An hour later we approached a driveway entrance flanked by two tall stone pillars. In some ways the entrance was unassuming—the pillars were covered with ivy, no signs or gilded gates. The only reason I even knew it was the entrance to Humboldt Park was because Dylan uttered “Home sweet home” as we turned into the road. It snaked around bends with fields on either side, wooded areas in the distance. I could see farmhouses and outbuildings a ways off, and I was simply taking in the enormity of the place.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a square, stone, towerlike building deep in some gardens.
“It’s called a pigeonnier. It gives the birds a place to nest, and we collect their eggs. We used to occasionally collect the birds as well but haven’t done in some years. My father prefers shooting parties.”
We continued to round the estate and came across the edge of a large pond, with a bridge over it. It reminded me of Central Park, with its winding paths crossing over water and its crisscrossing walkways. “Is this all part of it?” I asked, nearly leaning over Dylan to get a better look out the window.
“I’ll show it all to you later.”
When the house finally came into view, my jaw dropped, and I felt my eyes bug out of my head. This place was a palace. I’d seen pictures of it online, but it was different to have it looming over me in person, to feel so dwarfed by it.
When I was a child, my father and I went to Newport, Rhode Island, one summer to look at the mansions. The memory had been long buried, nestled somewhere under a zillion movie nights and years of cancer treatments, but it emerged fully realized now. That was the only other time I’d seen houses like this one, and we’d had to pay for tickets to get into those. People rented them for weddings, for Christ’s sake. This is where Dylan had grown up? Holy fuck.
“Dylan, I…” I couldn’t finish that thought. I had no idea what to say. The house was enormously tall and so grand. We rounded a corner and a stately columned façade came into view with several steps. There was a curved driveway in front, and I couldn’t miss the Roman statue and fountain. I remembered Will’s comment about Geoffrey’s mistress.
“Come,” Dylan started after a moment of silence and as the car rolled to a stop in front of a grand set of doors. He leaned over and kissed me quickly but firmly, even though I barely registered or responded. “It’s just a house.” Yeah, and the Grand Canyon was just a ravine.
An older woman in a crisp blue dress was waiting by the door, and a younger man in a collarless button-down shirt and a pair of pressed trousers was approaching the car.
“Hello there, Jake,” said Dylan to the guy with a genuine smile. “Our bags are in the boot.”
“Right, sir. Her Grace has Miss Bell in the blue room,” he added, looking at Dylan as though he knew this cryptic phrase would get a response, which it did—a huff of anger.
“Of course she does. Please put Lydia’s bags in my room as well, if you would.”
“Of course, sir,” the young guy replied with a barely noticeable smirk.
Dylan then looked to the warm older woman waiting for us by the door. “Mrs. Barnes,” he said, giving her an all-encompassing hug. “It’s lovely to see you.”
“You look so well, my lord.”
“It will never feel right for you to call me that.”
“Fine, then,” she said, pleased with herself. “Master Dylan it is.”
Dylan chuckled. “You haven’t called me that since I was a boy.” He sighed. “Anything’s better than ‘lord,’ especially from you.” He was smiling so warmly towards her, it was almost as if this woman were his mother. You could feel the comfort radiating from her. And Dylan’s respect for her. In the next moment, he turned and gestured back towards me, and I stepped forward. “Mrs. Barnes, I’d like to introduce you to Lydia Bell, my girlfriend.”
Mrs. Barnes beamed and took both my hands in her own. She looked me over and took me in with the eyes of someone who loved Dylan without end. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Miss Bell.” And she held my hands for just a moment longer.
“Lydia,” Dylan said, turning to me, “Mrs. Barnes has been the housekeeper here for nearly forty years. The story goes that my parents attempted to hire a nanny, and Mrs. Barnes here was charged with interviewing them, but there were no good candidates, so she was left with the onerous task of looking after me herself.”
“Now,” said Mrs. Barnes, “I won’t have you telling falsehoods while you’re under this roof. The truth, Miss Bell, was that I couldn’t part with young Master Dylan here. I’m sure any one of those nannies was perfectly qualified, but none was good enough.”
“All for the best,” Dylan said. “I’m sure I would have ended up hiding under your apron regardless.” I’d never seen Dylan so warmly embraced, so much like a son, until this moment. It was the first time, apart from moments with his sister, that I could truly see him as part of a family.
“You? Hiding under an apron? Why do I find that hard to believe?” I asked, looking at Mrs. Barnes as I spoke, and she hollered in reply.
“Oh, you know him well, don’t you?” she replied, and we both laughed as she followed us into the house.
We walked into a great hall with ceilings higher than those in any museum I’d been in, certainly any home. Looking around, I was pretty sure that some of the paintings on the wall were taller than my ceilings back in the New York apartment.
“Their Graces are in the library,” Mrs. Barnes continued, “but I imagine you’ll be going for a walk before joining them?”’
Dylan nodded in confirmation. “I’ll show Lydia my room. Could you please have Jake round up Cider and Monty? We’ll take them with us.” I looked at him, confused, and he clarified, “The dogs.”
As we walked through the house, away from the main staircase, we passed endless entrances to endless hallways, windows big enough for elephants to climb through, and furniture that I was pretty sure dated from before the founding of the United States. “Is it really just your parents in this place?” I asked, holding Dylan’s hand for dear life, afraid that if we got separated I might never find my way back again.
“Well, my parents and six staff who live here. And guests—they often have guests. In fact”—he slowed—“up here.” He tugged me through a doorway in the wall that didn’t even appear to be a doorway—it blended in completely with the ornate wallpaper—and dragged me up a flight of stairs. When we arrived at the second floor, he opened the first door we passed, and we stood in the doorway looking in at an astoundingly ornate bedroom. “Rumor has it that a French monarch was conceived in this room.”
“Seriously?”
Dylan nodded. “Not in my day, obviously, or in my grandfather’s for that matter, but you know, back when.”
We finally arrived at a door at the end of a hallway, and Dylan opened it to reveal a suite of rooms that felt thankfully more modern than the rest. Sure, the bed was still a grand mahogany four-poster that made me feel like a miniature person, and the drapes looked heavy and silken, and the rugs looked foreign and fancy. But there was a TV mounted on the wall, a comfortable and worn-looking velvet couch, and bookshelves lined with trophies and evidence of a teenage boy’s existence. Photographs and concert tickets pinned to shelves, rugby jerseys draped over hooks, paperback novels strewn about a table. Thank god. And somehow our bags were already there.
“This is yours?” I asked, starting to poke around and finding myself at a window looking out on a vast wilderness with the occasional evidence of man’s reining it in with box hedges and pathways. I felt Dylan’s hands on my hips and his front pressed to my back before he actually spoke.
“You can snoop later. Let’s go for a walk,” he started and turned me around to look at me, browsing my attire and landing on my sneakers. “Can those trainers take a few rocks and twigs? Maybe a little muck?”
I nodded.
“Good, then let’s get out of here.” As we began to descend the main staircase, the enormity of this place registered full force. There were coats of arms everywhere, tapestries that looked old—like, really old—hanging from the walls. What kind of life was this? All of a sudden I understood, just a little bit, what Dylan’s future meant. I knew Dylan in his modern London architect world, where his being a future duke felt like a funny quirk, a wanna-hear-something-crazy-about-my-boyfriend? kind of thing. But being here made it real. Suddenly I understood why a world of bloggers thought I wasn’t aristocratic enough.
* * *
Cider and Monty were two Irish setters, and Dylan was clearly their master. They bounded around him, swarmed him, nuzzled him, and licked him silly. I actually felt honored when Cider licked my hand and gave me the time of day.
It was three in the afternoon when we set out, and we walked for nearly two hours. The property was so different from the property at Dylan’s own country house—what I called his hideaway—which was sprawling and natural, and felt untouched apart from the deliberate and minimalist landscaping around his moderately sized modern house. Humboldt Park was vast, almost like a city of landscape with different neighborhoods. There were gardens around the pond, with carefully articulated spots for fishing. There were highly structured and elegant English gardens, with different “rooms” and themes—roses or various perennials. And there were orchards, wooded areas, and a deer park.
There were pathways and trails and huge swaths of wild land, all so beautiful, and they made me feel like we could be in any time. While walking across one trail, we ran into an old gentleman in his walking cap who bowed his head and said “G’day, milord” to Dylan in a way that made me feel like we were in the late-nineteenth century.
“Who was that?” I asked.
Dylan shook his head. “I don’t know him.”
“But he was walking across your land,” I said, confused. Surely he’d know the strange person walking through what was essentially his backyard.
“Freedom to roam,” he said. “It’s the law here. Anyone is free to walk across anyone’s land. Not the house, of course, or any private gardens or anything, but large parks like this are open to any walkers or hikers.”
“That’s so cool,” I replied, looking around as though I might see another Englishman or lady popping out of the woods. “I love that. My country is filled with NO TRESPASSING signs. Different mindset.”
Dylan just chuckled. “Yes, well, different histories.”
And the history of Humboldt Park was everywhere. It felt old, not in a costly Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous way, but in a calming way, as though all of the tradition, the lack of technology, the beautiful oldness of it all, actually made it humble. As though it was purposely taking a slower path to change, hanging back, being cautious, and reverent of the idea that this was part of a country’s history.
“I understand why you like to walk here, I think,” I said to Dylan, our hands linked, my scarf muffling my words.
“Is that right?” he asked, just as we came to the top of a small hill. He pulled me close to him, resting our linked hands at the base of my spine. I leaned into him, resting my cheek on his wooly sweater and prompting him to put his broad hand against the back of my head, stroking it. I could feel and hear the dogs circling us.
“I feel calmer. There’s something about this place that feels almost centering, clearing, like I can breathe easier. It’s beautiful.”
“It is,” he replied and took my face in his hands. “I’m so glad you like it. When I’m in that house, it’s easy to feel suffocated, but out here…”
I looked back at the grand house in the distance. “So you’ll be ‘Your Grace’ someday.”
“Hopefully not for a long while,” he said.
“I know you don’t want to be like your father, but do you want to be duke?”
Dylan didn’t reply for a moment. “No one has ever asked me that before.”
“Really?”
“Well, it’s not as though I have a choice,” he said very matter-of-factly, and he took my hand, guiding us back down the hill.
“I never thought of it that way.”
“Because of the way these things work, the title only goes to sons—”
“Yeah, Emily explained that bit.”
He nodded. “Right, well. So if I die, the title dies.”
I stopped walking, jerking him back a bit. “So if you don’t have a son you’ll be the last duke?”
“There’s actually a third cousin, who I believe is currently twelve, who lives in a hippie commune in the Australian outback. Technically he may have a right, but there is some dispute about that, because his grandmother wasn’t actually married to my father’s second cousin when she gave birth to his father, who subsequently died in a some horrible business involving wild dogs.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Not really?”
“Really.”
“So you’ll be the duke, then.”
He nodded solemnly.
“The only way to get out of it is to commit a horrible crime, wherein the queen will take the title away, or to die. Neither of those is on my list.” I remained quiet for a moment, hoping he’d continue. “And I don’t know if I’d want to even if I could. I am proud of this place, of my family’s place in history, in keeping this part of my culture alive.” He looked to me. “There are only twenty-five dukes left in the country. I mean, dukes that aren’t directly related to the royal family. There have been a few unlucky generations—lots of daughters. I mean, I’m sure they were lucky in their delightful daughters, but it was bad for the title, obviously.”
“Obviously,” I smiled, ribbing him. There was no way I was ever going to let him forget that at least a part of this was just crazy.
He laughed a little, but the seriousness was so near the surface for him. “But then I look at my father,” he continued. We were looking over a vast green area, and I could see some deer skirting the edges of the woods. “Earlier this year he fired a footman who’d been with our family his whole life. He was born here, for fuck’s sake. I mean, literally—he was born in the house. His father had served my grandfather. And you know why the bastard did it?”
I looked up to him, holding his hand, and I could feel the anger pulsing through it.
“His favorite Scotch had run out.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t even Robert’s job to make sure that Scotch was in stock. Really that’s my mother’s job more than anyone’s—she’s the one who suffers the most, normally…But poor Robert went to pour it, and there wasn’t a full glass left, and my father fucking fired him. I’d grown up with Robert. I may have high standards and expect the best from my employees, but I reward them handsomely, and I’m loyal, just as much as they are. No one should be treated the way Robert was, and I don’t want any part of it.”
“What happened to him?”
“Well, actually it worked out for the best. Will hired him at the restaurant, and he was quickly promoted and now holds a high post at the Ritz. So, well done for him—probably the best thing that ever happened to him. But I mean, bloody hell. The old man hasn’t a shred of decency.”
“But you’d never be like that,” I urged, not even sure why I was pushing him, except that I could see the part of him that loved this place written so clearly on his skin, in his eyes. I wanted him to see himself in a way he wasn’t—he was seeing his father mapped onto himself. But he was better than that.
He closed his eyes for a moment, contemplative. Then he opened them and put his palm against my cheek. I could feel that my face was a little windburned, chilled from the cool breeze. “You’re cold. Let’s get back, damsel.”
And that was that. A part of me wanted to dive at him with a hundred more questions, but I knew, now more than ever, that when we were just about to dine with his parents was not the time. The one question I wasn’t even willing to look at, but I knew was there, lurking, was: If this was his destiny, was there really any place in it for me?
* * *
We’d been at Humboldt Park for four hours before I set eyes on Dylan’s parents. The sun had set, giving the house a medieval quality, lit mostly by wall sconces and table lamps. We entered the lounge, a sprawling living room that reminded me of the living room back at La Belle Reve, the Canadian mansion the Hales also owned and where I had originally met Dylan. The duke and duchess were sitting properly, elegantly, but somehow managing to also look relaxed on couches by a roaring fire. Jake now stood in full livery, waiting to pour us cocktails.
“Laphroaig for me, please, Jake,” Dylan said with his arm around me. Then he looked down at me without letting go and asked quietly, “Champagne?”
“Yes, please.” I was so glad I’d worn the dress he’d suggested. It felt country club-ish, which now felt appropriate. Dylan was wearing a dark grey suit with no tie. I noticed his father was wearing a tie.
“Dressing down tonight, Dylan?” He actually huffed with disapproval.
Dylan ignored him and bent down to kiss his mother on the cheek. “Good evening, Mum. You remember Lydia.” She was wearing an elegant knee-length teal dress with lace sleeves.
Charlotte politely looked up at me from her seat and said, “Of course. Welcome to Humboldt, my dear,” without a trace of emotion.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” I said to her, shaking her hand, which all of a sudden felt like a very American thing to do, and I looked across to the other couch and addressed the duke. “And you, Your Grace. It’s lovely to see you both. Thank you for having me. Dylan took me around the property today, and it’s just stunning.”
Neither of them said anything, and I gratefully took my glass of Champagne from Jake, who gave me a wink.
Dylan clasped my hand and moved us to stand by the fire.
Everyone seemed so quiet, and it was driving me crazy.
“Ma’am,” I said, deciding to just go for it and addressing Dylan’s mother according to the rules I’d memorized and rehearsed with Fiona that week at work, “Dylan showed me the gardens earlier, and I noticed the beautiful stone animals towards the far end. They add so much spirit to the garden. Have they always been there?”
She hiccupped a little, maybe surprised that I was making the first move so willingly. But of course I was. I loved her son, and I wanted to know her, even if I hadn’t heard the best of things. “No, actually I commissioned those when I first arrived from a London stone smith.”
“They almost reminded me of the Beatrix Potter books I read as a child,” I continued, and she almost—not actually, mind you, but almost—smiled.
“Mmm, yes, I’ve thought the frog by the tea roses did have a Jeremy Fisher quality to him. I’m glad you enjoyed them, of course.” I think I saw, maybe just for a moment, this woman’s guard drop, a slight slump in her perfect posture. It felt somehow as though with two sentences I’d cracked something.
“And have you seen Amelia recently, my dear?” She looked at Dylan pointedly as she asked the question.
Or maybe not.
“Mother,” Dylan said sternly. “Behave.”
Oh boy.
“Dinner is served,” Jake chimed in from the doorway. Thank fucking god.
Dylan’s parents rose, and Dylan held my elbow, pulling me back. He leaned down and whispered into my ear. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”
I smiled and squeezed his hand.
We sat at the far end of a long table that looked like it could seat at least twenty people, and the entirety of dinner was a dance between cold apathy and elegant passive aggression between Dylan and his parents. There were some Please pass the salt cellar and The carrots came in nicely this year interspersed with complaints from his father and social inquiries from his mother. Charlotte also asked a lot of seemingly casual questions about Emily, which revealed just how little she knew of her children’s lives. At one point she asked if Emily was enjoying her psychology studies, and without thinking I piped up and said, “Emily’s studying art history.”
Dylan stilled as he was bringing water to his lips. I think stunned that I had just corrected his mother about his sister, but I could see the edges of his mouth curl up.
“Of course,” Charlotte replied, and she quickly turned the conversation to something about horses.
After dinner we retreated to the library for cards and what I feared would be another hour of polite non-conversation. We drank some more, and I fielded questions about where I’d travelled and what my father had done for a living. Even though I stayed firmly in polite meet-the-aristocratic-parents mode—my ankles crossed, my hands in my lap, my back straight—I told stories of my life before the way I would to any boyfriend’s parents. I was determined to be myself.
Dylan sat near me on the pink silk sofa and occasionally elaborated on a story I was telling, always demonstrating his pride in me. And every time he spoke I recalled his words from the previous night, about how much was at stake for him, sharing things with his parents. After everything I’d heard about Geoffrey, I half expected him to just usher me to the door or come out with something cruel, but in the end he never moved from his post by the fireplace and demonstrated only the minimum interest in our conversation. And his mother barely said a word as she sat primly on the chair across from us. As the night wore on, I realized this kind of indifference was almost worse.
I was looking at my own hands in my lap, thinking about how sad this all was, when Dylan’s hand landed on top of my own. Just the touching of our skin brought me back to life, sending a jolt of energy flying across my skin. I shivered slightly, and my eyes snapped to his.
He rose, urging me to stand with him, and looked me in the eye as he said, “Mum, Dad, we’ll see you in the morning.”
I cleared my throat and forced myself to look at his parents. “Thank you so much for dinner. It’s quite incredible to be in a place like this, and I really appreciate you having me.”
How I got those words out, I’ll never know. In that moment, Dylan’s fingers threading with my own, him pulling me towards the door, I remembered all at once why I was even there. Dylan. And as he came back into focus, after hours of tense conversation, I wanted nothing more than to dive into him. As we left the room, I let myself sink into the feeling of just being together, into the anticipation of being alone in his room, and I was relieved to let him lead me there.