The last time I wrote to you, I mentioned that I’d fixed my interest on a particular young lady. Well, I proposed to her, and she accepted me. So, you can congratulate me. I’m an engaged man.
The young lady is Miss Cecily Hewitt. Her father owns a number of factories in the North. He has offered a generous dowry arrangement.
Father is relieved that we’ll be able to save Dinsford Park, but every time the name ‘Hewitt’ is mentioned, his eye begins to twitch. As for Mother, she’s trying to ignore what’s happening, but it’s not very easy since Mr. Hewitt calls upon us daily to discuss wedding arrangements. He has a rather familiar manner—friendly, he would say—and when he turns his charms on Mother, she looks quite pained. It might be amusing if it wasn’t so damned awkward.
Thankfully, I won’t have to bear this for much longer since we’re to be married on the 21st of June, here in town. On the evening before the wedding, Cecily’s family is hosting a dinner, with dancing to follow.
I am hoping you will come, to both the dinner and the wedding. You’ll be the guest of honour—Cecily’s father is very eager to meet you.
Send me a note to let me know if you will come. I realise it will not be comfortable for you (for either of us), but I hope above all things that you can see your way to attending. It has been too long.
I have missed your company.
Your dearest friend, always,
Fletch
George continued to stare at the letter after he finished reading, his gaze lingering on the familiar flourishes in Ollie’s loopy handwriting. Every time he read it, his stomach sank, and he wasn’t even sure he knew why. It was a tangle of things. Nostalgia for their boyhood closeness, sadness over painful memories of the past. Perhaps, if he was honest, some resentment too. He had not seen Ollie in a year, and in the year before that, only twice. Yet over that time, he’d received countless letters like this one, full of carefully framed sentiments. Professions of warm friendship, of missing George, but nothing ever really said outright. Just hints of wordless yearning, easily denied.
He was becoming quite sick of how Ollie’s letters made him feel.
Despite that, he’d carried this one around with him for weeks. It wasn’t out of indecision—he’d sent a reply the day after he received it, offering his congratulations and confirming he would attend both the wedding and the dinner. He wasn't sure why he hadn’t put Ollie’s letter away after that. Why he’d read it over and over, even though it made him feel twisted up and more angry than sad.
George sighed. It wasn’t just Ollie’s letter making him feel this way. This whole last year had been unsettling. Not seeing Ollie was just one part of it. There was the business with his father too.
In all the years since George’s mother's death, when he was nine years old, his father had never remarried, or shown any interest in another woman. And then, last year, quite out of the blue, he’d told George that he had a romantic companion who would be coming to live at Avesbury House.
A man.
Christopher Redford.
Kit.
George had realised, with something like dismay, that his father believed—truly believed—this news would make George happy.
After all, his father had recently learned from George’s brother, Freddy, that George himself preferred men, and he’d wanted to reassure George. To say, Look how happy I am—how happy you can be too.
George could remember just how his father had looked as he’d shared the news. Smiling softly, his gaze warm.
“I’m sure you will understand my feelings better than anyone.”
But George hadn’t understood. Not at all. He’d never experienced anything like what his father and Kit shared. All he had were memories of a few stolen kisses with his best friend and the harrowing events that had followed. A decade of guilt and longing and endless denial.
As desperately as George’s father wanted him to be happy, George could not will himself so. And learning that he need not take a wife for the sake of continuing the family line if he did not want to was not the liberating news that his father evidently imagined it would be. In fact, since that conversation George had felt almost bereft. His plan to make that sacrifice had given his life a twisted sort of purpose. Without it, what else did he have? He didn’t have a romantic companion. Ollie’s letter was an undeniable reminder of that.
Slowly, George folded up the letter. Tomorrow, he would leave for London. Tomorrow evening, he would meet Ollie’s betrothed. In a matter of days, the wedding would be over, and he would return here, to his quiet, unsociable life.
Swallowing hard, he crumpled the stiff paper in his hands, balling it up before tossing it into the pond.
For a while, it floated there, but gradually, as water seeped inside, it grew wetter and heavier, until it finally disappeared beneath the surface, and was gone.
Above the pond, two dragonflies danced in the dappled sunlight.
When he returned to the house, George was in need of a distraction, so he headed for the library. As he was walking past the open door of the neighbouring sitting room, someone called his name, halting him in his tracks.
“Good afternoon, George. Would you care to join us for tea?”
George turned to look into the room. It was Kit who had called his name, and sitting beside him, a delicate bone china cup and saucer in her hands, was Kit's friend, Clara Atkins.
