“Er, yeah. It’s great,” I said. “Nate’s been showing me the Jane Austen stuff.” Damn it, if I was going to lead our family properly, I’d need to learn how to speak to this sort of person in this sort of setting.
“He does appear to be quite involved in his research.”
“Just don’t ask him about breeches,” I begged. “I thought the curator of the fashion museum was going to cry at the level of detail he went into.”
“Really?” he said, a hint of surprise in his voice. “Are you interested in fashion, too?” His eyes flicked over me, and I had no ideahow he kept a straight face. I was wearing my best suit—myonlysuit—but no one needed to tell me it was a world away from the one Nate was wearing. I’d never been anywhere people dressed up for supperin their own home.
“I’m not really into clothes,” I said, and then I realised what he was up to. He wanted to know why I was spending so much time with Nate. Time to distract him from our collaborative investigation.“The Georgian make-up display, though—that was kind of fun. I didn’t know that they put mercury on their skin to get rid of freckles. Or that their cosmetics were basically arsenic and lead.”
He cut in smoothly before I could get onto the good stuff, like the balls of cork people kept in their mouths to counteract sunken cheeks.“Tell me, Alex, what do you do when you’re not understudying your aunt?”
Was this polite conversation or an inquisition? Honestly, I didn’t know. I’d never been to a drinks party before we’d come to Bath. “I mainly research useless historical facts,” I told him. “Did you know, Alexander the Great was buried alive? Mistakenly. Probably.”
His smile became slightly fixed. “I’m glad you’re enjoying Bath,” he said, and moved on.
I manoeuvred myself into Nate’s eyeline and raised my eyebrows. We were running out of time. He said something to Ella, and I thought he was about to leave when Anna Fortescue approached him. For God’ssake. Not that I blamed them for wanting Nate’s attention, but were weevergoing to go swimming?
I’d grown familiar with the differences between Nate’s polite smile and his genuine one. But as Anna Fortescue spoke to him, low-voiced and earnest, there was no smile at all on his face.
NATE
I’d been looking forward to a repeat of our river trip. Not a precise repeat—I was determined neither of us was going anywhere near that water until we’d had sex. But between them, the Fortescue family managed to derail our evening plans comprehensively.
Ella finally stopped interrogating me about Jane Austen. “Why are you spending so much time with that Cornish dragon?” she demanded instead. “You should be with Charlie.”
“Charlie and I split,” I reminded her. Her eyes were fiery, and I’d need to navigate this carefully to avoid an eruption of some sort. I didn’t know if she was aware Charlie had asked me to get back with him.
“I know things went wrong, but you’re here now, and everything can go back to how it was.”
It was an uncanny echo of what Charlie had said.
“But things aren’t the same as they were.I’mnot the same, and neither is Charlie.”
“You can be if you want to be,” she declared, and I remembered again how young she was.
“Why do you want us back together?” Her insistence made no sense.
“Because you should be together.”
This was going in circles, and Alex was staring meaningfully at me from across the room. “Ella,” I started, about to make my excuses and leave.
“Charlie’s unhappy.” It rushed out of her, fast and choppy. “He was always happy when you were together. Everything was better when you were here, Nate.”
I didn’t know what to make of that last sentence, so I ignored it. “The thing is, Ella, he wasn’t happybecauseof me.” He’d never have cheated on me if I’d made him happy. And suddenly, I understood why Charlie had asked me to get back with him. He associated happiness with being with me. It wasn’tmehe wanted back. It was the time when everything had been fun and easy.
Ella shook her head impatiently. “You’re wrong.”
I was still grappling with my revelation and couldn’t remember what she was talking about. Thankfully, Mrs Fortescue’s cool voice interrupted us.
“Nate, Ella.”
Mrs Fortescue dismissed Ella with a mere flick of her eyes. “Nate,” she said. “I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to catch up, but it’s good to see you again. We always enjoyed your company. How is your great-uncle? And your—brother, isn’t it?”
“Uncle Thaddeus passed away,” I told her, carefully not mentioning that it had happened when I’d still been with Charlie. I couldn’t expect her to remember the minutiae of my life. “Rufus is happily settled as the librarian at Mortimer College.”
“I’m sorry about your uncle,” she said. “That must have been a great loss.”
“Thank you.”
