If the Shoe Fits (9 page)

Abby looked down at her lap.

“Bye, Abs. Thanks again for being here.”

“Of course.” She looked up at her older brother. So precise. So happy. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

“Not even an oil spill?” he joked.

“Not funny. Go already.”

He smiled and headed out of the small dining room.

Bronte’s face turned from misty-eyed to brass tacks in a flash. “What the hell is going on with you and Tully?”

Damn
it
, thought Abby. She had thought she was going to make a clean getaway. “We’re fine.”

“No you’re not,” Bronte said plainly. “You looked totally annoyed with her last night, and this morning, you barely got up from the table to say good-bye.”

“I put the paper down,” Abby said with a guilty pick at her cuticle.

“Abby. Look at me, honey. What’s going on?”

Over the past few months, Abby and Bronte had bonded quick and close. Their shared outlaw status in the eyes of the dowager duchess threw them into one another’s highest estimation.

“I don’t know, Bron.” Abby looked up and tried not to cry. “I just don’t…” She looked away, unable to hold Bronte’s look. “You and Max just look so effing happy. It’s not realistic for the rest of us, you know what I mean.”

Bronte grabbed her friend’s hands in hers. “Abigail Heyworth. It is totally realistic. If things have cooled with you and Tully, that’s just the way of it. I was so devastated when I broke up with the guy before I met Max. We can’t always get it right the first time around. Tully didn’t look like she was having the best time either, you know. Maybe one of you just needs to start the conversation…”

“Why does it have to be me?” Abby whined.

Bronte laughed. “Oh. Now that’s a really good reason to stay in a relationship. Too lazy to break up.”

Abby smiled at least.

“You’ll figure it out. But you’re so fabulous—”

Max’s sister snorted.

“What?” Bronte barked. “You are! It’s ridiculous how you play right into your mother’s hand that you can’t be hip and smart and gay or not or whatever you want to be. Just don’t wallow, okay? It doesn’t suit you.”

Abby nodded. “Thanks, Bron. I’ll try. But I just can’t see myself telling Tully…what?
You’re just not enough
… that sounds so horrible.”

Bronte shrugged. “She’s not enough for you. There. I said it. You need some dynamic woman who’s going to make you shine like the fucking sun.”

Abby laughed. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Bron. But I don’t know about that. Sounds like someone ends up burned.”

Max poked his head in the small room. “You two still solving all the problems of the world?”

“I wish,” Abby said. “If I have to read one more story about those women in Afghanistan, I’m going to throw up.”

“Charming,” Max said.

The two women stood up and Abby gave Bronte a strong hug. “Congratulations about the baby, Bron.”

“Thanks, Ab.” Bronte held Abby a bit away from her. “Take care of yourself, okay? You deserve every good thing.”

“Car’s waiting,” Max prodded.

“Okay! Okay!” Bronte gave Abby one last hug and then turned to Max, and the three of them went out into the courtyard to load up the car that was taking the newlyweds to the airport.

Devon had gone up to his room to shower and change and pack. He’d left his car at Dunlear the week before, while he was in Vegas, so he could drive himself back into town. He finished collecting his things, threw his bag into the trunk of his Aston Martin, and was back in front in plenty of time to bid the happy couple farewell on their way to the airport.

There were still tons of workers breaking down all the wedding paraphernalia, hauling out rented tables, sound equipment, banquet chairs, and potted palms. Devon and Abby stood amidst the controlled chaos and watched their brother and sister-in-law—the duke and duchess, they amended—being driven down the long gravel lane.

He turned to Abby, both of them quickly ducking to avoid an eight-foot metal pole perched carelessly on a mover’s shoulder.

“Party over,” he said to his younger sister.

“What happened with blondie, Dev? She take a little piece of your stone-cold heart?” Abby joked as they walked across the black-and-white marble floor of the vast entry hall.

Devon became peevish. “Why does everyone keep implying I’m heartless?!”

“Whoa.” Abby stopped them both at the bottom of the red-carpeted stairs. “I never said you were heartless. It was a joke. You okay?”

He shook the flop of hair off his forehead and shoved his hands into the pockets of his beige moleskin jeans. “Yeah. I’m fine. I guess she got under my skin a bit. I’m not used to it.”

“Ha!” Abby laughed. “This is going to be good.” She slapped his upper arm. “I’ll see you in town later this week. I have some stuff I need to do before I go.” With that, she turned up the stairs and went to pack her bags.

The motorways were not crowded since it was still early in the day on Sunday, and Devon was back in town well before supper. He thought of calling round to one of his mates, but decided to pick up a curry and stay in. His flat was on the south bank of the Thames River in one of architect Daniel Russell’s most famous large-scale, mixed-use, commercial-residential projects: Quayside. The open plan, ultra-modern, minimalist apartment suited Devon Heyworth perfectly. He might have been perceived as the foppish faux-earl when he was playing that part (smiling gamely for the photographers from
Hello!
or attending the infrequent royal wedding), but his real interests were far more serious, and almost entirely unknown to everyone.

Except Max.

Devon had, from a very early age, been quite adept at puzzles, codes, games of chance, and tests of logic. And while he thoroughly enjoyed playing chess or batting around financial equations with Max, he never did so with anyone else. His mother’s not infrequent references to him as “the spare” had led to his deep-seated belief that any show of confidence, proficiency, or intellectual expertise on his part would lead to her version of runner-up ducal training. He had given very little thought to what he
did
want out of life, though he was quite certain about what he did
not
want: deputy duke instructions from the dowager duchess topped the list.

A woman of his mother’s cunning was no fool. One did not rise to the rank of the Dowager Duchess of Northrop through sheer happenstance. Devon had to pay particular care to his tone of voice, speech, and topics whenever they spoke. She was too shrewd to overlook the slightest deception and would have picked up on the merest hint of irony. So, for as far back as Devon could recall, if his mother happened to be home from London and came upon Max and Devon discussing something esoteric, Devon would immediately leap to greet her, hoping his effusion would bar any interest she may have had in what they were talking about. His hopes were realized. A combination of her ego and his eagerness led to the unanticipated, happy coincidence that the duchess misinterpreted his very particular concealment for a very particular attention to her. As a result, she adored him unequivocally.

Claire was her first child, on whom she had lavished years of “only child” attention, imprinting her with what Devon saw as an unhealthy mix of arrogant female entitlement and piquancy. Next came Max, who was the duke. Period. Devon was her Dearest Devon. In her mind, he admired and honored her, whereas the rest of her children simply misunderstood the extent of her responsibilities. As for Abigail, well, to the Duchess of Northrop’s mind, there was no accounting for Abby and her eccentricities. When asked about her wayward fourth and final child, the duchess simply smiled blandly and half-joked that she probably should have stopped at Devon.

By the time he got to university, Devon had spent so much time hiding behind his false front of average intelligence at Eton that he had fooled nearly everyone. Ironically, he had inadvertently created the very role he sought to escape: he was always a very strong second.

Then, after three months at the London School of Economics (his feigned mediocrity extended to his refusal to apply to either Oxford or Cambridge, bolstered by his desire to misspend his wild youth in the heart of the capital), he slipped up. While more or less dozing through yet another mathematics lecture, he heard the professor ask a particularly easy question and, in a daze, Devon raised his hand, answered the question, and went back to doodling random calculations for the radius of a circumsphere.

The room went completely quiet.

He looked up at the professor and stopped doodling. He hated drawing attention to himself, to his academic self, and was worried he had done so. The professor put down the stylus he had been using to write on his tablet computer, which was projected on the screen in the front of the lecture hall.

“Mr…”

“Heyworth,” Devon offered tentatively.

“Mr. Heyworth. Please elaborate.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Very well. If you are unable to admit you just grabbed that number out of a hat, I might get on with the lecture that, some students at least, have come to hear. If you, on the other hand, would be less bored elsewhere, perhaps you should consider transferring into a more
challenging
course.”

The silence was almost physically painful in Devon’s ears. No one was going to step in for him. Where was Max?

He was embarrassed to admit that that was always the first thing that popped into his supposedly postadolescent mind when he felt the claustrophobia of his intelligence. The terror of discovery. Max knew how to deflect anyone.

On the other hand, Devon was not an infant, and this was a maths lecture after all. He didn’t need to play the
utter
fool.

“Well, I… could you repeat the question please?” He was only stalling, of course, and it seemed this teacher was not the droning idiot Devon mistook him for.

“I think not. Explain your answer, please, Mr. Heyworth.”

“Very well. For the regular tetrahedron, the formula for a solid angle at a vertex suspended by a face will, in my experience, produce steradians identical to those in the apex angles in excess of one radian. Hence, my answer was 4.735.”

The rest of the students in the class looked as though they had accidentally stepped into advanced Finno-Ugric when they had, in fact, signed up for basic Spanish.

Professor Millhaus picked up his stylus, seemingly unimpressed, and returned to his podium to continue his lesson.

Devon thought he had sounded acceptably fair to middling.

“Please see me in my office after class, Mr. Heyworth. Now, back to regular tetrahedrons…”

Millhaus continued in his dull monotone, hoping against hope that this Heyworth boy might actually have a brain. Perry Millhaus had spent the past fourteen years teaching first-year mathematics to the entering marketing students who needed to fulfill their requirements before moving on to the more advanced courses. There had been bright rays of intellectual promise along the way, but most went on to acquire business degrees, and—while Perry was the last one to criticize a healthy interest in the acquisition of a tidy income—those students were not genuine mathematicians.

Those interested in pure mathematics were rare in his classroom. Millhaus had somehow spent a decade and a half of his prime years prattling on about the same bland concepts. All he had craved was a tenured position at a respected university, and that was all he got. A childhood of financial uncertainty had made him blindly committed to an adulthood of financial security. Nothing risky. Nothing daring. Just secure. And, if abject boredom was the price he had to pay, then so be it. But maybe, just maybe, the young Heyworth was more than the lazy peacock he appeared to be.

After class, Millhaus pestered Devon so mercilessly that he was finally able to crack the student’s absurd attachment to feigned mediocrity. Devon and Perry hammered out a deal of sorts that gave them both a much-needed intellectual outlet. Perry was able to discuss ideas and concepts that he had no interest in broaching with his professional colleagues (faculty camaraderie was anathema to him), and Devon was able to enjoy the freedom of his own intellectual pursuits without anyone knowing. For his part, Perry promised to give Devon no grades above solid high seconds. Since neither of them had a particular care for financial gain (Perry was perfectly secure; Devon was astoundingly rich), they decided to publish all of their joint work directly and anonymously onto open source mathematical discussion boards. Ten years on, Devon and Perry still met on a monthly basis to discuss the latest mathematical conundrum, architectural puzzle, or financial observation.

After an enjoyable university career spent under the radar at LSE—not only under the radar, but usually underground at dance clubs and late-night bars—Devon met with Max to talk about what he should do next. Max had recently decided to embark upon a monstrously ambitious PhD program at the University of Chicago and voiced his wish that Devon should join him.

The laughter that constituted Devon’s reply could be heard across the pub and out into the crowded mews off of Berkeley Square. Devon had absolutely no intention of entering an educational institution ever again, having just barely escaped the confines of the classroom and thus fulfilled what he understood and accepted to be his filial debt to his parents. He wanted to do something nominally sexy. He wanted to drive an obnoxiously fast car, live in an aggressively modern apartment that was
not
child-friendly, stock his wine rack with big Barolos, and shag. In reverse order.

Architecture seemed the thing.

Max smiled at his brother over the frothy top of his pint of beer. “Architecture is great. Did you think you might use your degree? Computer-aided design and all that?”

“For some reason, the ladies like architects. That was my main factor when narrowing down the field, of course—that, and what I might be able to do with the least possible effort. I just looked up sexy professions, you know, the guy most likely and all that, and the top five were athlete, fireman, doctor, architect, or model.”

Max’s smile encouraged Devon to elaborate.

“I’m too lazy to be a professional athlete… snooker maybe, but the hours, you know, or Formula One driving, but then there’s all the expense, danger, and travel bother. Fireman… such a mess, and again, unplanned interruptions, late-night calls, going into burning buildings, and all that… I could always do a bit of volunteer fireman stuff if my magnetism starts to wane.”

Max was smiling and shaking his head as he listened to his younger brother go on without a hint of irony.

“Doctor? Ridiculous… who has the time to sit through another five years of boring lectures? And again, angry sick people calling at all hours. No thanks. Model?”

Max burst out laughing and almost spit his beer across the bar.

Devon half stood up from his barstool to get a better look at himself in the angled mirror above the shelf of spirits behind the bar. “What? I’m not half bad.”

“Oh, Devon.” Max tried to contain his laughter. “You are a prize. Of course, you could work the runways… show me your walk!”

Devon smiled and situated himself back into his seat. “So that left architect. And, not like I am looking for a life of the mind or anything, but I thought I could do
some
mathematical or computer-related something or other without the nuisance of graduate study. Honestly, I don’t know what you think you will find in Chicago, of all places. Five years of discussing
anything
, much less statistical linear and nonlinear regression analyses, sounds like a recipe for heartbreak.” Devon turned to face his older brother full-on, grabbed his upper arms firmly, widened his eyes, and proclaimed theatrically, “Don’t do it! Stay with me! I can’t bear it!”

Two twentysomething women were walking past just then and smiled warmly at the two brothers: Max had come straight from the office and his suit jacket was slung over the back of his chair, his blue-and-white striped shirt open at the collar, dark wavy hair disheveled, gray eyes gleaming; Devon had on his perpetual uniform of a T-shirt with something ridiculous written on it (preferably provocative or meaningless or both), a perfectly worn-in pair of old blue jeans, and an alluring mop of light brown hair that always looked like it was two weeks past needing a trim and fell seductively across one eye.

Devon released his hold on his brother’s upper arms, picked up his pint of lager, and raised it to the two women in mock salute. “Well, hello, ladies.”

Devon glanced briefly at Max, then back at the charming little redhead who had apparently decided to stay. “My brother was just leaving, weren’t you, Max?” Devon asked, without turning to look at Max. “He’s moving to America to blaze his own trail, make his way in the world.” Devon made a vague, broad circular gesture with his free hand. “He’s a thinker.”

Max took the last swig of his beer, stood up, threw his coat over one shoulder, and grabbed his briefcase from where it had been lodged between his stool and the wainscoting at the foot of the bar. “Please take my seat, Miss…?”

“Tina! I’m Tina; nice to meet you.” She looked at Max for a split second then let her attention return to Devon.

“Off you go then, Max. And try to loosen up a bit, old man.”

Tina climbed up onto the barstool that was still warm from where Max had been sitting, and within seconds, she and Devon were leaning toward one another and sharing humorous, probably scandalous, bon mots. Max just shook his head in wonderment and headed home to his mews house in Fulham.

Devon ended up applying for an entry-level position in the Specifications Department at the architectural firm of Russell + Partners. His grades didn’t open any doors, so he had to wait a few months and call in a few favors until he was finally able to ingratiate himself with the friendly female members of the Human Resources Department. By Christmas of that year, he was gainfully employed.

Typically, the Duchess of Northrop thought the entire idea of a job that required daily attendance to the same tasks was preposterous. And it interfered with their spontaneous luncheons in town. She adored meeting her handsome son for lunch at Cipriani or Bar Boulud, then meandering around Mayfair or Chelsea arm in arm, shopping or not. Devon was attentive without being overly precise like his older brother, Max. Sylvia was finding it harder and harder to tolerate Max’s inflexibility and pointed retorts. (It was obvious to Devon that Max was exerting a touch of independence, nothing more, but he knew better than to gainsay his mother.)

Now, after six years at Russell + Partners, Devon was exactly where he wanted to be professionally.

Coasting.

No one on any of the design teams ever questioned his curious working habits. He was frequently gone from the office for long stretches of time, strolling in at odd hours of the night, treating the entire office as his lower-ground-floor recreation room. When he decided to buy a flat in the same building as his office, one friend had voiced her concern that he wouldn’t ever get any time away.

“All I have is time away,” he replied with typical honesty (though he often purposely implied mere humor). The truth of the matter was that Devon could do the complex calculations for suspension bridges, flying buttresses, and undulating titanium fascia in very little time, and from a computer sitting in his lap, wherever that might be.

So, when he showed up, buffed and polished, at 8:00 a.m. on the Monday morning after his weekend with Sarah—
Max
and
Bronte’s wedding weekend
, he corrected himself silently—he received the types of looks usually reserved for workers who sported yesterday’s clothes, a two-day growth of beard, and mumbled a request for a spare toothbrush. When he sat down at his carrel, took out his laptop, and fired up his computer, his colleague Narinda Channar couldn’t help giving a little verbal poke. “Pull an all-nighter, then, eh? Decided to come straight into the office?”

Devon looked at the attractive Indian woman and gave her as good as he got. “You were here before I was… were you shagging Russell again under the conference table?”

She smiled and went back to her own project.

The architects in the firm were divided into seven design teams, but the Specifications Department worked for all of them. At any given time, Narinda might be working on the local government regulations for the suspension bridge they were building outside of Athens or the labor negotiations for the stadium under construction in Reykjavik. She somehow managed to bend all those bureaucrats to her will. She had a sharp retention of the germane structural details of each project and was able to convey the big picture.

Devon, on the other hand, was happily entrenched in the details. The big picture was sometimes so far removed from what he was doing that he forgot about it altogether.

At work at least, he no longer gave much thought to his youthful paranoia about revealing his abilities to others. After about a year at Russell + Partners, Devon had been tapped by one of the lead architects. Michael Ryman had been commissioned to design a small museum to house an entire private collection of abstract sculptures, large-scale paintings, and a research library for all the provenance. Ryman decided to set up a small competition within the firm to see if anyone could create a structural casing that would be lightweight, reflective, and have zero variability in 120-degree heat or a 10-degree freeze.

The email announcing the contest was accidentally sent company-wide, and Devon started working on it as a game. Four days later, he had a clear idea of the chemical equations necessary, but he did not have access to a lab. He called Perry Millhaus and got the name of a scientist at the University of London, made a few calls, explained his idea, met with the professor, ran extensive tests over the following weekend, and arrived with a prototype that Monday morning.