Quentin sprawled across a chaise with his jacket off, his sleeves rolled, a glass in his hand, and a grin on his face. William sat in the armchair opposite, his cheeks flushed, his cravat loosened, already two drinks into an evening that clearly intended to go further.
“You came.” Quentin raised his glass. “I told Richard you would not, and I am delighted to be wrong.”
“William is leaving for France in three days.” Evander took the whisky. “I wasn’t going to miss this.”
“Sit down, then. Stop looming. You are making the furniture nervous.”
Evander sat. The whisky was good. He took a careful sip, measured and controlled, the way he took every drink, one glass and no more.
William leaned forward. “Your Grace, I wanted to say, once more, how grateful Charlotte and I are for everything you have done. The apartment, the university position, the passage. It is more than we could have dreamed.”
“You have thanked me enough, Harcourt. Another word and I will rescind the offer.”
William smiled. “Charlotte warned me you would say that. She told me to thank you anyway.”
“Charlotte is correct more often than is convenient.” Evander glanced at Richard, who sat beside the fire with a relaxed ease Evander had not seen on his brother’s face in months. The tension was gone. The guilt remained; Evander could see it in quiet moments, but the crushing weight of it had lifted, and what emerged was closer to the Richard of before. Warmer. Lighter.
Quentin refilled William’s glass and raised his own. “To France. To Paris. To a life where no one knows your name, and no one cares about your scandal. More importantly, the wine is better than anything this miserable island has ever produced.”
They drank. The conversation turned to the apartment Evander had leased near the Sorbonne, to the colleagues William would meet at the university, to the neighborhood Charlotte had chosen from a map and declared perfect based on the proximity of a patisserie. Richard described Tommy’s latest feat, rolling from his back to his stomach, which had caused Mary to applaud and Mrs. Bridwell to declare him a prodigy.
Mary’s name landed in the room like a stone in still water. Evander felt it. Quentin saw it. Richard, who had grown more perceptive in his five months of exile than in the previous twenty-eight years of his life, read the silence that followed and set down his glass.
“What happened?” Richard asked.
“Nothing happened.”
“Evander.”
“Nothing happened, Richard. Leave it.”
Quentin uncrossed his legs. “You realize that saying ‘leave it’ to three men who have known you for a cumulative total of sixty years is the equivalent of hanging a sign that reads ‘please inquire further.’”
Evander stared into his whisky. The fire popped. The three men waited. William, to his credit, occupied himself with studying the ceiling.
“I made her an offer,” Evander said. The words tasted like ash. “A child. A baby of her own. I told her I would help raise it, provide for it, and be present. But I could not be the husband she wanted.”
Quentin’s glass stopped halfway to his mouth. Richard’s expression went very still.
“She came to my room to accept.” Evander’s voice was flat. Recounting the facts. Managing the information. Treating the worst moment of his life like an estate report. “And I held her, and I kissed her, and she stopped me. She told me she would not accept a child without a marriage. A real marriage. With everything that entails.” He took a drink. “She left. I let her go.”
The room was quiet for a long time.
“You kissed her,” Richard said.
“That is not the point.”
“That is entirely the point. You kissed her. You offered her a child without offering yourself. Those are not the actions of a man who feels nothing, Evander. Those are the actions of a man who feels everything and is terrified of admitting it.”
Evander said nothing. Richard leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“No love is perfect.” Richard’s voice was quiet and sure. “I spent five months hiding in a cottage because I believed the mess I had made was too large to fix. Charlotte spent five months hiding because she believed the shame was too great to face. We were both wrong. The mess was fixable. The shame was survivable. The only thing that was not survivable was the hiding.”
“Richard—”
“I know what you are afraid of.” Richard held his brother’s gaze. “You are afraid of Father. You are afraid that loving someone will destroy you the way loving Mother destroyed him. You watched it happen. I watched you watch it happen. And you decided, at seventeen, that you would never let yourself be that vulnerable.”
Evander’s hand tightened on the glass. The fire crackled. William studied the ceiling with renewed intensity.