Page 39 of Love and Loathing

Her reply was to tow him after her back down the hall until they reached an empty room. A small morning room, hardly used, now full of dusty globes and moth-bitten rugs. Oh well. It would do.

She closed the door behind them. Aubrey looked down at her, seeming mildly amused. She let go of his sleeve.

“It was you? You asked Hugo?” She didn’t know what to ask, or how. “But… Why? Why would you do that for me?”

“It puts me off my food, watching you sit there with an empty plate, and I was looking forward to the duck.” He made it sound very straightforward. A completely normal thing to do.

“But…when did you…?”

“I met Hugo in the garden at Redbridge this morning.”

Evie nodded, still completely thrown. No one had ever… Well, sometimes Roscoe smuggled in some bread, but no one had ever…

“My father’s going to kill you.”

“For giving my girlfriend dinner? Didn’t you hear Domnall? Apparently it was romantic.”

He said it with such dark sarcasm that Evie immediately felt stupid for believing it had meant anything at all.

“He’ll be angry, though,” she said, sticking with the one part of this she understood for certain.

“He needs me too much to fire me.” Then, bitterly: “I know too much.”

She frowned up at him. “What do you mean? The Domnall thing? It’s dodgy, isn’t it, the strategies you’re working on for him?”

She didn’t want him to say yes, but the confirmation was there in his eyes before he cleared it away, turning to glance around the room as though noticing it for the first time.

“Aubrey,” she said, reaching out for his sleeve again. “Don’t… Don’t do it if it’s wrong…”

He gave a small, humourless laugh and stepped back, away from her touch, sitting against the edge of a large desk that was crowding the space, his arms folded. “It’s all wrong according to you, Evie. The whole job, all of it. According to you, I’m up to my eyeballs in sin.”

“Why are you being so spiky? All I wanted to do was thank you for dinner. I’m allowed to not want you to get arrested for tax fraud, aren’t I?”

He gave another humourless laugh. “No one’s going to get arrested, Evie. It doesn’t work like that. It’s all entirely commonplace, even the worst of the things we might do. It’s everywhere. They’re all doing it. I’m more likely to get promoted than punished.”

“Well, great,” she said sourly. “Good for you.”

“But I was brought up to be a lawyer,” Aubrey continued, ignoring her sarcasm. “I was brought up with all those noble beliefs you probably have embroidered on your pillow, tattooedon your flesh—honesty and integrity and fairness, the whole damn lot. And now you…” He waved a hand at her. “You’ve gone and reminded me I’ve got a bloody conscience. And I’m extremely pissed off about it.”

She looked at him, suddenly wanting to laugh. “Sorry.”

“You should be.”

“I imagine it’s very inconvenient.”

He gave her a heavy look. “Terrible timing, Evie. Absolutely appalling.”

She really was laughing now, and he finally broke into a reluctant smile.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

He looked away from her and stood up, straightening his jacket. “My job. I still have to do it. But now I get to feel really, really bad about it.”

She followed Aubrey back to the drawing room, feeling like a lot of important things she’d really meant to say had been left unsaid. But that was unsurprising. He hardly ever let her speak. Not when the conversation had anything to do with him.

Perhaps all the business talk had been concluded, or was being saved for later as dawn was breaking, over whisky and cigars, because her father made no effort to cloister Domnall away with Aubrey and Liz but seemed content for all of them to stay together in the drawing room, being liberally supplied with drink.

But all the alcohol in the world couldn’t make it fun—not for Evie. Or Amy, or Hugo, or, she strongly suspected, Aubrey, though he gave no sign of it, sitting in an armchair near Domnall, conversing in his usual laconic way, drink held looselyin one hand, dryly drawing shouts of laughter from the other man.

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