Her friends looked at each other, and the expression that passed between them was brief and profoundly irritating.
“I need to speak with Lionel,” Penelope said, and took her leave before either of them could arrange their expressions into something she would have to respond to.
She found her brother on the terrace, leaning against the balustrade with a glass of something amber in his hand. He had the serene look of a man enjoying a moment of relative peace. For a moment, she did not want to bother him, then she recalled how she was also just accosted and suddenly had no patience to be delicate.
“How was Miss Fenwell?” Penelope asked, settling beside him.
Lionel glanced at her sideways. “She is very pleasant.”
“She is wonderful,” Penelope agreed. “She is clever and kind and she has an excellent sense of humor once you earn it.”
“I know. We spoke at length.”
“And?”
He was quiet for a moment, and Penelope’s eyes wandered down to the garden below, the golden glow of the afternoon sun making everything look magical.
“She is very beautiful,” he said finally. “And I think she will make someone extraordinarily happy. As much as I would have loved to have a lovely woman like her by my side, I do not think I shall be the one granted the honor.”
Penelope studied his profile. “Why not?”
Lionel exhaled, his expression calm and thoughtful. “I enjoyed my time with her immensely, but I couldn’t help but notice something rather interesting. We agreed on everything, Penny. Absolutely everything. Every opinion I offered, she had already considered and reached the same conclusion. It was – lovely. But it was also rather like speaking with myself. I could not find the edges of her.”
“Edges?”
“The places where she pushes back. Where she surprises you.” He swirled his glass. “I know what people say about happy marriages – that the secret is finding someone who thinks as you do. And I used to believe that. But I think now that is perhaps not quite right.”
“What is right, then?” Penelope asked, genuinely curious, because her brother had never spoken to her quite like this before – not with this particular quality of considered honesty.
“I think,” Lionel said slowly, “That a good marriage is not one in which two people who never disagree. It is two people who cannot imagine going elsewhere with their disagreements. Who choose to stay together, despite their disagreements, because they can’t imagine being elsewhere.” He paused. “I want to choose to stay with someone. And I want to be chosen as well.”
Penelope stared at him.
“Lionel,” she said, after a moment.
“Hm?”
“When did you become so wise?”
He grinned, sudden and boyish. “Last Tuesday. I have not told anyone yet, so I would appreciate your discretion.”
She laughed despite herself, which had always been the thing she loved most about him – the way he could hand her something true and then immediately make her laugh, as though the two were not mutually exclusive.
She was still smiling when something small landed in her lap.
She looked down. A piece of paper, folded into a neat square. She glanced around but the terrace had grown quiet, most of the guests having moved indoors, and there was no one nearby who might have – she caught a movement at the edge of her vision, the faint shift of someone who had just stepped back into the shadows of the doorway, and she did not need to look directly to know who it was.
Lionel was saying something about the dinner menu. She made an appropriate sound. Her fingers worked the fold of the paper open in her lap, out of sight.
Three words, in handwriting she knew by heart now.
The Garden. Midnight.
She folded it again and tucked it beneath her glove, and told herself that the warmth spreading across her cheeks was simply the last of the afternoon sun.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Penelope could not go. She would not.
