To Love and to Cherish by Patricia Gaffney Page A

of irony. “Do you know, on the whole, I believe you’ve turned out better than I have, Reverend Morrell.”
    “Maybe you haven’t finished turning out, Lady D’Aubrey,” he said gently.
    “I have, though. Quite finished. Will you please call me Anne?”
    “Anne.” The honor wasn’t lost on him.
    “Well, now, isn’t this cozy. Anne and Christy, friends together. I’ve waited years for this.” Without stopping, Geoffrey headed straight for the drinks tray and poured out a glass of wine.
    “Geoffrey, it’s good to see you.”
    “Wonderful to see you!” He tossed off one drink and immediately poured another. “Missed you. Been thinking about you.” He looked at him for the first time. “Are you allowed out like that? Christ, man, you’re not in your full holy blacks!”
    Christy smiled, remembering that was what he and Geoffrey used to call his father’s clerical garb. “I only wear my ‘full holy blacks’ on grand occasions. Meaning no offense,” he said for a joke, turning to Anne.
    Her face shocked him. Gone were the humor and tentative friendliness, replaced by a careful blank mask, which nevertheless failed to hide a tension that verged on desperation. From that moment, the evening became hellish for Christy. Geoffrey’s jokes grated on his nerves like fingers on a chalkboard, because he’d begun to hear them through Anne’s ears. The forced bonhomie grew increasingly grotesque, and he found himself counting, like a temperance fanatic, the drinks Geoffrey consumed. Anne said almost nothing during the long, uncomfortable meal, during which she and Geoffrey never looked at each other. What was happening here? What was the source of this terrible unspoken strain? As green as he was, Christy had already been called upon to offer counsel to any number of troubled couples—but this went beyond any unsatisfactory marriage he’d ever encountered. There was a secret between the Verlaines, and he was beginning to be afraid that he was the last person who could help them. Because he had a stake, a favorite. His neutrality had been compromised.
    When dinner was finally over, he was afraid Anne would leave. “Will you join the gentlemen for their masculine brandy and tobacco?” Geoffrey asked her, with the drawling sarcasm Christy hated. “Or do you prefer your own company, my love?”
    She was ready to bolt, a polite exit line on the tip of her tongue. “Please join us,” Christy said quickly, seriously. Geoffrey glanced between them and laughed. She sent her husband a look that held such contempt, Christy shivered. “Very well,” she murmured, and they all three adjourned to the drawing room.
    Geoffrey continued to recount childhood experiences from his and Christy’s past, always flavoring them with a note of mockery or disdain. He seemed incapable of saying anything directly, unequivocally, without an edge of supposedly humorous cynicism. Christy wanted very much to know how he had gotten this way. But whenever he asked a question that might have revealed it—about his experiences in the army, the fabric of his life since they’d parted twelve years ago—Geoffrey always turned it aside with a joke.
    For the third or fourth time, he brought up the subject of the horse race he was dying for them to have. His vehemence increased by the hour, and his tack this time was to taunt Christy. “You’re afraid!” he pounced, as if the truth had just hit him. “You’re afraid I’ll trounce you and your overrated chestnut!”
    Christy shook his head, unmoved.
    “A hundred pounds,” Geoffrey offered next. “I’ll bet you could use a hundred pounds.”
    He laughed. “I haven’t got a hundred pounds,” he said candidly. “If you won, I couldn’t pay you.”
    “It doesn’t have to be for money, then,” Geoffrey offered, standing in front of the empty fireplace, spreading his arms wide. “We’ll just run our horses side by side as fast as we can. We won’t even notice who gets to the end