Helena said nothing. She did not need to.
Chapter Twelve
“You’ve been staring at the same page for forty minutes,” Miles said, dropping into the chair opposite casually. “Either Burke’s prose has grown considerably more testing since I last read him, or there is something the matter.”
Dominic turned the page. “Nothing is the matter.”
“You turned the page before you’d finished it.”
“I finished it.”
“Then tell me the argument of the last paragraph.”
Nothing came. He closed the book and set it face down on the side table.
The fire in the east room of White’s had been burning since well before he arrived, and the steady, low crackle of it was the only sound between them beyond the murmur of other men’s conversations drifting from the card rooms.
Miles reached across and filled his own glass without ceremony. “You arrived before eight,” he said. “No cards. No conversation. In this chair, which I know from experience to be the one you choose when you would prefer to be left alone.” He lifted the glass briefly. “And yet here I am, talking to you.”
“Here you are.”
“Your face is off.” He said it without inflection, not unkindly. “The arrangement of it. You have the same look you had the night Rowbury called you a cheat at hazard, and you spent the following hour telling everyone you were perfectly fine while your cravat was doing something extraordinary at the collar.” He settled back as a man settling in for the duration. “You were not perfectly fine then, either.”
“That was three years ago.”
“You have a consistent face.” Miles swirled his glass. “Is it the boy?”
It used to be, Dominic thought with a tinge of annoyance.
“James is fine.” He said aloud, however.
“The estate?”
“Also fine.”
Miles went quiet. The fire shifted, a settling of coals, dispersing the smell of beeswax and old wood and the accumulated tobacco of other men’s evenings around the room. He waited in the way he had always waited: no pressure, no performance of it, just present.
“Miles,” Dominic said once, and the word came out flat.
“I’m not asking,” Miles pointed out smugly. “I’m observing.”
Dominic could feel himself nearing the point where he could crack a molar between his jaw with the frequency with which he was clenching his teeth. “Then observe quietly.”
But he raised his glass to that, deciding in that moment that keeping his cool was going to do him far more good than any emotional reactions ever would. Especially for a partner such as Miles.
A footman came through with a fresh decanter and departed again without introduction. This time, Dominic left his glass where it was.
“You know,” Miles said at last, conversationally, “the last time you sat in that chair in this condition, you went to Bellamy’s to watch a horse race at midnight and the horse lost, and the timebefore that you commissioned a portrait of no one and cancelled it before it was half done. You have a history of impractical responses to agitation.” He picked up his own glass. “I note this purely in the spirit of personal curiosity.”
Dominic knew that it was his personal affliction to be so acquainted with Miles and reminded himself to temper his irritation before it spiraled out of control. “Personal curiosity is another word for meddling.”
“It is. But I have found it keeps the conversation alive.” Miles tilted his head, considering. “You are sober in a place designed to make that difficult. You have not spoken to anyone except me. The brandy you ordered has gone warm. And you have been reading your philosophy upside down.” He held the look. “If it isn’t James and isn’t the estate, it’s a woman. It always is.”
Dominic looked at the fire, and did not need to say anything because he knew his friend could read it on his face.
“None of my concern,” Miles mimicked Dominic’s tone. “I merely note the pattern.” He stretched one leg out and crossed it over the other. “I have eyes, Silverford. And you have been dropping that boy off next door three mornings a week for the better part of a month.”
“James’s lessons are not contingent on what I do or do not feel.”
