of disapproval. “I must tell you, Clara, this isn’t at all the thing. You should have waited to hear from me. And yes, I know Mama ordered you to come. She threatened me with as much in her last letter. As if I were tied to her apron strings! I mean to say, how do you imagine it looks for my sister to be asking after me at my college of all places?”
“I have the notion that, had I continued waiting to hear from you, I’d be waiting until judgment day. Which doesn’t even begin to address the matter of my lessons.”
“You’ve still been receiving them, haven’t you?”
“I wouldn’t call those lessons. The past six months of them have been half-hearted at best. And the one I lately received—”
“Must we discuss our business in the street?” Simon steered her down one narrow lane, and then another.
“The Bell and Swan is that way,” she protested.
“We’re not going to the Bell and Swan. There’s a meeting of the Antiquary Society there today. You never met a rowdier bunch.” He stopped outside a small coffeehouse with a glazed sash window. “It will be quieter here. We can talk, and then I’m putting you on the train.”
Before she could object, he opened the door and urged her inside. The coffeehouse was empty save for two elderly gentlemen by the fire, drinking from steaming cups as they engaged in a game of chess.
Simon led her to one of the small green baize-covered tables. It was situated in the far corner on the opposite side of a decorative screen. “I know the owner. Sit down. I shall be right back.”
Clara removed her bonnet and cloak and hung them on a nearby coatrack, her eyes following Simon all the while. In his fashionable plaid trousers and double-breasted waistcoat, he looked almost a stranger. He was taller than the brother she remembered, and his face had lost its boyish softness and grown more angular with age.
She wondered what differences he observed in her. Did she look shabby to him? A faded, country creature, worn down by years of servitude? Void of the glow of her youth?
A depressing thought.
Sitting down at the table, she slowly stripped off her gloves. Simon joined her a moment later. He was accompanied by a serving boy who brought them two steaming mugs of coffee.
“Would you prefer tea?” Simon asked as he sat down.
The serving boy looked at Clara expectantly.
“Coffee is sufficient,” she said. The boy bowed and withdrew. She turned her attention to her brother. There was no reason to beat about the bush. “Is it true? Did you really engage in a bout of fisticuffs with Mr. Bryce-Chetwynde?”
Simon winced. “Trent told you, did he?”
“Not in any great detail. He doesn’t know the why of it. Only that it happened, and that you were, apparently, the aggressor.”
“I wouldn’t say that. It was Bryce-Chetwynde who started it.”
“How? What could he possibly have said to you?”
Simon bent his head to his coffee. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I beg your pardon. It matters very much.” Her voice dropped to an angry undertone. “If you’re rusticated for it, and if you end up having to pay twenty guineas in damages—”
“It will have been worth it to have taken the smug look off of his face. My only regret is that I’ve had to apologize to the blackguard. He doesn’t deserve it. Not after what he did to you.”
And just like that, the world seemed to stop spinning.
Clara gaped at her brother. “What he did to me?”
Simon’s expression hardened. “When I encountered him at the railway station, your name was mentioned. And you know what I’ve always thought. What I’ve always believed.”
Of course she knew. It was the same thing her mother had believed. That Clara had spun a few commonplace civilities from Mr. Bryce-Chetwynde into a romance. That she’d dreamed it all up. An unfortunate result of her novel-reading and love of poetry.
“Bryce-Chetwynde and I might have parted without my being any the wiser,” Simon went on, “but