He would never be accepted by those men or their like again.
The game lost its appeal. Jonathan played out the rest of it, going after balls that were out of his reach and swinging wildly when he could have just volleyed. He was still a better player than any of the gentlemen around him, but the game was no longer fun.
As soon as it was over, despite the cheers and congratulations of the men around him as he made his way to the side of the court, Jonathan took himself away from the others. He was lucky that a table of refreshments was set somewhat apart from the court and that his excuse of helping himself to one of the glasses of lemonade waiting there meant his separation from the others wasn’t suspicious.
“Won’t you play again?” Blythe called out from the side of the court as a new set of gentlemen took up rackets and made their way out to the grass.
“Not this time,” Jonathan said, smile still in place, trying to be as affable as possible. “I will defer to better men than me this time.”
Flatter. Flirt. Be as agreeable as possible. It was the only way to stop the flood of grief that had been looming over him for nearly a decade.
“Perhaps you need another dose of jellied eels to fortify you,” Copeland said, more to the other gentlemen than to Jonathan.
They all laughed. More comments were made about the eels and how, surely, that was all Jonathan needed to regain his strength.
The lemonade Jonathan gulped down nearly came back up again. He was nothing but jellied eels to these men. He was the diversion, not part of the company. He wasn’t even supposedto be there. He’d been invited to perform a task, not because anyone wanted his society.
His father’s cautious looks over the last day and a half suddenly made sense. The man wasn’t monitoring him to see whether he could be reformed and rejoin polite society, he was waiting for the moment when the entertainment would be over and the embarrassment he’d created could be sent back to the darkened outskirts of society again.
It stung. More than Jonathan wanted to admit. Worse still, all the feelings of rejection he’d glibly pushed aside as he’d woven his narrative of claiming his freedom and the life he wanted came crashing back in on him.
He was lonely. He’d been cast out into a cold world with nowhere to go and no friends to embrace him.
Just like Charlie.
He put down the half-empty glass of lemonade he’d been holding as his thoughts washed over him and turned to march over to where his jacket had been draped over a chair. The next tennis match had begun, so no one was paying him any attention as he plucked his jacket from the chair, then turned to walk away.
His father noticed him leaving, but he didn’t say a thing. The corner of the man’s mouth twitched as he met Jonathan’s eyes, as if he finally approved of something Jonathan was doing, walking away.
He was a fool to think he could ever win his father’s approval again in any way.
“No longer in the mood for company?”
Jonathan nearly stumbled over his own feet and wheeled back when Hammond’s question caught him by surprise. He’d cut through the rose garden in order to make it back to the house faster, and he hadn’t seen the man standing there.
“Hammond,” he said with a nod.
“Has the sun become too much for you?” Hammond asked on.
Jonathan suddenly felt free to admit he didn’t particularly like Hammond. He was no longer disposed to pretend friendship with any of Frome’s guests, so he did not feel at all guilty for replying with a curt, “I’ve exhausted myself playing tennis and wish to retire to my room for a wash.”
“Ah, I see,” Hammond said, nodding as if he understood more than that. “And this wouldn’t have anything to do with your fetching apprentice, would it?”
Jonathan didn’t like the implication of the man’s words or the sly glint in his eyes.
“Charlie and I have work to do,” he said, deflecting the deeper question in the man’s look as best he could. “If you will excuse me.”
He tried to move on, but Hammond stepped into his path.
“Lovely boy, Charlie,” Hammond said. “Though he seems a bit highly strung.”
“Charlie is wonderful,” Jonathan defended him. “He is intelligent and helpful in every way.”
He was a great deal more than that, but Jonathan didn’t have the words for it.
He’d let Charlie down. Even though the things Charlie had asked of him had made him feel helpless and frightened, he shouldn’t have simply dismissed the help Charlie needed.
Charlie was the only person in all of Wiltshire, perhaps all of England, who genuinely cared about him, and he might have just destroyed that. He had serious apologies to make.
