He set down his glass, loud enough to make everyone look, but fixed a smile to his face and pretended to study the light fixture. Cobwebs in the chandelier, tiny, wispy ones, moving in an unfelt current.
They didn’t look much like lovers to him sitting next to each other at dinner, even though etiquette ought to have puthimby her side. Several significant glances were exchanged, and even more blushes. But there was nothingburning. George seemed to feel no need to manufacture a hundred ways to touch her: the glance of fingers when passing a dish, the helpful rearrangement of the napkin on her lap, the request to examine the bracelet on her wrist and hold her hand as he did so, fingertip exploring every bead. He didn’t seem to find his eyes lingering on the colours the candlelight made in her hair, finding amber and red honey among the dark curls. Or to be a base, pathetic man, Goddammit, unable to stop his eyes dropping again and again to the plump, pale mounds of her breasts, set there like forbidden fruit on the devil’s own plate.
He unclenched his fingers from his cutlery and ate studiously, tasting nothing. They were both shy. And George was a betterman than he. So perhaps the lover-like behaviour was reserved for private moments.
This observation gave him little satisfaction, as did the inevitable conclusion that he reached as the final course was being cleared away, that with such similar temperaments, they were clearly made for each other.
George stood, decorously assisting Min to her feet, saying something gallant and tactful about how Jack would excuse him from pipe and port, because how could he want to be separated from his love for even one minute?
How devoted George would be, Jack had to admit as he followed the pair—now sweetly arm in arm—to Caroline’s parlour. How tender and gentle. And how Min would blossom under that kind, respectful care. It was what she needed. She was smiling her thanks at George now as he led her to the seat of her choosing. It wasexactlywhat she needed. To be seen and valued and set apart. The Lord knew that society, in all its loud, rambunctious narcissism, seldom noticed or cared for such quiet qualities as Min’s. Especially when set in a skin not fashionably beautiful, and especially when the creature in question was happiest in quiet corners—had, indeed, been taught from birth to take second place. First to her father’s books and clinging, self-indulgent grief, and then to her grand neighbours and their spoilt children, her only choice of companions.
Which was why, later, as Caroline was hunting the house for a child’s game she was sure was in a cupboard somewhere and George had stood to tend the fire, he found himself asking, “Would you have known us?”
It was the warm, companionable quiet of late evening, and for once, with no ball or party or show to dash off to, Jack let himself succumb to it, the comfort of food in his stomach, wine in his veins, the soft crackle of the fire. And Min with her legs drawn upunder the rich satin of her skirts, curled in the corner of the sofa nearest his chair.
“If the rector had been a family man,” he continued, “with a brood of respectable and well-mannered children, or if there’d been some quiet country gent with a couple of very proper daughters your age—a Claire and a Dorothea, both diligent with their needles and their catechisms—would you have come every day to our garden and subjected yourself to the tyranny of the Ortons? The tyranny of me?”
Min gave him an odd look, one too complicated to be a smile. “Would you have knownme, Jack, if that country gent had a strapping, sporting son or two? Some fellows to hunt with, and fish with, and give black eyes to whenever you got it into your heads to try your hands at boxing?”
His own smile was easy. He always smiled remembering their past. “You should be glad there were none, or you can be sure we’d have teamed up to torment you together.Threehorrible boys. Poor Lucy. We would’ve driven you to despair.”
“You did that all by yourself.”
“I’m sorry.” Though he was still smiling.
She didn’t answer straightaway, and in the pause, he felt doubt creep in. She seemed far less amused than him. Not amused at all, in fact.
“Was I truly so awful?”
“No. I…” She sighed. “I wondered for a moment whether it would have been better if it had all been different. But then you wouldn’t have been you, and I wouldn’t have been me, and I think…I think it’s best for both of us that we are the way we are.”
He didn’t understand any of that. But one thing he did know.
“I never wanted you to be any different.”
Her lips pressed up, sceptical, her nose wrinkling. “Not braver or bolder or…or more fun?”
“No.”
“I suppose I might have stolen some of your shine if I were.”
“Min… I mean, Lucy… Ever since you told me not to call you by that nickname… Ever since we met again at Almack’s and you held out your hand like you scarcely knew me, I’ve been worrying that you didn’t remember those years with the same fondness I’ve always done.” He resisted the urge to take her hand. “Do you?”
She paused. “I do remember them.”
“But fondly?”
Another pause. “Something deeper than that, Jack.”
Relief washed through him, warm and sweet as cocoa. “Well, of course. It was everything.”
She gave him a strange look, surprised and doubting. The glow from the fire was a perfect gold—he realised now that George had finished tending it and had gone, left the room, perhaps to assist Caroline in her hunt for the game. He could understand Lucy’s doubt. The last seven years had left plenty of room for doubts to grow. But the last seven years had also been a waste.
He could see that now—now that he had something to compare them too. They were hollow as a courtesan’s laugh. Butherewas reality. Here was the very core of him, the thread that ran through him from boy to man. It was in the warmth and the depth of this companionable quiet, with the light playing over Lucy’s chestnut curls like exploring kitten paws. The freckled skin of her cheek was smooth. Cream and cinnamon. She sat close to him, tucked up in the sofa’s corner, and he found himself leaning closer, his elbow on the arm of his chair. If she’d turned to face him, their mouths would be scandalously close. But she stayed looking at the fire.
“Lucy…”
She turned a fraction, looked at his lapel. Somewhere beneath it his heart was beating a strange rhythm.
