Prologue

PROLOGUE

Xavier

I was becoming something of an expert on funerals.

This one was rather nice, so far as they go. Smaller than the grand procession organized for my father, but there was still a line of cars that snaked through the village following the chapel service. Henry was buried in the old churchyard on the day autumn arrived. A chilly breeze skimmed off the lake, forcing us into overcoats, but the remnants of summer flowers still floated about the air, reminding everyone of better days. The estate hosted a wake afterward for the peers and MPs and other aristocratic fools who were there more to hobnob with each other than to bid farewell to a man they only ever knew as the brother, then uncle, to much more influential people.

In other words, they were there to see me.

I ignored every one of them.

The service was short. Henry was never much for a lot of words. He preferred a brief, dry joke and a stiff upper lip, as they say. So I offered a few quick remembrances without meeting the eyes of a single supposed mourner. Listed, with the help of Elsie and Frederick’s notes, a few of his accomplishments and other contributions to his community.

I actually found out a lot about him. That his favorite food was cook’s roasted lamb, and when he was a boy, he dreamed of being a chef himself. Like me. I learned he took particular pride in the little sheep herd we maintained at Kendal and submitted them from time to time to local fairs or shows. He even took first place ribbon at Findon when he was a boy.

What was more than clear was the way he loved Kendal like nothing else. Despite being the second son, he’d been the estate’s caretaker for nearly his entire life, since my grandparents both passed when he and Rupert were still just lads. But while Rupert had been more interested in polo and parties, Henry had quietly revolutionized Kendal’s means of income over the past thirty-five years. He had seamlessly translated the estate’s holdings into a digital economy, yet somehow maintained its status as a modernized country dukedom, complete with farms and tenants that others thought belonged to a different age. A truly hybrid operation that was much more innovative than I’d ever given him credit for when he was alive.

It was understandable, then, why he’d never had children. Kendal was his family. It was the only thing that had ever mattered to him.

The love was clearly returned. The village church was small but packed with locals who cried genuine tears on his behalf. Remaining tenants too. Various businesspeople who had conducted affairs with him outside the ranks of the House of Lords. Friends, family. Even some extended cousins who, yes, included my stepmother, her sister, and the other distant Parkers waiting for my imminent demise as the reluctant Duke of Kendal.

Gone was the only person who’d ever believed I could actually fill the shoes of this ridiculous title.

I couldn’t look at any of them. Couldn’t fathom this entire congregation who had known and appreciated my uncle, and by extension my father, and therefore me—someone who knew so little about what they had done and was now forced to take it on or let their hard work wither on the vine.

Henry deserved better than that. He deserved better than me.

By the end of the service, I had the outright shakes as I escaped to the garden. I yearned for a drink in peace without a thousand people wondering about the future plans for the estate. It was maybe a little early for brandy, but I was past caring. Anything to quiet the storm that was threatening to split me into pieces.

Unfortunately, the garden was anything but a refuge. The camellia bush at the southeast end was starting to bloom. Amid the browns and yellow and burnt siennas of autumn, the bright pink stood out like a herald.

The color of deepest longing.

The color of my utter regret.

The color of Francesca.

It was everything I could do not to call her after Henry passed and beg her to come back. I did everything through the service to keep her from my mind, knowing I’d have smashed my fist through the lectern if it had come to that.

But with that pink flashing like a strobe through the falling leaves and garden greenery, the memories of her sweet scent, the soft warmth of her body, the mischievous curve of her smile—each one cut through me like one of the rapiers mounted in the library.

She should be here. She’d know exactly what to say to put my head right. But more than that, she’d be grounding, a safe place for me to go when the rest of the world was pressing in, demanding their pound of flesh.

But now she was gone.

Because I’d cocked it all up.

“All right, mate?”

I turned to find Jagger and Elsie—otherwise known as the only other people in the world I could trust—approaching slowly, as if I were a wild animal. Elsie, my mother’s best friend and my executive assistant, wore a black version of her typical jumper, wool skirt, and Balmorals—the same uniform she’d had since first meeting my mum in a library nearly thirty years ago. The consistency was, as always, a particular comfort.

Meanwhile, between a designer suit, diamond-encrusted cufflinks, and a manicured goatee, Jagger, my best friend and business partner, was a bit too flash for a gentry funeral. It was something I loved about him, though. You could take the boy out of Croydon, but never Croydon out of the boy. Like me, there was a side of Jag that would always indulge no matter how successful our empire of restaurants became—the part of him that still remembered what it was like to have nothing. Maybe had a hole, deep down, that could never be filled.

They were a bit of an odd pair, standing there in the middle of the garden. But right now, they were everything I had in the whole fucking world.

I yanked at the lapel of my morning suit. To be honest, I was quite annoyed that I had to wear this thing at all. Henry hated fuss, but he did like propriety. Georgina insisted that as the head of the family, I’d be expected to dress like it. And so, to the tailor I went to make my very best impression of an emperor penguin.

Elsie offered a rueful smile as she popped onto her toes to adjust my collar. “Only a bit longer, dear, and then you can leave.”

I glanced toward the sky-high windows of the library, where guests hovered around the books in their black and gray finery, some of the women in hats that nearly grazed the ceiling. Shadowy peacocks, all of them.

I snorted. “Leave for where? The nearest pub? I wouldn’t mind getting pissed.”

“You’re not going back to America?” Jagger frowned at my brandy glass, then Elsie, then back at me. “I still have the Paris projects on hold, but if you’re game to get them started again…”

I shook my head. “No, don’t do that. I’ve enough to keep me occupied here until we can find another steward.”

“You can’t be serious, boy.”

My mouth fell open. “I—Els?—”

“I mean, really ,” she continued. “I raised you better than that. Your dear mum and I taught you right.”

I gawked. “Isn’t that what Henry would have wanted? Stay here, keep things going?”

“And do exactly what your father did to you? Abandon your child? Make them feel unwanted, uncertain of their place in the world, just like you were?” She shook her head. “Xavier Parker, I have never been so ashamed.”

I stared into my brandy snifter, cheeks turning the color of the autumn leaves. First the camellia, now Els. I was trying not to go there. “It’s not abandoning them if I’m giving them a better life, Els.”

Neither she nor Jagger looked convinced.

I closed my eyes, inhaled, then exhaled forcefully. I did it another four times, just like Dr. Hazelwood taught me when I started seeing her a few weeks ago. I didn’t want to see a therapist. But it was that or tear my fucking flat apart.

My heart rate did calm down, just like she always said it would. I was still angry. Still so angry and sad, above all. But I didn’t want to rip anyone’s heads off anymore. Shockingly simple. I did sometimes wonder why I was paying five hundred quid a session to learn how to breathe. But whatever. If it helped, it helped.

“Boy,” Elsie started again.

“I’m not a boy, Els,” I cut in. “I haven’t been since I was sixteen years old.”

Her harsh gaze softened at the mention of that age. When Mum died, and I was on my own for the first time. When Elsie used to bring over stews every few days just to make sure I was at least eating properly.

“Ah, sweetheart. That’s where you’re wrong. You’ll always be my boy.”

One of her small hands cupped my face, and the hell if I didn’t want to bury my nose in her jumper and cry until my eyes were dry as the Sahara. Dry as my dirty, empty heart.

“Fuck,” I muttered. “Oh, fuck .”

“That’s right,” Elsie said as she continued to stroke my cheek. “You know what you have to do. Find Francesca and make things right. Henry’s at rest now, so you go get your babies, love. Jagger will manage the Parker Group just like he has been, and the estate will keep itself. I’ll help Frederick, and whatever we need from you, well, you’re only one ring away.”

“Babies?” Jagger said, a bemused expression bouncing between us. “Did I miss something?”

Elsie preened. “Did you not know? Our Francesca is expecting. We’ve got another darling baby Parker on the way.”

I took another slug of brandy. “Els, have you been snooping through my emails again?”

She didn’t look the slightest bit remorseful. “It’s not snooping if it’s my job. And no one told you to leave Francesca’s missive open in your inbox for all the world to see.” She cocked her head. “It was a very nice letter, if I do say so.”

I closed my eyes. I’d probably read that email at least a hundred times since it arrived just after Henry’s death. It had come as a picture of a handwritten note, one where Francesca’s struggle with me, with us , with the choices ahead of her, were scrawled through her neat script and multiple cross-outs.

At the end, though, her message was clear: she didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past. And so, she was telling me this time outright.

And staying exactly where she was. An ocean away.

“She’s pregnant again? Blimey, Xav, what were you trying to do?” Jagger was still gaping like a boy watching fireworks.

I wanted to tell him to shut his mouth—he wasn’t the one who’d been slapped in the face—twice—by a surprise baby. “It was an accident, just like the last time.”

“More like a Freudian slip,” Jagger joked. “It was a mistake the first time, so you’d think you’d both be more careful the second go. Happens again…” He shook his head. “Come on. How hard it is to wear a Johnny?”

I opened my mouth to argue but found I couldn’t. It was true—Francesca and I had been playing with fire all summer. She was on the pill, yeah, but she’d forgotten it plenty of times over the course of chaos—not to mention it was a complete ball-ache to get a refill while on a waiting list for a GP. Meanwhile, I had a box of Durex in my nightstand I hadn’t even opened. Best intentions flew out the bloody window the second I saw that woman naked and willing.

And maybe Jagger was right, too. Maybe there was a part of me that wanted it. Wanted more with her. Wanted everything. I’d bought a ring after all—the pink diamond cluster I’d carried it everywhere, even after she’d left.

Fuck me. I still had it even now in my jacket pocket, a sad talisman of my complete and utter failure.

“She’s only a few hours away right now, you know,” Elsie prodded.

I turned. “What?”

“Italy. For her brother’s wedding, remember? She sent you her schedule last week so you could keep up your FaceTime dates with Miss Sofia.”

I blinked. All the communication with Francesca, since she had fled England last month, was a blur between too much drinking, mourning my uncle, and bruising my knuckles nightly on my heavy bag. I hadn’t missed a FaceTime with my little girl, but only with Elsie’s help.

“She’s in Italy?” I repeated.

Elsie nodded. “A quick plane ride away. And I happen to know the Parker jet is available at the Kendal airstrip just now.”

Jagger lifted one brow expectantly and helpfully took my near-empty brandy glass out of my hand. “Go on, Xav. We can entertain the suits. Go get your girls.”

I was moving before I even realized my decision, jogging through the garden and up around to the front of the estate to avoid the crowd. There were things that needed to be done. Papers to sign, deals to make, projects to finish that Henry had started.

They could rot in the lake for all I cared.

“Xavier! Where in the world are you going?”

I stopped at the great entry to face Georgina. The dowager duchess—my father’s widow who had been a thorn in my side for years—stood at the bottom of the front steps in her funerary finest, including a hat approximately the size of Germany on her perfectly set, light brown hair. Her pearl earrings dangled softly in the breeze, but her face was pinched sharp as an arrowhead.

I took another deep breath and held it long enough for my fists to unclench before I faced her.

“You can’t leave,” she said. “We’ve still guests here. You’re expected to welcome them properly, as the duke.”

For now, her tone suggested clearly as if she’d said it aloud.

After all, wasn’t that what she wanted?

“I have to go, Georgie,” I said. “I’ve some business with my family, and now that the funeral is over, I need to tend to it.”

There. Short and sweet, and I’d even managed not to rip her head clean off.

I turned to leave, but she hurried up the stairs to catch me by one of the coat tails, like a spoiled little girl grabbing her kitty’s tail.

“What is it, Georgina?” I practically roared after she jerked me backward. “What the fuck do you want from me?”

So much for sweet. Deep breathing could only go so far when it came to this one.

“How dare you speak to me that way. I demand respect!”

“You,” I said, thrusting a finger in her face, “can fuck right off. How’s that for respect?”

“Xavier!”

“Don’t Xavier me, Duchess ,” I snapped. “I’m leaving now to fix the mess you made. Do you think I don’t know it was you who sent Ces and Sofia home? Do you think I don’t know you’ve been working for months to have my title stripped in the House of Lords? Do you think I don’t know all of it?”

It came out like a waterfall of bitterness, and just like that, my fists were clenched back up, tight as rocks. God, when I thought of what she’d done, I wanted to burn the place down. And her with it, like the witches of the old days. In my frame of mind, I really thought she deserved it.

Heartless, I know. But I never claimed to be a good man. I wasn’t going to start now.

Georgina’s overly plump mouth fell open as she took another step backward, like she sensed the pending threat. “I—it doesn’t matter now. This family has appearances to keep up. You can’t just leave .”

“I can, and I fucking will.”

I turned then and started back up the stairs, taking two at a time in a hurry to retrieve my things and be gone.

“If you leave, you’ll lose it all.”

I froze at the top as her voice echoed through the foyer.

“You’re right,” she said evenly, glancing to the side to make sure we weren’t to be interrupted by any guests. “Caroline and I have been working to overturn the entail. It’s absurd that you ever became the heir, when by rights it should have been Henry, and then Frederick, considering his father was the next male heir in line. Rupert was my husband. I knew him better than anyone. And there was no way he would have ever married a kitchen maid, much less in a Buddhist temple. I will find the proof, Xavier. That is a promise.”

I stared at her for a long time. Long enough for her brown-eyed gaze to waver and for her set jaw to tremble. I took one step down, then another, and another until I was back on the landing, staring down at her from my considerable height.

“The next time you address me, you will use my title or Your Grace, as custom demands,” I said in a low voice that shook with suppressed rage. “In the meantime, you will vacate the premises immediately after the wake or else be escorted by every Bobbie in the area. Squatting rights don’t apply to the likes of you, you despicable piece of shite.”

Her mouth fell open. “How dare you?—”

“Now,” I interrupted, waving away her weak admonishments. “I’m going to Italy to get the mother of my children. And I may not be back for a very long time, depending on how badly you’ve fucked things up. So, until then, your behavior will determine your fortunes when I do return. And you do not want to be on the receiving end of my rage, Georgina. You won’t like what comes of it when properly simmered.”