And it seems to have worked out, he thinks now as he tosses the German book up into the air and catches it. After Sherborne he’d gone to Oxford to read economics, a subject in which he received passable (if not outstanding) marks, and which interested him just enough to hold his attention. From there, he moved to London, where, with the help of an old naval buddy of his father’s, he landed a job in the analyst program at Barclays. Much as before, his life during these nascent stages of adulthood seemed to follow a path of negligible resistance. He received promotions, raises; his financial security was such that he never had to live with a roommate. He knew he’d never become a managing director at the bank—his reviews were always impressive, but very rarely stellar—but that didn’t cause him any lost sleep. He saw the work it took to climb to Barclays’ upper echelons, and it was work that, quite frankly, he knew he wasn’t cut out to do. Perhaps more accurately, that he wasn’t willing to do. Occasionally, he’d remember the things that Tatiana had said to him; he’d recall the scathing tone with which she berated him, and he’d feel a lingering shame. These moments, though, weren’t too dreadfully difficult to mediate. There were enough charity dinners and galas and auctions happening at any given moment in London, and he found that all he need do was shell out five hundred pounds for a ticket to one, and partake in whatever picturesque version of Good it was selling, to alleviate a solid dose of that Tatiana-bred guilt. The events also had the added benefit of being, well, fun; they gave him an opportunity to wear his tuxedo, and get sauced on champagne, and cavort with his mates, a group of people who apologized for the trappings of their upbringings by making a deliberate show of them.
It was at one of these events (he can’t remember which one—they bleed together, like most of his twenties) that he first met Eloise. He knew after two years together that he wanted to marry her. Like so many decisions in his life, this was one that he didn’t think about particularly hard, or for particularly long. While they may not have been a perfect match (she got annoyed with his partying; he got annoyed with her getting annoyed with his partying), he was starting to suspect that perfect matches didn’t actually exist, anyway—at least, not when two sentient people were involved. In this way, he concluded, they were likely the best that either one of them was going to find, and thus the prospect of forgoing her and trying to find a relationship that was in some way a little closer to perfect only to later realize he’d let something wonderful go … well—one in the hand, as they say.
Besides, he thinks now, as he descends the stairs from his room to Horwood Hall’s kitchen, he loves her. He loves his life with her. A month ago they met for the second time with an adoption agency (an adoption agency! If only he had Tatiana’s address), and the very real potential of beginning a family together had him nearly combusting with excitement. A son! he kept thinking to himself, as the woman across the desk from them—a dowdy northerner named Fern—explained endless reams of paperwork. A son, a son, a son! In the cab on the way back to their flat, he hadn’t been able to stop shaking his leg, so gripped was he by excitement.
“You’ve got to stop doing that,” Eloise had said to him, resting a hand gently on his knee. “You’re driving me nuts.”
“I’m sorry.” He stopped shaking and gripped his thighs to hold them still. “This is all just so exciting.”
“It is.” She smiled, warily. “Still, I just … I don’t know.”
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “It’s going to be great.”
*
“Danke!” Frau Winkler kisses his cheek and takes the notebook from him.
“Bitte,” he says, grinning broadly. Having forgotten the rest of his German, and gripped with a very present need to escape the Frau’s butterscotchy breath without appearing rude, he says, “If you’ll excuse me, word is the speeches are about to start, and I worry if Eloise has to sit through Bixby’s toast without proper fortification there might not actually be a wedding tomorrow.” The Frau laughs; Ollie’s grin widens, and he winks.
Turning, he nearly knocks over the cello player that they’d hired for the evening—a striking, raven-haired beauty in a black dress and a gold necklace who Eloise met four months ago while she was planning a dinner for Mission: Breathe. Ollie raises an eyebrow and mouths oops; the girl smirks and lifts both eyebrows in response. As she readies her bow against the instrument’s strings, Ollie steals a peek at her ass and steps out onto the lawn.
He did want to find Eloise—that wasn’t a complete lie—though he has no idea when the speeches are set to start, or if there are to be speeches at all (there’s meant to be; after the fourth round of canapés circulate, Andrew Bixby is indeed expected to propose a toast. Andrew Bixby, though, is hardly reliable, particularly when free champagne’s involved). Really, he wanted to find her simply to be with her. His friends often mocked him for this sort of romantic sentimentality; most of them had been married for a few years already, and they constantly harassed him for his desire to start the rest of his life at the expense of his freedom.
He finally spots her on the opposite end of the lawn, where she’s standing with her siblings. She’s talking to Paul, and she looks tense—her shoulders are up near her ears—and this, again, makes Ollie smile. He likes Paul. He knows that lately she’s found him trying; she speaks often about a monumental shift that happened in Paul at some point during the past three years, this transformation from the brother she thought she knew into a neurotic, narcissistic stranger. Ollie doesn’t know about all that—he didn’t grow up with Paul (but then, neither did Eloise, really), so he hasn’t got much of a frame of reference. He thinks Paul’s funny, though. Hilarious, even. Fifty percent crazy, maybe, but Ollie knew enough sane people already. Besides, crazy could be fun, particularly when you only had to encounter it during holidays. And even then, didn’t he have a right to be a little bit nuts, what with his dad dying having basically disowned him? Sure, Eloise has said that Paul doesn’t know the things his father said about him; she’s said that Paul can never know. But then, how reasonable is that assumption? Ollie’s not the brightest—he freely admits that—but he suspects that if he were in Paul’s shoes, he’d know. He’d just have to. There’s never not-knowing a thing like that.
(Thinking of all this now, as he watches Eloise speak to her brother, Ollie congratulates himself on what he said to her when she recounted the whole sordid history between Paul and his father; how he told Eloise that if they adopted a gay son, he’d embrace him and love him from day one. He makes sure to mention this in passing to Paul whenever they’re with each other—just that he’s okay with gay people, and all. He thinks that it’s important.)
Alice, though. Eloise’s sister. She’s a tougher one to crack. The few times that they’ve all been together it’s seemed to Ollie that he can hardly glance at Alice without catching her glaring at him. Eloise has assured him that his fears are misguided, and that his paranoia is a product of his own thinking—“If she hates anyone,” she told him, “it’s me.” For whatever reason, though, this has done little to assuage his misgivings. Eloise had mentioned that she suspected Alice loathed her life in Los Angeles, and so he’d nearly tripped over himself getting her that job with Xavier Wolfson’s production company. Whenever he saw her, he unleashed his usual charm offensive—the smiles, and jokes, and compliments that had won over so many skeptics in the past. And yet, still she seems dead set on freezing him out. It drives him insane.