When it was over, when the tape flipped over and sank into some Elton John ballad with slammed piano and stricken emotion, they held each other close. Her coat opened up and he pressed his chest to hers. Their heartbeats danced as they did.
“I’m falling in love with you, Samantha Dubarry,” he said.
“Don’t push your luck.”
“Fine.” He held her all the closer. “I’m not falling in love with you.”
A pause. She cleared her throat.
“Good.”
Closer now. They were one body of music and soul. Of love even she couldn’t deny.
“Because I’m already there.”
Chapter Nineteen
Since meeting Daniel almost three weeks ago, Sam had done everything in her power to avoid the Animos Society. Being around them only reminded her of the inevitable consequences waiting for her foolish heart at the end of this ride. A glimpse of one of them in the streets and alleys between Oxford’s many colleges shoved her into a spiral of heavy breathing and panic. The color blue—even if put somewhere other than their uniforms—punched the back of her throat until she was certain she’d throw up.
They all ran in the same circles; seeing at least one of them every so often was inevitable, whether in the halls of the university or somewhere else the children of England’s elite went to drink and be rich together. The real problem wasn’t PJ or Graham or any of the other flunkies who wore the blues of the Animos Society. Her problem was very specific.
Captain was her problem. He wouldn’t leave her alone. Whether he was swanning into her house to ask her to a ball or demanding they meet up for some sort of “friendly chat” about Animos or sending her streams of text messages or leaving drunk voicemails on her phone, he crept into her life like a wall-colored spider… Slowly at first, then everywhere at once. Welcoming his advances meant spending time with him, while ignoring Captain always ended in some simmering confrontation.
She could avoid them no longer. A week ago, she received a gilded invitation for an Animos supper, and there would be no begging out of an invitation as she had been begging out of their more casual affairs. An Animos Supper was a blue-tie affair, the highest distinction one could put on a society event. Not showing up would mean immediate expulsion from the group. Two years ago, one guy missed a Blue-Tie Supper for his own sister’s funeral, only to be asked to turn in his uniform and pin the next day. An expulsion wasn’t something Sam could handle, especially not after her talk with Thomas.
The stakes were too high. The walls were closing in. She had to face the facts.
With this threat hanging over her head, she made the thirty-mile drive to the nearest estate allowed to host them. Oxford banned all official meetings of their society within university limits in the early 1900s after a group of particularly rowdy blue-coats burned a church to the ground, so they were forced to thrust these sorts of meals on unsuspecting country pubs. She arrived with time to spare, wearing her black initiate uniform. She stuck out like a painful, throbbing bruise at the long table of Animos blues.
She put all thoughts of yesterday out of her head. If she was going to survive, she couldn’t think about Daniel. Or his love for her.
Or her love for him.
Tonight, she sewed her invisible mask of upper crust civility to her face. Without its protection, she knew she would give something away, her displeasure or hatred for these men around her.
For so long, she wanted to be one of them. The shimmer of their pins blinded her. She knew they were the most common kind of evil, but she pushed it aside, hoping one day she’d have a permanent seat beside them. Now, all she wanted was to take the ride back to Crowdwell’s Bookshop and sit at a table with the eclectic musicians who’d taken her under their wings these last few weeks. What she wouldn’t give to hear the mournful weep of a bassoon or the shrill rage of a guitar right now.
What she wouldn’t give to feel Daniel’s comforting grip on her hand. To be dancing on his car, shouting about impossible love with him to the stars.
The pub’s long, private dining room was filled with the current members of the Society, with Captain at the head of the table. He stared her down, the furrow of his brow casting a shade over his already darkly bagged eyes. By the time she arrived, earlier than most but later than some of the more eager hangers-on, Captain was already drunk. By the end of the third course, he was polluted. When desserts turned into port and cheese, he spoke for the first time.
“So.” He slammed down a wineglass. The delicate glass only narrowly escaped falling haphazardly to the floor by Graham’s guiding hand.
The room was more silent than a grave. All eyes were on their leader. All eyes except for Sam’s.
“The Piggy finally graces us with her presence.”
Captain lobbed the first insult in her direction, and thus began the back-and-forth the men at the table around them followed, their heads snapping back and forth like this was a particularly fierce match at Wimbledon.
“I’ve been busy with my Mud Duck.” Her voice was a dividing line, a quiet refutation because she couldn’t make a loud one. The attention of the room scalded her.
“That’s what we’re calling it these days?”
“Cap—” PJ’s voice shook, an unsteady entry into the fray.
“Don’t say it. You know they’re fucking.”
“We aren’t,” Sam almost whispered.
