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“Look around you—this is all memorable. And I’m sure your brother will love it and appreciate your efforts, no matter what.”
“I haven’t been able to find him yet. Do you think he wouldn’t show up to his own party? He promised he would.”
“I thought it was meant to be a surprise?”
“I might have told a few people.”
“Well, did you tellhim?”
“Well, of course I did. Ihadto. Otherwise how would he have known to show up?”
“There are a lot of people here, Ada.If he’s anything like me, he’d be on his way to Scotland right now or hiding away in a little den somewhere far away and—”was what he wanted to say.
“Ada! There you are, you little rascal. I couldn’t find anybody anywhere!”
Bron turned at the great boom of voice behind him. Ada pushed past, running straight ahead into the open arms of a gray-suited man who skipped up the steps toward her. He lifted her from the landing and twirled her into a wide three-sixty spin, the hem of her silver dress billowing into a circle as they turned, like the moon orbiting the earth tilted on its axis. They looked striking together, like a young father and daughter.
Bron would have hardly recognized the man he’d tripped over, in his tightly fitted suit, his frame slender and muscular—less bulbous than it had been under the coat—and his hair slicked back, if it hadn’t been for his deeply affected voice.
Whowashe? And what he was doing here? Another “friend of the family”? Bron unconsciously stepped back, and quickly strategized the quickest route away from here.
The man soon set Ada down. “Right, that’s enough now.” But Ada went in for another hug at his leg. He ruffled her hair, but peeled her off and looked up at Bron. “Now who’s this?”
Ada pulled at his arm. “Don’t you know? This is Bron, my tutor, and already a very dear friend. He’s very smart and very creative, and teaches me things I didn’t know I didn’t know. Bron, this is my brother, Darcy.”
“So,” Darcy said, extending his arm. He put his hand in Bron’s. “We meet again. It’s nice to see you in something other than a shawl.”
Bron relived the moment in flashes across his mind, his throat constricting, his stomach clenching. He felt this man take ownership of his body like a commodity once again.
“You two know each other?” Ada piped up.
Where Bron said “no,” Darcy said “yes.” Ada looked from Bron to her brother.
“Well, I suppose you could say we have met,” Bron said, “but only for a moment.”
“And quite the moment it was,” Darcy said, looking him up and down and lingering at his head, making a point of his headband. “So, this is Bron—Ellis, is it? The boy wonder my father has been going on about for quite a week? I suppose youarea step up from the bitter old woman, Fräulein Malene, I had tutoring me. Father has mellowed in his age, and Ada is lucky to have … what did you call yourself? A modern-day governess?”
Bron tried to speak, but the words were glued to his throat. He was embarrassed that the man who had humiliated him was both his employer’s son and also now there standing before him. His position in the house had turned into a farce before his very eyes.
Mr. Edwards broke into the trio, patted his son’s back, and proceeded to make introductions again before Ada explained she’d already gone through the formalities.
“Good girl, I’m glad all that fuss is over. And now we dance!” Mr. Edwards took hold of Ada’s little hand and led her down the stairs. Not wanting to be left alone with this man, Bron followed them into a less-clustered corner of the room. To his annoyance, Darcy trailed after him.
Resting against a wall, he watched as Ada and Mr. Edwards danced to “Electric Avenue”—Ada was flossing, Mr. Edwards did the robot—around the onlookers, who did little by way of dancing, sloshing their champagne flutes around with nodding heads and swaying hips. Darcy accepted a flute from one of the passing servers and knocked it back, swapping his empty flute for another drink at the first opportunity. Bron accepted one also, conscious of his arms, limp at his side, and grateful for something to hold. He watched as Darcy surveyed the room, glanced at his wrist, and then smiled at the guests who nodded at him. When theyapproached him with small talk, Darcy invited them in cordially, only to artfully dismiss them before the conversation had even started.
If Bron could’ve had it his way, he’d have marched back up the stairs and away from everybody there. But the house had many corners in which to dwell and take shelter, so he stood instead at the edge of the foyer, his presence pointless but somehow necessary. Were he to escape now, it would only result in Ada coming to fetch him from his room—or worse, one of the Edwardses’ men, at her insistence, when he didn’t comply. He accepted the canapes that came, not because he was hungry, but because he was eager for something to weigh him down, and took in the elegance in which the people around him lived … anything that kept him from looking at Mr. Edwards’s son, who he knew was staring at him.
What must it be like to really be these people? The women, beautiful and rich and so well made up; and the men who stood beside them, broad, pruned, and ornate. When he looked at the women, he saw the smallness of their waists, the convex slope of their ribcages in their satin dresses, the peaking softness of their breasts; when he looked at the men, he saw the muscular fill to their arms, their necks, some with beer bellies and perfectly round arses, the thighs that plunged below them.
He held a grudge against everybody for the self-made categories people were forced to fit into. And tied to this, he supposed he should probably apologize to Mr. Edwards’s son for his outburst earlier. Sooner or later he would have to make amends and forget everything that’d happened. That was the way the world worked: apologize before things escalated too far; otherwise, he was destined to lose.
He was sipping wine when Darcy approached, making him gulp and then choke on his drink.
“May I?” Darcy said at his side. He didn’t look at him, but stared out into the crowd instead. Soon Darcy was pressing intohis side, and Bron felt a tug of discomfort: here he was, existing outside the confines of his beloved novel, and he was unsure how to react. What would Jane do at this party?
“So I suppose I should ask what it is that made you want to uproot your life and come to work for my family? I can see it wasn’t for the social gatherings.”
“I guess I saw the ad online and thought …” Bron trailed off, shrugged.
