“How dare you, sir!” Bramley’s voice boomed through the pub. I hadn’t seen him look so incensed since that time I suggested we save on polish by only doing the silverware once a month. “I’ll have you know, you’re addressing His Lordship’s fiancé!”
“No, Bramley, that’s only for—” But my protest arrived too late.
“Fiancé?” Horatio repeated, his voice thundering across the whole pub. “Dub-Dub, you dark horse! Congratulations!” He stuck his hand in mine and shook it, then pulled me towards him, slapping my back. “Everybody, His Lordship is engaged to be married!”
A roar of applause went up around the pub. Horatio shouted the entire bar a round of drinks. By the time the congratulations had died down, the match was starting and Horatio had slunk off. At half-time, I stood on a chair and bought everyone another drink on the condition they swore to keep the news about my “engagement” under their hats.
“The last thing we want is for this to make the papers,” I said. “We all remember what it was like last time our village was crawling with reporters.”
“Gutter scum!” Birdie Craddoch cried out.
“What’s the world coming to when you can’t even finger a girl in the street without some arsehole taking a photograph?” Noah, the village electrician, added.
“Shame!” someone boomed.
“We saw them off for you, though, William,” Gurpreet, the local chemist, said.
Which was all jolly encouraging, but it didn’t alter the fact that the lie Petey Boy and I were engaged was never meant to go beyond the walls of Buckford Hall. Now it had escaped, and I feared it might be difficult to contain. I was relying on my community’s love and respect for my family to keep it quiet. Because if it hit the papers, we wouldn’t be left alone—and I wanted very much for us to be left alone. Almost as much as I was starting to want to addusto my list of pronouns. I sat down. Petey Boy leant into my ear.
“Why didn’t you just tell them the truth?”
“We couldn’t risk the cast finding out.”
Petey Boy looked at me like I was an idiot. “The cast that is locked away at Buckford Hall and has no contact with the outside world? Who these villagers are therefore never going to meet?”
“Ah.” He had me there. “Yes. That cast.”
No wonder he thought I was a himbo.
Back at the folly, I made my way upstairs with a couple of nightcaps to find Petey Boy sitting at my father’s desk, his fingers tracing the ornate carvings. The moon was shining in through the porthole window behind him, giving his white-blond hair an ethereal glow that reminded me of Prince Henry in theKnights-Erranttrilogy. I presented him with the tumbler, and he took it.
“What is it?”
“Sloe gin. It’s about the only thing this estate still produces. Sorry, there’s no ice.”
We cheersed and he sipped at it, his eyebrows leaping off his head.
“This isreallygood.”
I parked my arse against the edge of the desk, pretending to look out the window at the moon but mostly enjoying the closeness of Petey Boy’s body.
“Was it a good day off, then?”
He smiled. “The best.”
I clinked my glass against his. “I’m glad. I’m sorry we couldn’t fit in the otters.”
He spluttered into his drink. “I missed out on otters?”
“Didn’t I mention?” I knew I hadn’t. “Well, it was otters or the rugby, so I made an executive decision.”
“I feel like if I’d been consulted, our day would have ended very differently.”
As it turned out, that would have been for the best.
“They’re very young. Their mother is still teaching them how to swim. There’s plenty of time.”
Petey Boy looked like he was having a stroke. “Baby otters? You withheldbabyotters? Fuck. I know people who would shiv you for less.”
