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“So, what happened with him?” I asked. “You always talked about your dad like you hated him.”
“What happened was, it was all a lie,” he said. “I made Corbray Hall, and his house in London, my homes for five years. Dad actually embraced my culinary work, but always close to home. He made no secret of wanting me to be his heir, and with Lucy around, it seemed plausible that someone like me could do it. And I liked it. I actually liked being Rupert Parker’s son. I wanted him to like me too. More than like me.”
He shook his head and muttered something like “idiot” under his breath.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “It seems like you were getting what you wanted. Why all the vitriol?”
He sighed. “It started with Lucy. I told you we stuck together that Season. I was useless in society, and she was sick a lot and not much of a looker. But her parents treated the Season like it was the nineteenth century, you know? But she couldn’t even get through most of the events without feeling poorly. And she hated most of the men who ever tried to talk to her anyway. Fortune hunters, all of them.”
I made a face. I hated that idea on principle. I couldn’t imagine being in her shoes—no doubt wanting to be loved, but never knowing for sure if anyone could love her for anything but her money.
“You also remember, her parents gave her an ultimatum. Dad said I should help her out.” Xavier’s eyes narrowed, as if he wanted to go back and shout at the man. “He made it sound like it didn’t matter if we didn’t love each other—that would come, or maybe it wouldn’t—but in the meantime, we could remain friends. Take care of each other as we grew old. Continue the way they had been. That we would stay a family.” He shrugged. “I guess I believed him. So I talked to Luce, and she agreed to get engaged for our parents’ sakes. She’d stay at her family’s estate and run things. Help my dad when he wanted. I could keep working on my business in London. We decided that if neither of us found anyone else before we were forty, we’d get married for real.”
“Sounds great for all of you,” I remarked, unable to keep the sour taste from my mouth.
“Well, it was. Until I met you.”
I closed my eyes briefly. The city seemed to be pulsing around us, but I couldn’t hear it over the memories. The idea of Xavier, young, happy, and ambitious, traveling and looking for new inspiration. Me on the precipice of my own studies, dreams about to come true. Our hope was intoxicating. He hadn’t said anything about his past back then. But of course, we were too wrapped up in each other to notice anything else.
Xavier stopped on the sidewalk, tugging me to face him. His blue eyes shone with intensity. “You changed everything, Ces. I honestly thought I was set up. I had my fun and my restaurants. The dad I always wanted. And then I met you, and the world shifted. I really did lo—” He cut himself off, his gaze flickering all around us. “Well, you know what happened after that. I came here, and for the first time in my whole life, I wasn’t Rupert Parker’s son or bastard, the heir to Kendal. I wasn’t a mistake, and I wasn’t rebel gentry, and I wasn’t a fucking disappointment. You looked at me like I was a whole person, someone really worth knowing. And you know I thought the bloody world of you.”
I swallowed. His emotions made his eyes sparkle like stars, even in the light of day. He was looking for me to confirm that I had felt the same way. That I had been equally enthralled.
Instead, I kept quiet.
“So I went home, ready to tell Lucy all about you,” Xavier continued. “She would have been happy for us, Ces, I know she would have. But when I got there, she was too far gone for even a conversation, much less a wedding or anything else I promised her. Six months later, she died.”
He wiped his eyes. I didn’t see any tears there, but he seemed to be feeling them, gazing around like he was uncertain of where to land those deep blue pools of sadness. I couldn’t help it. I had to hug him. Obviously surprised, he allowed me to wrap my arms around his waist tightly, pressing my face to his chest. I felt his hands slide tentatively down my back, keeping me in place. He didn’t make any other move. Not until I did, at which point he released me with a frustrated huff.
“Thanks,” he murmured.
“You seemed like you needed it.”
“Yeah, well. Anyway.” Xavier cleared his throat and pulled at his jacket. “Once Lucy’s estate was settled, that’s when I started to look at the numbers. Her family’s land had largely been sold off years before we met. She had a huge fortune, but the viscount’s title was already going to a distant cousin.” He swallowed, fury replacing the sadness. “It was the Kendal estate that was upside down. Had been borrowing money from the Douglases for years just to get by. Half the land taxes unpaid. Farmers, whole villages left to crumble. Walking on the edge of losing everything until Dad realized I was best friends with a cash cow and decided to make it work to his advantage.”
I frowned. Something wasn’t adding up. “Xavi, can’t it be both? Can’t your dad have wanted to save his estate and loved you and Lucy at the same time? Because it kind of sounds like he did.”
He just shook his head in disgust. “I confronted him about it, but he couldn’t explain it. He manipulated her, just like he manipulated me. He pretended to love me, Ces. Pretended he actually wanted to be my father. But in reality, he was playing puppets with me and her, nudging and pushing our friendship so he could sell me off to his debtors like a fucking stud horse.”
I gulped. It certainly didn’t sound good. I was starting to realize why Xavier had avoided talking about his father. I understood parental betrayal too. Not much hurts worse than the person who is supposed to protect you turning out to be the one who attacks.
“So I left,” Xavier said. “Told him he could shove the estate and his title and everything else up his arse. I never returned, even when he died the year after when his cancer returned too. Bit of karma, that. After all, it was Luce that kept me there, Ces. Not Rupert Parker. And now that they’re both gone, I’ll never go back. They can’t make me be the Duke of Kendal. No one will.”
His story finished just as we stopped outside of the Y. I had less than ten minutes until my class started, but now I was in no hurry to go in, mulling instead over everything I’d just heard.
There had been so much loss in Xavier’s young life. First his mother, then his best friend, and last, his father. Death and betrayal. No wonder he didn’t trust me with his secrets. He didn’t seem to trust anyone at all, and by this point in his life, he really had no one left.
I swallowed. It was a lot. But then Xavier Parker, erstwhile Duke of Kendal, was always a lot.
“Who’s there now?” I asked finally. “At Corbray Hall, I mean?”
In my head, I imagined an abandoned manor covered with ivy and crawling with wildlife. But I had a feeling that wasn’t what had happened over the last four years.
“My uncle Henry stewards the estate, like I told you,” Xavier said shortly. “I gave him pretty much everything but the title since I’m not allowed to pass it on. Sometimes he makes noises about me coming back, but it’s a joke. It was always a joke.”
He rolled his eyes, like he thought it was absurd. Honestly, it sort of was. This whole story was unbelievable.
And yet, it was true.
