“Oh, well,” said Matthew. “Perhaps.”

He was privately surprised by the picture. He would have thought Alastair’s sister might share Alastair’s unpleasant look, as if he were eating lemons he looked down on. She did not. Instead Matthew was reminded of a line in a poem James had read to him once, about an unrequited love. “That child of shower and gleam” described the vivid face laughing up at him from the frame exactly.

“All I know is,” Matthew continued, “you have every other girl in London beat to flinders.”

Lucie colored faint pink. “You are always teasing, Matthew.”

“Did Cordelia ask you to be parabatai,” Matthew said casually, “or did you ask her?”

Lucie and Cordelia had wanted to be made parabatai before they were parted, but they were warned that sometimes you regret a bond made young, and sometimes one partner or other would change their mind. Particularly, Laurence Ashdown had remarked, since ladies could be so flighty.

Lucie was not flighty. She and Cordelia wrote to each other faithfully, every day. Lucie had even once told Matthew she was writing a long story to keep Cordelia amused since Cordelia was always so far away. Matthew did not really wonder why someone like Lucie found it difficult to take someone like him seriously.

“I asked her, of course,” Lucie said promptly. “I did not wish to miss my chance.”

Matthew nodded, confirmed in his new belief that Cordelia Carstairs must be something special.

He was sure that if he had not asked James to be parabatai, James would never have thought of asking him.

James returned to the room. “Satisfied?” he asked.

“That is a strong word, Jamie,” said Matthew. “Consider my waistcoat wrath somewhat appeased.”

James still had his book tucked under his arm, but Matthew knew better than to fight doomed battles. James told him about the book as they walked the London streets. Matthew enjoyed the modern and humorous, such as the works of Oscar Wilde or the music of Gilbert and Sullivan, but Greek history was not so bad when it was Jamie telling him. Matthew had taken to reading more and more literature of old, stories of doomed love and noble battles. He could not find himself in them, but he saw James in them, and that was enough.

They walked unglamoured, as Matthew always insisted they do in his quest to make Jamie feel less self-conscious after the disasters of the Academy. A young lady, arrested by Jamie’s bone structure, stopped in the path of an omnibus. Matthew seized her waist and whirled her to safety, giving her a tip of his hat and a smile.

Jamie seemed to miss the whole incident entirely, fiddling with something beneath his shirt cuff.

There were crowds protesting the mundane war outside the Houses of Parliament.

“The Bore War?” asked Matthew. “That cannot be right.”

“The Boer War,” said James. “B-o-e-r. Honestly, Matthew.”

“That makes more sense,” Matthew admitted.