Strange to feel regret about that still, after all these years.
“Well,” Lady Prudence said. “If Sherrington attends, I expect it will turn out all right. The bride’s father will probably have an apoplexy from the sheer joy of having a duke-in-waiting in attendance, and half the mamas in London will drag their daughters to the wedding simply for the chance to throw them at him—if I had a daughter, I’d certainly do so.” She gave a tinkling laugh. "The ladies are so very curious about him, you know. He’s barely been seen in society since he came of age. From what I hear, he holes himself up in that huge great house in Wiltshire, reading dusty, old Greek books and tromping around the fields in his muddy boots all day long.” She sniffed then, disapproving of this greatly. Theo’s mother was firmly of the view that eligible gentlemen had a positive duty to make themselves available to well-born young ladies in search of a husband. And they didn’t come any more eligible than George Asquith.
“Well, in that case I hope he does turn up,” Theo said lightly. “I might be able to slink off home early if all eyes are on him.”
Lady Prudence promptly rapped his knuckles with her closed fan.
“Ouch!”
“You are not even to think of doing such a thing! I might not be going to this wedding myself, but I want to hear all about it. Especially how that dreadfully vulgar cit toadies up to Sherrington.”
But Theo wasn’t paying attention to his mother anymore. He was remembering the young George Asquith, a long-ago, sun-hazy memory. George had been playing a rare game of cricket on the school field one perfect May afternoon in Theo’s last year at school. Theo and Piers had been idly watching the younger boys’ game, lounging in the grass while they stealthily shared a flask of gin. Fletch had just been bowled out, and George had been browbeaten into going in to bat after him.
The day had been so warm that even George, shy and fastidious as he was, had stripped off his coat, revealing a lean frame that, while still lissom in the way of boys, hinted at the adult he was growing into. Theo vividly remembered how his dark hair had flopped over his forehead as he gripped the bat, waiting for the bowler to let the ball fly. George had never shown any particular skill at cricket before, but on that particular day, when the ball came sailing towards him, he’d hit it for six.
Even now, years later, Theo could still see the astonished sweetness of George’s smile after his bat cracked against the leather ball and sent it sailing off into the distance, carried away by the raucous cheers of his team mates. How he’d immediately glanced over at Fletch, his eyes bright with happiness. Theo remembered, too, the tight, unexpected pang of envy their shared look had provoked in his gut. And the strange, frightening realisation that he’d wanted George to look at him that way.
Theo had known he liked boys before that day, but he hadn’t thought so very much of it. That was just how it was at school where there were only boys. Everyone knew that. There was a great deal of fumbling in corners and under blankets, but it didn’t mean anything. It was understood that things would change when they were men.
But that day… that day Theo had been unable to tear his eyes away from George’s slim, graceful body as he completed run after run, his stomach clenching with such intense want that he’d realised, appalled, that the desires that had been plaguing him these last few years were not, as he had hoped, going to be temporary. Not for him.
And not for George either, judging by the way he looked at Fletch.
Theo wondered how George felt about Fletch getting married and whether he would be coming to the wedding. Piers hadn’t seemed to know when Theo had asked him outright. He’d mumbled something about Fletch and George not being such close friends these days, and Theo hadn’t asked again.
"Are you listening to me?”
Theo blinked. "Sorry,” he said to his mother. “I was daydreaming.” Quickly, he changed the subject. “By the way, what’s this story I’ve been hearing about some lady being caught in a compromising position at a ball with the hostess’s footman?”
He knew his mother would know the gossip, and sure enough, her face lit up with glee. “Oh heavens, that was such a scandal! The lady was Mrs. Philomena Lennox—not that anyone respectable would consider her a lady—and it was at a ball hosted by…”
Theo leaned back in his chair, only half-listening to his mother’s scandalous story as they waited for the tea tray to arrive.
2
GEORGE
Avesbury House, Wiltshire
George loved his home.
Avesbury House, the ducal seat, was a sprawling hodgepodge of a place. The original house had been gradually added to over the centuries by successive dukes, and now it contained, amongst other things, a Medieval chapel, a suite of Tudor rooms with heraldic panelling, a Jacobean long gallery, and several mismatched turrets. And that was only the house. In the grounds, there was an Elizabethan walled garden, a huge kitchen garden and orchard, an Italian sculpture garden, and beyond that, a wild wood, where George and his siblings had played when they were children.
George’s favourite spot on the whole estate was in the middle of this wood where a peaceful little pond hid, veiled by the drooping branches of a very old weeping willow. When he didn’t have estate business to deal with, George would often come here, to sit on the bank, a book in his lap. The stout trunk of the willow tree provided a comfortable backrest and its trailing foliage offered a measure of privacy.
There was something endlessly restful about sitting there, turning the pages of his book, half-listening to the lazy drone of insects and the occasional plop of a fat frog dropping into the water.
When he was a boy, George spent countless hours here with his favourite books. Aesop’s Fables, with its marvellously detailed wood engravings, and The Adventures of Ulysses, his mother’s last gift to him. As the years passed, he brought other books. Herodotus and Homer and Plato. And later, more prosaic volumes, about agriculture and estate management.
Today, though, he had brought no book—only a letter, which he’d been keeping in his pocket since its arrival several weeks earlier. It was rather the worse for wear, from all the times he’d read it, the seams of each fold in the paper worn, the last fragments of sealing wax crumbled away.
Taking it out again now, he opened it up, smoothing the slightly crumpled surface over his knee, and began to read.
Dear Sherry,
It feels like forever since I saw you last.
Can you believe it’s been almost a year? I hoped you might have visited London before now, but I understand your reluctance to return to town. I’m sorry I’ve not managed to visit you in Wiltshire this year.
