My mother had believed herself special among my father’s many liaisons because she alone was the one my father had married. She’d imagined that she was the only one to bear him a child, too. And even all these years later, she couldn’t stand the idea that Ash’s mother had been doing the same thing. At the same time.
She had viewed my friendship with him in school as a betrayal. And after everything had fallen apart, I had agreed. I should never have let myself imagine that I—or Ash and I—could overcome the curse of my father’s blood. I should never have allowed my youthful naivete to hurt my mother, whose only sin was in wishing my father was a different man.
I paid my penance to this day. That was why I subjected myself to trips home to the unhappy house in Surrey where I had been raised—between terms at my various boarding schools, that was—and danced attendance on the woman who acted as if I’d wronged her yesterday. And was capable of turning operatic when distraught.
I was no longer friends with Ash. He considered me an enemy now and had for years. My father was dead, and my mother had received the bulk of his estate. He had not recognized his host of mistresses in that way. Only my mother got to live in style with the old man’s ghost.
I would have preferred to burn the house and its memories to the ground, I reflected as I drove up to the sprawling old house that day. That I hadn’t yet done so was a monument to my strength of character, I liked to think.
Especially when I knew my mother would spend our visit as she spent every visit, regaling me with tales of her victimhood as she sat surrounded by all the luxuries my father’s money could buy and mine could support. But that was part and parcel of the penance I paid her. She behaved as she liked and I took it.
I strode inside, nodding curtly at the butler. “Is she downstairs today?”
“I’m afraid not, sir,” the man replied, without inflection.
That wasn’t a surprise. I took the grand stairs two at a time, then made my way down the hall toward my mother’s private rooms. And found her where I expected I would, swaying as she stood behind the settee in her drawing room, shakily fixing herself a drink.
It was clearly not her first.
That wasn’t remotely surprising. My mother did not work. She did not even dabble at the sort of “work” women in her tax bracket normally did—meaning hosting charity events with high profiles. What was surprising was my own irritation with it today. I normally viewed interactions with my mother as a kind of hair shirt. Not comfortable, certainly. But mine to suffer anyway.
I should have been focused on my mother today, a week or so after I’d left Paris, but all I could think about was Darcy.
She had given me one night. I shouldn’t have wanted more.
Yet I dreamed of her every night—and was daydreaming about her even now as I greeted my mother and sat across the room in the chair closest to the door. Because sometimes she liked to throw things.
“If you have better things to do, Sebastian, don’t let me keep you,” she said when her glass was full. Her voice was the typical mix of petulance and malice that only got worse—and more shrill—the more she drank. I could tell by her pitch that she’d been at it all day.
There were other clues. My mother was a beautiful woman whose vanity had increased with age and insecurity in equal measure. Her version of day drinking involved dressing as if she planned to attend a black-tie ball at any moment, with hair and cosmetics to match. Today she wore a flowing gold gown that made her look like a statuette. Her dark hair was arranged into an elegant coiffure that I knew her staff made certain could withstand a selection of gales.
It was the smudged lipstick that gave her away. The unfocused gaze. And the shadow beneath her eyes that told me she’d already raged and cried, then had tried to wipe the telltale mascara runs away.
I forced myself to smile. “What could be a better thing to do than spend time with my mother?”
“Everything, apparently. I haven’t seen you in ages.”
“I was here last month.”
“Last month,” she said, to the walls. As if it hurt her. “Last month, if you please.”
“Mother.” It was harder to keep my voice level and pleasant than it should have been. Harder than it had ever been before. “You know full well I have a company to run.”
She drank from her glass, then sauntered out from behind the settee—and the bar that was always stocked with the finest liquors for her to toss back at will. She swept to the center of the settee and then settled herself, likely imagining she looked regal and haughty, like the queen she sometimes fancied herself. When, instead, she was obviously unsteady, and sloshed whatever she was drinking today over the rim of her glass onto the cushion beside her.
“You spend too much time working. And not nearly enough time with your family.”
She had no idea how I spent my time, but I didn’t bother to point that out. I had long since come to terms with the fact that when my mother addressed me, she was seeing her late husband, not her son. I gave her what he never had: the courtesy of remaining in the room to hear her out, and a response.
“The company is my responsibility,” I said evenly. “It takes up most of my time, but then, it should.”
It took up all of my time and I liked it that way.
All of my time save one memorable night in Paris, that was.
I blinked. Surely I was not going to daydream about my little dancer here and now. In the presence of my mother. I might enjoy shattering taboos now and again in the safety of the club, but that seemed a bridge too far.
“I think it’s high time you found yourself a wife, Sebastian,” she said, high color on her cheeks and something hectic in her eyes as she regarded me. “A good one to settle you. And I don’t trust you to pick her. You’re far too much like your father.”
It always ended this way. On good days she would shower me with love, then smother me with her various protestations. Too quickly, she would veer into insults. I was too much like my father. I was cold, withdrawn. Being near me was like being staked out in a field in the middle of winter, and so on.
Apparently, we were fast-forwarding straight into the insults.
Normally, I took this as part of my penance, too. Because I’d always understood that I really was too much like him. It had been my needing to be too much like him that had led to my attempt to put together that deal. It had been my unearned certainty that I could pull it off that had lost Ash’s money. And lost me Ash in the bargain.
I thought of his raised middle finger across the club bar. Eloquent as always. And I wasn’t sure why that old hollow feeling swept over me again. It was as if I’d left my best armor behind in that suite in Paris. As if Darcy had taken it with her when she’d left me.
She haunted me.
And in all that mess, as always, there was my mother. Needy and demanding, lonely and shrill.
“Why would I ever marry?” I asked, though I knew better than to engage. “I have seen no evidence that you enjoyed your marriage. Or that anyone else does, either.”
“A man like you needs a wife,” she replied. She sniffed. “You can stash her away in a place like this. After all, you will need her to produce an heir at some point.”
“Yes, that was a lovely childhood. I remember it well.”
“You had everything you needed, Sebastian. This is about what I need. A daughter-in-law will fill the space nicely when you’re not here. And I fancy I’d make a darling grandmother, don’t you?”
“I have no intention of marrying,” I said, amazed she was still going on about it. “The notion has never crossed my mind.”
“Sebastian.”