not depressed or anything?” He wasn’t sure what he was asking. All he had was a hunch that there was something moving under the surface of Regan’s tough exterior, a deep current of sorrow or maybe even fear?
“She’s been in a better mood than I’ve seen her in a long time. Hasn’t threatened to sack me all week.”
“And that’s unusual?”
“I usually get the boot twice a day.”
“Only twice?”
Zoot pointed at his face. “Brat,” she said, then turned and stalked off again.
Arthur called after her, “I like your coat.”
The reply came in the form of her two fingers in the shape of a V.
Eight o’clock was a full day away. And the sun was out—a rarity in London in November. Arthur went for a long run followed by a full English breakfast. Buoyed by the knowledge he’d get to see Regan again tonight, he decided to brave texting Charlie.
That afternoon, Arthur put on his black jacket and boots and set out across Hyde Park. Not only had his brother texted him back, but Charlie had agreed to meet him for tea.
The plane trees that filled the park were in full color—a mottled yellow and red. The oaks had gone red and orange and the paths were littered with fallen leaves, every color of autumn. They crunched under his boots as he strode past tourists taking photographs on their phones.
His dream had cast a strange pall over the day. It was erotic, yes, and he’d liked it (of course), but it had left him unsettled, the way too-vivid dreams could. In the dream, Regan had spoken with such honesty that he’d believed her, that she really would die the second their bodies parted. And it hadn’t been erotic exaggeration on her part. It had been the truth.
At that moment, he realized he hadn’t been having a dream but a nightmare. What unsettled him wasn’t that it was a nightmare, but that it was a nightmare from which he hadn’t wanted to awake.
He blamed the dream on the conversation they’d had in The Pearl’s old smoking lounge, about how learning about death was the end of childhood. That was all. Fitting that the dream took place at Wingthorn Hall. She was just like their famous roses, loved not for their petals but their enormous thorns.
A young couple from Japan interrupted his reverie, and he was glad for the chance to shake off the dream. Smiling kindly, they asked if he would take their photo in front of the Serpentine, the bridge in the background. The Serpentine had been a pet project of Queen Caroline, one of Arthur’s many exalted ancestors on his father’s side. Could they imagine that the random man they’d asked to take their picture shared DNA with kings and queens, lords and knights?
They didn’t. They couldn’t. And he liked them the better for it. They might have found someone else to ask if they’d known he was the titled son of a wealthy earl and not, as he appeared, just a lad in his early twenties, probably a university student, out for a walk.
He had never taken his “noble” ancestry seriously. His paternal grandmother had been quite a genealogist and kept the family tree updated. To Arthur, his ancestors had nothing to do with him. Yes, so a great-grand-great-whatever grandfather had fought beside King Henry the Eighth in the Battle of the Spurs. Meanwhile, his mother’s grandmother had worked as a typist at a publisher in New York City. She’d moved up from typist to editorial assistant to editor-in-chief by her death and imbued a working-class family with a love of the arts and literature.
That impressed Arthur much more than his rich and titled relatives on his father’s side. They’d been born rich, stayed rich, and died rich. Or, in the case of Lord Malcolm’s generation, had been born land rich and cash poor, which inspired his great-great grandmother to force Malcolm into a marriage to the daughter of a war profiteer with blood money to spare.
Was that noble? Really? Did someone who’d sell a free-spirited son into a loveless marriage to the daughter of a man who’d made his fortune manufacturing mustard gas really deserve the title of “Lady”? Did Malcolm, a man who’d spent the last of his family’s fortune on paintings and prostitutes really deserve the title of “Lord”?
They were all whores, weren’t they? No wonder Arthur took so naturally to selling himself. It was a Godwick family tradition.
Charlie was waiting for him at a table in