“We’re friends, Min,” he pleaded, “of course we are. For many years we were the best of friends. So how can you talk so? I’ve never bullied anyone in my life.”
“You care for nothing but your own amusement. And you never listen.”
Or that’s what he thought she said. It was hard to tell when her voice was so muffled by both hands and tears. But really…this was the outside of enough…it made no sense. And it was hell anyway, standing and watching.
He took her elbow and drew her down to the fainting couch, sitting beside her. Seven or eight or nine years ago he would’ve put his arm around her shoulders while she cried. Now he took her hand instead, examining the bare fingers ruefully. Hecouldn’t even remember where he’d put the torn glove. Dropped it, probably, in his haste to get to her side.
“This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.”
She sniffed. “How was it?”
“I couldn’t quite imagine it. But not like this.”
She said nothing, gaze fixed on the wall opposite. Pale blue wallpaper, tatty now, and hardly luxurious even when it’d been new. How Almack’s was so fashionable, he had no idea. But at that moment, it seemed Min vastly preferred the sight to looking anywhere near him.
“I’m listening now,” he said, her fingers in his hand as lifeless as one of his sister’s old toy dolls. “Tell me what you’ve been up to, my little Minnow, to make your hands so sore and red like this? Don’t tell me Nell’s put you to work in the laundry!”
She didn’t even laugh, and the feeling intensified of having taken a wrong stop—one far worse than Min’s in the dance.
It had started, now he thought about it, when he first greeted her, in the moment she held out that cool hand and uttered the politeLord Orton. He’d felt odd ever since. Dislocated somehow.
“Can you really not dance?”
“Obviously not.”
“And you never did? At your aunt’s?”
But she was clearly in no mood for conversation. Jack frowned at the same patch of wall as her, but unseeing, old thoughts resurfacing. “When your father died and we first heard you were going to live with some grand old relative, I was almost glad, though I hated to lose you. But I thoughtfinally—finally Min will get to live in a house where she’s appreciated and taken notice of. I’m sorry to speak ill of the dead, but you know I never liked the way your father abandoned you in favour of all those dusty old books, even if he was old and dusty himself.”
“He was grief-stricken.” It was the same quiet defence she’d always made. “He never recovered after my mother died. Everyone said so.”
“Noteveryone. My father said he was a dull old stick even before that happened. Always had been.”
She pulled her hand from his and wiped a tear from the end of her nose. The wetness glimmered on her sore, red finger. He felt acutely useless. “What does this have to do with anything, Jack?”
“Just that I’d always hoped you were having fun up there in Northumberland with your aunt. But you weren’t, were you? She was an even duller stick than your old man.”
Min kept on staring at the wall. Her tone was that of a well-disciplined schoolchild reciting their lessons. “She took me in and looked after me. I am very grateful.”
“Well, of course you are, Min. You’re very good at being grateful for things you shouldn’t. You used to put up with me and my wretched sisters, you were sogratefulfor company. I’d hit windfall apples at you with my cricket bat, and you’d still come back the next day for more.”
Another sniff. “I told you you were a bully.”
A wider smile. “You said you wanted to learn to catch!”
“Youorderedme to stand there and catch.”
“I think we remember the past quite differently.”
He said it laughing, but her voice was quiet.
“Yes. And I think we lived it differently too.”
There was a note of sadness in that, one that plucked his ribs like a harp string, moved his hand like a puppet’s to take hers again, but he stopped himself, feeling awkward.
“How odd.” That wasn’t what he ought to say. But it was one of the loudest thoughts in his mind. “How odd it is to see you again. It’s been barely an hour, and it feels like the last seven years never happened. How did I manage to almost forget you?”
She said nothing, but she’d entirely stopped crying. Indeed, all of her was as still and lifeless as her hand had been.
