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“Ah yes, Dickie’s new project,” he said. Bron was amused by the way his Italian accent almost separated the word into “pro” and “ject”:prowject. “I am happy to meet you and sorry we were not introduced earlier. Dickie tends to …” He searched the air for words. “Board one train without getting off the other, if you know what I mean—e gli manca una rotella. He is a little bit crazy, missing a wheel.”
Bron nodded in understanding, but curiosity stopped him from commenting. How did this man know the Edwardses, and what was his relation to them? Giovanni beat him to the next question.
“How long have you been living here?”
“About a month,” Bron said, hoping the extra week might gain him more authority to have stumbled into this room. “It isvery nice here. I had thought I’d be very happy just by being in this house.”
“Hadthought?” Giovanni countered. “Whatever could you mean?” And as if this man could read his mind, he said mockingly, “Has this to do with signore Darcy?”
“Darcy?” he echoed, his cheeks blushing red-hot. “I don’t know whom you mean.” Mr. Edwards’s son had only appeared fleetingly over a single day of his life, and yet he couldn’t deny the sudden power Darcy had over him. He gave Giovanni a knowing smile. “But it might have something to do with a man called Theodore.”
“Pah, Theodore,” Giovanni spat, lips curling into a smile.
Though they’d both voiced this new name, Bron couldn’t picture Darcy by any other, and quickly inquired into the nickname’s origin.
The explanation, overall, amounted to: “Theodore … Dorcy … Darcy.”
“Well, that’s quite a stretch.”
“I believe it is what the little one called him as a baby, and it has somehow stuck.”
“The little girl, Ada—she doesn’t need me. Not really. Not like I thought she might. And now Darcy has shown up, and I … I can see I am not well suited here. I have no purpose.” Saying the words out loud made him feel the impact of their truth. He sighed. “You know the family well?”
“I have been acquainted with the Edwardses for quite some years now. Dickie is a kind-hearted soul. He has a lot to offer the world. And the little girl is a great blessing to us all. But, if you’d forgive my forwardness, I cannot say the same for his son.”
Bron was gripped, though slightly puzzled, by Giovanni’s candid divulging of his thoughts. Mr. Edwards, the good guy; Darcy, the bad. Ada a gift to the world. But why? Whowasthis man, this family friend turned family? He had to know more.
“And why do you say that?”
“Dickie looks on me favorably, and I dare say Darcy has taken our attachment quite to heart. I think he might be more forgiving of me if his father liked me less.”
Bron nodded, willing to learn more about the family he had come to live with, and finding comfort in another’s dislike of Darcy. “And what is there to forgive?”
Giovanni hesitated before saying “Lots.” He laughed a toothy grin, and Bron smiled alongside him. “And you? You do not like to dance?”
“Me?” Bron said. For Giovanni’s smile belied the truth: that he had seen them in the foyer, and it had been clear that Darcy wanted nothing to do with him. “I do not find myself in the way of dancing enough to warrant a disliking of it. But what I can admit to is the unlikelihood of dancing again any time soon, or ever again for that matter.”
“You sound displeased about it—but I say there are greater losses in life to be had, and you, my pretty thing, deserve much better than a man who talks of you behind your back.”
He thought it a particular thing to say, and it was impossible for Giovanni to have eavesdropped on the same conversation. Hadn’t he been tucked away in here, in this room full of books, the noise from the outside barely reaching their ears? Still, the pertinence of his description knotted his stomach.
It was then that the door burst open, and Darcy rushed hurriedly into the room, pressing himself against the door to hold it shut as Bron had so done before him. Bron didn’t miss Darcy’s face contorting into a snarl as he laid eyes on Giovanni, or the way Giovanni side-stepped away from the desk, his face drained a little of color, or the way his jaw set. They both stood rigid, and Bron’s eyes darted from man to man: Darcy’s hands flexing at his sides, Giovanni twisting the rings on his fingers and clearing his throat.
Aha,he thought, instantly processing the conversation just had and the subtle reactions of this encounter, to deduce that someone here played the character of the rival, and the other hadbeen wronged by some unrepentant action. But what? Something was certainly alight between them, a fiery swell once snuffed but now reignited.
Giovanni leaned for Bron’s hand and brought it to his lips. “Ciao, bella,” he said before nodding in salutation to Darcy, who moved out of the way of the door as Giovanni left the room.
Darcy snorted before slamming the door shut, and rapped his knuckles on the wooden frame. This left the two of them alone: Bron rooted in place by the fireside, Darcy facing the wall. From the way Darcy’s body shifted, it seemed he was hoping to avoid, perhaps even ignore Bron’s presence altogether. When he finally acknowledged him, there was an unsettling silence. Darcy decanted some whisky at the drinks trolley, offering the glass to Bron with an outstretched hand. He declined, shaking his head. Darcy took a sip, then broke the quiet.
“I can’t say I was expecting to find you in here,” he said. “Either of you.”
Bron allowed the words to linger, to dissipate into the crackling of the fire in the hearth, before replying, “I can’t say I was expecting to be found in here either.”
He crossed his arms, holding himself in, while Darcy slid his hand in and out of his trouser pocket. They moved to speak at the same time, freezing one another in the process, and as a result, said nothing. Darcy ran a hand through his hair, gestured as if to say,“You speak,”but when he didn’t, they were again plunged into quiet.
“So I see you’ve met Giovanni?” He posed it like a question. “Christ.”
“He seemed like a nice enough man. Nicer than most.”
