Min, cheeks now very red, turned back, startled. “Oh! Y-yes… But I—”
“Never fear, I’ll not bore Lord Orton with a repetition of it. I only mention it to reassure our very proper friend here that there are few ladies who could object to Cupid’sappearance, and that Miss Fanshaw is unlikely to be one of them.”
As the groups once more separated outside Somerset House, Jack discovered that George was expected at Miss Sedgewick’s for dinner that evening. A small, informal party of the most intimate friends, Caroline informed him with a significant smile.
“And am I not?” Jack returned, offended.
“You must know you are! And if you return home this very instant, you’ll find that the note of invitation I sent to you this morning will have preceded you.”
But Jack didn’t return home, nor did he accept Warde’s invitation to ride out, or keep an only informally made agreement to call on an acquaintance that afternoon. Instead, he accompanied the ladies on foot from Somerset House, escorting them on the little errands of shopping they had, then on a visit to drink tea with an old, shabby-genteel school friend of Caroline’s—who lived in an unfashionable street he’d never set foot in his whole life—before escorting them all the way back to their house. He finally bid them adieu on their doorstep, priding himself on having been exactly the proxy George would undoubtedly have wished and on having only accidentally called Lucy Min once. Out loud, at least. The inside of his own head was slower to make the change.
But he arrived back at Caroline’s later that evening for dinner with a degree of anxious trepidation. It was the first time he’d rung her bell pull with anything other than the expectation of flirtation and idle enjoyment. Now he felt oddly tight, as though all his insides had been spun around a cotton reel, one of those new machine-powered devices, whirling dizzyingly fast. His heart was going fast too, and his hands were burning and sweating uncomfortably in his gloves.
But it was only curiosity, this jittery feeling. The strangeness of seeing Min and George together for the first time. Though he’d seen George smitten before—the man had been in calf love a half dozen times. But Min… How wouldshelook at a lover?
The idea of Min asamour, asbeloved… The idea that George looked at her and saw awife…
It would be real then. Written into the air between them. Secret looks and touches that told a story old as time.
He broke out in a new sweat, wishing he was out of his greatcoat, out of his tails, clawing the cravat from his neck. Jack had surely spent too much time around art and artists today—around Thornton and Cotton with all their talk ofseeingtruly. Was this odd, dislocating sense of the world having changed what they meant by shifts in perspective? Was this the disorientating sensation Cotton sought via brandy and opium? The familiar made strange? The man could keep it. Jack didn’t like it one bit.
William took his hat and gloves in the hallway, and Jack, a frequent friend of the house, made his way to the parlour without introduction. He walked in to find Min and Caroline sitting side by side on the small sofa and George standing at the window. All three of them gave a guilty start.
“Why the shock?” he asked, half smiling, as he walked into the room with a raised brow. “I’m expected, am I not?”
“Yes! Yes, of course,” agreed George hastily. “Didn’t hear your carriage, that’s all.”
“I walked.”
“It’s only that we were just talking about you,” Caroline said, smiling now and with no trace of discomposure. She stood up and held out her hand.
“It can’t have been anything good, judging from George’s face,” said Jack, giving her fingers a brief squeeze.
“Of course it wasn’t! Friends never speak politely about each other. We know too much for that.”
“Hm. And there’s someone here who knows me better than anyone. Hello, M—Lucy.”
She’d stood too, and he now gave her fingers a warm press, accompanied by a smile. “What horror stories have you been telling them?”
She was dressed in a green satin evening gown—he spotted Caroline’s influence again. It was a colour he couldn’t remember seeing her in before, and it worked well to bring out the warm, chestnut undertones of her abundant curls, just as the low neckline worked well to… Well. He shouldn’t be looking at that.
A pink flush spread among her freckles, and Jack reluctantly let go her fingers, adding, “Though I should warn you to speak wisely, old friend, lest I share a few horror stories of your own youth.”
She narrowed her eyes in a look he remembered well—it was often a prelude tohorrible boy.But George intervened, coming to her side and tucking the fingers Jack had just relinquished under the protection of his arm. Red in the cheek but with gallant firmness, he protested, “No, Jack! That will not do. A fiancé outranks an old friend, you know. I won’t let you bully and tease my wife-to-be. Admit it now, before us all as witness, that you haven’t a single story to threaten Lucy with. She was as perfect and blameless a child as she is a woman. I stake my life on it.”
Jack gave a tight chuckle and found himself heading towards the decanters clustered on the cherrywood table at the side of the room. The man was clearly smitten. If it had been aimed at anyone but Min, it would’ve been nauseating. Jack’s stomach twisted, regardless.
“You’re right, of course.” He poured something amber into a glass, not caring what it was. “I’ve never found a fault in Miss Fanshaw.”
“What n-nonsense you both speak!” protested Min.
“Nonsense?” He sipped his drink, lingering on her blush, red as cherries. The neckline of that dress was absurd, however glorious she looked. George should say something. Any man could just stand there ogling. He lifted his eyes and found her blush hadn’t lessened at all. “True. You do haveonefault—a lifelong one. Which is your unfortunate taste in friends. But here”—he raised his glass as though in a toast towards the couple—“here is George to appreciate you as you deserve. And Miss Sedgewick too. You are finally among people good enough for you.”
“Come, come,” said Caroline as Jack tossed back his drink in lieu of the laugh he couldn’t quite find. “If there’s one thing friends never do, it’s remember each other as children.Allchildren are wretched. They cannot help it.” With her usual skill, she turned the conversation to a story of an old friend and the trials of the numerous progeny she was afflicted with, and from there, somehow, to some interesting gossip about mutual friends. And thus they passed the wait for dinner, Jack still probing his odd mood as though it were a loose tooth.
Numbing it with another swill of cognac, he watched Lucy and George, and George and Lucy, and felt indeed as though some part of him had come loose.
It was just damnably strange. It was just…damnablydamn.
