Page 37 of Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
“He said, and I quote: ‘I’m sorry for being a twat, Bugs.’ ”
Nory laughed, half out of relief.
“Why does he call you Bugs?”
“No reason, you know how nicknames are.”
“Can I call you Bugs?”
“No, you cannot.”
“He also asked me to give you this...”
Isaac leaned into her and kissed her cheek. Nory’s breath caught. This was very confusing for her body; she did not wantto be feeling the things that Isaac’s warm lips on her cheek were making her feel when the kiss was a message from her brother!
She cleared her throat.
“Thank you.” She didn’t trust herself to send the same message back, and besides, she wasn’t sure Isaac would kiss Thomas’s cheek on her behalf.
Isaac pulled his collar up around his ears and stepped down onto the gravel. “Well, enjoy your evening,” he said.
“Thank you, you too.”
Isaac nodded once and began to walk away across the courtyard; the sound of his boots crunching on the gravel was audible long after the darkness had swallowed him from sight. Nory resisted the urge to sniff the scarf until she reached the bottom of the main staircase. It smelled of Isaac. Had he worn it, knowing that he would make it smell of him? Or had he worn it because it smelled of her? Did men do that?
“What are you doing?” Ameerah asked, coming out of the library with Dev in tow.
“Nothing. Just sniffing a scarf.”
“I’m not even going to ask. Come on, weirdo, we’ve got to change for dinner.”
Twelve
If anyone had still been on their best behavior before, the pretense had certainly been dropped by that evening’s dinner. Nory marveled at how quickly they had all slipped back into their school roles.
Charles and Guy picked up where they had left off in their self-appointed capacity of alphas: general showing off and chest puffing, loudly reminiscing about daring exploits and mocking Jeremy just enough to keep him in his place of lovable, unthreatening nerd.
Camille was unimpressed, her mouth thinning into a line and her shoulders visibly tense beneath the shoestring straps of her evening dress, but for all the attention he paid her, Guy probably hadn’t even noticed. Nory smiled apologetically at her every chance she got and tried to include her in their conversations. Dev and Ameerah were equally sensitive to the situation, and between them they tried their hardest to make sure Camille didn’t feel like a complete spare part.
Jenna and Pippa—though thoughtful and generous of spirit—were always the badass girls at school: cool, immaculate, smart-mouthed, and supremely confident in their sex appeal. They hadcarried elements of these traits into their adult lives, although they had matured over time, and what once could have been described as mean-girl mentality had deepened to become self-assurance. But in this environment, even they had regressed. They showed off and laughed too loudly, and though Nory didn’t like to admit it, they could even be a little cliquey.
Ameerah had been the awkwardly gangly, spotty, desperate-to-fit-in girl at school. Though she was holding her own, Nory could see she was having to fight to prevent herself from falling—or being pushed—back into the role of pet minion. She had already stood her ground against two or three requests of “Ameerah, darling, could you just...” Nory was sure Pippa and Jenna weren’t aware of what they were doing, and to be fair to them, they both inhabited worlds where they were used to people doing their bidding.
For Nory’s part, she was the scholarship girl all over again, a beloved part of the group and yet ever so slightly on the outside. She was still less traveled and unpolished. She had been welcomed into their world at school, but through no fault of theirs, she had never quite belonged. And in a cruel twist, her acceptance into Braddon-Hartmead had made her belong a little less in her old world too. Now she found herself playing the part of the commoner once more, despite living a very middle-class lifestyle. She hammed up her working-class roots and played up to the old image they had of her in their minds: a sort of Eliza Doolittle character, the everywoman perspective of the group.
Nory supposed it was inevitable. This was the state in which they had known one another best. Though it pained her to think it, she wondered if some of them would have lost touch completely if Tristan hadn’t died. But life was like that, wasn’t it? Anever-ending series of events, the ripples of which would either push you away from people or pull you toward them. Nory thought it made this second chance even more poignant.
After dinner they all filed back into the drawing room, before the men excused themselves to go to the billiards room—Camille looking distinctly like she wished to skewer Guy with a cue.
“What’s with the men taking themselves off after dinner?” asked Pippa. “It’s not 1902!”
“The men have to go off and talk about big-boy stuff like politics, and we women have to stay here and talk about kittens,” said Jenna dryly.
“Fuck that shit! I’m off to kick some arse at billiards,” Pippa announced, and scooping up the front of her gray waterfall gown, she marched out of the room.
“I might head off to bed and read,” said Camille. “Reading is such a luxury for me these days. So is sleeping, for that matter.”
“I don’t blame you,” said Nory. “My sister-in-law has two boys, and she says sometimes she locks herself in the toilet just for five minutes’ peace.”
