No one protested his seemingly odd and antisocial decision. No one suggested coming with him. They understood his unspoken wish to be alone. Of course they did. They must have half expected it after last night.
The late evenings during their gatherings were almost always taken up with the most serious of their talks. They spoke of setbacks they had encountered with their recoveries, problems they faced, nightmares they endured. It had not been planned that way, and even now they never sat down with the express intention of pouring out their woes. But it almost always ended up that way. Not that they were unalloyed grumbling sessions. Far from it. They spoke from their hearts because they knew they would be understood, because they knew there would be support and sympathy and advice, sometimes even a real solution to a problem.
Last night it had been Flavian’s turn, though he had not intended to talk at all. Not yet. Perhaps later in the visit, when he had settled more fully into the comfort of his friends’ company. But there had been a lull in the conversation after Ben had told them how his recent decision to use a wheeled chair after he had insisted for so long upon hobbling about on his two twisted legs between sturdy canes had transformed his life and actually been a triumph rather than the defeat he had always thought it would be.
And yet they all felt his sadness too, for taking to a chair had been his admission that he would never again be as he once was. None of them would. There had been a brief silence.
“It is almost a whole year since Leonard B-Burton died,” Flavian had blurted out, his voice jerky and unnaturally loud.
They had all turned blank looks upon him.
“Hazeltine,” he had added. “After a shockingly brief illness, it s-seems. He was my age. I never did write letters of c-condolence either to his f-family or to V-Velma.”
“The Earl of Hazeltine?” Ralph said. “I remember now, though, Flave. You told me about his passing when we were in London soon after leaving Penderris last year. He was—”
“Yes.” Flavian interrupted him with a flashing smile. “He was my former best f-friend. I knew him and was almost inseparable from him from my f-first day at Eton right up until—”
Well, right up until.
“I remember your talking about him,” George said, “though I did not know of his death. He never came near London, did he? You were never reconciled, then, Flavian?”
“He may r-rot in hell,” Flavian said.
“I had not heard either,” Imogen told him. “What has happened to Lady Hazeltine?”
“Her too. M-m-may sh-she r-r-r-o-o-t-t-t—” He thumped the side of one closed fist several times against his thigh in impotent rage and gasped for air.
“Take your time, Flave,” Hugo said, getting to his feet and taking the empty glass from the table beside Flavian in order to fill it again. He squeezed his friend’s shoulder as he passed him on the way to the brandy decanter. “We have all night. None of us is going anywhere.”
“Take a deep breath,” Vincent suggested, “and keep inhaling until the air blows a bubble out of the top of your head, like a balloon. It has never worked for me, but it may for you. Even if it does not, though, waiting to feel a bubble form takes your mind off whatever it was that was getting beyond your endurance.”
“I am not really upset,” Flavian said after drinking half his brandy in one gulp. His voice was suddenly toneless. “It happened almost a year ago, after all. He was not my friend for more than six years before that, so I have not missed him. And Velma preferred him to me, as was her right, even if she was betrothed to me. I never wished them harm. I don’t wish her harm now. She means nothing to me.”
He had not stammered even once, he realized. Perhaps he really was over it. Over them.
“Are you still feeling guilty that you did not write to her, Flavian?” Imogen asked.
He shook his head and spread his hands just above his knees. They were quite steady, he was happy to see, even though they were tingling with pins and needles.
“She would not have wanted to hear from me,” he said. “She would have thought I was g-gloating.”
But he had felt guilty in all the months since he had heard—and resented the feeling.
“You have never been able to close the door on that part of your life, have you?” George asked. “And Hazeltine’s dying would seem to make it harder for you ever to do so. It really is too bad, Flavian. I am sorry.”
Flavian lifted his head and looked broodingly at him. “It was shut and bolted and locked and the key thrown away s-seven years ago.”
He knew—damn it all!—that it was not true. They all knew. But no one said so, and no one pursued the topic until he did. They never intruded beyond a certain point upon one another’s privacy. But there was a silence to allow him to say more if he wished.
“She is c-coming home,” he said. “Her year of mourning over, she is coming b-back.”
His mother and her infernal letters! As though he was interested in all the latest gossip from Candlebury Abbey, his ancestral home in Sussex, in which he had not set foot for longer than eight years. Lady Frome had called on his mother with the news, her letter had explained. Sir Winston and Lady Frome lived eight miles from Candlebury, at Farthings Hall. The two families had always been on the best of terms, Sir Winston and Flavian’s father having grown up together and attended school and university together. Velma was their only daughter, much adored by her parents.