Page 2 of Last Comes Fate

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 haveneverbeen so ashamed.”

I stared into my brandy snifter, cheeks turning the color of the autumn leaves. First the camellia, now Els. I was tryingnotto 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. Stillsoangry 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, withus, 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?”

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