“You’d better get out of here before you get the thrashing you deserve,” Bill told him. “No, don’t speak. If you open your mouth again, I’ll close it for you.”

“Mr. Merton,” the Countess said. “Please. Stop. Let us deal with this. I would prefer everyone to leave. I— If anyone should like to order sandwiches, please do ring.”

Pat looked at her, sat among the ruins of her dinner table and her family, and said, “Come on, Bill. Let’s go.”

Bill took her arm as they left the room. “Crikey. Crikey.”

“I need to find Fen.”

“Do you?” Bill said dubiously as she set off for the drawing room. “She might be busy.”

Pat hoped she was busy giving Jimmy his marching orders. “We’ll see. I imagine Jimmy might need a shoulder to cry on too.”

“Jimmy deserves every damned thing he has coming,” Bill said, with quiet savagery. “Stupid swine.”

“Couldn’t agree more.”

The drawing room door was open. Pat and Bill came to it together, and stopped.

Jimmy and Fen were in there. They weren’t arguing. They were embracing, tightly—not kissing, but holding one another in a desperate grasp, so absorbed that they didn’t seem to have heard the Mertons’ footsteps.

Bill’s fingers clenched hard on Pat’s arm, almost spasmodically, then he stepped silently back, pulling her away. “Come on, old thing,” he murmured. “Come on. Better leave them to it.”

***

“CHRIST ALMIGHTY,” BILL said some time later. “Excuse my French.”

“Feel free.”

They’d settled in Pat’s room, since there was nobody in the house either of them wanted to speak to. The room had no chair, so the siblings sat on the bed, backs against the wall, as they had when they were children. The wind howled outside, flinging sheets of rain against the window with heavy splats.

Bill, taking the Countess at her word, had rung for sandwiches and beer. Pat supported that, since she’d done a lot of walking today, although the hollow feeling in her gut had nothing to do with the interrupted meal.

How could Fen forgive him? He’d ignored her, he didn’t appreciate her, he was keeping a mistress, for God’s sake. Why hadn’t she thrown the ring back in his face?

Men keep mistresses, she reminded herself. Fen’s a great deal more worldly than you are, when it comes to society marriages. She’ll be a countess. You only met her two days ago. It didn’t help.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, knowing it would probably crumple the dress. She’d put so much effort into looking nice.

“Are you all right, old thing?”

“I feel terrible,” Pat said. “I do wish I hadn’t said anything. If I hadn’t made that remark, given him that opening—”