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‘Again?’ I replied, dismayed. ‘You were there only last week, and it’s such a big journey.’
‘Nothing I consider when there is such company to be found.’
He was quite aglow with excitement. My heart sang for him, and sank for him. Who knew it could do both these things at the same time?
‘I have met these new friends in town,’ he said excitedly. ‘I cannot wait to invite them up here so they can meet you, Jo.’ His eyes were searching mine for an excitement that mirrored his own. I did my best; I am an actress after all. ‘Dominic and Leopold are the leaders of the pack, crazy bounders the lot of them, of course.’ He smirked most idiotically. ‘Then again, all of them are rakes. Isn’t it just delightful?’
‘Dominic and Leopold?’ I asked. I knew those names. They were the Christian names of the Duke of Ashton and the Heir to a Marquis. Laurie was a bit too free with them. ‘You mean Justin’s friends.’
‘Mine too,’ he said, with forced conviction.
I considered it for a second. ‘He introduced you to them?’ He nodded like a puppy. ‘And now you call the duke ‘Dominic’ and he calls you ‘Laurie’?’
I promise you, Beth, he grew crimson as a poppy.
‘I call him ‘Ashton’. They… they like to tease me,’ he said. ‘They said Laurie was a childhood name, and reminds them of a girl. Sometimes they call me ‘Laura’, it sends them into peals of laughter. I don’t mind, really. Usually, they have been drinking and losing heavily at cards at the same time.’
‘Do you do that too?’ I asked.
Deeper grew the blush. I fought the urge to swear like a sailor.
‘That’s not you, Teddy,’ I said.
‘You don’t know what is me.’
‘You have forgotten how to speak the English language now as well, it appears,’ I retorted with a calmness I did not feel.
He was beginning to look annoyed.
‘You are watching me change before your eyes and it intimidates you, admit it.’
It terrified me. Who he was becoming. But I would not admit it, not to him, not after the way he was behaving.
‘Do you drink heavily too?’ she asked. ‘Gamble?’
He shrugged.
He did. My stomach sank.
‘They are vile,’ he mused, ‘but it is magnetic, watching these god-like creatures part the throng of the ton as if they are the waters of the Red Sea. Every single night, Jo.’
‘Do they now.’ I was hoping he would say more, condemn their ways.
He did not; instead, he merely smiled, an indulgent, wistful sort of smile. He wants to be one of them, I thought. I’m losing him. I’ve lost him.
He was gone in a few hours, and did not come back to Concord for a week. But when he did, he was back to his old self, and everything was forgotten. Or at least I pretended it was.
The truth was that I need my memories of us to be intact. Perfect.
I need them not to be memories, but the present.
Am I holding on too tight to something that is long past?
I can’t let go, Beth, I can’t.
I want everything to stay the same. I want to keep writing violently romantic plays for everyone, and I want us all to keep growing up in this idyllic life in the country, as we have until now. Eating apples in the winter, oranges for Christmas, chestnuts when it’s too cold to step out of the house. Skating on the ice, then climbing trees in the summer. Writing, riding, talking around the blazing fire. Is that not a full life? It is for me.
It was for Laurie too, until now.
