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“And I want to ask you to trust me.”

He did not care for that answer. He wanted to hear it explicitly stated that she had rebuffed the gentleman in question and that all was well. But what could he say? That he didn’t trust her and therefore needed to meddle in her affairs? “All right.”

A slight awkwardness settled, until she quite overtly changed the subject. “I know you and Lord Harcourt were school friends, but tell me about how you met. What was your first impression of him? You are correct in your assertion that if I were to try to dislodge him upstairs, he would resist. Was he always so upstanding?”

It took Simon a moment to adjust to the new topic, but he let himself be carried along, casting his mind back to his first year at school.

“I tried to avoid him, initially.”

“You did?”

He smiled. “He reminded me of my brothers.”

“How so?”

“He shared their interests in outdoor pursuits: riding, hunting, sailing.”

“But why avoid him? Your brothers were kind enough to you, to hear it told, even if the age gap made true closeness impossible.”

“To hear it told? Miss Brown, I am not sure how you can know that given that the conversation you are referencing never happened.” He smiled to show he was in jest. “I thought I had nothing in common with my brothers. To the extent that they took notice of me, or that I spent time with them, I was always being exhorted to run somewhere or shoot something or move out of the way of a mast before I got brained. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the appeal of the out of doors. In the correct doses. Which for me are much smaller doses than for my brothers—or Archie. That was why he reminded me of them. And unlike me, Archie had no interest in the school part of school. He was not a scholar. So I formed an impression of him that while superficially correct, was nevertheless in error.”

“How was it in error?”

“I was only seeing the outside of him. What he looked like—a Corinthian. What he did—ride horses and shoot things. I came to learn, thanks to his cheerfully relentless insistence on sitting by me at meals, that on the inside, we had a great deal in common.”

He thought she might ask what those things were, and he was prepared to answer. An interest in justice and fairness. Similar challenges with their families.

Instead, she nodded as if she agreed with him and asked, “And how did you come to be friends with Lord Stonely?”

Was Simon … disappointed that she wasn’t going to press him to talk more about his family?

He forced himself to answer the question at hand. “Effie came a little bit later that first year. Some of the other boys started picking on him, so Archie adopted him, too, appointed himself his protector.”

“That sounds like Lord Harcourt.”

Suddenly, Olive appeared in Simon’s peripheral vision. “Finally. We’ve been trying to get your attention.”

He swiveled to find everyone looking at him—at them. Olive lowered herself to sit next to Miss Brown on the other side of the settee and said, “Miss Brown, Lady Stonely and I have yet to take the waters. We were asking Lord Stonely to comment on the experience, but I am not sure we can trust him to be a reliable reporter. He does tend to overdramatize.”

“Is it possible to be overdramatic about freezing to death?” Effie called from across the room.

“Miss Brown, I understand that you and Lady Harcourt immersed yourselves this afternoon,” Miss Morgan said.

“Yes. Well, I did. Lady Harcourt only went in a little way.”

“And was it unbearably, soul-shatteringly cold?” Effie asked cheerily.

“It was certainly cold, and Lady Harcourt did not care for it. But for my part, I felt that once one has grown accustomed to it, it’s not so bad. I would go so far as to say it’s rather invigorating.”

“Well, it must have been,” Olive said, “for you are positively glowing.” Was it Simon’s imagination or did Olive glance at him suspiciously?

“That’s exactly—practically word for word—what Marsden said,” Effie said. “I think water that cold requires a certain sturdiness of character that most of us lack.”

“Speak for yourself, my dear,” Julianna said.

“I wasn’t referring to you, my love,” Effie said, and Simon barely refrained from rolling his eyes. “You have the sturdiest character I know.”

“And to think,” Julianna said, failing to suppress a fond grin, “he fancies himself a poet.”