“I am the one who made the mess.”
“Yes, but I incited it.”She held out her hand to him.“Come, we must not leave Sally and Charles any longer.”
She had taken his hand, briefly, when they were kissing by the hedgerow.
Had he ever held hands with a woman?
For some reason, he couldn’t remember a single instance, although it couldn’t be true that he hadn’t.
It was a simple thing.
He saw his friends hold hands with their wives all the time.And it never failed to make him feel something—first, yes, irritation, but, if he were honest, not just that.
He had never understood it, even if part of him had thought it seemed like one of the only appealing parts of the marital state.
The easy wordlessness of it.
Catherine was always reaching across the table to take John’s hand when his father was mentioned or when he said protective things about their young son, Griff.
Henrietta would take Trem’s hand when the subject of his young orphaning came about.Or when he felt some gentleman of thetonwas looking at her too closely and he grew possessive.
And Olivia and Monty held hands the most.Leith always took it as a symptom of their long separation.Of how glad they were to have found each other again—and how they might fear, he imagined, being pulled asunder once more.
“Come on,” she beckoned.
It felt consequential somehow.Weighty.To take her hand here.
But he did it anyway.He couldn’t resist.
And it felt good.Almost as good, although in a totally different way, as their robust coupling on the bench.
They walked out of the garden and down the path, back towards the noise and the revelry.The nearing noise didn’t bother him as much as it once had.Their contented silence warmed him and made his distaste for the place more tolerable.It helped to know, too, that she also didn’t care for much of what surrounded them.It made him feel less alone.
The fireworks burst forth in a passion above them and then stopped altogether.Their stilling mirrored the peacefulness he felt inside of himself.
When they reached the main pavilion, she didn’t drop his hand.
He considered it, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so.
And, after all, what was the problem with it?Compared to what they had done on the bench, it was nothing.And they were at Vauxhall, a place of permissiveness.If he could hold his mistress’s hand publicly anywhere in London, it was here.
When they approached the supper box, they found it empty.
He turned to Beatrice and saw her worried expression.
“I am sure they haven’t gone far.”
Beatrice, he was learning, was very solicitous about the well-being of her maid.It was unusual, but so many things about her were.At least to him.
“Shall we look for them?”
“It would be unlike Sally to stray far.”
He turned towards the dance floor in front of the orchestra and saw a flash of a familiar color.Yes, it was Balfour livery.
“Ah, there they are.”
Sally and Charles were dancing.It was, of course, not strictly the done thing for their servants to be so flagrantly enjoying themselves, but he couldn’t see any practical reason for his objection.Especially since the last thing he would have wanted was for Sally and Charles to have been within earshot of what they had just been doing.
