“No problem,” Nick said.
Evelyn waited, trying to slow down her breathing, until she heard the motorboat rev and a thonk that must be Scot’s big foot getting into the boat. She smoothed her hair and stepped out from behind the trees.
She had been expecting someone quite tall, but Jaime de Cardenas was small, tan, and fit, with biceps neatly packed into each fatless arm. He looked as if he ran twelve miles several times a week, and was in the gym every other day doing weights and attracting looks from Equinox’s boys and girls alike.
“I was just looking at the ducks down by the tennis court. There’s the most fascinating group of—oh, hello! I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Evelyn Beegan,” she said.
*
A game of croquet was soon assembled, after Camilla skipped out and decreed it so. Evelyn was doing rather well—not, of course, beating Camilla, but holding her own.
Camilla tapped her mallet against Jaime’s. “How’s your room?” she said.
“It’s great,” Jaime said. “This place is amazing, CHR. I don’t know why I haven’t been up here in so long.”
“Did you used to come up here a lot?” Evelyn said.
“Oh, God, for high-school summers, Sachem was the be-all, end-all,” Jaime said. “All of us from St. George’s would come up to see the girls of St. Paul’s in their swimsuits. Remember, CHR? That one summer when you were going through that religious phase? She made us all parade to church every Sunday. She was in the choir at St. Paul’s and was an awfully saucy choirgirl.”
Camilla crinkled her eyes at Jaime in a way Evelyn hadn’t seen before; she seemed softer, as though the top coat of nail polish had not been put on. “You make it sound like I was a backup singer, darling. I was a soloist.”
“That’s right. I remember your ‘Ave Maria.’ It was worth the forced sanctity.”
This wasn’t going in Evelyn’s direction; Jaime had barely looked at her. She needed to establish herself, fast. “Isn’t every boarding school essentially a forced churchgoing experience?” she said, shading her eyes. “At Sheffield, where I went, there was morning chapel every day. They would sort of nod at the Jews and the Muslims and pretend like it was nondenominational, but it was so clearly church.”
Jaime turned to her and let his eyes rise and fall over her body, too slowly to be casual. “Sheffield,” he repeated thoughtfully. Evelyn could feel an almost physical trail where his eyes had moved.
“Yes, Evelyn went to Sheffield from a funny town in Maryland. It must have been so foreign to you, Evelyn,” Camilla said with a flip of her hair.
“I had grown up in London, so it was awfully foreign to me, too,” Jaime said. His eyes flickered, but Evelyn couldn’t read them.
“It would’ve been stranger for Evelyn.” Camilla smacked her mallet and sent her ball hurtling over a bump, then it gently turned and dropped through a wicket. “Perfect,” she said. “So I’m surprised, Evelyn, that you’re playing getting-to-know-you with Jaime. Didn’t you say you’d met him?”
Evelyn tried to look puzzled. “Did I? I don’t think so.”
“I do,” Camilla said. “You said you ran into him at the Harvard Club. Maybe when you were there with your boyfriend?”
“It’s possible,” Evelyn said quickly. “Nick, it’s your turn, isn’t it?”
“The Harvard Club? Am I that ancient looking?” Jaime said with a laugh.
“I thought it sounded odd,” Camilla said, gazing coolly at Evelyn. “Her boyfriend—”
“Do you know what I heard about the Harvard Club?” Evelyn interrupted. Her mind spun for something plausible. “When they tried to update the menu and take the old-school dishes, like beef Wellington and clams casino, off the menu, members lost their minds and threatened to quit the club en masse.”
“I believe it,” Jaime said. “I can’t imagine members have the most adventurous palates.”
“That’s because they’re so old their food is pureed. Shazam!” Nick said.
Evelyn smiled, ballooning with the weirdly good feeling of a lie well told, and tapped her ball with her mallet. Jaime put his mallet on the ground and turned to Nick. “I hate to break up the game, but, my friend, I have to go into town. If you want to come in with me, I could use the company.”
“Stay here.” Camilla pouted. “We can send the caretaker into town for whatever you need.”
“No, I promised to drop this off to Jack myself. I’m in the same town; I can make the delivery.”
“Well, don’t take Nick, then. He promised me a game of tennis this afternoon.”