After Lex hit his next clay, Barnaby tipped forward and rested his forehead against Lex’s shoulder. Just rested it there,his face turned into the sleeve of Lex’s borrowed jacket, his breath warm through the waxed cotton.
Lex breathed in. He looked out across the field. Florence was asleep under the folding table, her nose tucked under her paw.
“He’s extraordinary,” Barnaby said, to nobody in particular and everyone at once. His voice was hoarse from the gin. His forehead was still against Lex’s shoulder. “He’s the most extraordinary person I know, and he doesn’t know it, because he’s too busy being loud.”
Nobody spoke. The field was quiet except for the wind in the hedgerow and Perry’s thumbs on his mobile screen.
Lex kept his eyes on the horizon and let the words settle in his chest. He didn’t make a joke. He didn’t deflect or undercut or resort to their usual banter. He just stood there, with Barnaby’s head on his shoulder, and let someone say something kind about him.
James broke the silence. “Did Bash ever tell you about the time he set off the fire alarms at Eton?” James said, turning to Lex with the particular brightness that meant he was about to commit character assassination on his closest friend.
“Don’t,” Barnaby said, lifting his head.
“It was my birthday. Half five in the morning. Barnaby decided he was going to bake me a chocolate cake, which is a lovely gesture from a boy who had, at that point, never buttered his own toast, let alone operated an oven.”
“I’d operated an oven.”
“Mrs Farrow let you play at turning the dials. That’s not the same thing. He set the butter on fire, Lex. Not the cake. Thebutter. Before it had been added to anything. He somehow managed to ignite a block of Lurpak in a saucepan, and the smoke set off every alarm in the house. Fifty boys were evacuated onto the front lawn in their pyjamas at dawn. The headmaster was apoplectic. The fire brigade came. And Barnabywas standing in the kitchen in an apron holding a flaming saucepan with oven gloves.”
“The butter was supposed to melt,” Barnaby said. “That’s what the recipe said.Melt the butter.It didn’t specify a temperature or a time frame.”
“You were supposed to remove it from its highly flammable paper packaging before you did that, Bash.”
Lex was grinning so hard his face ached. “Did you get the cake, though?”
“No,” James said. “I got a fire safety lecture and a letter sent to my housemaster. Barnaby got a week’s worth of sanctions. The cake was a write-off. All I ever wanted for my fourteenth birthday was a chocolate cake from my best friend, and what I got was a building evacuation.”
“I made you a cake the following year,” Barnaby said, stiffly. “A successful one.”
“You had Mrs Farrow make it and put your name on it. I know this because you can’t ice a cake and the lettering was professional-grade.”
Barnaby drew himself up to his full height, which was undermined by the fact that he swayed slightly and had to correct himself by grabbing Lex’s sleeve. “I stand by the intent behind my gesture,” he said. “Wait until your next birthday, James. I’ll just pop into the nearest high street and get you some generic scented candles from John Lewis, shall I?”
“They’ll be better than the ones you handmade that had wicks too big and made the jar shatter.”
Barnaby made an aggrieved noise and lunged at him. James caught his wrist without spilling his drink. “Vidal appreciated them,” Barnaby sulked.
“Then why does he only ever have Diptyque candles in his place, Bash?”
Lex pulled him back against his side. Barnaby went without resistance, settling into the space under Lex’s arm. “I’ll take one of those candles off you, Barns,” Lex murmured.
Barnaby was quiet for a moment, pressing his frowny face into Lex’s shoulder. “I’ll give you the one that smells like fig,” he said. “You’ll like it.”
“I will,” Lex agreed.
It was a good day.
The thought arrived without fanfare. The afternoon light was thinning across the parkland, and the Duke was loading the trap for one last round. Perry was eating the final wedge of game pie, and James was sitting on the crate with his gun across his knees and a half-smile on his face that belonged to Jams and not the King, watching Lex coddle Bash into a better mood.
The Duke raised his flask. His eyes were on Lex and Barnaby, on Barnaby tucked under Lex’s arm, Barnaby’s hand still curled around the sleeve of Lex’s borrowed jacket, and his expression held no surprise or discomfort. He tipped his flask in a deliberate toast, and drank.
Chapter Twenty
Barnabyhad warned Lex about the dinner. He’d done it carefully, the way one delivered news of a minor surgery; acknowledging the necessity, downplaying the discomfort, and omitting any detail that might cause the patient to bolt. “My family dresses for dinner the night before we go back to London,” he’d said, two days earlier, while Lex was throwing a ball for Florence across the back lawn. “Black tie. It’s a tradition.”
Lex had caught the ball on its return bounce and looked at him. “Black tie. Like, a tuxedo.”
“A dinner jacket. Yes.”
