“Opera’s not my thing but I won’t pass up the company,” said Will, easily finishing the game as he potted his last ball.
It should have felt like an easy victory, but Archie somehow felt betrayed, as if he’d been hoping that Jeremy would turn him down and give him an excuse for his mother. Now he had to actually go and meet the women.
“I don’t know why I bother. I come, I lose, I have to leave again,” said Jeremy despondently as he pulled out his wallet at the sight of Williem’s beckoning hand.
“Already?” asked Archie, glancing at the clock. On a normal day, he wouldn’t even be up yet.
“I’m meeting Sophia and her parents for a luncheon and now they’re older they eat terrible early. It’s been an awful trick trying to find time for all my own things now I’m taking over Althsbury properly, but there’s usually a lax hour or two between morning business and luncheon and nothing decent to fill it with.”
Archie’s eyebrows rose. If he had arrived any later, he would have missed Jeremy completely. “I never have engagements at this time if you’d like a game or two any other day.”
“Really? I didn’t want to impose, knowing you’re never up this early,” said Jeremy, looking genuinely delighted. Archie made noises about arranging something just as Jeremy looked atthe clock and grimaced, promising to send a note to Archie at the palace once he’d spoken to Sophia, and sped away.
Huh, that had been easy. Archie was going to have to think over the rest of his friends too. Had he perhaps merely assumed that married life would take their time away? Perhaps Estelle, with her habit of writing notes daily to friends even if they only lived across town and dropping visits in on people if she felt she hadn’t seen them in too long, had it right.
CHAPTER FOUR
ARCHIE WAS JUST trying to figure out how to politely extricate himself now he’d secured his invite to the opera when Williem held out the cue stick Jeremy had left behind as a question. “Would you take a game?”
“You play a little richly for me,” said Archie with a nod at the two bank notes still pressed into Will’s hand. But then again, it would behoove him to make more friends. A man could hardly complain about being lonely and then pass up an invite when it was tossed his way. Williem was young and probably still fresh enough to the city to find it exciting, and he was of a similar ilk to Archie, noble born but with few prospects of his own. He hadn’t met enough people to know that Archie was probably not worth his time yet. “If you’re willing to spare some time to teach an ignoramus the rules though, I’d be grateful.”
Cueball was a new game brought over from the continent, and while Archie picked up the basic understanding of it with no problem, actually playing it was a different matter.
“Why is it going that way?” asked Archie with exasperation, as the ball veered left, avoiding the pocket completely.
“It’s all about angles,” explained Will, reaching out. “Here, you’ve got to hold the stick more loosely, like this.”
Will placed his hand over Archie’s to reposition it, and Archie’s mind went blank as Will leaned over him. Never mind that Will was barely eighteen and only explaining a game, there was just something about how tall he was, and the way his body seemed to cover Archie’s that reminded him of last night.
“Are you all right?” asked Will as Archie jerked uncharacteristically, sending his ball skittering the wrong way.
“Sorry, I must have used too much force,” Archie lied. “There’s a reason Jeremy and I were stuck together fencing for so long. Hopeless at anything to do with hand-eye coordination, I’m afraid.”
Something moved at the corner of Archie’s vision. No one was at the other cue table. He gritted his teeth and didn’t turn, didn’t look, forced himself to have no reaction at all. ButWillturned. Archie saw him glance at himself in the mirror that spanned the wall and blanch. The back of his neck itched as he refrained from swirling around to seek out what Will was staring at in the mirror.
“Are you all right?” Archie asked, his tone deceptively light-hearted.
“I – yes. Yes. I thought I saw something over there, that’s all, but it was just a movement in the mirror’s reflection.” Willwas a terrible liar. His face was a blotched pink, and his gaze kept returning to the mirror.
“Let’s break. I just need to—” Archie gestured in the direction of the door, but Will didn’t even seem to hear him.
Archie fled to the lavatory without looking back. He locked the door and carefully examined his reflection in the mirror over the sink, and couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He pressed cold water to his face, the shock of it helping to brace himself for what he was about to do.
“Damaris. Come out, I know you’re there.” Archie was proud of how steady his voice was. He felt like a fool speaking to himself. There was advice aplenty on how to avoid demons, or resist them, or repel them, but he came to the realization that he had never come across any instruction on how to summon one.
You could ask nicely.
There it was, that voice that felt like a smug cat, tantalizingly close to Archie’s ear. He gripped the edges of the sink basin so tightly his fingertips went numb. “Please, I need to talk to you.”
Talk away.
Archie could see the shadows darken at the edges of his vision. Instinctively, he understood that it wasn’t happening in the mirror, it was happening within him at the edge of his vision. He shuddered. “Are you talking to Will too? The same way you’re talking to me?”
Jealous?
“No.” A lie, and they both knew it.
The sunshine boy, he does not crave the forbidden as you do.
