It was quiet enough he could have pretended not to hear the anger. If he hadn’t cared, he could have pretended to be that stupid. She closed the lid of the box and flicked the catch shut with a resolute snap. “But your sisters stopped replying to my letters a few months after I had left. So it does not matter. It is all in the past.”
“Min…”
There was a hidden bruise here, old and long-standing. How had he never suspected it? Never imagined it? In sympathy, it crept inside his own heart and pressed deeply with a punishing thumb.
“Min, I…”
When she’d left… He thought back to that time, to himself, a young, lanky youth of much more fashion than sense, desperate to sample every excitement and enticement the world had to offer. Even Oxford might as well have been London after the quiet of the Herefordshire countryside. And it hadn’t been long before he was using his allowance to convey himself directly intothe midst of all that capital’s follies too. There was endless vice to be discovered when you were young and rich and stupid.
“I suppose I did think about writing,” he admitted, “once or twice. I certainly thought about you quite often after you left. But a letter… I don’t know what I would’ve said. I think I felt… I felt like you were gone forever, entirely out of reach, whilst also feeling as though you’d be back for a visit at any moment because how could it be possible that I wouldn’t see you tomorrow, or the next day, or the next? And then somehow months went by, and years, and now… Well. Here we are. All grown up.”
“Yes.” She gave a resolute nod, hands still resting on top of the box, eyes focused there too. “We are.”
But she glanced up when he said nothing, her silver-grey eyes very cool, very distant. A familiar landmark seen from a great way, like a church spire far in the mist.
“What’s happened?” He was asking himself the question. “We never used to argue.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “Wealwaysargued. Don’t you remember?”
“No. Not really.” He’d thought he remembered it all. He’d once, not long after she’d left for her aunt’s, lain awake in his hard, uncomfortable bed at Oxford and managed to recall the placement of every freckle on her face. But she was right. That had been a very long time ago. “I mostly remember laughter, Min. That’s what I remember.”
“Yes. Laughing at me.”
The aggrieved tone made him smile. Nowthatwas something he remembered. “Laugh at you? Surely not.”
“Yes, Jack. Every single day.”
“What a wretch I must’ve been.”
“You were,” she said firmly, refusing to smile back. “Youare.”
“Was I…horribleeven?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“No.”
“Go on, Min. Please. Tell me I’m a horrible boy. You’ve no idea how I’ve longed to hear it.”
“I will not!” She stomped off across the room, and the sight of that familiar angry step made his heart lift even higher. Of course they were still friends. They’d always be friends. Everything about her was written into his flesh and bone, the way birds were born knowing how to fly.
“I am not saying it,” she said, her back to him as she sorted irritably through a pile of parchments, entirely unaware how widely he smiled, “because it was a childish thing to say, and I am no longer a child. Even if you might still be.”
She turned back to him at that point, a martial light in her eyes. For once, she wasn’t shy at all, but stood and glared, every freckle aimed his way like the tip of an arrow.
He crossed the room and finally did what he’d been wanting to do since he first saw her at Almack’s. He gathered her into his arms, ignoring her squeak of surprise, and after a moment, her angry breath hissed out, her shoulders dropped, and she put her face against his chest.
“There,” he said, because this felt right. He was warm all over. “That’s where you ought to be. We’ll be friends forever, you and me, no matter what.”
She said nothing. He suspected her eyes were shut, though he couldn’t see her face. With her head bowed to his chest, it was her neck he could see, a little bit of the ridge of her spine, dark curls against freckled skin. He had an urge to touch those freckles, to draw lines between them. He wondered if she’d be amused to discover his mind had apparently mistook the artist for the canvas.
But she let out a breath just as he began to smile at the thought, and she pushed him away, her voice small and shaky, but making him grin.
“Horrible boy.”
Eleven
