“Before? And so close in age?”
“There was some overlap.” She couldn’t—wouldn’t—look at Jasper.
“Ah, of course. Understood.” Jasper’s father smiled, suave as a film star, and Emma scolded herself for her suspicions. He couldn’t have been needling her deliberately.
A throat cleared. Emma hardly recognized Richard in the shy schoolboy hovering in the doorway. He had combed his haystack hair into a semblance of neatness. His tie and blazer were precise to a pin.
“My boy!” Jasper’s father beamed. “What’s this?”
Richard was offering him a box. “Snuff, sir—I took your advice and tried it. I hope you’ll do me the honor?”
“Of course.” Jasper’s father snorted a pinch. “Exactly what I like. You have taste, my boy.”
“I should hope so, sir.” Richard’s face was shining. “I sent down to Yardley and Walters and asked them to make me a mix of your sort.”
“Good lad,” Jasper’s father roared. Emma looked from them to Jasper, alone by the window. He was clenching the sill so hard, his knuckles were white. She saw his father glance over, smile at Jasper’s reaction, and turn back to Richard. “Now, what have you been up to, my boy? I want a full update.”
“Certainly, sir. Military History Society keeping me busy. If you want to step into my room, there are a few things I saved. I thought they might interest you?” Richard was practically frisking at his heels.
“So thoughtful. But I still have business to attend with Jasper here. If you’ll excuse me?”
It was a dismissal. He turned his back on them and steered Jasper into a bedroom. Emma saw the look on Richard’s face as the Balfours left. The chagrin and hurt, raw in his eyes. She stood with him by the ancient window, and the silence stretched.
It galled her, seeing Jasper’s father play them off against eachother. Constantly shifting the balance of favorites, turning a word of praise for one into a barb for the other. She looked sidelong at Richard, his hair slipping from that neat schoolboy comb-over, and felt desperately sorry for him.
“You could show me those military history things,” she said. “I’d like to see them.”
Richard rubbed a hand over his face. “No, you wouldn’t. But thanks. You’re a good sort.”
Dust motes danced in the sun. Their shadows stretched long on the floor. The voices of Jasper and his father were a dim buzz from the other room.
“My father can be like that,” Emma said. “Like there’s something much more important over your shoulder, and you’re keeping him from it.”
Richard laughed, then stiffened as though stuck with a cattle prod. “I shouldn’t—They’re the best family in the world, and they’ve been so good—”
“No, of course,” said Emma, feeling like an idiot. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t even see my father much. At all, really.”
“My father’s not here either. Dead, though.”
Emma was taken aback. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Long time ago. But it’s like there’s a shape, everywhere I go. A shadow cutout, where he’s not.”
“I get that,” Emma said. “Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if he was here. How things would be different.”
“Me too.”
They leaned against the windowsill, framed in the arch of medievalstone. The sun warmed their backs. Her other friends loved to talk. But Richard seemed as comfortable in silence as she was. For a moment, she wished Jasper were more like him.
A door slammed. Jasper burst into the room like a hurricane.
“God, he’s such adick.He said he wants you in there now, Rich. Probably to lecture you too.” He grabbed Emma’s wrist. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“Away from here.” Shouldering his camera bag, he pulled her from the room and out onto the quad.
Jasper kept up a stormy pace through the courtyards and cloisters of St. Dunstan’s. The famous spires of St. Dunstan’s Cathedral rose above them.
