Page 57 of The Sea Siren of Broadwater Bottom
Oh, Harrington thoughthewas having a crisis? Edward raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And what is the nature of this crisis?”
“She’s left!” Harrington spat.
“L-left?” Suddenly Edward’s head was swimming. He hastily masked his features. “To whom are you referring?”
“You bloody well know who I’m talking about. Miss St. Cyr! What on earth did you say to her?”
Edward glowered. “That is none of your affair.”
“The hell it’s not! If you think I’m going to sit back and watch you throw away the best chance you’ve ever had at real happiness, then you don’t know me at all.”
“The best chance I’ve—” Edward looked down, suddenly feeling an urgent need to dislodge a twig from Bucephalus’s mane. “What nonsense. I’m perfectly—”
“Miserable. Don’t deny it. I know you better than that. But when you’re with her…” Harrington waved a hand. “I haven’t seen you this happy inyears. And there isn’t a chance in hell I’m letting you walk away from that! Now, you’re going to pull your head out of your arse and tell me what happened, and we are going to figure out what to do.”
“I—” Edward bit back a curse. As soon as Harrington said Elissa was leaving, a piercing ache had started in the center of his chest. It showed no signs of abating. He shouldn’t be surprised that she’d left. Hell, he’d been the one to tell her to go!
But it would seem that he wasn’t nearly as prepared to see Elissa St. Cyr walk out of his life as he had supposed.
Edward shook his head. “It’s too late. I—I’ve ruined everything.”
“As a noted expert in making a hash of things, I doubt that very much. It takes a real concerted effort to ruineverything.”
“I can’t face her,” Edward said in a rush. “Not after I… I… ”
“Start at the beginning.”
Edward paused. Elissa had trusted him with her deepest secret. Even though she probably hated him now, he didn’t mean to break her confidence. “I was trying to propose, but she stopped me. She had some, er, surprising news that she thought she should tell me first.”
Harrington snorted. “What, is she the secret translator of that book everyone’s going on about?”
Edward froze.
The truth must’ve shown on his face, because Harrington’s eyes went wide. “She is?” He barked out a laugh. “Good for her! Is that it, then? You didn’t take the news well?”
“No, I think I did. She was expecting I wouldn’t.” Edward gave Harrington a hard look. “It is very important to Elissa that her secret not come out. You can’t tell anyone. Not even Thetford.”
“What a shame, because all Thetford and I talk about is Greek poetry.” Harrington rolled his eyes. “So, if that wasn’t the problem, what was?”
Edward paused. He didn’t want to tell Harrington that their argument had started with Edward’s insistence that Elissa drop out of the contest. He didn’t want Harrington to feel bad, so he decided to skip forward a bit. “She was crying. With relief, I think, that I wasn’t put off that she was the translator. And I was, you know, patting her on the back and what not. And she needed a fresh handkerchief, and I told her there were some in the desk drawer.”
Harrington looked perplexed. “Um, all right?”
Edward swallowed. “It is the same drawer where I keep some of my old awards from Cambridge. And when she reached in there to get a handkerchief, she happened to pull out the Chancellor’s Second Classical Medal.”
A swift, horrified comprehension swept over Harrington’s face. “Oh,shit!”
Edward rubbed an eye with the heel of his hand. Apparently, Harrington was more observant than he’d given him credit for. “Oh, shit,” he agreed.
“That could not have gone well. What happened?”
Edward sighed. “She was chastising me for keeping it in a drawer. Going on about how I should be proud of it.”
“She happens to be right about that.”
He narrowed his eyes at his brother. “In any case, we started arguing about it. She was actually quite upset, because of course she wasn’t allowed to go to Cambridge and try for any awards. And she kept going on about how I should treasure it, how I should put it ondisplay.” His whole body gave a horrified shudder. “And I—I snapped. I started ranting about how I hated the sight of the bloody thing, and… and screaming about Robert Slocombe—”
“Oh, my God!” Harrington threw his head back, squinting at the sky. “You even brought up Robert bloody Slocombe!”
