About Last Night

He’d feel better if she were with him now, but tradition held firm. After dinner, Nev and Winston joined their father in the library for a drink, while the women went to the drawing room and did whatever it was they did in there. Rosemary would no doubt be silent as the grave. He could only hope Mother would go easy on Cath. He’d seen the panic in Cath’s eyes when she’d realized she was about to be parted from him.

He poured a dab more whiskey into his glass, then distributed them and took his customary seat. His father offered a toast. “To Nev and his lovely wife. May they enjoy many years of happiness.” Winston tipped his hand in Nev’s direction, and they drank.

She was lovely, he mused. She’d worn a conservative black dress to dinner with a neckline high enough to hide her phoenix tattoo. She ought to have looked drab, but the dress fit her well, and she somehow managed to make it sexy. He longed to get through this interminable evening and take her back to bed. She’d been so defiant this afternoon, her irritability arousing him beyond reason. His arm still throbbed where she’d bit him, the slight discomfort a continual reminder of the way she’d looked in her stockings and garters, the way she’d thrown her head back against the wall when she made herself come. The sound of his name on her lips as he pounded into her.

“Neville?”

His father was looking at

him curiously, and Nev realized he’d lost track of the conversation. “Pardon?”

“Winston tells me he’s going to recommend your promotion at the next board meeting. Congratulations.”

His hand tightened around the whiskey glass. The announcement startled him, though it shouldn’t have. Winston and Mother would assume he’d married Cath for purely mercenary reasons. He’d played his part, and now he’d get his reward. It wasn’t as though he didn’t deserve it. He’d more than earned this promotion. Still, it galled him to have it handed to him this way.

But wasn’t that why he was here, at least in part? To be sure, he’d seen a way to help Cath, but he’d also seen a way for Cath to help him. He’d accepted the devil’s bargain, intending to get the board’s stamp of approval on the promotion and then tell his family the marriage had been a ruse from the start. He would beat his mother at her own game. In a few months, the board would be informed of his divorce. Simple. No one would get hurt, and he and Cath could both have what they wanted.

So why did he feel like a complete git every time he let himself dwell on the plan?

“Thank you, Dad. I’m honored, of course.”

“Come now, Nev, you’ve earned the right to crow a bit,” Winston said. “You met the terms, and now you deserve your reward. Though I have to say, I’d no idea you’d go so far as to marry her.”

Nev clenched his teeth and bit back an insult, the action reflexive after all these years. It never did help to get angry with Winston; he’d carry on baiting you with a bland smile on his face until you snapped. Better to keep out of it.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Richard said. “What’s this about terms?”

“Sorry, Father,” Winston answered. “It was an internal matter. The board members agreed to offer Neville the promotion, but only if he would marry. We felt a married man would be better suited to the demands of the position.”

Richard had stepped away from the bank six years earlier, saying he wanted to give Winston an opportunity to run things. He was well out of the loop now, but far from ignorant about bank procedures. “That’s … unusual,” he said. “And you’re saying your brother married simply to— Nev, is that right?”

“It’s true the board made me the offer, but that’s not why I married Cath. The timing is a coincidence.” He wanted his father to understand, but even as he said the words, he knew the protest was pointless. Dad couldn’t possibly believe him after what Winston had just said, and even if he did, it would become obvious soon enough that the marriage was a fraud, and that the entire purpose of the ruse had been to manipulate the board into promoting him and strong-arming his father into making the donation Cath needed.

Christ. Viewed from that perspective, it was a thoroughly despicable plan.

“Of course it’s a coincidence,” Winston said, his false, cheerful tone exactly the one Mother used. “Fantastically good timing. Come to think of it, you’d met Cath even before you knew about the offer, hadn’t you? She was at your flat the day I came over to speak with you. It looked like the two of you were already fairly well acquainted.” His smirk spoke volumes, and Nev had to close his eyes for a moment to stem the tide of rage moving through him in response to his brother’s casual lechery. He downed the remainder of his drink in one swallow, holding his breath as the slug burned down his throat.

“Watch it,” he said after he’d regained command of himself. “You’re talking about my wife.”

“Oh, I know exactly who I’m talking about. The question is, do you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that I wonder how much you know about this girl you’ve married. You’ve had so little time to get acquainted, and she is an American. Rather an unknown quantity, I should think. I just hope you haven’t gone and done something we’ll all have cause to regret.”

“That’s enough, Winston,” Richard said. Disapproval had replaced confusion as the predominant emotion furrowing his forehead. “It seems I’ve been left in the dark here, but I certainly hope I know enough to recognize when you’ve stepped over the line. Cath is your brother’s wife, and you’ll speak of her with respect, or I’ll ask you to leave.”

“Thank you,” Nev said. “But I think I’d better be the one to leave at present. I’m anxious to get back to Cath.”

He deposited his glass on a side table with a satisfying thud and stalked out of the room.

He’d find Cath. First, though, he needed to take a walk and calm the hell down.

She’d managed to make a friend. The friend in question was thirteen years old and wearing too much eyeliner, but Cath was in no position to be choosy.

All it had taken was one question—“Is that an iPod?”—followed by a lot of attentive listening as Winston’s daughter, Beatrice, launched into a dissertation on her favorite music, scrolling through the menus on her music player and favoring Cath with twenty-second snatches of various songs and even videos. Cath had made appropriate noises about the brilliance of this artist and the worthlessness of that one, and Beatrice was all hers.

She was glad for the company. Nev had abandoned her to the drawing room, leaving her to fend for herself against his terrifying mother, his sullen niece, and Rosemary, the cardboard cutout who functioned as Winston’s wife. After the horrors of dinner—silverware she barely recognized, which she’d had to try to sort out while on the receiving end of history’s politest inquisition—she’d been ready to take a bow and go to bed. Or at least break out the grappa and start swapping embarrassing stories, the way her family did after a big meal. But no, the Chamberlains had an honest-to-God drawing room, and the women retired there after dinner while the men went off to drink in the library, and Cath had simply had no idea, no idea this sort of thing hadn’t died with Queen Victoria. All they needed was a bottle of good Madeira, and the illusion that she’d stepped directly into 1865 would be complete.