Peter trotted upthe grand staircase wrapping around both sides of the entrance hall at Brooks’s, through the Great Subscription Room, jostled elbows, grasped hands. He accepted a glass of port from a waiter—couldn’t avoid it without drawing attention—weaving through the tables towards the group around the high fireplace. Leaning against the back of a high leather chair, half-smiling, swirling his glass, looking like he belonged.
He spotted John Brennan, ensconced in a deep chair with his newspaper. Brennan met his eyes and nodded; Peter raised his glass in salute but did not cross the room to chat. He wasn’t sure what to make of Brennan, after spending so much time at his place after James—last June.
Fine. Brennan had seen him at his worst. All control lost. After that, do you talk about the weather?
The group around the fireplace were men around his age. Some had already come into their inheritance; some were married; some had young children and mistresses set up in Cheapside.
Peter listened. Needed to learn about being a guardian for a young lady. He didn’t hear anything about the Northumberland Alcotts, and when he mumbled something about the daughter, someone just remembered Eliza. She had been safely married for eleven years now.
Peter peered at Brennan, who had been James’s friend and could have mentioned Elinor if he cared to. Had he been to Castlereath? It would have been after Peter had left for good.Brennan stretched out his long legs, turned the page without glancing up.
Just then, one of the other men mentioned the Thompsons.
Trying to marry off their passel of daughters, the fellows agreed. See how many parties they could fit in this spring—how many feathers could decorate their hats—if they looked pretty this year.
“I’ll take the younger one,” someone joked. “With the smile and the”—he cupped his hands at his chest. Everyone laughed and agreed; they all said they wanted Henrietta, but no one really meant it. The Thompsons were too well-born to get what you wanted without the parson’s leg-shackle but not quite well-enough to make your mama pleased with the match.
Peter smiled along, flaring with resentment. He didn’t know Henrietta as well as the others, but she seemed intelligent and had done nothing to invite men to discuss her body in a club. He hated the way men talked about ladies, as though they were fools or fine cuts of beef.
Hated especially when a man made fun of his wife.
That was why it would be good that Elinor would live with him. The men didn’t make fun of the ladies who had a gentleman looking out for them. Peter liked Thompson; bang up clever when it came to the books. But Henrietta needed a relative who knew how to wield the fear of God, or possibly just a good right hook and a dueling pistol.
“The older one has the dowry,” someone muttered, and there was a chorus of dour agreement.
“She has bubbies too, but too many brains,” Frank Simpson added. Simpson’s place had flooded twice recently, and Rose’s dowry was probably just about the right size to put him back on track.
Rose was too good for damn fool Simpson with his damn fool floods. Peter wanted to tell the whole room to never again evenlookat the Thompson ladies’ bubbies, let alone mention them, but he hadn’t the right.
No one mentioned Celia, which proved Peter’s point. No one wanted to cross her brother.
Or perhaps no one mentioned Celia because Peter was there, and Mr. Hughes had been just a little too obvious in his attentions. Good thing he had ended it. Definitely. Good. She was angry with him, in her poised and delicate Celia sort of way, and he was proud of her for it.
The conversation moved on, and Peter meandered away through the dining area, asking about wives and business deals. Made a few comments that reminded people of his Hughes persona; it had to be close enough to his real life that his Cambridge accent and his military bearing made sense, without drawing attention to the long-missing scion of the Alcott family. Fortunately, he was physically unremarkable, and on the blank canvas of brown hair, hazel eyes, and generically upper-class features, he drew notable tics for each persona. Hughes hummed modern arias, and of course drank like a fish.
Peter was trotting down the stairs, focusing on the new little trilly bit of Rossini, when he heard his name.
Speak of the devil, which wasn’t so far off when it came to Celia’s brother. Peter made his greeting, adjusting the correct depth for Hughes to bow to Clarence Westhaven, Lord Kilairne.
Kilairne made some desultory complaints about the weather, and Peter responded. Probably anyone else would have focused on the haughty tilt of Kilairne’s head, the heavy brows that dominated his narrow face, but Peter checked his left hand.
Fingers pressing. Thumb against second, third, fourth, inside fist, outside. Repeat.
Twice, Peter had encountered Kilairne when he was visiting the Thompsons, and learned that Kilairne did not always fidget.
“Have you been calling upon my uncle lately? Or perhaps, my sister?” Kilairne’s eyes darted away before they met Peter’s.
Neither of them had visited as much lately, but Peter resented Kilairne for it.
“I spoke with your uncle last week.” Peter emphasized the relation slightly, indicating that he was not calling upon Celia, not courting Celia, was nothing to Celia.
Kilairne cleared his throat. “Ahem. He appreciated your ideas on his paper. Ahem, last winter.”
“Happy to help.” Never mind his silly research, Thompson appreciated that Peter had thoroughly investigated his office and submitted a report proving that he was innocent. That was the real reason that “Peter Hughes” had shown up at the Thompsons’ townhouse last winter—accusations of treason. Of course, Thompson didn’t know that, just like Pipperly didn’t know now.
“Well then. Right.” Kilairne glanced up the stairs, at the butler, at Peter’s tie pin, his left hand going the whole time. “You should come to dinner one night. Don’t be a stranger.”
Peter made a non-committal noise, frustration welling up like mud in a footprint. He ought to empathize with a young man given more responsibility than he had been trained to handle. Clarence had inherited his title when he was one-and-twenty, and his father might have been a fine fellow but the old baron stayed in Ireland and Clarence had spent a decade at school in England, so his father hadn’t been much practical help. Peter knew how helpless he had been, himself, at one-and-twenty.
