Page 64 of Infamous

‘Libraries?’

‘Why are we having another quarrel? Why are wealwaysquarrelling these days? I feel like I am stumbling around, always operating with less than half the pertinent information. I am tired, Rose, and I have made an enormous fool of myself, and I suppose I’ll be lucky if I’m not put on the first boat home tomorrow to go back to London in disgrace. I need you to be my friend right now. I wish you would just be honest about what you have been keeping from me, because .?.?. because I know youhavebeen keeping something from me.’

‘Fine,’ Rose said, her voice hard. Tears were streaming steadily down her cheeks. ‘Let’s have it out. But I will never forgive you for making me say it like this, Eddie.’

Her face was the very picture of heartbreak, and Eddie wilted.

‘Oh, God. Then don’t,’ she said, feeling as if she were being gutted like a fish. She took a step towards Rose, and then another when Rose didn’t move. ‘I can’t stand there being anything truly unforgivable between us. I mean it.’

‘We should never have come here,’ Rose said, her voice breaking.

Eddie put both arms around her and pulled her in close, and was relieved beyond measure when Rose pressed her face into Eddie’s shoulder and stayed there, crying softly. Tears brimmed over in Eddie’s eyes, too, and she felt one of them slide down her face, the fleeting sting of salt on her lip.

‘Christ, Ed,’ Rose said tearfully, her voice muffled. ‘Are you wearing his coat?’

‘Don’t,’ Eddie said, squeezing her tighter.

There was a sudden burst of noise from the doorway, and they both looked up as a small crowd of guests spilled out onto the lawn, laughing and calling out to one another as they went. They parted around Rose and Eddie like a river around a rock and then kept walking, lanterns swinging, in the direction of the woods.

‘I suppose they must be going home,’ Rose said, breaking free of Eddie’s embrace.

‘Or to do really deranged things with trees,’ said Eddie. ‘We should go inside.’

Rose nodded, wiping at her eyes and taking a steadying breath before leading the way into the jaws of the beast.

*

Somebody was knocking softly on the bedroom door. When Eddie opened it, Albert, Dayo and Valentine were standing in their bedclothes, looking faintly ridiculous. The last of the party guests had departed an hour or so before, and ever since the house had been full of the distant din of two people shouting at each other very, very loudly.

‘We aren’t dressed,’ said Rose.

Not so long ago, this would have been delivered with genuine concern about the impropriety of the situation, but her time on the island had clearly worn her down, as her delivery was rather half-hearted.

‘Neither are they,’ Eddie pointed out.

Rose just shrugged and pulled a blanket around her shoulders, so Eddie opened the door wider to admit their visitors. It must have been close to dawn; the sky was still dark outside, but it had a fugitive quality to it, as if threatening to turn at any moment.

‘Mama and Papa are fighting,’ Valentine said in a sing-song voice, and Eddie sighed.

‘It isn’t funny.’

‘No, it actually isn’t,’ Albert said.

He went to sit down in the only chair and then immediately stood up again, offering it to Eddie, who rolled her eyes.

‘Just sit in the damned chair, Albert.’

He did.

‘Liza threw a vase through the window in the South Parlour,’ said Dayo wearily.

He pulled a pipe from inside his evening jacket and then patted his pockets, frowning, until Valentine leaned over and lit it for him.

‘No,’ said Rose, stunned. ‘She did not.’

‘She did,’ said Valentine. ‘I don’t care that it wasn’t anywhere near that portrait of Nicholson senior, I think she ought to get twenty-five points for it.’

‘Motion sustained,’ said Dayo.