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“They go all the way to the upper floor, if you are really so curious,” Edward said with a smirk, startling Jonathan into jumping a few inches into the air.
“Morton!” said the thin blond man, approaching with a hand out and a broad smile. Edward took his hand and shook it, unable to keep a smile from his own face. “Still wasting your precious youth on your social betters’ drudgery?”
“So it would seem. As you are still knocking about and getting up to trouble at all hours of the night?”
Jonathan gave an exaggerated shrug. “We all have our own role to play in this life. I would not want to fail to live up to my own reputation.” They shared a laugh of familiarity.
“In that case, I shall not stand in your way,” said Edward. He gestured toward one of the more intimate salons, and as Jonathan put a brotherly arm around his shoulders the two men began walking down the corridor.
“Sorry to hear about your friend the Duke, old boy. Terrible tragedy, that.”
Edward’s jaw tightened. “Thank you, Fletcher. I apologize for not answering.
“Quite all right. From what it sounds like, you’ve had your hands even fuller than usual. Guardian of the new Duke, eh? Hah!” Jonathan laughed. “Sounds to me as though you’ve just found another way to be far too serious about someone else’s business while making far too little money for your trouble. As usual.”
Edward shook his head and laughed bitterly. “You know me too well, Fletcher.”
“Indeed I do, but why let that stand in the way of our friendship now?”
As they walked, he noticed Jonathan continuing to glance about them, peering around corners and tracking the smallest household sounds they encountered. What the devil is he playing at, I wonder? Edward thought as they entered the St. Georges’ smallest, most intimate salon. Scenes of the hunt were preserved in oils around the hearth, which already had a fire burning in it. Momplaisir must have anticipated where I would take Jonathan. Is he really that observant, or am I just that obvious and set in my ways, I wonder?
“But here now,” Edward said, opening a convenient bottle of wine as Jonathan crashed onto a leather chaise longue. “What brings you here at this time of night? And don’t tell me it’s to express your sympathies in person—you’ve been looking under every ottoman and behind every door since you walked in here.”
Jonathan laughed, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “And here I thought I was being so stealthy about it.”
He accepted the glass of wine Edward offered him, took a long, satisfied sip, then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Actually, old boy, it’s about that maid who’s turned out to be a secret St. George.”
Edward groaned as he took a seat opposite his long-time friend. “Of course it is,” he muttered.
“Really, though, it’s just all so exciting!” said Jonathan breathlessly. “Is it true she’s all hunched and misshapen? I’ve a bet with the Baron of Shropshire that it isn’t—I’m more convinced by the rumours that she’s a great beauty, or the one that she’s a masterful thief who’s just putting a great con on the St. George family.”
“Is that what the ton is saying about her?” Edward asked with ice in his voice. “Surely you all must have better things to waste your time and effort on than this kind of ridiculous gossip-mongering.”
“You clearly underestimate just how much time and effort London society has on our hands.”
Edward sighed deeply, slouching back in his chair and drinking deep from his glass. “Frankly, Fletcher, I had rather hoped you had come tonight for a loan, or for advice on a girl you would never take. I’ve already had my whole day eaten up by everyone’s fascination with Miss Clara, and the last thing I want at the moment is more of the same.”
Jonathan clicked his tongue dismissively. “By now you should have known better than to count on me for anything productive. So you might as well spill just what’s going on because I won’t leave until I either get a look of this girl or I hear something closer to the truth than what the old fools at the Club have been spreading.”
Conflicting impulses ran through Edward’s mind as he stared up at the painted tiles of the salon. It was such a pretty room—the whole house was almost unfathomably beautiful, it occurred to Edward, and he had neither time to appreciate it nor anyone to share his appreciation with.
It would feel good to unburden myself, at least for a moment, he thought, suddenly feeling very tired once again. But this impulse was snuffed out swiftly, as it always was, by the damnable voice of reason that seemed to hang over Edward’s head like a curse.
“I can’t, Fletcher,” he said weakly.
“What?”
“The girl is completely innocent of all of this. If you go down to the Club and start repeating your own wild versions of whatever I tell you, it shall surely come back on her, as shall my hand in it. Spend your time as you like, but I do not wish to be included in this sport.”
A soft clink echoed off the floor as Jonathan set down his empty glass. He looked to Edward with an expression he had rarely seen on his friend. He looked sincere, somehow, even hurt.
“I hope you do not think so little of my integrity, Edward,” Jonathan said in an oddly subdued tone. Then the glint returned to his eye, and he added, “Or my creativity. Since you are so conflicted by your culpability in the idle gossip of others—a terrible habit, by the way, one which I think you should abandon posthaste—I will keep anything you tell me in the strictest confidence.”
As Edward opened his mouth to protest, Jonathan continued, “Or at the very least I will claim I heard it from someone else. The truth will be uninjured, as will your reputation.”
“Promise?”
“On my honour. Or your honour, if you trust that better.”
