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I glanced at Elsie and back to him. It was common to tip porters and drivers in London, but I wasn’t sure about what to do with my boyfriend’s estranged staff. What was the protocol for that?
“I’m sorry, here,” I said, taking out a five-pound-note from my wallet and handing it to him. Better safe than sorry, I supposed.
Gibson just stared at it, eyes suddenly afire. “Certainly not, miss,” he declared, then abruptly moved to the trunk to unload our two small suitcases.
Crap. I guess I was sorry after all, although something told me either way, I couldn’t have avoided it.
“Hello, loves,” Elsie greeted me while she stroked Sofia’s hair from where she was wrapped around Elsie’s hips. “Sorry I couldn’t be the one to meet you at the station. Gibson here doesn’t like to drive, but Ben had a cold this morning. He’s feeling better, though.”
Gibson just sniffed. “Please request that Benjamin move the car to the garage, Mrs. Crew. I have things to attend to.” He turned to me with a stiff tip of his head. “Miss.”
Without waiting for an answer, he angled around us with our weekend bags and strode off into the manor. Sofia and I turned back to Elsie.
“Why does he call you ‘miss’?” Sofia asked once Gibson had left us. “You’re not a little girl. That’s what Elsie calls me.”
I smiled. As ever, my girl was possessive of her family.
“I think because I’m not married, peanut,” I told her. “Although I’m not sure I’d want to be ma’am either. That just sounds like what the butcher calls Nonna back home.”
“Yeah, that won’t work. Nonna’sgrandma.” Sofia’s button nose wrinkled. “Why can’t he just call you Frankie, like everyone else?”
I shrugged. “That’s not how they do things here, bug.” I grinned at Elsie. “Right, ‘Mrs. Crew?’”
Elsie just snorted and patted her gray bob as we all started to walk toward the house. “Don’t mind Gibson. He’s a terrible snob. He’s just mad I made him pick you up since Ben couldn’t do it. Thinks it’s beneath him to drive a car.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because he’s the butler. Very few houses have them anymore, but Gibson has been for, what, thirty years now? Since Xavier was a boy. His Grace, I mean,” she corrected herself when another staff member passed by. “They like things formal up here,” she whispered conspiratorially.
I looked around the imposing entry hall as we walked inside the manor. “I can understand why.”
Elsie followed my gaze while Sofia returned to my side, as if she too had suddenly become aware of the grandeur of our surroundings.
It felt more like a museum than a house—which, I realized, was probably accurate. A huge staircase crisscrossed up at least three floors, with enormous wood banisters carved with what looked like the history of the estate. The stairs were padded with a sumptuous carpet that appeared to continue down arched corridors in nearly every direction from where we stood. Each was lined with richly polished doors and a variety of priceless antiques, along with gilt-framed portraits of people who looked like royalty from nearly every major era of English history over the last several hundred years. I looked up at a particularly large portrait that hung probably ten full feet above a grandfather clock in the entry hall. It was of one of the previous dukes, I assumed, based on his pose and stature. Xavier might have inherited a lot of his mother’s features, but it was very clear where he got his imperious blue eyes, prodigious height, and long nose that his ancestors enjoyed looking down.
Xavier’s family, I realized, was Sofia’s family too.
“I’ll give you a proper tour this evening if you like,” Elsie said. “But for now, I’m here to take you to Xavier. Poor boy, he’s just swimming in papers.”
“What exactly has been going on?” I wondered, taking Sofia’s hand so she wouldn’t accidentally “explore” something along the way into pieces.
“It’s his uncle Henry,” Elsie said as she led us up the main staircase.
“Yes, Xavi said he’d had another stroke. Is he able to speak?”
“In a manner,” Elsie said, veering to the right at the top of the stairs, where we passed another parade of painted relatives. “He woke up screaming, apparently, about some sort of deal that had to be signed today. The boy can tell you more if he wants, but the short of it is that Henry invested a great amount of the estate’s money into something that will ruin everything if it’s not taken care of this week.” She gave a few disapproving tsks. “Likely tip of the iceberg, if you ask me. Where there’s one, there’s a whole mountain below.”
“That sounds…stressful.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. I didn’t exactly have a head for business, nor did I understand in the slightest what went into maintaining a place like this.
“It is,” Elsie said shortly. “He’s in here.”
With a sharp knock, she pushed open a heavy-looking wood door the color of almost-burned caramel. It opened into a room with windows that looked out onto the gardens, sunlight streaming over a collection of leather furniture built to last, and a fireplace that stood empty in the summer afternoon. The walls were covered with tartan wallpaper and more imperious paintings than I could count, with a wall of priceless books on the other side begging to be read.
But I barely noticed any of it. Because there, sitting in the middle of the room, looking more like the duke he was than ever I’d seen him, was Xavier.
ELEVEN
Xavier was hunched over an enormous antique desk bearing two computers, a pile of papers, and several empty teacups. He looked a bit worse for wear in a rumpled button-down, sleeves rolled up to reveal his tattoo, and one hand shoved through his hair as he perused documents. Dark circles marred his lovely pale skin, and his eyes, still blue as the sky, seemed slightly overcast and dulled. I knew I was responsible for some of that fatigue, but not all of it. He was a far cry from the restaurant tycoon who had left me in London and even further from my lighthearted chef.
