“No.” Nathaniel held up both hands. “I have no need to mention the sparkle in your eyes again because the sparkle has now apparently taken over your entire person whenever she enters the room. What concerns me rather more is that alongside the sparkle there is also a shadow. I want to make sure you do not do something foolish and ruin a perfectly good thing that stands directly in front of you.”
“I ruin nothing,” Julian said. “There is nothing to ruin. Clara and I have an arrangement, one that will conclude the moment we find Arabella.”
“A confederacy of two,” Nathaniel said. “Yes, you have mentioned it. Several times. And yet it is plain to anyone with eyes that that is no longer quite accurate. Particularly,” he added with the air of a man producing a card he had been holding for some time, “for two people who have just spent the night together in a Dover inn.”
“We were there on business,” Julian said, “and nothing happened.”
“I did not say anything happened. Although I notice,” Nathaniel said pleasantly, “that you felt the need to clarify that nothing did.”
Julian said nothing.
“Dover clearly affected you,” Nathaniel said, more quietly now. “I can see it. You came back different. Both of you, if Evelyn is to be believed, and Evelyn is generally to be believed.”
Julian pressed his lips together. The truth was that Dover had done something he had not been prepared for. Charlie Dunmore, dragging Marianne down the stairs, and the sound of fear in Clara’s voice had struck him hard.
It was holding her afterwards while she shook, her face against his shoulder, telling him she was afraid for Arabella, afraid for all of them, and the way she had felt in his arms as though she had always been meant to be there. It was waking up in the gray morning light with her arm across him and her head tucked against his shoulder and not wanting to move for anything in the world.
He had lain there in the growing light, completely still, and thought:This is the most content I have ever been.And then he had thought:And that is precisely why I cannot have it.
“Even if there were more between us,” he said, “nothing would come of it. I will not allow it. There is nothing that makes a man more of a sapskull than allowing himself to be led entirely by his feelings.”
“That is absolute nonsense,” Nathaniel said pleasantly. “Love is a gift. A gift I have received and which every one of our friends has received and which you presently stand six inches away from and refuse to pick up.”
“You have all been fortunate,” Julian said. “The fact that so many of my dearest friends found happiness in matrimony tells me only that such luck cannot persist indefinitely. The odds, Nathaniel, are that at least one of us will not have his happyending. I would rather it be me than any of you since you have all already committed yourselves, and there is nothing to be done about it.”
Nathaniel’s eyes performed a maneuver that Julian was fairly certain no physician would recommend. “Do not play the martyr,” he said. “Do not stand there and tell me you sacrifice yourself from having love so that the universe does not take it away from one of us. That is the most mutton-headed thinking I have ever heard from a man of your intelligence.”
“It is not mutton-headed. In any case, what would be truly foolish is walking headfirst into another attachment that ends with me making a complete cake of myself in front of the entire ton. I will not do it again.”
“This is about Josephine,” Nathaniel said.
“It is not about Josephine.”
“You cannot compare Clara to Josephine.”
“I am not.” Julian stopped. He had not meant to say that so quickly or so decisively. It was true of course—Josephine had never been a quarter as gracious or as warm or as steadying as Clara, and he did not compare them because there was no comparison to be made. But it was not something he wished to hand to Nathaniel.
Too late. “So you admit that she is everything a man of sense ought to want in a wife.”
“I admit that she is, yes. All of those things. But it makes no difference. My attention must be on Arabella. That is where it belongs.”
“Of course,” Nathaniel said, recrossing his legs with great deliberation. “But when Arabella is found, what will your excuse be then?”
Julian said nothing.
“Your parents’ marriage,” Nathaniel suggested after a moment.
“Do not.”
“Julian. My own mother and stepfather entered a perfectly practical arrangement and have been thoroughly content for twenty years. You know my views on this. You know that I myself did not precisely search for a wife when Evelyn appeared, and yet?—”
“Yes, yes,” Julian said. “You, James, Lucian, Gideon, Rhys. I am well acquainted with the catalogue.”
“Then take note of it.” Nathaniel leaned forward. “You were not even in love with Josephine. You told me so yourself.”
“No,” Julian said. “I was not.”
He thought of the way he had explained it to Clara at the menagerie—the blank canvas of painted dreams. He repeated it now to Nathaniel, briefly, without embellishment.
