Edwardian? Elizabethan? Somewhere in the middle. Old and fancy is what I’m getting at. Big windows. Four-poster bed. Actual fireplace.
“I suppose it must.” That was Oliver, keeping the conversation going while I was trying very hard not to face-plant on the nearest soft object. “Marriage is a significant step for anybody.”
The problem with Oliver being a good person was that where I would have made a noncommittal noise and waited for Alex to leave, he’d taken an interest so now Alex was sitting in a chair with the air of somebody settling in for the evening. Or, in this case, early hours of the morning. “Yes, well. Seemed the thing to do. After all, she’s a smashing girl from a smashing family. Can’t have Mummy and Daddy wondering if you’re a homosexual your whole life.” He paused. “No offence.”
On the one hand, some offence. On the other hand, it was the night before his wedding and we’d dragged him out of bed to spring us from jail. So if there was ever a time to let it slide, this was it.
“You realise”—Oliver was looking terribly sincere—“that even if you were, that would be okay.”
Alex laughed. “Oh, of course it would. After all, it is the twentieth century. One of my father’s best friends is a homosexual, and they’re all jolly supportive of him, especially his wife.”
“Um,” I said. “Isn’t that a bit weird for her?”
“Can’t see why it would be. Plenty of chaps have other interests.
Daddy’s simply batty about steam locomotives.”
I really regretted not face-planting. “Okay, but assuming you mean exclusively homosexual, rather than something under the bi umbrella, I think that’s quite different from doing a spot of trainspotting?”
“Clearly you’ve never been married to a railway enthusiast.”
“No,” I protested, “but I’d like to be married to someone who is attracted to me.”
Frowning, Alex tried to take a sip from a glass of brandy that wasn’t there. “That’s a very shortsighted view of marriage. Surely if one’s going to spend the rest of one’s life with somebody, it’s more important that they’re, you know, the right sort of person.”
“What?” I surreptitiously massaged a temple. “Like belong to the right sort of clubs and wear the right sort of hat at Ascot?”
Alex blinked. “Well, obviously.”
“And,” Oliver put in gently, “you feel Miffy is the right sort of person?”
“Of course I do,” exclaimed Alex. “Her father’s an earl, for pity’s sake, and her people have hardly any history of haemophilia.”
“Isn’t that a bit…eugenicsey?” I asked.
Alex smiled vaguely at me. “Thank you. We do try. Daddy picked Mummy because Granddaddy said we needed some height in the line.”
“Then I’m sure”—Oliver put a reassuring hand on Alex’s shoulder—“you’ll be very happy together and everything will work out tomorrow.”
The look in Alex’s eyes, as he glanced up at Oliver, was not vulnerability exactly, because that had probably been bred out of him along with haemophilia and shortness, but a posh facsimile of it.
“Cheers,” he said. “Decent of you.” Then, filled with a new resolve, he bounced to his feet. “Don’t know what I’m fretting about, to be honest. After all, there’s simply armies of people we’ve brought in to make everything go smoothly. We Twaddles may not be able to fix photocopiers, but we’ve been getting married properly for centuries, and we’re not about to start blowing it now.” He looked momentarily fretful. “Just, you know, being such a duffer. Very real chance I might duff something up.”
“You’ll be fine,” Oliver told him. “Walk in a straight line, repeat whatever you’re told to repeat, and say ‘I do’ whenever someone asks you a question.”
“Unless”—I briefly stopped temple massaging—“the question is Do you love someone else.”
Alex ambled towards the door. “Well, I hope that won’t come up.
Seems a rather rum thing to ask a chap at his own wedding.”
“You’re right.” I sighed. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
AS SOON AS ALEX HAD gone, I proceeded with my face-planting.
“I can’t believe,” I said into the soft, enticing mattress, “I have to be up for a wedding in three and a half hours.”