All buildings started out ugly. There was probably some moral lesson in that. Gareth hadn’t seen the plans for the dormitory, but he thought it would end up handsome enough. Simon’s taste wasn’t bad, and he could afford competent builders. At the moment, there were only jagged, unfinished brick walls rising out of a muddy scar in the earth.
The dingy sky overhead didn’t help either, nor did the raw wind put Gareth in a more appreciative mood. Nonetheless, after three days of rain, and another when the ground was too wet for his leg to support him, he was just glad to be outdoors.
“Ten people are far too many for one house,” he said half to himself.
Simon lifted his gaze anyway, turned from inspecting the brickwork, and shook his head. “More than ten, old man. You forgot the servants.”
“So I did.” Gareth shook his head, abashed in the face of his friend’s good humor. “And it’s not as though I’ve ever precisely lived alone. I’m sorry. You’ve been quite hospitable.”
“Oh, the students count for two or three people apiece,” Simon replied easily. “Particularly to those who aren’t that young anymore. I confess I don’t know how we stood our crowd, and we had only four in our rooms.”
“Wine, as I remember. And the occasional brawl.” Gareth touched his left eye as a particularly vivid memory crossed his mind.
“Mm, yes. Particularly where you and Edward were concerned.”
“Yes, but I never started it. Hardly ever,” Gareth admitted. “And Alex was—” He stopped as he realized what he’d said, but couldn’t find any other way out of the sentence. Simon was inspecting the wall again, a bit more carefully than anyone needed to. “Was no stranger to temper either,” he finished. “Sorry.”
He wasn’t exactly sure what had happened to Alex Reynell, only that it had involved Simon, the woman who was now Simon’s wife…and blood. There’d been the official story: plucky widow menaced by deranged man of fortune, saved by equally wealthy but hopefully saner gentleman, pistol shots, and mysterious escapes. Gareth didn’t believe it, particularly not once he’d met Mrs. Grenville.
Gareth also hadn’t asked. He’d been sad when he’d heard, and surprised, but he’d never been close to Alex. Simon had, and so Gareth hadn’t asked.
He didn’t now. If Simon wanted to talk, he would, but Gareth doubted it. The man had another confidant these days.
Something silver-blue glimmered on the wall. Gareth took a few steps forward, peering at the bricks. He could just make out an outline, although he couldn’t tell what it was. The shape was almost runic, yet curved: a long, graceful loop. “Very pretty,” he said dryly. “Won’t the builders ask questions or gossip?”
Simon shook his head. “At this rate, the physical sign will be gone by morning. It’s already fading fast. It was much brighter when I made it.”
“Oh,” said Gareth. No paint he knew of was that shade or would fade so quickly.
“Do you want me to tell you?” Simon asked, glancing sideways at Gareth.
“I doubt I’d understand it if you did. I’ll leave those details to you and your…apprentice?”
“Kindly refrain,” Simon said cheerfully, “from giving me a beard and a pointed cap in your imagination. And if you mean Mrs. Brightmore, she knows as much as I do—her expertise is simply in different areas. As I hear, you have reason to know. And no,” he added, lifting a hand, “she didn’t tell me you were there.”
Of course not. She wouldn’t have needed to. “Is it a problem?”
“It doesn’t seem to be, yet.”
Gareth lifted his eyebrows. “What do you think I intend to do, Simon? I promise I’ve no wish to put a mouse in Mrs. Brightmore’s desk—not that she has one at the moment—or pour ink down anyone’s back.”
“That’s a tremendous weight off my mind,” said Simon dryly, “but it’s possible your presence could distract the lady.”
The lady was used to performing for twenty or thirty people at once. Gareth very carefully didn’t point that out, just as he didn’t mention his real reason for attending the class. He’d already gone around once with Simon over Mrs. Brightmore’s past. He would rather not point out the need for someone to keep an eye on her.
Even if he wasn’t precisely sure what he was keeping an eye out for.
“It doesn’t,” he replied instead. “She assured me of as much herself.”
Simon smiled a little. “Likewise,” he said, “when I asked her about it.”
There was no reason why that should feel like a betrayal. Simon had a school to run, and it was best to be straightforward. Gareth had always thought so. All the same, the knowledge that Simon had consulted Mrs. Brightmore about his behavior stung. He took a few steps, rounding the corner of the half-built wall. “She teaches well,” he said. “That’s not a surprise, I suppose. Certainly wasn’t as surprising as your wife teaching…boxing?”
“Fighting. There’s honor in boxing.” Simon made a wry face. “Marksmanship as well, eventually.”
Gareth lifted his eyebrows and whistled. “One doesn’t often meet an Amazon in Britain these days,” he said. “I take it the parents don’t know all that you’re teaching their children.”
“I’d assume not. Colonel Woodwell might, but he, from all reports, is eccentric enough not to care, and Miss Woodwell has attained her majority, in any case.” Simon absently ticked off students on his fingers as he spoke. “Fitzpatrick’s mother, pardon both the language and the slight, probably doesn’t give a damn as long as he’s out from underfoot and not disrupting her performances, and there’s no father in the picture there. The Donnells and the Fairleys were at their wits’ end, so I can’t imagine we’ll have much trouble from them.”
“Waite?”
“Could be trouble, if he writes home too tellingly and too soon. His parents are both radicals, by Society’s standards, but I’m not certain they’re radical enough to accept some of what happens here.”
“A pity you don’t just accept orphans.”
“I’ve thought so myself, at times,” Simon said, “but we do need some fees coming in. I can’t impose myself entirely on friends and family, you know. They start fleeing to the Continent before too long.”
Gareth laughed. “Only those of us who can travel in style,” he said. “Have you heard from Eleanor?”
“A letter came this morning. She should’ve reached Rome by now. She was in Paris when she wrote.” Simon chuckled. “If Ellie ever tires of helping me with this madhouse, by the way, she’d have an excellent future writing for Baedeker or Murray. I’m surprised France has any stationary left.”
That sounded like Simon’s younger sister, whom Gareth remembered as an intense, bookish sort of schoolgirl. She’d been somehow connected with Alex too, which meant her trip abroad might not have been entirely for pleasure. Something else he didn’t ask.
“Does she forget you’ve been there?”
“I think she rather assumes I didn’t appreciate it properly.” Simon glanced over at Gareth. “How about your family? Have you seen them since you’ve been back?”
It wasn’t a tentative question, but Simon asked it with a diffident tone that was almost worse than boorishness. Still, he meant well.
“Went up to Kent a month before I came here. They’re well.” That was true. There’d been no tragic homecoming, no stormy scenes. His mother had embraced him, and his father had been proud of him. Gareth knew he really shouldn’t ask for more.
Particularly because he didn’t know what more he could have asked.
“They all send their best,” he added and turned the conversation to lighter things, as he might have steered a balky horse. “Jenny, my niece, wasn’t exactly heartbroken when she heard you were married. Sorry to hurt your pride.”
“Been replaced, have I?”
Gareth nodded. “By the grocer’s lad, if I hear correctly. I think Helen had more peace of mind when it was you. Especially as this one might actually return Jenny’s affection—she can actually speak complete sentences around him. Clearly he doesn’t have your overwhelming charm.”
“Yes,” Simon said, “I’m sure it’s that, and not the difference between twelve and sixteen.”
Both of them fell silent. Gareth watched a flock of birds, starlings, he thought, cross the gray sky, heading south.
Four years had passed since Simon had come home with him, that week when they’d roamed the countryside, talked late over wine, and shared gentle laughter at Jenny’s moon-eyed infatuation when they were sure she wasn’t around. Simon had left for town shortly after that. Gareth had gone to Egypt. He’d climbed rocks easily back then, and the buzz of a fly hadn’t made him go rigid with anticipated horror.
Not even the light parts of his past quite worked any longer. Everything ran into what came after, just as the gentle slope on which they stood rolled inescapably downhill and into the dark fringes of the forest.
“They all seem quite healthy,” he said. “The students, I mean.”
“Ah,” said Simon, briefly disoriented. Then he seemed to find his place in the conversation. “Good.”
Gareth clasped his hands behind his back and forged onward. He’d gotten used to carrying conversation over gaps. That skill had been one of the things he’d learned on his visit home. “Do you expect many more?”
Simon laughed, and the constraint eased a little. “I dearly wish I could say. It’s a tricky business, you know.”
“I suppose one can’t simply post advertisements in the Times,” Gareth agreed.
“Hardly.” Simon gave the brickwork one last moment of scrutiny and then turned back toward the house. “I’ve a few connections here and there,” he went on as Gareth fell in beside him, “but I’d as soon not be too public. The servants are sworn to secrecy. That’s one of the reasons we don’t have as many as we should. Even the village thinks this is just an odd sort of bohemian establishment, like something Morris or Ruskin might have founded. Better that way, for a number of reasons.”
Gareth thought of the symbols on the bricks. “Sensible,” he said and tried to keep his voice neutral.
Something must have shown through, because Simon looked over and shook his head. “Poor St. John. From one war to another?”
“I’d imagine that’s how most people feel,” said Gareth. “This one’s—” He stopped for a second. If the general subject of his past brought up too much darkness to speak of, his time in the army was worse: like the bottom of a well rather than the forest’s shadows. “At least it lets me be more comfortable in the off hours.”
He looked away from Simon’s gaze. There were a hundred unasked questions in it. He braced himself for one of them.
Instead, Simon looked back toward the house. “We do strive to please,” he said lightly. “Speaking of which, it’s just about time for dinner.”
Thank you, thought Gareth, and said nothing.