“She said you were a wizard.”
“Claudia has rose-colored hindsight. I never knew what panic was until the ball was two days away and I still hadn't figured out how ten yards of skirts should gather and drape under the bustle. All the non-Euclidean geometry in the world couldn't have dug me out of that hole.”
She thought of the gown, lovingly packed in layers of tissue, kept in Claudia's old chamber at Twelve Pillars. I have the best brother in the world, Claudia had said that day, a not-so-subtle reminder that Gigi should get on a transatlantic liner posthaste.
“You did all right in the end.”
“I wired the skirt too,” he said.
They both burst out laughing. The corners of his eyes crinkled in mirth, laugh lines that she'd never seen before—lines that had come from the sun and the salt of the sea, marks of a man in his prime.
He stopped and looked at her. “Your laughter is the same,” he said. “I used to think you all sophisticated and worldly, until you laughed. You still laugh like a little girl getting tickled, all hiccupy and breathless.”
What did one say to something like that? If he were anyone else, she'd consider it a declaration, not necessarily of love but of great fondness. What was she to make of it when it did come from him?
He quickly changed subjects. “Before I forget, I've never thanked you for keeping Christopher in line, have I?”
Christopher had gotten himself into a few scrapes over the years. Nothing terribly alarming—no illegitimate children, ruinous debts, or criminal friends—but his parents worried and wrung their hands. After Saint Camden and Mostly Sensible Claudia, Their Graces were ill equipped to deal with a more temperamental offspring. So Gigi had stepped in dutifully, extricated Christopher from potentially harmful situations, unleashed stern lectures Their Graces were too softhearted to deliver, and ruthlessly choked off his allowance whenever he deserved it.
“No need to thank me,” she said. “I enjoyed keeping him in line.”
“He complained about you in his letters. He said you were harsh as the Gorgons and twice as deadly. That you meant to ship him to Vladivostok and leave him at the port penniless. That you threatened to bankrupt anyone who dared to loan him money when you stopped his allowance.”
There was such relish in his voice that the dangerous warmth infecting her at last turned into a conflagration of recklessness. “Did you miss me?” she heard herself ask.
Suddenly the only sound in the coach was the low roar of the train's engines and steel wheels clacking on steel tracks, going a mile a minute. She looked out the window, feeling as stupid as a stampede of lemmings.
He, too, looked out the window. For a long time he didn't speak, until she almost had herself convinced that they were both going to pretend that her question had never been uttered.
But then he did answer. “That was never the point, was it?”
They arrived at Mrs. Rowland's cottage a little after teatime. The weather had turned dour and wet in London just before they departed, but a gentle sun shone upon this part of Devon, though the soil was drenched and rain dripped off leaves still.
The roses were at their peak. Mrs. Rowland's cottage, with its bright white walls and vermilion trim, was all pastoral charm. Gigi half-expected her mother to fall down in a faint upon seeing Camden and herself together. But Camden must have had a telegram sent ahead, because though a note of curiosity wended through Mrs. Rowland's welcome, she was not taken by surprise.
“This is a lovely house,” said Camden, kissing Mrs. Rowland on the cheek. “The photograph you sent didn't quite do it justice.”
“You should see Devon in spring,” said Mrs. Rowland. “The wildflowers are incomparable in April.”
“I will come in April then,” said Camden. “I should still be in England at that time.”
Gigi felt her mother's gaze on her back as she stood looking out at the garden, strewn with petals from the earlier shower. He'd said nothing new, of course. Their deal was for one year, and that one year didn't conclude until next May. But for some reason she could not see them going on like this for another eleven months, or even another eleven weeks.
For ten years things had remained frozen in place, because he'd made it abundantly clear the circumference of the earth was not enough distance between the two of them. When he first returned, he not only personified antagonism, he took it to hitherto unscaled heights. But things had changed. This thawing of enmity put them on terra incognita, before dangerous possibilities, possibilities that she dared not even think of in the light of day, because they led to utter madness.
“I shall look forward to it,” said Mrs. Rowland. “We don't see enough of you.”