AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He was grateful that she seemed to appreciate when silence was more healing than confession. She was one of the most sensitive, introverted people in his life; in many ways, her personality was radically different to his own, but nobody could better understand his need to sometimes be alone with his thoughts, to wrangle things through by himself.
The officiant had pronounced the happy couple husband and wife. Mick rose to his feet with the other three hundred guests, many of whom would be peripherally associated with his parents’ social interests and were unlikely to have even met Marcus and Emily. He found it difficult to believe that any of the people wiping at sentimental tears were intimately acquainted with the couple.
He did, however, genuinely hope that things worked out for his brother this time. He would be perfectly content to think of Marcus living out a congenial existence, at a distance insurmountable by car. Preferably in a different time zone.
As her veil brushed past him, he saw the new bride snatch her fingers from Marcus’s grip.
He wasn’t overly optimistic.
“How can anyone have this many friends?” Sophy whispered to him as they filed out of the church into the flower-bedecked courtyard. Her eyes were darting about, taking in the scene, widening when she recognised faces that had been reproduced in women’s magazines, but she kept her head and body quite still, as if trying not to attract notice. She made a startling contrast to the majority of the people around them, most of whom would all but cease to exist if they were locked in a room by themselves for any length of time. The creed of society: attention was everything. It was not an environment Mick had ever admired. Crowds tended to make him edgy for an entirely different reason. He doubted that Sophy’s wandering eye was scanning for concealed weapons. “Especially when they’re such a dick,” he heard her add under her breath, and a slight huff of laughter escaped his chest.
“They don’t,” he replied, putting a hand on her waist to steer her through the throng, resisting the urge to let it stroke down to her hip. “There’s no way that Marcus knows who even a tenth of these people are. Both sets of parents would have wielded an iron fist over the guest list. There’s no better opportunity to socially network.”
“Oh,” said Sophy, dodging back against him as a woman in violently purple silk barrelled past her like she was running for a penalty shot. “How romantic.”
The reception was kicking off straight away in the ballroom of a central city hotel, located conveniently close to both Sophy’s lodgings and his own. He figured a duty appearance for an hour or so would clear his familial obligations for this round. He doubted that Sophy would push to stay longer. She already looked as if she was slinking off to a public hanging. Her own, to judge by the facial enthusiasm.
She was enthralled by the decorations in the reception hall, though, where somebody had gone overboard with candles, Christmas tree lights and spiky flowers that probably cost almost as much as the diamonds hanging around the bride’s neck. Sophy immediately pulled out her digital camera and started taking close-up shots of wine glasses draped in crystal beads. He had no idea what women did with that sort of photo. Did they seriously ever look at them again?
“Oh, crap,” Sophy muttered, setting the camera aside to dig through her bag. A pack of tissues, a lipstick, her keys and various other items appeared on the table at his elbow. The bag was large enough and messy enough that she could have smuggled a small child in it. If she’d lost something, he anticipated her finding it approximately next Thursday. “I forgot to bring my phone. Damn it.”
“Do you need to make a call?” he asked, already reaching into his pocket for his own.
“No,” she said, looking bothered. “But I never come to things like this without my phone. That way if I find myself standing around with nobody to talk to, I can always fake text.”
He turned a laugh into a cough when he realised that she was serious.
“Would you like to hold on to mine?” he asked, keeping his face deliberately bland. He held it out between two fingers and she took it at once.
“Yes. Thanks.”
She was holding it to her chest like a kid clutching a teddy bear.
Mick was still grinning when he headed across to the bar to pick up a couple of glasses of champagne.
“The black sheep returns,” drawled a voice, and he turned to look at Marcus, who was draped across the mahogany counter. He also had a glass in each hand, but didn’t look inclined to share. A passing observer would be forgiven for writing him off as the token family soak rather than the man of the hour. “You seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“And you might want to slow down,” Mick returned coolly, propping an elbow against the bar as he studied his brother’s flushed face. Not the image of connubial bliss, by any means. Had their relationship been even a fraction less ugly, he might have been concerned. Sophy, for one, would probably bleed her heart out over the most obnoxious sister. His nature was obviously less forgiving. He found it hard to do better than indifference. “Or your wedding night might be even more disappointing for your bride than her demeanour would suggest.”
Marcus released a breath through his nose and eyed the champagne in his glass thoughtfully.
“I do so enjoy when we’re away from the mater and pater,” he drawled. He glanced over at the table where Sophy still sat, the phone in her hands. Mick followed the flicker of lasciviousness in his brother’s look, feeling his body tense. Sophy, oblivious to their regard, had the furrowed brow and engrossed look that usually accompanied her immersion in a book. From zero to reading in sixty seconds. “And the little woman, of course. It’s so much more interesting when the gloves come off, don’t you think?” He tipped his glass to Mick in a mocking salute. “Feel free to take a swing, won’t you? It can’t be healthy, I’m sure, to constantly repress any violent inclination.”
Mick shook his head. He felt a combination of pity and disgust as he met Marcus’s glinting gaze.
“I’m not sure what screws with your head the most. That I’m nothing like our father,” he said, “or that you’re everything that he is.”
And he turned his back and walked away.
***
The arrival of the first course finally diverted the attention of her verbose neighbour. Sophy let out a silent sigh of relief. She’d been nodding and smiling along to a lecture on the infant vaccination scheme for twenty minutes. She was fairly sure that she approved of the scheme in theory, but in logistical, halfway drunk detail, she hadn’t the faintest idea what the woman was talking about.
Mick had disappeared to get them drinks half an hour ago and the last she’d seen of him, he’d been waylaid by a crowd of cheek-kissers.
Steeling herself, she abandoned the dull safety of the table and ventured into the chattering hoards to look for him. The combined pitch of voices and laughter had become a sort of unified hum, rather like having an agitated bee inside her ear. Clinking glass and the thumping beat of music completed the universal sounds of a party.
She stood for a moment, looking around and feeling more than usually awkward. A man came up to her, leaned close and tried to make himself heard over the commotion. He asked a question about the guest rooms upstairs, of which she only caught the tail end. She had no idea whether he was genuinely seeking information or making an uninspired pass at her, so she gave an awkward shrug in return and slipped quickly away.
