“Hush,” Nicholas warned, hoping the other men were not eavesdropping.
“Is that your only defense?” Samuel’s face brightened with a smile. “It must be true, then.” He leaned back in his seat and stared off in thought. “Truly, when I first heard the news, I thought it was just another story in the rags. Not that it surprised me. You are beloved by the writers after all.”
Nicholas sighed. “They will have something doubly scandalous to write about if you do not hold your tongue: the Viscount Whitmore strangled to death by his own brother over a roast.”
Samuel raised a finger. “Half-brother, don’t you forget... The rags certainly never do.”
“Now you have hurt my feelings,” Nicholas joked, squashing a boiled potato with the back of his fork.
He sighed when Samuel began to say something else.
“Look,” he cut in. “I have not seen hide nor hair of you in the last three months, and there are so few here in Oxford who I tolerate quite so much as I tolerate you, as George is so often busy. You were kind to travel all the way here to check on me—though I am still convinced you do so not out of the goodness of your heart but for entertainment. So do not write yourself in my bad books, brother. At least not until you have gone.”
Samuel stole a sliver of carrot off his plate. “It’s a wonder you can’t make more friends than George and me. You are so genial.”
“Oh, still your bleeding heart,” Nicholas quipped, putting his fork down with gusto. “I have more friends than I know what to do with. It is just that none of them happen to behere.”
“Have you really met no one worth their salt since you have come?”
“No, there has been...”
Before he could tell Samuel that Oxford had been an utter bore, his mind suddenly flashed with a familiar, sweet face.
Miss Tate appeared behind his eyes.
Her wit, her pleasant smile, her eyes, so like an angry sea.
“There has been...? There has been...?” Samuel urged, and Nicholas cursed himself—cursed the distracting memory of Miss Tate. “There has certainly been something.”
Miss Tate was no laughing matter. Nicholas knew no other way to be with Samuel, so he said nothing.
“Alright, have it your way,” Samuel whined. “Just come with me to the club tonight, the one Father used to attend. Abandon this drudgery for an evening.”
Nicholas wiped his mouth on his napkin, smirking.
“Oh, dear brother. There will be no club for us tonight.” He watched Samuel’s face contort with knowing. “The cream of Oxford society—comprised of those ton fools you like so much—plans to gather at the Bodleian tonight.
“Youwho wishes to spend time with me...” He seized his brother’s shoulder and drew him in. “May well spend time with me there.”
CHAPTER SIX
Amelia sighed in displeasure as she crossed out her latest note. The margins of the play’s text were two blocks of confused chaotic scribbling, notes haphazardly recorded and struck through, a visual representation of the unstable nature of her thoughts.
She had only one manuscript of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and had taken pains to rewrite the play into a piece that could be performed by children—each reply, each direction, copied by hand twenty times or more on stationery of her own.
“You’ll need another copy soon,” came Mary-Ann’s crooning voice from behind her.
Amelia gripped hard on her quill, spooked. She turned in her seat and came nose-to-nose with her cousin, placing a playful kiss on Mary-Ann’s cheek to dismiss her.
“When did you come in?” Amelia asked.
Mary-Ann stepped away, clipping in her earrings. Their shared room glowed in the light of the fire, Amelia’s blue gown hanging from her armoire and shimmering like a sky full of stars.
“I went to fetch these pearlschez Mama.That was five minutes ago. I could have sworn I told you...” Mary-Ann finished attaching her earrings and sighed.
“Oh, sweet Amelia... Do you know, sometimes, I have dreams that you forget my name altogether.” She positioned herself behind Amelia at the escritoire, wrapping her arms around her. “In my dreams, I grab you by the shoulders and cry, ‘Amelia! Amelia! You must remember me, I am your Mary-Ann!’, but you look at me with gorgeous, vacant eyes, and I know in my dream-heart that you do not know me at all.”
Laughing softly—though it was far from a laughing matter—Amelia grabbed one of her cousin’s hands where it rested on her chest.
