The doubts never seemed to last for more than a moment, though. They would slip away until he barely remembered them, just as he barely recalled kissing Grace the day before. He knew that he had. He could remember kissing Daisy—in fact, the memory was so sharp-sweet it was difficult to think of other things. But he could not recall why he had kissed Grace, or what it had been like when he had.

“You have always believed love came at a cost,” said Matthew. “That it was torment and torture and pain. But there should be some joy. There is joy in being with someone you love, even knowing you can never have them, even knowing they will never love you back.” He sucked in a ragged breath of cold air. “But even the moments you are with Grace, you don’t look happy. You don’t seem happy when you talk about her. Love should bring you happiness, at least in the imagining of what your lives will eventually be like when you are together. What will your future with her be like? Tell me how you think of it.”

James knew it was impossible. All his dreams of a future with Grace had been abstract, none concrete. When he thought of her in the house on Curzon Street, he realized suddenly that he had chosen nothing in the house with Grace in mind. He had considered his own wants and Cordelia’s. He had never thought of Grace’s, for he had no idea what they might be.

He felt the bracelet cold against his wrist, the metal picking up the chill of the snow. “Enough,” he said. “We shouldn’t be discussing this now. We should be looking for answers.”

“I will not continue to watch you make yourself miserable,” said Matthew. “There is no point to it—if you will never see reason or good sense—”

“Because you’re a bastion of reason and good sense?” James snapped. He knew he had a temper, just like his father; his anger spilled past everything else now, tasting of copper and fury. “Matthew, you are drunk. For all I know, you mean nothing you are saying right now.”

“I mean all of it,” Matthew protested. “In vino veritas—”

“Don’t you quote Latin at me,” said James. “Even if you were sober, which would be a fine chance, you’ve never taken love seriously enough to lecture me about this. Your passions have been a series of dalliances and ill-conceived attachments. Look at me and tell me there is someone you love more than that bottle in your hand.”

Matthew had gone very white. James realized with a distant dismay that he had broken a pact between them, unspoken, that he would not speak to Matthew about his drinking. That if it remained unmentioned, it might vanish.