Interlude II

INTERLUDE II

ELEVEN YEARS EARLIER

Xavier

“ I told you, I’m not fucking going back.”

“Watch your mouth, boy, or I’ll watch it for you.”

“I’d like to see you try, gnarly old git,” I retorted, turning to pick up the dough I had been weaving into a plait.

Gavin, the village baker, had given me a bit of his starter last month, and I’d finally trained it in the kitchen to the point where I thought I could get a decent rise. I’d wanted to try a plaited sourdough for a while. Even if Gavin swore up and down it wouldn’t work in the cool Lakeland humidity. I thought that Corbray Hall had enough elevation that it just might make the difference.

Before I could make it through a third weave, a cast iron pan clanged into the wall above my head.

I bent down, narrowly missing the second one before it banged into the brick over my shoulder.

“Evelyn won’t be happy that you’re ruining her prized skillets,” I remarked as if he had only dropped one on the ground.

“My cook’s concerns are the least of my list of worries. My son’s blatant and complete disrespect is at the top.”

“Well, good for you, Your Grace, getting your priorities in order at last,” I said, feigning nonchalance over the anger simmering. The anger that was always simmering. Like a pot ready to boil over if he turned up the heat a bit too much.

“You will go back to university, Xavier. Do you have any idea what kind of favors I had to call in to ensure you a spot at St. Andrew’s, after what happened at Christ Church? They say the prince of Denmark shall never have the same nose again.”

“That’s really too bad, since no one asked you to do it,” I told him as I pulled another thread of dough across the plait. “I already told you, I’m not going. Not to St. Andrew’s or Cambridge or any other of these posh schools you want to force me into. I want to learn to cook properly. And I don’t need your help to do it. I’ve already been accepted to the London Culinary Institute, as it happens. And under the name Sato too. Without your fucking favors.”

I continued plaiting as if he wasn’t fuming on the other side of the counter. Rupert watched until it looked like a vein at the top of his forehead might burst.

“Ungrateful little bastard,” he snarled. “That’s what you are. If I hadn’t?—”

“Hadn’t what?” I snapped. “If you hadn’t what? Shagged the cook?”

“Your mother and I met at university first, as you well know?—”

“Got her pregnant?” I went on. “Eloped in an impulsive wedding? Or maybe it was abandoning your family for fifteen years until you suddenly grew a conscience, eh? My God, if only you hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be here at all, would we?”

“My son will not be no better than a kitchen boy, and that is final!”

Seething and swollen with anger, Rupert Parker opened and closed his mouth like a blowfish. Blowfish could be poisonous. They were delicacies in Japan, but if you didn’t remove certain parts, they could also be deadly. A delicious game of Russian Roulette.

Sort of like fighting with my dad. Five out of six times, he kept his cool. Get that last bullet, though, and you got a cast iron pot thrown at your head. Or maybe a priceless heirloom, depending on which room of the house we were in.

Apparently, I was looking to play.

He watched me for a few more minutes with those annoyingly blue eyes of his. The ones I inherited. The ones I fucking hated.

“I’ve really tried, you know,” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “The polo. Took you to Scotland. Sent you to the finest schools, did everything to help you learn to be a part of society. You can’t tell me I didn’t.”

“Yes, you have tried,” I said, picking up the edges of my plait once more. “Tried to shove a square fucking peg in a round hole, Rupert. But some things just don’t fit.”

He stared at me for a long time, then shook his head. “He really can’t tell me I haven’t tried.”

Great. Now I was being talked about like I wasn’t even fucking there.

“You call this trying?” I demanded. “Forcing me into your life and throwing tantrums when I don’t fit?”

“You ungrateful?—”

“Wretch. Brat. Bastard. I know, I know. Don’t bother, because I’ve heard them all. Just more reasons I’ve no desire to be the Duke of fucking Kendal. And let’s be honest, you wouldn’t know real effort, real hardship if it bit you in the arse.”

Rupert stood up hard enough that his stool went toppling to the stone floor and left the room with a bang of the door against the stopper.

“Don’t let it hit you on the way out,” I called and went back to my plaiting.

“Don’t let what hit me?”

I looked up to find Henry coming in. I jumped at first, thinking it was Rupert again, back for another round. They looked alike from afar, nearly as tall as one another. As tall as me. But where Dad had steely blue eyes and an expression to match. Henry’s was softer, somehow. Not kind, per se. No one in the Parker family was ever really kind. But at least he didn’t throw pans at me. Maybe a jibe or two, but that was it.

“You can’t imagine this is really about whether or not you want to make bread, of all things.” Henry looked at the plaited dough as if it might jump out and attack him. “It’s about your future. About his future, really.”

“Oh?” I said, finishing off the plait and tucking the ends under the loaf before scooping the whole thing up and gently setting it into a proofing basket. “Please tell me why my desire to cook has anything to do with his future. Dad can be a self-righteous twat, whether or not I’m working in a kitchen.”

“Well, for one, he’d miss you,” Henry said. He bent down to grab the stool Dad had knocked to the floor and set it upright for himself.

“Go on, tell me another,” I said. “I’m the thorn in his side. Have been since I was born. He just couldn’t ignore me anymore after Mum died. Even worse, that I turned out to be his actual heir.”

Lord, that had been a prize fight. I’d been the one throwing things that night, once I’d learned that not only was I the next Duke of Kendal, but that titles weren’t really something you could refuse. I was what I was. Like it or not.

I turned around and started washing my hands in the sink. Sourdough really did turn to cement when it was left to dry, and it was like glue when wet. Horror to work with, but I was determined to master it no matter what. Plus, one of the few perks about Corbray Hall was the proper bread oven, lined with bricks and fully fired. Most industrial bakeries didn’t have as much. It was too good not to learn.

“Be that as it may,” Henry said once he’d sat down on the stool. “If you do leave again and become a chef—aside from what it will look like for the Duke of Kendal’s son to be a common cook, on top of needing to get that thing on your arm?—”

I grinned. I had particularly liked Dad’s reaction when he caught sight of the tattoo I’d brought home from America. Up and down my left arm, a little bit up the neck and over the wrist, so it couldn’t be hidden with the best of collars, the longest of sleeves. A serpent designed to recall Kiyohime, the woman who turned into a serpent demon in order to kill the man who betrayed her. Mum told me a lot of Japanese folktales when I was a kid, but that was one of her favorites. It never occurred to me to wonder why until I’d come to live with Rupert Parker.

“If you left,” Henry continued, “it would also mean you wouldn’t stay here and marry Lady Imogene. As you are meant to.”

I paused, hands still under the half-boiling water. “You want to say that again, Uncle? Who’s getting married to Imogene Douglas?”

Uncle Henry sighed, like he was speaking to someone particularly slow. “It’s been in the works since you were first brought here. It’s the obvious choice, boy. The estates adjoin, and we’ve known the family for generations. Imogene will inherit Ortham and her parents’ income, if not her father’s title. Their estate will become a part of Kendal and still remain part of a different, greater title that can maintain everything. It all works out.”

“Why not Lucy?” I asked. “She’s the eldest.”

“Xavier, please,” Henry replied. “Lucy will not live beyond thirty, if she is lucky. We all know it. That future is not one to be planned for.”

“You don’t know that.”

I turned off the faucet and wiped my hands on my pants. Henry sighed irritably, then yanked a dishtowel from a rack behind him and threw it at me with a bit more force than necessary.

“Imogene?” I asked disbelievingly as I finished drying off. “That’s what this is all about? He wants me to marry Imogene Douglas?” The idea made me laugh outright. “She’s, what, fourteen?”

“Fifteen,” Henry replied calmly.

“Jailbait, that’s what,” I countered. “I’d rather just marry Lucy, if I had to do it at all. Which I don’t. But at least we’re actually friends.”

“Don’t be a fool, boy. For one, Lucy can’t have children.”

“And how would you know that, you old lech?” I leered at him.

Henry would know the ins and outs of a prospective girl’s reproductive system, though. He knew more about this place and everyone in it than anyone who’d ever lived here, I’d wager. He probably had her lady parts tested too. Counted the eggs and everything.

“Her parents told me,” he replied, impervious as ever to my jokes. “We’ve discussed the match a great deal. They are very supportive, even with their prospective son-in-law’s…unusual proclivities.”

I recoiled. The idea of these imperialistic old geezers sitting around talking about my and Imogene’s future like it was a game of chess made me physically ill. And I didn’t even like the girl.

“It’s a no,” I told him. “And I mean absolutely not. I might have to take Dad’s title or die, but I’m not getting forced down the aisle. Lucy’s my mate, but Imogene is…” I made a face. “Well, she’s annoying.”

“She is still young.”

“Exactly. Every time I’m over there, she chases me around like some kind of puppy.”

“Well, she is very young. But it bodes well that she likes you, I should think.”

“It bodes nothing, Uncle. I’m not interested. I’m also not even twenty-one yet.”

“Exactly. She’s coming out this year,” Henry said. “In a few more, she’ll start university. Look, boy. No one is saying you must marry the girl now. Sow your oats, as they say. Do what young men do. But when all’s said and done, you must keep your future in mind. And while apparently that does not include a degree from Britain’s finest institutions?—”

I snorted. Yeah, I didn’t fancy getting kicked out of another university. Three was enough.

“It should include doing what is needed to be a true Duke of Kendal,” he concluded. “And eventually, that will mean getting married and carrying on the line. I realize they question you now, boy, but should you marry the Douglas girl, you wouldn’t hear a word about it ever again. Be the heir, establish an heir. Have your fun discreetly. You understand?”

I opened my mouth to joke again, to tell him he’d lost the plot completely. But Henry was looking at me in that way he sometimes did. Like he thought he knew me better than I knew myself. Like he knew that deep down, there was a part of me that wanted to be accepted by my father and his people and be more than Rupert Parker’s funny-looking boy who fought and swore too much. He knew it, even if I wasn’t willing to admit it.

I knew one more thing, though. That, out of the few people left in this world who actually cared about me, Henry was the only one who could tell me the real, honest truth of things, whether I liked it or not.

That didn’t mean I was ever going to marry Imogene Douglas, though.

Before I could say as much, the kitchen doors burst open, and my father reentered the room, red-faced and ready for another argument.

I clenched the towel, prepared for battle.

Instead, he surprised me with an olive branch.

“All right,” Rupert said, “you can go to bloody culinary school. I’ll even pay for it. On one condition.”

I glanced at Henry. He shrugged, clearly as curious as I was about what was happening.

“Oh?” I asked. “And what’s that?”

“That you, when you’re finished, you come back here and follow the plan.”

Henry looked at me again as if to say “I told you so.”

I just snorted. He might have imagined that future, but there was no way I was ever marrying Imogene Douglas. Just like there was no law that said the Duke of Kendal had to reside in Kendal.

“Fat chance, that one,” I told him. “Once I leave Kendal again, I’m never coming back. I don’t fancy having another pan thrown at my head or any more of this matchmaking business you and Uncle have been cooking up. No fucking thanks.”

Henry sighed as his brother turned his murderous gaze on to him. But Rupert barely managed to hold in his anger before he turned back to me. The dealing wasn’t done.

“And if you and your smart mouth had a place of your own?” he asked.

I looked up, this time genuinely surprised. “What, you mean a flat in town?” I shrugged. “I can get that on my own. I still have Mum’s, you know.”

“I mean a restaurant,” he said, as if I should have known. “A shabby little pub to do with what you like. So long as you stay here and finish learning the things you ought to.”

I peered at him, wondering what other motive was behind this. There was a time, years ago, when Rupert tried to make nice with me. After he realized I was legitimate, he did try a little, like he said. Taught me to play polo, for fuck’s sake. Well, that part I liked.

None of the rest took. Especially when it was so obvious he’d had to. His wife and stepson were hardly around. And so he was left with one option: a black sheep for his only heir and legacy.

I glanced at Henry to see what he thought. His face didn’t move, but his thin shoulders rose and fell, as if to say, “Why not?”

I turned back to my father. “All I have to do is live in Kendal? And you’ll stop haranguing me about uni and everything else? You’ll let me do what I want? You’ll let me cook?”

I wanted to hear him say it.

Rupert’s face contorted with struggle, but at last, he sighed, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and nodded.

“Yes,” he said through his slightly crooked teeth. “Come back and stay, and you can cook. But you will become a duke.”