By the eve of departure, it was hard to believe that the major tasks were handled, that the referred patients had already started to report to Guy’s and St. Bart’s, and that Mae and Roland, for the first time in a very long time, had no crises at all with which to occupy themselves.
Well, no crises save one.
“The dinner,” she said with a sigh. “This is your fault.”
“Yes,” he had agreed, checking his cravat and smoothing his hair. “It certainly is.”
She might have been joking, some weeks back, when she’d suggested his father host a banquet for their friends and family to all become acquainted, but Roland had known the genius of that idea when he’d heard it.
And besides, introducing his two families to each other was what he’d agreed to in order to get that thimble.
He never went back on a dare.
Aristotle welcomed them with far too many candles, far too many courses, and far too much wine, his very best wig glinting in the candlelight as he embraced and admired each and every attendee as they came through the door.
“Oh, my beloved Sybil,” he said to her. “You bathed!”
“Well, now,” Sybil had said, straightening and patting her suspiciously glossy hair. “You can’t prove that.”
He was particularly taken with Vix. “My,” he said, his eyes gone big and shiny. “You are a goddess.”
“So are you, darling,” she’d replied, evidently already his lifelong friend, two seconds into meeting him. “You do not strike me as an Aristotle, you know.”
“Don’t I?” he’d replied, looking taken aback. “I chose it myself, you know.”
“You did?” Ambrose said, tilting his head to the side. “How did that come to happen?”
“Well,” said Aristotle, biting into a stuffed mushroom. “It used to be Diogenes. I couldn’t have that, could I? Can you imagine? Me in a barrel?”
Mae blinked and caught Roland’s eye, to which he gave her a quick, decisive shake of his head. He’d heard that nonsense story spun out many times in his life, and it had never failed to charm, but he was reasonably certain it was also complete nonsense.
“I could imagine it, actually,” Vix replied to him, grinning. “But it would require origin from a couture cooperage, naturally.”
Roland listened to the blossom of laughter and wondered several times during that meal why he had ever thought it so important to keep them apart. Why the partitions in his life had ever felt so damned necessary.
He watched Matthew do shadow puppets for Sybil and Violet Casper. He watched Aristotle actually make Tod laugh and Mae’s brother blush.
And he sat there, feeling like quite the silly little boy about all of it.
He turned to observe Mae, watching her dimples deepen in the shadows of the candlelight and feeling all the space that had opened around his heart, stretching like stiff legs, too long in a tiny boat.
She had done this.
She had torn down the walls he’d built between the rooms of his life. She had shown him how unnecessary the partitions were. Had put light on the things he’d thought were shameful so he could see them properly.
Finally.
He sighed and shook his head as she met his eye once more, knowing she was puzzled by the devotion in his gaze.
One day, he would make sure she understood, he decided. One day, she would know that she had somehow created the room needed in his chest to contain the love he felt for her.
“A toast!” Tod said, standing and clinking his crystal wineglass delicately, though one would think at his size, it would shatter just from being in his general vicinity. “To the couple, off to elope on the morrow.”
“Hear, hear!” Hannah cried, her cheeks pink and merry. “Did you decide your destination?”
“This is all very odd,” Aristotle said with a frown. “You aren’t supposed to announce an elopement. You’re supposed to elope!”
“Rules are for the weak,” Dinah Lazarus said through a mouthful of torte.
