Park Lane by Frances Osborne Read Free Book Online

whether cavalry or livery, really cannot help but be at least a little attractive.
    ‘You had Joseph, not James?’ asks Bea as, after Joseph has left, she finishes Edward’s collar and checks his studs.
    ‘I like the fellow. By the looks of it, so do you.’
    Bea pinches her brother.
    ‘Hey, sis, we’re not six years old any more.’
    ‘I still know how to pinch my brother when he is teasing me. I am not yet desperate enough to marry the footman.’
    ‘You don’t have to marry him.’
    ‘Edward! Be quiet.’
    And he falls into silence.
    When Bea has finished the studs, she looks up at Edward to read the expression on his face. This is her moment to talk to him, however little she may want to hear the answers. Still fired up enough to keep her gaze on the dark circles under his eyes, she begins.
    ‘Edward.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Are you all right?’ He doesn’t look all right. He’s pale, his hands are not altogether steady and, is she imagining it, but is there the tiniest nervous tic to his smile? But he opens his arms.
    ‘Darling sis, I am on capital form.’
    ‘Or on form,’ she says, and this is what she should have said half a year ago, ‘all over the capital.’ Edward looks at her with a ‘How can you not believe me’ expression on his face, then he slumps down into the armchair behind him. The bravado has vanished, his arms flop along the sides of the chair, wrists and hands hanging off the end. He is half the size he was.
    ‘Listen, Bea darling, I am trying to be good, but it is hard to give up such a roar of a time. Or rather, what was a roar of a time, and now it’s more a case of things not being jolly unless I’ve a fan of cards in my hands. Or a stack of counters.’
    There they are, the words that Bea has been avoiding for months. How long will it be before Edward, like their father, vanishes to the Continent to be occasionally sighted at the tables in Biarritz or Baden-Baden? Bea feels her stomach turn. The idea comes to her of running over to the door, turning the key and removing it, telling Edward that he is never going anywhere without her again. If shecould, she’d move him back into her room, take from him some favourite toy and refuse to return it until he has mended his ways.
    ‘Edward,’ Bea says, ‘my darling, darling Edward, you must stop. You are the man of this house,’ she tries.
    ‘To all intents and purposes, it is Mother who is the steam engine.’
    ‘Steamroller, more like,’ mutters Bea.
    ‘Yet she always stops,’ replies Edward, ‘before knocking me down.’
    ‘Edward?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘How much have you lost?’
    ‘How much have I won, do you mean?’
    How can he joke now, how can he treat this, what he is doing, even the conversation they are having now, so lightly? Bea feels a degree of anger rising inside her.
    ‘And where does all this take you?’
    ‘I don’t know, Bea, I don’t know.’
    ‘You do know, Edward, you know perfectly well, and you must stop.’
    His head is low again, as though there is a puzzle stretched across his knees.
    ‘I am trying, Bea, truly I am.’
    ‘You must succeed, and if—’ yes, she’ll say it, and mean it too – ‘if you do not, I shall tell Mother.’ But Edward isn’t looking at her. How odd, a maid – Grace it is – has slipped in without knocking and Edward is watching her move across the room holding a tray as if it were a cushion with a crown on it. The girl lifts her head and Edward beams at her as though he is the sun itself, and the maid blushes. Bea feels a jab of annoyance.
    ‘You’re not listening to me,’ she continues, but he doesn’t move.
    ‘Edward,’ she growls at him.
    ‘Yes, Bea-Bea, but if I do succeed, then what on earth do I do with myself? I haven’t the patience for fishing. Despite Mother’s misfounded beliefs, I am a poor horseman, and in any case, likeyou, feel saddened by those foxes; they’re rather elegant, don’t you think? As for shooting, well, if I didn’t miss