“I…” She was too stunned for speech, too busy searchinghisface to know her own thoughts. Did he look tired? Perhaps. There was a tightness to his jaw, a cool glint in the usually laughing eyes. If anything, he looked…angry. Her heart gave a nervous kick. One she felt all the way down to her toes.
“But that is an unhandsome way for me to offer my congratulations. My apologies.” He gave her a sharp bow. “My earnest wishes for the happiness of the future Mrs Simmons.”
“Th-thank you.”
“And I really do mean that,” he said, stepping closer until he stood just before her, looking down on the blushing face she’d have far rather hidden. “Areyou going to be happy, Lucy? That is what I want—need—to know.”
The words were kind, but his manner was still hard and angry, his grey eyes, stormier than ever, pinning her like prey in an eagle’s claw.
“George is an excellent, kind, generous man,” he went on, searching her face until she had no choice but to look away, down at the threadbare carpet, the toe of his boot; it was only inches from hers. “But…Lucy…you do not know him. How can you possibly know him? Or he you? You have met him two or three times by my reckoning.”
“P-perhaps…sometimes…that is enough.”
Jack’s jaw twitched, and he turned away, running a hand through the dark hair his valet had no doubt been at pains to arrange only an hour or so before. When he turned back, he was rumpled, artless, much more like the boy she used to know. He sighed, studying her anxious expression, then gave a short, humourless laugh. “Forgive me. I should be happy for you. But it is a shock. You can hardly conceive how much of a shock itwas…” He shook his head, dazed, with another small laugh. “Is this why my proposal in the park yesterday so horrified you? You should have said, Min!Lucy.I beg your pardon. But I can hardly understand how it happened. You must have met George more times than I knew. How and where? And how did you get to be so sure of your heart in just a matter of days?Areyou sure?”
She looked at him for a moment the way a raindrop snags on its way down the glass, caught by something invisible. But the downwards pressure always wins. She addressed herself to the gleam of his boots. She could almost see herself in it. A pale, wishy-washy blob, the brighter light of the window behind her. But her shoulders were set, her chin tucked tight. His boots couldn’t show that.
“Sometimes… Sometimes people can know each other for years and hardly know each other better than they would after two days.”
He looked at her for a long moment. She could always feel it when his eyes were on her, even though she didn’t risk raising her head. It was a buzzing feeling, faint, like bees in a meadow. And like bees and flowers, it was as old as the earth; it was the burning sun, coaxing buds out of the dirt… He kept on looking, and she kept her head down, her heart bleeding out of her eyes.
A motion made her glance up. Jack shaking his head, turning away with a frown. He looked deep in thought—but they were only the thoughts of a man who’d lost his favourite watch, trying to recall where he’d last seen it.
“I wish George were a scoundrel. I wish he were wicked and I could warn you away. But he truly is the most excellent of men, and so all I can do is congratulate you on your good fortune. And he on his. And…and get used to the idea, I suppose.” He dragged a hand through his hair again, staring blankly across the room. There was nothing there but the wall. “Though I confess a sound thrashing at Jackson’s fists would leave me less dizzyin my mind. AndwhyI’m so shocked, I hardly know. Only it is so sudden… And you…” He scrutinised her again, as though she was a room he’d already searched and he thought he might be going mad, but he might as well search it one last time… “To me, you’re still my little Minnow and hardly fit to be out in society, let alone getting married and setting up your house.”
Lucy stiffened. “I am three-and-twenty.”
“I know. And I’msix-and-twenty, and I still have no idea howthathappened.”
He gave a rueful breath of laughter. A crooked smile. One last studying sweep of his eyes up and down her form. “This is a very nice outfit you have on. I spot Miss Sedgewick’s eye at work.”
He’d given up, then. No watch lying conveniently where he’d last put it. Too much effort to pick up the sofa cushions and really look.
“I’m sure you are very familiar with Miss Sedgewick’s eyes.”
The acerbic note surprised them both.
Jack raised his brows, then laughed and rubbed his jaw, somewhat sheepishly, as Lucy spun away, giving the ruptured seam of her glove a fierce study. Her fretting made it worse.
“Do you know,” said Jack, in a thoughtful mood again, “confronted with this news, seeing the thing unfold before me, involving people I know and care about… After a night full of reflections, I realise I’ve never entertained a serious thought of matrimony in my life. Because here are you and George, and the whole thing seems so damned real andfinal…”
He trailed off. She’d removed her gloves as he was speaking, tugging them sharply from damp fingers. Now she crossed to the armchair by which Miss Sedgewick kept her sewing box, though her hands were shaking too badly to do any sewing at all, let alone a repair as finicky as this.
She glanced up as she rummaged through the box. Jack was looking at her, and she tried to keep her features neutral—that was the best she could aim for. The role of radiant bride-to-be was beyond her power. But Jack’s scrutiny wasn’t one of suspicion. It was something deeper than that.
“You always were ahead of me, though,” he said softly. She picked up thread, scissors…put them down again, searching slowly and blindly as she listened with every fibre. “In every kind of good attribute. Kindness and fairness and wisdom. It shouldn’t be a surprise that you’re leading the way again.” He aimed for a smile, but it fell strangely short, wry and twisted. “And I know how well youseethings. Lucy Fanshaw with her artist’s eye, observing the whole world, and no doubt finding a great deal of it—the human part of it—sadly lacking. Perhaps that explains it—how you were able to see in George at one glance what I’ve spent seven years of friendship getting to know: that he is a thoroughly good man, to his core, without a single fault other than a tendency to think less of himself than he ought.Youmust have seen it at once. Whereas the rest of us fools… Well, you know me more than well enough to recognise allmyfaults. And I’m sure I’ve only developed new ones as I’ve grown.”
She’d forgotten she was pretending to search the sewing box. She was motionless. Listening.
“Is that why you greeted me as you did, Min? Lucy, I mean. At Almack’s.” There was the faintest smile in his voice, as though he hoped to find some joke somewhere along the way. “Do you remember? You held out your hand as though you were the queen and I was the dirt on the hem of your gown.‘Lord Orton. How do you do?’It floored me almost as much as this engagement has done. But I suppose this is the power of old friends. They know so much of us they form a perfect mirror. A mirror that sees too much… It’s very unflattering, you know,” he added, an even fainter laugh now in his voice, “the portrait of myself I see reflected in your eyes.”
Her heart had grown increasingly unsteady as he spoke. Jack, earnest, affectionate, sore… That Jack was hard to withstand. But every word was bittersweet.
“And in your eyes,” she found herself saying, “I hardly see myself at all.”
Jack frowned as though he did not understand, or as though he didn’t quite hear her—she’d spoken very quietly. He took two steps closer, about to question her, ask her to repeat herself, and her heart thundered with each one. But Miss Sedgewick came into the room.
“Lord Orton! What a pleasant surprise. William said you were here.”
