Page 99 of Oleander

“Oh, fabulous, perfect, the right man for the job, I see.”

I helped him stack them. He seemed to know exactly where each of them went. Pointing me to the right shelf and slot so that they were back in the correct indexed fashion.

When we were finished, he asked me to join him in the blue sitting room, where Elspeth had laid out some tea and scones. He was in the mood for company, he said, and it was important to take a break from revision.

I joined him, sitting down on the uncomfortable sofa across from where he sat and watching him pour our tea from an ornate brass teapot.

“I shall be in London this weekend with Xavier, whom you met a few weeks ago.”

I tried to keep my face as neutral as possible, my voice steady. “Your lawyer?” I asked.

“Yes, though truthfully, we are much closer to friends.” His smile turned almost simpering before he blinked it away. “Anyway, you are completely welcome to come to the house while I’m gone. Luke has a key.”

“Right,” I nodded.

Gideon’s gaze settled on me, studious. “So, you must be missing Cas terribly by now.”

I choked slightly on my mouthful of scone, reaching forward to lift my tea to wash it down. The tea was too hot, and it burned my mouth before eventually going down. Gideon was still watching me, that familiar smile in his eye now. A private joke only he knew the punchline of.

“You haven’t told a soul, have you? That you like boys as well as girls.”

My entire body went white hot, then very cold suddenly. I felt it at the base of my skull, a peeling away of a layer to expose the raw pink heart of me.

I opened my mouth to speak, closed it again. Then shook my head.

“My father was exceedingly old-fashioned,” Gideon said, lifting his teacup. His wrist was slim and elegant, and the gold of his cufflink glittered in the sunlight. “He didn’t believe it was possible for a man to love another man the way men aresupposedto love women. But neither did he think it a sin to have relations with them; boys’ schools are quite the hive of homosexual experimentation, you see, and he had no issue with the principle of the thing. I’m certain he experimented just as I did, just as most of us do; he just didn’t want me getting ideas of making a life with a man. After all, who would carry on the Deveraux name? The line?”

I couldn’t move, I sat with my mouth open slightly eager to hear the story he was telling.

“Seraphina would marry, and since her child would have their father’s name, it was impressed upon me that I alone was responsible for the lineage. But, as it turned out...” Here Gideon shot me a conspiratorial kind of look. “It was very much possible for a man to love another man. And I did, quite completely. Iloved one so fiercely that I was prepared to give up my title and my fortune for him. For what are either of those things against the magnificence of love? Against the scent of another’s skin in your lungs, or the sound of their pleasure in your ear; that great fire of lust in their eyes when they look at you. It’s like nothing else on earth – money and title do not even come close. But you, Jude, you are lucky, for you have neither. You have nothing to lose but your heart, and I think you have already given it away, haven’t you?”

I saw little point in feeling insulted by that; he was right. I had neither money nor title. He was right too that I had already given my heart away; I saw no point in lying about that to Gideon of all people.

“What happened?” I asked instead of confirming it. “With the man you loved?”

Gideon went stiff as a cat, as though he hadn’t expected me to ask. “He loved my money and my title more than he loved me. Without it, I wasn’t such an attractive prospect.”

“It sounds like you had a lucky escape.”

He stared openly at me for many moments. “Caspien is lucky,” he said. “Because I don’t think you care a jot about his fortune, do you?”

I shook my head.

“But I also think you care terribly about your own.” I frowned, not understanding what he meant by this since I didn’t have one. “You want to make something of yourself, leave this island and live a life somewhere else. Go out into the world and prove that you can do something more than what Luke does.”

Heat rushed to my cheeks, my stomach turning inside out from shame.

“I see how you look at him, the shame and embarrassment that crosses your face when you think no one’s looking.”

The shock and shame burned their way through my chest. I shook my head. “That’s not...” Tears welled up behind my eyes. “I love Luke; he’s like a big brother and a dad to me – I love him.”

And I did. More than Beth, more than anyone. But this treacherous, treasonous thing was something I kept hidden in the darkest part of myself. How, for example, I wished for once he’d dress properly at parents’ evening, like Alfie’s and Josh’s dad. No turning up in shorts and a worn Green’s Gardening Group T-shirt, or how I wished that he’d make sure to clean the dirt out from under his fingernails when we went out for dinner, or how I wished he’d talk about something other than plants or soil quality to Cas when he saw him.

Gideon moved around the small coffee table and put his arm around me, fatherly and comforting.

“Oh, goodness, sweet Jude, no one is suggesting you don’t love him. Of course you do. Luke is a wonderful father figure to you and a very good man – there aren’t many of those around, trust me, I know. It’s clear how much you love him.”

I’d managed to keep the tears in, but the humiliation and guilt made my mouth loose.