It skipped across the pond in rippling jumps, much to the applauding delight of both men.
“Oh,” said Claire, coloring. “Never mind.”
“Well, look at that,” Patricia mused. “He finally got it. I’ve been trying to teach him for weeks.”
Claire turned on her heel, putting the scene firmly to her back. If she had been alone, she also would have fanned her face. As it was, she’d have to hope the sunlight could be feasibly blamed for the elevated color in her cheeks.
“I was looking for you,” she said, a little louder than entirely necessary, drawing polite interest from the other woman. “I think … I wanted to ask … it should be you.”
“It … should?” Patricia repeated, bemused.
“You should introduce Oliver to Freddy,” Claire said quickly, blinking far too many times in the space of the thought. “I can’t. I’ll only make it tense, and that wouldn’t be fair to either of them. It should be you.”
“Oh, Claire,” the other woman said, pressing her fingers to her chest. “I don’t know if that is correct. You are his mother.”
“Yes, I am,” Claire agreed, “and I am asking you, his grandmother. I don’t want to taint his perception of his father or lose my words in a muddle trying to do it. Please. I will beg if you require it.”
“Don’t beg,” said Patricia immediately. “I … I can do it, Claire, but you should at least be present, even if you are only watching from a distance. It seems important that you observe, at the very least.”
“Is it? Important?” Claire replied weakly, knowing it was. “Fine. After dinner, perhaps? Before Oliver goes to bed for the night. You can prepare Freddy to tell him a story or whatever it is fathers do in these situations.”
“These situations,” Patricia repeated softly. “My dear, I think there is little precedent. I don’t think before bed is a good idea, however. The boy won’t sleep if we excite him so late in the day. We could do it now?”
“Now?!” Claire balked. “No! Not now! I need to prepare. Freddy ought to prepare too!”
Patricia gave her a little smile, her face perhaps the most correctly maternal thing in the room at that given moment. “How about tomorrow morning, then?” she suggested, reaching out to squeeze Claire’s shoulder. “You’ll both have the time you need, that way.”
“Tomorrow morning,” Claire said, sucking in a little breath and nodding. “All right. Tomorrow morning it is.”
Tomorrow morning, she told herself many times over the next several hours. Too soon. Too far away.
Tomorrow morning.
She could survive at least until tomorrow morning.
CHAPTER 5
Sadly, like many of Freddy’s schemes, the interception failed to fire. That was to say, it needed to be postponed, because Claire had not come to dinner.
That was fine, he decided. He’d learned to be patient, if nothing else, in these last few years. Besides, it would only give him time to perfect his strategy. He’d eaten dinner like a proper, well-behaved lad, made polite conversation with some Portuguese people seated across from him, and now had retreated to whiskey and cigars with the other men to nurse a glass of water and air.
“What are you plotting, you wee scunner?” Abe Murphy asked, peering at him over his Scotch like a fishwife. “I know that face.”
“This face?” said Freddy with an innocent raise of his brows. “The beautiful one, you mean? Jealous, Murphy?”
“Cain!” Murphy tattled, turning to summon over Freddy’s dour half brother. “Freddy is being suspicious.”
“Is he?” said Silas Cain in a bored voice, not making a single move to change his position in the corner of the room, where hewas lounging with something that looked suspiciously pink and feminine in his glass opposite Dom Raul and Joe Cresson. “That sounds standard, then.”
“Oh, come on!” Murphy exclaimed. “Stop him before he does something untoward.”
It only made the other men laugh.
Freddy grinned at Abe. “You could always try,” he suggested. “Though I remind you what happened last time you tried to corral me.”
“Aye, I remember,” Abe muttered, twisting a signet ring around his pinky, the same ring Freddy had once stolen to teach the man a lesson, back before he was reformed. “If you ever drug me again, I will actually kill you.”
“Of course,” Freddy agreed with mock solemnity. “Abe, if I were going to drug you again, I probably would have done it when I was preparing a decent portion of your daily meals.”
