Page 14 of The Spare

I frown. I’m keen to get to the bottom of this. I’ll have to pry the salient information out of Benedict at some point, when this bloody day is over.

‘God knows where he found her,’ Minty says. ‘But the point is that no one needs to know the truth. That press release will really set the cat among the pigeons. Lord, the media shitstorm when that thing hits will be… I dunno. Just remember this, darling. All anyone will be talking about is that you caused the biggest playboy in the country to wreck his brother’s wedding. It’s really very fucking hot.’

I hope she’s right. I need her to be right. Ben has spent the past few days refining the release, and I have to say, it packs a punch.

It goes like this:

An announcement from Lord Benedict de Vere:

I have been in love with Selena Wentworth for as long as I can remember. For years, I have attempted, wholly unsuccessfully, to get my feelings under control. However, as her wedding to my brother Xavier grew more imminent, I accepted that I would have to act urgently or forever live in abject misery.

Last week, I threw myself on Xavier’s mercy and begged him to walk away, freeing up the woman I love to marry me. Not only did he acquiesce, but he relinquished his right to the Dukedom of Oxford. We both agreed, after all, that Selena was born and bred to be a duchess.

I am therefore delighted to confirm that Selena and I are marrying today at Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford.

I know it by heart. I’ve been over it and over it, worrying that some aspects are too far-fetched.

‘You’ve been with hundreds of women,’ I argued when he came by yesterday to check in on me and finalise the wording. ‘No one will believe you’ve had a thing for me all this time.’

‘On the contrary, princess, it’s classic broken-hearted behaviour. All of it was acting up, overcompensating. Trying to fill the void, you know?’

‘You’ve certainly filled a lot of voids in your time,’ I grumbled, but I could see his point. ‘And do we honestly expect them to believe that Xavier would just walk away and hand you the title of his own accord?’

‘That’s a tougher pill to swallow,’ he admitted. ‘But he’s known to be honourable, and I think it’s believable that he would make the sacrifice for his brother. Think about it—why would you walk away from the title for me? I haven’t said anything here about your loving me back. It’s always been an arranged marriage for you, regardless of which brother you ended up with. So I think we can make people believe that it was an act of brotherly devotion.’ He makes an amusing face. ‘Too bad they’ll never know I’m the one who’s too devoted to his brother.’

I blew out a big breath. ‘It’s all such a tangled web. How will we ever keep our story straight?’

‘Never complain, never explain, remember?’ He put an arm around me and gave me a reassuring squeeze. ‘And you’re overthinking it. You’re forgetting that they’ll see what they want to see. We’re giving them the ultimate romantic fairytale: two brothers, one woman, and the Great Groom Swap. Just look at you. There’s no reason for them to doubt that you could drive a man to desperate acts. None.’

I smiled gratefully at him. ‘I suppose you’re right—about them seeing what they want to see, I mean.’

‘I’m always right,’ he said. ‘Helen of Troy, remember?’

Dammit. That had me thinking about his trouser submarine.

Thankfully, my friend Ewan pulls me back to the present. If anyone were justified in peacocking today, you’d think it would be the bride—but no. Ewan is, apparently, the most self-satisfied dandy to ever have dandied. Like the other bridesmaids—and he has most definitely declared himself a bridesmaid rather than a bridesman—he’s wearing powder-blue satin courtesy of Wentworth, only his ensemble takes the form of an elegant, slim-cut suit. See? A dandy.

‘To say it’s very fucking hot is the understatement of the century, love,’ he tells Minty now. ‘The two most eligible brothers in the UK have fought over her, and the fuckboy won.’

‘That’s hardly how it went down,’ I protest weakly.

‘Doesn’t matter. It’s how everyone thinks it’s gone down that matters, and you should know that better than anyone. Perception is reality, doll. It’s practically a Wentworth family motto. And speaking of going down⁠—’

‘Yes, that’s quite enough, thank you,’ I say firmly to shut him up. Ewan is truly the only person I allow to give me this kind of shit. He’s my number two on the Wentworth Home team and the type of creative genius whose talent is almost indecent. That said, there’s only one person in this room who’d like to ruminate on oral sex with Benedict, and that’s definitely not me. It’s not poor Flora, either.

‘I’m just saying’—he crouches over me to adjust his tie in the mirror—‘no one likes an ungrateful bitch. You got the title, the house, the hot guy. Quit whining.’

All this is, of course, tongue in cheek. Ewan was the first bridesmaid I called with the news that Xavier had dumped me and Benedict had stepped up with a proposal of his own. I worked on the assumption that Flora would already be in the know, and I couldn’t face Minty and Annabelle’s particular brand of superior schadenfreude. Sometimes, in my more paranoid moments, I wonder if they wouldn’t have been happier had I been left with egg on my face, whereas Ewan was amazing.

I manage a watery smile at him in the mirror. Thank you, I mouth.

‘Of course.’ He grins at me. He’s very handsome—tall and slim with dark hair and brown eyes. He’s painted himself beautifully for today, with a subtle powder-blue eyeshadow that makes his eyes pop and a few false lashes at the outer corners. ‘I still can’t believe you wouldn’t let me wear a ruffled shirt. It would have looked so Grosvenor.’

Grosvenor is a scandalously spicy Regency TV show that Ewan and I watch solely for the décor and the sex.

‘You say that, but all I could see when you pitched it was Jim from American Pie.’

He straightens up. ‘Such a bitch on her wedding day, even though she’s in bloody couture and she’s making us all wear off-the-peg. Now, duckie.’ He swivels and turns to Flora, who seems to find him endlessly amusing. ‘Spill all the tea on Xavier’s new friend, Ivy. And I mean all of it. I want an entire samovar full of tea.’