The Spells of Paradise

Chapter 16: In This Place We Call Home

Chapter 16: In This Place We Call Home

Lanfore, Hertfordshire

"A week, and no word," James shook his head and cursed foully. "A week... A bloody week!"

"Hmph?" Sebastian Lucas, James's good friend, whose family had moved to Lanfore a good while back, looked up from the daily paper. "Did you curse something?"

"Not something," James clarified, "someone."

"Yes, a woman, I know," Sebastian muttered. "It's always a woman, isn't it?"

"Must you be so blasé?" James growled at his smug friend. "Lucy left a week ago and I've received no word. No letter of explanation, no apology, nothing! She could be dead in a ditch somewhere on the road to God-knows-where, and I wouldn't know! This is preposterous!"

"Specifically that?" Sebastian asked. "That's a touch dramatic, don't you think? Perhaps it would be far more appropriate to find it... Shocking? Odd? Improper? Unkind?"

"You're useless, you know that?"

"And I hardly think that it's been a week," Sebastian continued, ignoring the insult entirely. "Three or four days, at most, yes, but not a week."

"Are you going to pick apart my every statement like a vulture scavenging bones?"

"Ah and here come to innuendos, I was wondering when they would make an appearance."

James cursed and turned to make for the door. "I am not listening to this."

Sebastian stood, placed the paper to one side, and followed him out of the study. "Have you spoken with your mother recently?"

"What would constitute as 'recently'?" James asked dully, starting down the stairs.

"As in any time between last week and this specific moment," Sebastian clarified blithely. "I wouldn't blame you if you haven't, mind, but do not leave it for too long."

"Noted, but I do not need anyone's advice to speak to my own mother," James grunted.

"I suppose not. Quite honestly, parents are demanding, aren't they? We grow up with them, they seem to understand us... It's comfortable. Then you yourself grow, and soon they become an obligation, despite... Well, mutual understandings."

"Charming thought, truly. And, to answer your question, we have not spoken. She still seems to be rather angry with me and avoids me like the Black Plague."

Sebastian chuckled at that. "Of all the women you do not want to anger, mothers should be the first on the list. No matter, she'll come round, won't she? After all, you're the provider now, aren't you?"

James snorted. "As if she would ever let that fact affect any of her power in this house."

"I should think not. You should make it right with her as soon as possible before she has you out on the street."

"I highly doubt it will come to that!"

"Right, of course."

James grunted at nothing in particular.

"So what are you going to do, then?" Sebastian pressed on, not letting the stillness of their conversation faze him at all. "About the other woman you seem to have angered, that is."

"I did not anger Lucy."

"Of course you didn't," Sebastian replied blandly. "So why do you think she was angry with you?"