and the butcher and the florist, and by December 27 parcels began to arrive, filling their small flat with party preparations. There were crates of vintage champagne, the best she could find on such short notice and marked up so drastically it took Johnny’s breath away to read the bill. But getting Delilah to change course once she got the bit between her teeth was like trying to hold back a storm. Far easier just to go along for the ride—and far more fun. She put him to work testing canapés and mixing cocktails, a taste for which she had brought with her from Louisiana, while she dashed off again on another of her interminable errands. She shopped for a party dress and chose flowers, and—to Johnny’s amusement—hauled home a gramophone and two dozen recordings to play on it.
“I’m surprised you didn’t hire musicians,” Johnny told her, only half in jest.
Her expression was thoughtful as she surveyed the flat. “I would have, but they’d take up too much room. If everyone we’ve invited turns out, it’s going to be a terrific crush, and I want them to have room to dance. They must be able to dance.”
“Why, exactly?”
“Because I’m doing some matchmaking. Poor Quentin Harkness was so gutted when I ran away with you, I thought I’d throw him a nice juicy little bone,” she told him, her eyes dancing.
“And what might the bone’s name be?”
“Evangeline Merryweather. She’s a darling girl. Granddaughter of one of those moth-eaten old earls who died without an heir so everything’s gone to some cousin or other. She’s had to go to work,” she said with a frisson.
“There are worse things in life than working for a living,” Johnny put in mildly.
“Not for a girl who hasn’t any skills, and Evie is hopeless. Darling, but hopeless. No, I need to marry her off, and now is the perfect time to find her a husband. We’ll have a pack of young men just itching for a pretty girl to make love to before they head off to war. Why not Evie?”
“It’s a fairly long way from wanting to make love to a girl to marrying her,” Johnny reminded her.
“Not for you. And if I can have you bagged and tagged in two days, I can do the same for Evie in a single evening. Just watch me.”
He burst out laughing. “So it was all just a bit of sport to you? And I was the trophy?”
“Precisely.” But she was grinning, and Johnny’s expression turned pensive.
“I think you’re out of your depth here, love. I’ll wager you can’t get Evie Merryweather paired off like one of Noah’s animals.”
“How much?”
They were alone, but Johnny was still too much of a gentleman to say the words above a whisper. “Come here and I’ll murmur into your delicate little ear.”
Chapter Two
Across London, Evangeline Merryweather was staring at the invitation and suppressing a groan. Her flatmate, an unpleasant girl named Marjorie, or Margery—Evie had never bothered to learn and cared even less—gave her a repressive look. “I say, some of us are trying to study here.”
Evie sighed and picked up her coat. “I was just leaving.”
“You will catch your death in this weather. And when you come over with a cold, don’t expect me to take care of you,” Marjorie called after her as she left.
“Of course not. You’re only studying to be a nurse,” Evie muttered as her coat caught on the door.
“What did you say?” Marjorie said, her voice sharp with suspicion.
“I said, I would never expect you to,” Evie said with an effort at brightness. She freed her coat and banged the door closed behind her. Marjorie was right. The weather was filthy, bitterly cold and sleeting heavily, but she couldn’t bear another minute cooped up inside. She had agreed to share with Marjorie on the recommendation of a mutual friend—a friend who had been firmly struck from her Christmas card list after the first fortnight of living with Marjorie. Evie had been cheerfully optimistic about her ability to live with a flatmate. She had been bounced around enough of her relatives’ homes to have honed her skills at accommodation. She had lived with adenoidal spinster aunts and religiously fanatical cousins and uncles who gambled. There had been a great-aunt who drank the cooking sherry and even a sort of second cousin who collected hair as a hobby, but nothing had prepared her for the sheer grimness of living with someone wholly lacking in humour.
“I can bear anything as long as I can have a bit of a laugh,” she told herself as she hurried down the street. She walked on, drawing in great deep breaths of the crisp, damp air. She walked all the way to Kensington Gardens and turned in to walk beside the Long Water. She hadn’t intended to go there, but whenever she needed to think, she found herself on the west side of the Serpentine in the leafy glade that sheltered the statue of Peter Pan.
It had appeared overnight on May Day morning of 1912. No warning, no fanfare, just a notice in the Times.
There is a surprise in store for the children who go to Kensington Gardens to feed the ducks in the Serpentine this morning. Down by the little bay on the southwestern side of the tail of the Serpentine, they will find a Mayday gift by Mr. J.M. Barrie, a figure of Peter Pan blowing his pipe on the stump of a tree with fairies and mice and squirrels all around. It is the work of Sir George Frampton, and the bronze figure of the boy who would never grow up is delightfully conceived.
Evie had hurried along to the park that May Day morning, as delighted as any child. Peter Pan was her dearest childhood friend, and watching him fly from the stage of the Duke of York’s theatre was her last truly happy memory, the only one unencumbered by the loss of her parents, the endless moving from place to place, from relation to relation as she was passed around like a hand-me-down garment that was nice enough but didn’t quite fit. Peter Pan was the last time she had fit, and whenever she felt low, her steps always carried her back to the little glade in Kensington Gardens where the boy who wouldn’t grow up waited.
He was alone now. The weather had driven everyone else away from the park, but Evie settled at his feet next to a particularly winsome rabbit. She was sheltered from the worst of the sleet, and the wind had died down a little. If anything, the brisk air invigorated her, and she pulled out Delilah’s invitation to read it over again.
It was written in a firm, dramatic hand. Delilah did everything with flair. The daughter of a divorcée, Delilah had been a glamourous debutante, the most sophisticated of their Season. Evie had been presented by an ancient aunt and had only agreed to go when the aunt had unearthed her own court presentation gown from sixty years before and promised it wouldn’t cost Evie a penny of her meagre earnings. It had kept the peace for a while, which was the only reason Evie let herself be trussed up like a Christmas turkey and thrust into the row of debutantes, plumes nodding gently overhead as they made their way down the queue. She had been placed next to Delilah and had stared openmouthed at the glorious creature with the curious accent and spectacular eyes. Everyone else looked nervous as cats, but Delilah merely glided along, a small smile on her lips as if it were all simply too amusing, and most amusing of all was the girl with the hideously unfashionable dress who made her laugh. Delilah loved nothing better than a good laugh, and by the time they were finished, she had looped her arm through Evie’s and towed her away to lunch at the Savoy. They exchanged pleasantries over the starters, but by the time the entrée was served, Evie had told Delilah her entire life story and when pudding
