“Yeah, Bex really blew it for you,” Lacey said.
“Your face need not be part of this, so feel free to shut it,” Bea said haughtily.
“Bea, I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” I said, trying to mean it. “But Nick and I have moved on.”
Bea arched her crazy-arched brow, which I hadn’t imagined was possible. “Are you quite sure?” she said.
I would have thrown up my hands with frustration, except I didn’t want to spill my Pimm’s Cup. “I sent him back a box of his sweaters. It’s over.”
“Oh, please, that’s absurd. He probably never even got them.” She poked me in the sternum. “I saw you dribbling over the eye candy this afternoon, and my advice is that you do not touch. Nick will be ready soon enough.”
“What? Like a pan of brownies?” Lacey asked. “It’s not 1925. She’s not going to twiddle her thumbs and wait patiently while Nick is off playing solider and sleeping around.”
“I’m not suggesting she take up needlepoint,” Bea countered. “I’m merely saying that timing is everything.”
“And our timing was terrible,” I pointed out.
“Once,” Bea said airily. “Maybe not forever.”
“Stop fucking with my head, Bea.”
“I am fixing your head,” she said. “And before you decide to listen to your sister on this topic, may I remind you which of us has known Nick since—hang on, is that Duddy Fitzherbert? He cheated me out of the most beautiful filly at Tattersalls. I have words for him.”
She swept off.
“She apparently has words for everyone today,” I said to Lacey. “I wonder if she showed up with a list.”
“Do not let her get to you,” Lacey told me. “Nick hasn’t given you any indication that he is coming back.”
“I know,” I said.
“And you will regret wasting time on a faint hope.”
“I know.”
“You’re not getting any younger.”
“Now who’s acting like it’s 1925?” I retorted.
“I just don’t want you to get sucked into Bea’s magical thinking,” Lacey said.
“I doubt Bea’s engaged in magical anything in her entire life,” I said. “And I don’t want to spend the rest of mine talking about how I almost ended up with Nick. Can we move on?”
“Sure,” Lacey said, gesturing with her bottle of Hooch. “Freddie’s over there with Penelope Six-Names. What’s that about? He can’t be into her.”
“Here’s a challenge,” I said. “Let’s see if we can avoid talking about Wales boys altogether.”
Lacey glared at me. “I’m not sure if you’re less fun with Nick, or without him,” she said, and walked away, leaving me with plenty of people staring but nobody who wanted to talk.
In that moment I decided I might hate country house parties.
Suddenly, a gong rang out; I turned to see Gaz standing near the French doors, beating a giant golden disc hanging from a wooden frame with a carved Chinese dragon across the top.
“Dinner is served,” he announced.
“You’ll make a great butler someday,” I teased. He responded by bopping me on the arm with the velvet-covered mallet.
The dining room had a mahogany sideboard that functioned as a hot-food buffet, and a massive table in the middle of the room covered with cold dishes. I grabbed a plate and fell in line behind Clive, who was juggling his with a white wine spritzer. There are a lot of reasons Clive never turned my crank enough to be the love of my life, and one of them is that he likes white wine spritzers.
“That looked like a fun scene outside,” he said.
I stabbed some roast beef like it had insulted me. “The next person who says N…um, Steve’s name gets a fork through the neck.”
“Watch out, Clive. She’s always been a danger to others,” Freddie said, cutting in behind me. “Who are half of these people, anyway?”
“How it is possible you don’t know?” Clive asked as we carried our plates to the bottom of the house’s sweeping, chipped wood staircase and sat down to eat. “I’d have assumed you’d slept with at least that many.”
“A gentleman never kisses and tells,” Freddie said. “Certainly not to a reporter.”
Clive waved his glass. “This entire party is off the record.”
“Nothing is ever really off the record,” Freddie said. “I’m actually surprised you’re free today, Clive, what with so many important galas to cover, like Lord Whatsit’s Charity Pet Statue Auction.”
“Reporters need to keep their feet on the ground,” Clive said, missing the insult. “I am massaging my sources. Speaking of…”
He nodded at a fetching brunette giving him the eye from across the foyer. Clive and Davinia were still together, as far as I knew, but she was in London, and clearly no handsome, ambitious party reporter—or at least not this handsome, ambitious party reporter—worked a room with total chastity.
“That’s Hilly Heath-Hedwig’s niece,” he told us. “She’ll have loads to say about that divorce.”
As he left, Freddie made a gagging face. “I prefer his brothers,” he confided. “They might be clods, but they’re also very straightforward.”
“Clive is lovely,” I said, before I caught myself.
“Point proven.”
“Why are you here on your own?” I asked. “Santa too busy in her workshop?”
“Making toys for other boys,” he said. “If you must know, I’m currently single.”
“Are you ill?” I gasped, feeling his forehead.
“Cute,” he smirked, swatting me away. “No, I’ve just been thinking about something you said a while back. It is rather juvenile, selecting my girlfriends specifically to annoy Father. So I’m taking a break.” He nudged my empty plate. “Which we are supposed to do, too, from each other. At dinner parties it’s customary to change conversation partners between courses.”
“Please, let’s not,” I said, pointing to the couple behind us on the landing, who were alternately fighting and feeding each other cornichons. “I can’t jump into that.”
Through the wide archway into the family room, I spied Lacey leaning against a mantel, twirling her hair and chatting up none other than British Brad Pitt.
“I might have wanted to jump into that, but it looks like I’m too late,” I added.
Freddie looked guilty. “I believe I led that lamb to the slaughter.”
I smacked him in the arm. “Are you saying you pimped out my sister?”
“I merely hinted—in the form of an explicit statement—that he’d do well to talk to Lacey because she’s very nice and very available.”
“So am I!” I protested.
“Yes, but you’re not on my scent,” he said. “As part of this new leaf I’ve turned over, I also considered that since it’s inevitable that we’ll get drunk and stupid, I should make sure Lacey is otherwise occupied.”
My phone buzzed in my purse, which was a surprise. Almost everyone I knew was at this party. But the ID indicated an unknown caller.