Chapter Four

The family home seemed even more cavernous without Jasper.

The Beaumonts, after their emigration from Quebec, had lived, currently lived, and would probably always live in a mansion just north of the city. It had extensive gardens and a tiled terrace and a kitchen he’d spent far too much money upgrading and it still felt, no matter what he did, anonymous. As if he, Theo, didn’t live there. As if he were just the next unnamed Beaumont heir.

Lexi’s things were long since moved out, and it felt like there were holes everywhere—her natural warmth was gone, and all that was left was antique furniture and portraits of deceased relatives and his cold childhood, echoing.

And Jasper’s rooms, which Theo had painted every color that Jasper had ever asked in an attempt to leave a mark for his only child, were shut up until June.

Now, without his son, without his wife, it was just Theo and his mother and the cleaning service that came in twice a week.

And the portraits—his father’s portrait. Which he had always thought was ugly and gauche, but he couldn’t bring himself to take it down.

He himself would not be getting a portrait done. Let that tradition die with him.

He had retired to his father’s—Theo’s, for these eighteen years—study. When he came back from his manic year in Cork, he’d put black curtains around the painting, hiding him, so he couldn’t see those diamond-cold eyes looking down from the beyond. Or up from hell, more likely.

He needed a drink. His crystal snifter was waiting to be filled from a decanter of brandy. But somehow, that wasn’t what he was in the mood for tonight.

Hidden behind a leather-bound set of W. B. Yeats’s collected poems, on the bottom ledge of a built-in bookshelf, was a bottle of Black Bushmills. He moved the book, took up the bottle, and assessed the two inches remaining.

Almost finished, then. The fire, which he lit religiously every evening after supper, snapped and popped behind him as he tried to pour a measure in his snifter—and then he dumped out the whole thing.

Life is fucking short, he thought. Or too long. Either one, really.

That bottle had been there, waiting for him, a talisman, since he proposed marriage to Alexia. The paperwork finalized—a prenuptial agreement, a date set for the wedding, and an amicable verbal contract for having a child—he had snuck out of the house and visited the liquor store, alone.