Chapter 1
Gwen
There wasn’t enough wine in the world to get Gwen through this dinner.
She was on her second glass already, and it was only the first course of Albert Merange’s birthday dinner. So many better ways to spend a Sunday night. Sunday nights were Gwen’s favorite times to put on her pajamas and stare at the TV until bedtime. Preferably while in the arms of her partner, James. Not that they had indulged in much cuddling in the past year.
Gwen stared at the bottom of her empty wineglass while a servant took away the bits of her salad she would rather not put into her mouth. Suppose I should hold off on drinking more until I’ve had something more substantial to eat. She looked up and met Albert’s eyes from the end of the dining table. He quickly looked away. Gwen wanted more wine. Or a cocktail, preferably. Maybe some straight vodka.
James’s father always maintained a tenuous respect for the woman who might one day be his daughter-in-law, but Gwen had often suspected that he only tolerated her because he thought her a fancy, flash-in-the-pan love affair that might last three years at the most. James and Gwen had been in their early twenties when they first got together. The Meranges had told their only child that he could sow all the wild oats he wanted – as long as he sterilized those oats, first.
But Gwen hadn’t been a temporary girlfriend. She graduated to James’s domestic partner and was now as synonymous with his name as he was with hers. Over seven years, Gwen Mitchell had integrated herself into her boyfriend’s high-society life. She had heiresses for friends. Memberships at invitation-only clubs. (Perhaps not all of them, but the ones she had been invited to were satisfactory enough for her commoner background.) A contract that said, should she and James break up, she would receive whatever she required to start her life over again elsewhere. Many out-of-towners were shocked to find out that Gwen wasn’t an heiress. Blending in with the lot of neurotic, spoiled assholes had been easy enough.
One of her closest friends was Charlotte Williams, one such heiress who had been the first to take Gwen by the hand and show her how to make the most of her station if she insisted on falling in love with a multimillionaire (in his own right) like James Merange. Charlotte, whose family was close friends with the Meranges, had come to tonight’s birthday dinner at Gwen’s request. I don’t want to be alone with these people. Bad enough Gwen had to sit next to James’s mother. At least she could see Charlotte across from her, helping her ailing father with his uncut potatoes as the main course came out for them to enjoy.
“Is this roasted goose?” Mr. Williams asked the birthday boy, a sparkle in his eye. “How did you manage to snag some at this time of year?”
“You know I have my connections.” Albert accepted his second glass of wine as the sommelier made the rounds of the table. Gwen exhibited great decorum when she turned down a third glass and instead sucked on her ice water. Dessert. I will have a third glass at dessert. She would really need it if the birthday dessert was Albert’s favorite cherry pie. Blech.
Mrs. Ophelia Merange had her wineglass topped up before leaning in toward the Williamses. “My husband humbles himself on his birthday, you see. He managed to catch not one, but two geese last hunting season. Really was a magnificent bit of skill, wasn’t it, darling?”
Albert did not blush, but he propped himself up in his seat and said, “Skill and luck often go hand-in-hand. We had the first goose for Christmas, and the second for tonight. Hopefully, my grandson will be old enough this year to enjoy it for the first time. A love for well-roasted fowl is built into our bloodline.” He turned to his son, sitting between himself and Gwen. “Isn’t it, James?”
He, like his girlfriend Gwen, had been quiet for most of the dinner. But when his own father asked him a question, he couldn’t simply sit in silence. Even when one of those words had made a shudder go down both his and Gwen’s spines.
“Don’t have much of a taste for duck anymore,” he attempted to say with humor. “But I do love a good turkey.”
The goose had been carved in the kitchen, unlike the mess back at Christmas when Albert insisted on cutting open the bird at the table in front of everyone, including his infant grandson. Patrick had wailed to see the golden goose split open like one of his stuffed toys. His mother had ushered him out of the room and didn’t come back to eat until the child had been put down for a nap.
“You should see the boy,” Albert continued, speaking to his friend Mr. Williams. “Still a bit on the small side, but so was his father when he was his age.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “I remember telling his mother that we would have to find him a wet nurse to make sure he was good and fed.”
“Albert, dear…” Mrs. Ophelia Merange held in her exasperation with considerable taste. “Mr. Williams and his daughter don’t want to hear about that.”
“Look! Right here!” Albert showed a picture on his phone to his friend. “Have you ever seen such an adorable little boy? Gives me hope that the best of our genes are really plowing through the generations.”
Mr. Williams adjusted his glasses. Charlotte politely poked at her dinner. Mrs. Merange studied her son’s face, gauging his reaction.
James and Gwen both reached for their wineglasses. James drank the rest of his while Gwen was sorely reminded that she hadn’t opted for the refill.
“Oh, my…” Mr. Williams looked across the table, to James, a grin touching his wrinkled cheeks. “He really does have your nose. Isn’t that remarkable?”
James forced a smile of acknowledgment. “I suppose so.”
He took Gwen’s hand beneath the table. She placed her napkin next to her plate of goose and potatoes and excused herself to the bathroom.
That was what she had dreaded the most when she agreed to come to Albert’s birthday dinner. The man was so smitten with his grandson, that he couldn’t help but shove the boy in everyone’s faces. Especially Gwen’s.
Because he’s not my son. He belonged to some other woman, a bastard sanctioned by both the Merange’s and their oldest friends, the Welshes.
Gwen would never forget that horrifying night one year ago, at a gala before Christmas, when Cassandra Welsh waltzed into town with a baby on her hip. The whisper in high society was that one of her many, many lovers was the father, and the reason she skipped down wasn’t because of a mental meltdown, but because she was pregnant with a bastard baby. James, the man who once called Cassandra his best childhood friend, had been his usual mix of concerned for her well-being and utterly delighted by the shitstorm brewing in town. There was no one more invested in gossip and “hot messes” than James Merange.
Until this one bit him in the ass.
The baby was his. Even a DNA test proved that. That night – that long ago, far away night that almost ruined their lives – Gwen ran the gamut of emotions that went from The Bastard Cheated on Me to The Welshes Did WHAT?
James had not, in fact, cheated on his partner of seven years. Instead, semen that he had preemptively stored in a bank upon reaching adulthood had been pilfered by the Welshes, because they were desperate for an heir, and Cassandra would only settle for having James’s baby. The worst part? James was never allowed any say in it. His father had signed off on the release of the genetic material for Cassandra to use in a sterile doctor’s office. Apparently, it had worked.
How could Gwen be angry at the man she loved for something beyond his control? How was he supposed to know that his parents still carried certain powers he never anticipated? And how could he face his sudden fatherhood alone? Gwen couldn’t leave him. Not when he was innocent. Not when they still loved each other.
Still, such events that not even the likes of James could have ever foreseen, put unprecedented strains on their relationship.
Before that night, we were as happy as ever. After that night, they had drifted apart, until Gwen often wondered how much more she could take before she opted for the stipend and moving to the west coast. Alone.
Albert was one of her least favorite people. He was the one who conspired with the Welshes to get the grandson he didn’t think he would otherwise have, since Gwen wasn’t good enough, and she and James had often discussed the idea of never having children. Something he probably ran by his father a time or two, considering the family was already small and had amassed quite the fortune over the generations.
That man was the family type. Not that he was ever so involved, James made sure to explain, but he loved the idea of children and probably thought of them as proof of his virility. “Must’ve sent him mad to know his wife could only have one.” Like it had driven him mad when he realized he and his real love, Sarah Welsh, would never be together as anything more than an illicit affair that transcended decades. James’s mother is more humiliated than I am on a daily basis.
This family was so fucked.
After the awkward dinner concluded and presents were exchanged over cherry pie, James insisted that he had an early meeting Monday morning and needed to get home. Albert asked his son to stay at the family estate and leave early in the morning, but the matter had already been decided once Gwen impatiently waited in the passenger seat of James’s latest vehicular acquisition, a 2018 Jaguar coupe. She popped some gum into her mouth and willed the car to get them home as quickly as possible. The only thing worse than awkward dinners like that were the awkward silences that always ensued on the drives home.
“God,” James muttered as they pulled out of the estate’s driveway, “I hope I didn’t have too much wine.”
“I didn’t have enough.”
That was all they said during the twenty-five-minute drive home.
For the past five years, they had made their primary residence a two-story colonial manor (James swore it would’ve been a proper manor in the 18th century, but now it was simply charming) in a gated community that boasted as many expendable heirs as it did self-made millionaires. Having a proper house suited them more than living in a penthouse or expansive apartment downtown. Besides, the community was only a ten-minute drive from the city center, and that accounted for mild traffic. All the amenities without the hectic pace of city life.
James hid in his man cave – Sorry, his office – while Gwen took a long, hot shower and kicked her heels up in front of the TV with a bottle of hard cider in her hand. Their one live-in servant, Rebecca, asked the lady of the house if she required any other refreshments before turning in for the night. Gwen asked her what the hell she was doing asking that on the staffs’ day off. Deferential until the end, Rebecca retreated to her private quarters on the other side of the house.
“Did you know,” Gwen asked John Oliver on HBO, “that Rebecca came highly recommended by James’s parents when we were in the market for a new maid?” She wanted to gag. While Rebecca was more than qualified to take care of a vintage house while the owners kept to their deliriously busy schedules, she was also a trained doula and nanny. The hint hadn’t been bigger if Albert Merange rented a billboard to tell Gwen to get knocked up if she insisted on infiltrating the family.
James stumbled into the shower without a word to his partner. Gwen finished her cider and crawled into bed, hoping that the alcohol would make her eyelids heavy.
The bed sank with James’s added weight a few minutes later. For a brief, hypnotic second, Gwen was pulled in by the scent of his shampoo and the sandalwood soap he used on the rest of his body. That’s what happened when she was half-asleep and presented with the comforts of their past – she forgot everything that had happened and happily slung her arm across her partner’s chest.
He held her hand in his, chest slowly rising and falling with his breaths. Gwen would have forgotten what she was always so angry about if it weren’t for him opening his mouth.
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
She slowly opened her eyes to the darkness of their bedroom. “I’m going to brunch with one of the fundraising committees I’m on. Then I guess I’m going to the gym. Why? What are you doing after your morning meetings?”
His silence spoke a thousand words.
“To the Welshes?”
“Yeah.”
Gwen turned over without a word. She loved James, and loved that he was willing to be a father to a boy he never knew existed until a year ago, but the amount of time he spent at Welsh Grove visiting his son made her nervous. Not the part about the boy.
The part about everyone else in that family, constantly conspiring to marry him to a woman he claimed to have never loved – like that.