He did not know how.
He did not know why.
He had never confirmed nor denied her suspicions. He hadn’t acknowledged them at all.
“You know as soon as you give me that,” he said darkly, “I am chucking it into the Thames and ending this misery forever.”
“Oh, Roland, stop being dramatic,” Vix said with a click of her tongue. “Look at Teddy. He broods with dignity.”
“I do?” Tod responded, furrowing his brow.
“You do,” his sister confirmed. “And anyway, the thimble isn’t for you, because I know very well that you cannot be trusted with it. That is what I’ve been pondering these last months. How to get around your very clever nonsense.”
“Thatis what you’ve been pondering?” Roland marveled. “Not your new son? Your husband? Your scholarship charity? Your newborn niece?”
“Oh, Roland,” Vix said sympathetically. “Did you know that some people can think about two or three or even four and more things, all at once? Did you know that?”
“Did you know, Vix,” he replied, saccharine sweet and smiling, “that some people concern themselves only with their own business, and are perfectly content to do so?”
She scoffed. “Sounds dreadfully boring. Anyhow, the clinic. We’re being harassed.”
“We,” repeated her brother, a tint of amusement in his usually even tone. “Are you back to teaching tally classes again?”
“No,” she said, batting her lashes at him. “Rosalind is fully restored and has returned to that matter, but I am and have ever been invested from my own vantage, Teddy. Do not disparage my input. If not for me, the whole affair would still have no curtains.”
“And without curtains, however would the place function?” Roland asked, leaning over the bar and taking up a bottle of port. “Hand me a glass, would you?”
“I would not,” Tod said, frowning as Vix flicked her own empty cup to Roland and he grinned, taking it up and pouring himself a portion of the syrupy-sweet brew. “Weren’t you just implying that you were the most matured amongst us?”
“Me?” Roland mumbled through his sip of port.
Vix sighed. “I am giving the thimble to Teddy,” she announced, “because he is in charge of you. And then he will give it back tome when I have the power to manipulate you further. Perhaps we’ll use Matthew as well. Don’t you see? It is perfect.”
Roland frowned at her through the rim of his glass and then tipped the remainder of the drink into his mouth and forced a swallow. “No.”
“No, you don’t see?” she asked, pursing her lips. “Or no, it is not perfect?”
“No,” he said again, and then narrowed his eyes at Tod. “Why are you playing along with this?”
“Because it amuses me,” Tod answered in the most monotone, disaffected voice imaginable. “And because that clinic is a personal project of mine and my wife’s and it is actually in tangible danger. We would have needed your aid with or without Vix’s odd fixation on your romantic avoidance.”
“Mywhat?” he repeated, aghast.
“Oh, please, Roland,” Vix tutted. “If both you and Mae were any more obvious exchanging heavy, heated glances at one another and refusing to speak for years on end now, all of our furniture would have char marks. The entire sanctuary at Holy Comfort would be a sooty ruin. It is funny, but it is also exhausting.”
“Then go and bother her!” he exclaimed, reaching out for the bottle again, which Tod immediately slid farther down the bar and out of reach without comment. “Dammit!”
She gave a long, bored sigh.
From the faro table in the left corner of the gaming room, a small scuffle seemed to be breaking out, with a gentleman standing and accusing the dealer of some manner of subterfuge. It wasroutine, some refrain of the same old song, titledI Can’t Possibly Lose That Many Times in a Row.
Roland grinned. “Duty calls.”
“Oh, go on, then,” Vix said, raising her brows. “Don’t think that’s stopping the discussion. It’ll just have fewer interruptions while you’re mothering degenerates.”
He walked around her, gripped one of her glossy ringlets, and gave it a firm tug as he passed by, smiling wider at her cry and gasp of outrage as he skipped along to break up the brewing fisticuffs.
If she was going to meddle in his life like a child, he would give as good as he got. As he always had.
