Page 24 of Love and Loathing

“A man like Domnall? He has a prurient brain. It’s obvious from the way he looks at me, the way he handles Liv like she’s a piece of meat. I’m guessing you didn’t miss the way he kept grabbing at her last night? I’ve given you brownie points in his eyes. Proved your masculine virility or whatever outdated nonsense he measures people by.”

“You’re insane.”

Evie just rolled her eyes.

Why,why, had he come to her room last night? He was never drinking again. He would find some earplugs for tonight. Put a pillow over his head. Find another bloody bedroom to sleep in. There were hundreds of the blasted things in this place.

“Are you really going hunting?” Evie asked him, serious now.

“Yes,” he said, knowing she would hate it and glad of it. “It’s what I’m here for. And after all”—he smiled maliciously—“it’s the perfect way to prove my masculine virility.”

ELEVEN

Evie didn’t bother goingto breakfast. There would have been nothing to eat. Nothing to do but look athimacross the table, and smell all the sausages and bacon and hot, buttered bread, and listen to them all talk about the day’ssport.

It’s what I’m here for.

She knew that was true. Of course she knew that was true. It was the reason for the whole weekend, showing Domnall that wonderful British tradition of killing things that didn’t need to be killed, all of it an excuse really, for her father to show off his land, to show off the men that worked for him, to show off his guns and the gundogs, pedigree bred for generations. The poor birds were just collateral damage.

The dried poppy head she was twisting in her fingers snapped off, and she winced guiltily, quickly breaking it open to at least scatter the seeds around, before wandering deeper into the garden. There were broad, manicured beds here at the side of the house. They led to the rhododendron walk—narrow paths between dense, glossy bushes. Almost a maze, they grew so high.In the summer, they were tropical bright, covered in red and pink flowers. Now just the leaves remained, dark green and a little dusty, dead brown ones on the path, leathery and dried, crackling faintly under her feet. A few birds flitted in the secret shadows deep within the bushes, but not much else moved. These were ornamental plants, grown for show, not wildlife.

Around a corner, she could see a patch of green, the great lawn opening up, bigger than several football fields, separating the back of Conyers House from the distant brick wall that marked the boundary of Redbridge—the smaller estate where Amy lived.

It’s where she was heading, taking this long, winding route among the secrecy of the cave-like rhododendrons, because first she needed…she needed…she didn’t know what. Just that she was irritable and on edge.

It was Aubrey’s fault. The way he’d looked at her! Like she was an idiot.“This is how you’re helping, is it? Humiliating me in front of my client?”Heat crawled up her neck, and a rhododendron leaf went the same way as the poppy, torn between her fingers. Yes, fine, it had been a stupid thing to do. But honestly, it really had been spur of the moment. Waking up with Aubrey in her bed, all the hard features of his face softened, and the memory of words in the night still hanging in the air. For a moment, he’d felt like a friend. As though they were on the same side. He’d confided in her, come to her room when he had nowhere else to go. And on hearing Liv’s voice outside, well… Why not pay her back? The walls of Conyers weren’tthatthin. If Aubrey had heard her last night, it was because she’d wanted to be heard. What better revenge than to make her think Aubrey had spent the whole night in her room and hadn’t heard a peep?

“You’re insane.”

“At least I don’t kill animals for fun,” she muttered to the garden air. It didn’t care. And besides, she wasn’t really talking to the garden, she was talking to Aubrey the way he was inher mind, pressed up against her in that corridor after they stumbled into the wall, his body against hers. An echo of the feeling went through her. And with it, the same flutter of excitement. He was a tall, strong, well-built, very solid sort of man. And his body had entirely covered hers. Again she saw it all in a flash. The laughing tumble out of her room, the jar as her back hit the wall, the pressure and heat of his body against hers, his mouth against her ear, his palm against the wall on her other side. Aubrey everywhere—just for a moment. Smell and touch and warmth and pressure.

“My current impulse is to throttle you.”

Humiliating, that her impulse had been almost entirely the opposite: Her mouth on his neck, not her fingers.

The rhododendrons ran out, and she was back on the open lawn, a weak dawn sketching the scene in silver and muted pastels. The blue gate in the brick wall that led to Redbridge was a flash of colour. She lifted her chin and set off towards it, but two voices, calling almost at once, halted her step.

Amy, calling from the right, coming round the side of the house leading two donkeys in rope halters. And much closer, Aubrey’s voice, coming from her left, from the back of the house.

“Evie.”

She stopped, looked around at him.

He had changed for the hunt. Instead of the traditional tweeds her father always wore, he was in sturdy black trousers, leather boots, a black-t-shirt and a jacket that was halfway between country wear and sportswear. He looked like a very competent and probably quite senior member of the military elite attempting to pass incognito as a civilian. Failing.

“You’re sulking,” he accused her, before he’d even stopped walking. He came up to her in a rush, seeming to see only her, though Amy and the donkeys were by now only a few metresaway. “It’s unfair to hate me for going shooting when I don’t have a choice.”

“Of course you have a choice.”

His eyes narrowed in irritation, then he jumped, cursing, as a big shaggy donkey head stretched out and lipped curiously at his jacket. “What the—?”

“Sorry,” Amy said, pulling ineffectually on the lead rope. “Quixote thinks everything is food.”

Evie watched the exchange, laughing despite her mood. There was a smear of green slobber on the sleeve of Aubrey’s jacket.

“Aubrey, this my friend Amy. And these are Quixote and Panza.” She stepped up to the donkeys and rubbed Panza behind one of his long, drooping ears.

“Do they shake hands?” Aubrey said dryly, offering his own to Amy. She shook it, regarding him with what appeared to Evie to be open curiosity.

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