Husband Material (London Calling #2)(68)

Aaaand there it was. Dead silence.

“Yaaaarrrrrrrr lsberg,” I repeated.

“Why do pirates like Jarlsberg?” asked Alex with near-biblical innocence.

I buried my head in my hands. “Alex, you have just told me a joke in which the implicit association between pirates and the syllable arr is the basis of the whole punch line.”

“Yes, but Jarlsberg doesn’t begin with arr, it begins with yar.”

“Yar is a valid substitute,” I insisted.

“He’s right,” agreed Rhys. “I often say yar when I’m doing a pirate.”

For a moment, Alex seemed to be processing, but then he nodded. “Ah, well in that case I consider the joke excellent, and you may attribute my lack of laughter to my failure to understand it instinctively.”



Ana with one n turned back around in her seat. “What type of cheese do you use to lure a bear out of a cave?” she asked.

Barbara Clench poked her head around the seat in front. “I don’t know,” she said, “what kind of cheese do you use to lure a bear out of a cave?”

“Come-on-bear,” replied Ana with one n, doing a surprisingly effective impression of somebody waving a piece of camembert enticingly in front of a large predator.

I laughed at that. I thought it deserved it. And so did everybody else. Well, everybody else except Alex.

“Do bears eat cheese, then?” he asked. “I would have thought they preferred honey. Or maybe…wildebeest?”

“Terribly sorry,” said Alex, as he led us down a plush-carpeted corridor lined with portraits of rich, dead wankers. “It’s just as Miffy and I need separate rooms—can’t see the bride before the wedding and all that—we’ve taken the two best suites already and obviously there’s a bunch of family up for the weekend so we’re going to have to stick you somewhere a bit substandard.”

Until I met Oliver, being stuck somewhere a bit substandard was very much how I’d lived my life. “Don’t worry about it. And thanks for, um, you know. The rescue and everything.”

Pushing open a door, Alex waved us through. “Oh, think nothing of it. Always happy to help out a chum. Besides, it gave me something to do. Fearfully excited about tomorrow and all that, but it does weigh on a chap.”

The substandard room turned out to be significantly better than sleeping in a bus and, for that matter, a fair sight better than sleeping in most houses I’d ever lived in. It was… Unlike Oliver, I didn’t know what era it was. Somethingian where the something was the name of a king and/or queen, but that didn’t exactly narrow it down.

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.”