Page 47 of Two Wars and a Wedding

February 1897

“Should you really be spending so much time with him?”

“With whom?” Betsy asked innocently.

Ava was not fooled. Ava was never fooled, but that was part of the fun of it. Or at least it had been. Since she’d arrived in Greece, Ava’s constant disapproval had felt less like part of their old routine and more like actual disapproval.

Ava was suspicious of the food, horrified that Betsy had a maid to help her dress and a servant assigned to shine her bicycle, appalled by the opulence of Betsy’s new wardrobe, and more than a little wary of Aikaterini, whose openhanded good nature was blunted against the granite of Ava’s unyielding self-sufficiency.

Right now Ava was standing in a corner of Aikaterini’s grand salon, looking decidedly out of place among the crimson velvet and palm fronds in her one decent afternoon dress, which was made of a sensible twill in a sensible deep brown with leg-of-mutton sleeves that had already been outmoded by the time the dress was made. The sleeves did no favors for Ava’s square-shouldered frame.

With her dark hair and dark brows and firmly marked features, Ava would be decidedly handsome if properly dressed. Betsy had offered to introduce her to Aikaterini’s dressmaker. Ava had refused. Firmly. Her pride had already been bent out of shape by accepting the ticket Betsy had sent her—which, she insisted, she had used only because Betsy had already paid for it, and it would have been worse to let it go to waste.

Never mind that Betsy could afford to send Ava back and forth ten times over without it cutting into her pocket money. Pointing that out hadn’t seemed to help.

Betsy couldn’t help feeling a little hurt. She’d been so eager to show off her new world and her new friends to her old one. Couldn’t Ava pretend to enjoy herself? Just a little? The only person Ava showed any interest in talking to was Aikaterini’s husband, the dour Dr. MacHugh, who had unbent so far as to show Ava the dispensary he kept for the use of the household. That was the one time Betsy had seen Ava truly herself since she’d arrived.

She’d had an idea that once Ava was here . . . well, everything would be different. That it would be like Smith again, except with fancier clothes and more men. She would drag Ava to balls and routs, show off her Greek, parade her friend triumphantly through the halls of the American School like her own particular trophy, and spend long hours sprawled in Betsy’s boudoir eating Turkish delight and rearranging the world to their satisfaction.

Nothing about this visit was going as Betsy had planned. Nothing at all.

Even the city itself refused to cooperate. Thanks to the death of the Austrian minister in Athens, the Athens social season had come to an abrupt halt, with the more elaborate entertainments canceled, including a ball to be thrown by the officers of the HMS Nile, upon which Betsy had been particularly counting. Balls as a rule weren’t Ava’s preferred pastime, but she might have found a cantankerous British naval doctor with whom to discuss the more gruesome sorts of cases, which might at least have put her in a somewhat better mood.

Without other outlets to divert them, Aikaterini’s salon thronged with the bored and fashionable.

Including Charles.

Not that Charles ever allowed himself to be bored. He found amusement in everything, and his lively sense of the absurd acted on Betsy like strong coffee, making everything brighter. All it took was Charles walking into the room and she could feel herself straightening, smiling, already rehearsing the amusing observations she meant to share with him, anticipating the way his eyes would crinkle at the corners, the feeling of his breath tickling her ear as he leaned over to whisper a witticism.

Ava had not taken to him. Betsy suspected the feeling was mutual although Charles was too worldly and too polite to show it.

“Monsieur de Robecourt is a friend of the household,” said Betsy virtuously.

“Monsieur de Robecourt is a married man.”

Betsy had forgotten just how New England Ava could be. Betsy, at least, had the benefit of being an upstart with new money, but Ava’s family were Boston Brahmins all the way down. Impoverished Brahmins, which was even worse. They clung to their principles as they hadn’t to their fortunes.

Betsy gave the taffeta skirt of her fashionable peacock-patterned tea dress a swish. “Don’t be so Boston, Ava. This is Europe. It’s quite permissible to talk to a man to whom one isn’t married. Or would you rather we all be put in zenanas?”

Ava cast her an exasperated glance. “You know that’s not at all what I meant.”

“You’d probably have more freedom in a zenana than you do in Concord,” persisted Betsy. Anyone could see that being a companion to a cantankerous elderly cousin didn’t suit Ava in the least. Except Ava, that was. “Life isn’t all mustard plasters and improving sermons. Don’t you want to spread your wings a little before you have to go back to ministering to that cousin of yours?”

Ava’s dark brows drew together. “You spread your wings too far, they burn.”

“Only if they’re made of wax,” retorted Betsy.

It made her remember Charles, what seemed like a lifetime ago, telling her that with her he had the tête de cire, the head of wax.

She turned to look at him and found him already looking at her. Betsy felt her cheeks go pink.

All right, maybe Ava wasn’t entirely wrong. Maybe she was dabbling her fingers in the fire, just a bit. But not enough to burn. They’d come to an understanding, she and Charles. They could be the best of friends, and that was all. Anything else was just . . . a frisson, Betsy told herself, feeling very European and worldly.

She grinned at Charles, just to show that she was a woman of the world and not some blushing schoolgirl, even if she was both blushing and currently in school.

Ava, of course, did not miss the exchange. “That,” she said, “is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about.”

“I can’t smile at a friend?” Betsy bared her teeth hideously at Ava.