“Come in, come in,” Clara said, standing behind the chair at the head of the table. She slid the chair out and tapped against the ornate cushion at the back. Della broke away from him, and Andrew mourned.
He was directed to the seat at Della’s right, and Clara sat to her left. Andrew took a moment to appreciate the fine china and the artfuldisplay of flowers at the center of the table. When he looked up, he noticed every pair of eyes was on him. Della. Clara. Mr. Stanton. Another man about his age who appeared to be slightly dusted in dirt. A younger girl who was quite possibly the blondest person he’d ever seen. An older woman who was fussing with the dishes.
“Where are your manners?” said the older woman at the opposite end of the table. “You are making the poor lad uncomfortable.” She turned to look at Andrew. “I hope you still like jellied eels. Miss Della told me they were your favorite.”
She remembered. Della wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was shifting her silverware across a still-empty plate.
“I love them,” he told the lady he assumed to be the cook.
“Thank you, Mrs. Goldsmith,” Della said, finally.
Everyone seemed to take that as permission to begin eating, and platters and bowls were passed around. There were his jellied eels, as well as white soup and potatoes and mince pies.
“You know,” Clara said, leaning her elbows on the table and avoiding the food she’d placed on her plate entirely in favor of conversation, “Della has never told me how this... friendship of yours came to be.”
Della looked at him then, a chunk of boiled potato on the fork she held frozen halfway to her face. She nodded once. He interpreted that as a nonverbal passing of the torch to him.
“I grew up visiting Morley House. My father was the viscount’s man of business, and their home was a more fun place for a child than my mother’s studio.”
He stopped speaking for a moment, and he realized that the silence he left behind was rather tense.
“Good lord, Clara,” Della sighed. “Go ahead, say it. I know you want to.” She ran a hand over the wrinkles in her forehead.
“Their home was... fun?” Clara asked. “For a child?” She looked around the table, as if to confirm that everyone else was as confused as she was. They appeared to be.
“It was,” Andrew confirmed. Even if he wasn’t on particularly good terms with the Harrises now, he still looked back on his time there with fondness. “David is several years younger than me, and while we had... different upbringings, we had many good times together in our youth. He was rowdy. Always bored by his nurse and tutors. It seemed the only thing that could entertain him was a boy with the same boundless energy and a few more years’ worth of sense.”
Clara leaned back in her chair. She crossed her arms. “And what about Della?” she asked.
Della dropped her fork. “Please do not speak of me as if I am not sitting right here.”
Andrew did just as she said. He looked directly at her, even though the sight of her ethereal face made his chest constrict. As he’d made the journey all the way here, his wild imagination couldn’t conjure up how this would feel, being this close to her again. Her eyes on him. Her voice in his ears, his mind. His heart. Every time he blinked, the image behind his eyelids was her.
“Do you remember the day we met?” he asked. He didn’t expect her to. They were so young then, it was an entire lifetime ago. There’d been so many days and miles and memories between them, he could never assume she’d kept a hold of this one moment in her mind.
“Of course,” she said. So simply, as if all those years of keeping that memory was as easy as breathing. “Though the story does not paint me in a flattering light.” Della laughed, and Andrew nearly fell off of his chair.
There it was, that one sound that had haunted his dreams for the better part of a decade. Under the table, he pinched the skin above his knee, then he regretted it immediately. Even if this were an aberration, he didn’t want to wake up.
“Oh, this I must hear,” Clara said. She leaned forward on her elbows again. Andrew supposed he’d been forgiven for whatever hadmade Clara so defensive before. Not defensive, exactly. Protective. He could understand that, being protective of Della. They were alike in that way.
Clara’s plate still appeared untouched, and Mr. Stanton wordlessly tugged on her left elbow, removing it from the table and placing her fork back in her hand. She rolled her eyes, but she ate.
“It’s David who was the menace,” Andrew said. He shook his head. He could hardly reconcile the boy he’d run amok with as a child with the man full grown who he saw parading around London as if he had been elevated by His Majesty himself.
Della hummed in agreement, and he could tell she was thinking the same thing.
“He liked to sneak away from his tutor,” Andrew laughed, thinking of all they’d done that they shouldn’t have. “Not for any important purpose or with any destination in mind. It was a challenge, and he loved winning. As my father worked with the viscount, I roamed about the grounds. David and I made a game of it. I’d try to find him before anyone else could.”
It was silly and juvenile, but they were boys. Andrew only wished that David had matured a bit since then.
“It always struck me as odd, how often David was able to escape,” Della said. She’d stopped eating, sitting with her hands folded in her lap. Just watching him. He felt the warmth of her gaze like a thick blanket on a cold morning. “His tutor only had the one pupil. I don’t know how he kept losing him.”
Andrew had never known, either. “One day, I was looking for him,” he continued speaking, though, because he was just getting to the good part. “I was looking in the stable stalls, which was ridiculous, because David’s never been much of a horseman.”
“Oh, no,” Della laughed, that brilliant burst of air ringing out like a church bell, “he’s not fond of strong smells.”
Everyone around the table burst into laughter, but Andrew wassuddenly deadly serious.
