Page 84 of A Single Thread of Moonlight

“You’re right, of course.”

I bid him goodnight, and he kissed me again. Then, instead of heading for my room, I waited until I knew he had gone and made my way to the library.

Nick was waiting for me there, just as I knew he would be.

“Well?” he said, standing by the fire, tension in every line.

I nodded. “It’s done.”

For a moment the look on his face was quite dreadful, and then he collapsed into the chair behind him with a bump.

I moved cautiously towards him. “I thought this was what you wanted,” I said. “I thought you’d be happy.”

“It is,” he said, his hand scrubbing tiredly over his face. “It was. I honestly don’t know any more.”

He gestured to the seat where I had sat across from him before. He reached again for the brandy, pouring two glasses with a steady hand.

He downed his own drink in one swift movement, but I didn’t touch mine. Despite the fire, I felt cold.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” I asked, because this, suddenly, felt like the right question.

“Yes.” The word hissed from behind his teeth. “Yes, Iris, I do.”

It was the first time he had used my real name. “Then tell me.”

He stared into the fire for another moment.

“When I was growing up, there really was a little girl who lived next door,” he said slowly. “Her name was Lila, and she was a year younger than me. Until the age that I was sent to school we were always together. She lived in the village. Her mother had been a lady but she married below her station, for love, of course, and so they weren’t a part of society life.”

He poured himself another drink.

“I was sent away to school and I didn’t see her for several years. Then, when I was sixteen, I went home for the holidays and there she was. The most beautiful girl I had ever seen.”

“You fell in love with her?” I asked gently.

“I was sixteen,” he said. “But, yes, I thought I was in love with her. It was not reciprocated. Lila saw me as a brother figure, I think. I accepted that, of course. I was quite happy for our great love affair to be one-sided. I believe at the time I probably thought there was something poetic about unrequited love – as though it were a rite of passage. I only wanted her to be happy.

“We remained very close.” His face softened. “I was shy as a boy and didn’t have that many friends at school, but Lila made me laugh, she listened to me, we shared our secrets, our dreams with one another. We wrote to each other almost daily for the next year. That’s when she told me that her widowed aunt – her mother’s sister – had decided as she had no children of her own that she would give Lila a London come out. Lila was ecstatic.”

He stared into his drink for a moment.

“I had grown up a bit and started to run with a rowdier set. That’s how I met Stefan. He came to my school to study for a term, and instantly we were the best of friends, but we pulled a stupid prank and got sent down – a sort of suspension, you see,” he explained, and I nodded. “We had nothing to do but kick our heels. We headed for London to cause as much havoc there as possible, and then … Lila.”

“She was there?”

He nodded. “Just arrived for her first season, so excited and about to be the pick of the bunch too, with her looks. It didn’t matter that she had no fortune, no real name. She would have made a respectable match of it.”

“Would have made?” I asked, a hollow feeling in my stomach.

Nick grimaced. “I made the mistake of introducing her to Stefan. Made the even bigger mistake of telling Stefan what she meant to me. And then, of course, he had to have her.”

“But he didn’t marry her,” I said.

“No, Iris.” Nick looked at me. “He didn’t marry her. He ruined her.”

“He … what?” I gasped.

“I know,” Nick agreed casually. “I was rather surprised myself. I never suspected he would take it so far. It turned out that Prince Stefan wanted Lila, but he needed a fortune. It was not the first time – apparently his grandmother was unhappy with him and had sent him to England in a state of temporary exile because of a number of indiscretions back at home. He convinced Lila to run away with him, made her think he was going to marry her, and then left her without a word. Of course, Lila had already made the mistake of confiding in people. She thought she was going to be married – to a prince, no less! She had no idea how society worked. The way they tore her down.”