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“Yes, Father. We’ve had this conversation before. Strangely, I’ve not forgotten it.”
“And don’t think I’ve forgotten it either! Or the reason for it!”
Jay’s father, The Viscount Orton, glanced at his wife, seeming to recall he couldn’t say much more on the topic. His many mistresses—and especially Jay’s…um…dalliancewith the latest of them—might be the talk of the town, but they weren’t spoken of at home. There were lots of things his family didn’t speak about, like the fact they all hated each other.
“At least it was only the old Boxster,” said Jay, attempting a careless shrug but wincing in pain instead. His head throbbed, despite the stuff the hospital had given him. He’d call a private doctor. Get something stronger.
“Myold Boxster!” thundered his father. “Which I didnotgive you permission to drive.”
“Yes. Well. You never bought me a car, so how else am I supposed to get around?”
“Jeremy,” said his mother primly, from where she sat on a rose-patterned sofa, her hands tucked between her knees, “we did buy you a car. You wrapped it around a lamppost in Kensington six months ago.”
Jay made a rolling motion with his uninjured hand. “Yes, yes, I meant toreplacethat one.”
He kept one eye on his father as he spoke, smirking internally at the coming apoplexy. Jay’s performance was largely for the old man’s sake. If only he wasn’t so easy to wind up. If only he didn’t deserve it.
“That’s it!” snapped the viscount, making a cutting motion with his hand. “That is it! You have no respect. No appreciation for money—”
“But, dear Father, it’s not like youworkfor our money.”
“That is beside the point!”
“Kenneth,” chided his mother. “He’s riling you on purpose. You fall for it every time. Like the idiot you are.”
The Viscount Orton glared, trembling with rage, hands clenched. “Idiot am I? Well. Let’s see who the idiot is now, eh. Insurance company valued replacing that car at forty-five thousand. You have a month to get the money, Jeremy. Until then, your allowance is stopped. And if you don’t get the money in time, it will be stopped permanently. I’m cutting you off.”
Jay, for once in his life, was speechless. He had already run through this month’s money and reached the deep bottom of his overdraft.
Far from coming to his aid, his mother chuckled. “Oh, that’s good Kenneth. Hit him where it hurts.”
“But…how am I meant to get forty-five thousand in a month?”
His father grinned. “Work for it.”
“But I don’t…I don’t have a job.”
“Maybe it’s time you got one,” said his mother, standing. “And learnt the value of money.” She left the room arm-in-arm with his now triumphant father.
Jay sat on the silk-brocade sofa, staring unseeing across the magnificent living room.
How on earth did one get money? Work? How? As what? He’d dropped out of Oxford. He hadn’t done a thing since, except have a tremendously good time. He was now twenty-six and living at home, having recently lost his London house to his father’s rage over that miserable little tryst with Ashleigh. And he hadn’t even liked the girl. He’d screwed her to annoy his father, but mostly, probably, because she was twenty-one and he couldn’t stand the thought of his father with someone the same age as his younger sister, so he’d had to find a way to end it. Really, it had been anethicalconquest.
A very fucked-up ethical conquest.
OK. So maybe he regretted it. Maybe it hadn’t been a good move. Even the bragging rights hadn’t been much fun. People kind of looked at him a bit strangely sometimes now. Like he was repulsive or something. Pitiful even.
But bugger it. It was done. And Ashleigh was free of his father, which was the main thing. It did him no good now to be thinking of it. This forty-five thousand, that’s what he needed to think about.
He could ask a friend…but he didn’t have the right kind of friends for that. He had ones to drink with, party with, shop with, dine with. He didn’t have call-them-up-to-bail-him-out friends. You know—actualfriends.
Maybe he could win it. He’d played a lot of poker in Monaco not long ago, having gone to Saint-Tropez with Biffy Shilstone and that crowd as part of Biffy’s birthday bash. They’d travelled up and down the French coast, partying, gambling, drinking, shagging, doing far too much coke and god-knows what else. He’d forgotten half of it. It was probably just as well. There were large swaths of his life it was better to forget.
The best part had been that first night in Monaco before everything got blurry, in that casino where they’d befriended that expat fellow. What was his name? Tall, blond hair. A bit eccentric. But a decent guy, the first decent person Jay had met in a long time who talked to him like a real person rather than the walking joke he’d managed to turn himself into. Probably because he didn’t know Jay’s reputation.
The man had just come into a huge inheritance. He’d been spending big. What was his damn name…? Actually, didn’t Jay have his number? He had a vague memory of it. Dim light, alcohol on his breath, glamour in the glittering chandeliers of the casino, regret in the shadows. “I’ll be in England soon. Scotland. England. Somewhere cold andtrès anglaise. Here’s my number. My name is not now but will be then, Marquess Banberry.”
Awkwardly, with one hand in a splint, Jay dug his phone out of his jeans pocket and looked through his contacts.Banberry-Brewerly, he’d saved the name under. That was it. Tom Brewerly.
