good,” I said before delivering another kiss. “Because I need you to hear me when I tell you that you are not Rupert Parker’s son. You’re Henry’s.”

His blue eyes were suddenly so wide I honestly thought I might fall into them. “What?”

I stroked his cheek, willing him to listen, hoping to God he would hear this for the blessing it really was. “They lied to you, Xavi. Henry Parker is your real father.”