“You wound me,” he responded drily.
“Not as thoroughly as this room has wounded taste.” Alistair looked at the drapery distastefully.
Blaise laughed despite himself. “You pompous bastard.”
“I am trying to save us both.” Alistair pointed, not quite at any one object, but at the room in its entirety. “If the garden party looks anything like this study, Marcus is doomed.”
Blaise tossed the estimates onto the desk. “The garden will not look like the study.”
“That is the first sensible thing you have said today.” Alistair crossed his arms and looked at Blaise concernedly.
“Do not look at me like that.”
“I have said nothing.” Alistair shrugged.
“You are in a charming mood, cousin.”
“I came at your invitation to discuss decor for a garden party designed to coax your elusive nephew into society. I expected difficulties. I did not expect to be assaulted by a room.” Alistair retorted.
Blaise moved to the window, though the view offered little assistance.
He turned back. “The party must be distinct. If we make it another dull parade of lilies, lemonade, and mothers measuring the prospects of sons, Marcus will vanish before the second tray is carried out.”
“He may not even appear, regardless.”
That is true.Although Blaise would not admit it.
“At twenty-one, I remember I would rather have walked into the Thames than submit to half the women my mother called eligible.” Alistair continued.
Blaise scoffed. “At twenty-one, you were insufferable. And we are not discussingyourtragic youth.”
“No,” Alistair agreed. “We are discussing Marcus’s potentially tragic future.”
Blaise glanced again at the estimates. “It need not be tragic.”
Alistair never handled affection directly. He circled it, mocked it, and made it present by refusing to name it. Blaise understood the method because he used it himself often enough. But at that moment, Alistair looked at him with the deepest compassion.
He picked up one of the papers again and tried to avoid looking at him. “The garden at Knoxford House can manage the numbers. I want movement through the spaces. And places for conversation that do not resemble traps. And music, but not so near the terrace that one must shout. And food that suggests abundance without vulgarity?—”
“And Marcus.” Alistair cut him off.
Blaise sighed loudly. He had a strong feeling Marcus would not show up, out of arrogance.
“It was Iris’s thought,” Blaise admitted.
And he prayed she would not be disappointed, although he did not understand why that meant so much to him.
Alistair nodded once. “I suspected as much. And how is the wonderful, beautiful widow that?—”
“Say another word, and I will throw you out.” Blaise felt a sudden wave of protectiveness over Iris.
“You would have to catch me first.”
“I have longer legs.”
The men were silent for a minute before they both laughed in shared camaraderie. Blaise touched the scar along his face, deep in thought, as Alistair moved nearer the desk and tapped one of the lists. “Perhaps you should ask her for some assistance, since it was her idea.”
Blaise leaned back against the desk. “She has her own household to manage.”
