Judith Ivory by Black Silk

Author:Black Silk [Silk, Black]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2012-04-25T12:31:25+00:00

He stopped by briefly on Monday evening and again in the afternoon of the Thursday after that. Then on the Tuesday following, he showed up at eight in the morning with a dozen sweet buns, six oranges, and a bottle of champagne—all of which he described as his version of breakfast.

He had spent the weekend in London hiring a wet nurse and making arrangements for his surviving little ward. He was “on a dash” to Netham and could only stay an hour.

He stayed two.

“Champagne for breakfast?” She remembered the whiskey from the week or so before. The earl of Netham’s reputation included, she knew, occasional drunkenness.

He was about to pollute the juice from the oranges with the wine. She put her hand over her glass. They were sitting out on the stone-floored terrace. The sun was shining. Birds twittered overhead from a nest of swallows somewhere in the eave of the roof behind them.

“To summer.” He held up his glass. She toasted with her orange juice. It tasted acrid and sour after the sweet roll. She thought, for some reason, of the clever, ambitious boys of Cambridge celebrating May Week, the last time she’d known champagne to flow where it possibly should not. She realized that though Graham Wessit may not have been the scholarly model of a Cambridge student, he had probably fit in rather well with his gregarious charm and outlandish exploits.

“Were you a good student at Cambridge?” she asked.

He poured champagne into his own juice and shrugged.

“Which college did you attend?”

He slid his eyes toward her sarcastically. “Which else?”

“Really? St. John’s?” Submit put her glass down. Henry’s revered institution, along with King’s and Trinity, was one of the three biggest, richest of the twenty-six colleges that made up the University of Cambridge. These were well-off, landed schools that didn’t favor old men by taking in their wards and sons. “What did you read?”

He made a facetious smile and took a long draft of champagne direct from the bottle, apparently dispensing with his orange juice entirely. “L.M.B.C.”

Lady Margaret’s Boat Club. It was an athletic club, the only boat club to lambaste the Other University regularly. Yes, she could well see the natty Netham with his champagne and scarlet blazer, racing on water, carrying on on land.

“What did you really read?”

“I told you before, humility.”

“You’re evading.” She teased him with a sidelong smile. “I won’t think less of you for having a serious scholarly interest.” She realized she wanted him to have a hidden intellectual side. The actor, the exquisite, she had weeks ago discovered, was really quite bright, though no one seemed to notice. And no one, not even he, seemed to care. His intelligence was not the first trait he chose to bring forward. Still, he’d been raised by Henry. He almost had to have a predilection, she thought, for a science or modern languages or the classics.

He settled back into his chair, leaning on its arm, setting his jaw into his hand, one pensive finger up the side of his cheek.

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