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“Let’s make this a private conversation,” Tilly said.
Isaac grinned; he loved mother-son secrets.
Then Sebastian giggled. How could she hear that giggle and not let her attitude toward him thaw? She imagined the expression that accompanied the giggle: eyes sunk into creases of laughter, nose puckered up, lips stretched back to reveal the sexy gap between his front teeth. This was the Sebastian she’d fallen in love with—the boy who chased kites across the moors, or sat cross-legged on Tilly’s window seat holding his cigarette out of her bedroom window and laughing at who knew what. But that was before his father left and Sebastian prepared for a life of responsibility, before he grew old with worry for his mother, for his grandmother, even for Tilly. And that was the beginning of the end, because the more Sebastian coddled her, the farther she ran.
Tilly gave a fake cough. “My mother tells me you’re living in Bramwell Chase, Sebastian?”
Sebastian stopped giggling. “I’m renting Manor Farm.”
“Yes,” Tilly said slowly. “My mother told me that, too.”
“I didn’t tell you first?” Rowena stretched against the steering wheel. “Sure I had. But since you don’t answer my emails, I have no idea what you know.”
Tilly bit her lip. Challenging Rowena was not an exercise for the jet-lagged.
“Anyway. It’s a brilliant story, so I’m happy to repeat it.” Rowena tailgated a BMW and flashed her lights, while Tilly sank lower in her seat. “I was in town for a meeting at the bank. No offense, Sebastian, but ruddy bankers. It’s always something. I walked in and there he was. Well, I about died.” She smacked the steering wheel and the baubles around her wrist tinkled. “Can you imagine?”
Yes, Tilly could. Rowena would have shrieked and people would have gawked. Sebastian would have been embarrassed, but would have concealed it and kissed both her cheeks. He certainly wouldn’t have stood and stared as he had done with Tilly. She yanked a tissue from her pocket and shredded it.
“I had absolutely no idea he was back from Hong Kong not that he’s ever handled the Roxton account have you Sebastian but we went to dinner—” jeez, was she going to pause for breath? “—and Sebastian told me he needed somewhere to stay and I thought the Farm with all that fresh air for the children and here we are.”
Tilly glared at Rowena’s headrest. Rowena’s recent emails had been full of chatter about finding her gamekeeper passed out with an empty bottle of whiskey, and about Sunday lunch at Woodend with roast lamb and the first new potatoes of the season. But no mention of Sebastian. And Rowena didn’t keep secrets. She didn’t know how.
Rowena twiddled with the heat controls, and Tilly breathed through a surge of nausea. Was no one else suffocating in this car? If she threw up that would be interesting: Sebastian was vomit-phobic.
Tilly shrugged off her cardigan. “Back for good, Sebastian?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were in Hong Kong for the long haul. What changed your mind?”
“Who, not what. Fiona.”
Tilly sat up and watched the silver belly of an airliner soar above them. “She’d had enough of Hong Kong?” Was the plane full of holidaymakers, businessmen and women? People fleeing?
“She’d had enough of me.” The front passenger seat groaned as Sebastian swung around. “Mind if I smoke? In front of Isaac?”
He never managed to quit, then. And yes, she did mind him exposing Isaac to secondhand smoke. But she hadn’t studied Sebastian’s face until now, hadn’t looked beyond the grooming to notice the purple welts under his eyes. She shook her head and prayed she had misunderstood, because Sebastian single plus Tilly single equaled a complex math problem. And she hated all things math. Sebastian cracked open his window. Cellophane crinkled, a lighter flipped open and she heard him breathe.
Tilly rubbed at a crust of strawberry jam on her jeans. “Fiona left you?”
“Yes.” Sebastian dragged on his cigarette.
“I’m sorry.” So, she didn’t plan to forgive him, and she didn’t want to hate him. Could she settle on indifference with a soupçon of pity? She could feel that for a squished squirrel on Creeping Cedars, and squirrels were public enemy number one.
A counterpane of fields ripped past, retreating from the invasive ground cover of London. What a different view this was to the one from I-40, where wide banks disappeared into acres of forest. Her body tingled with something that felt strangely like longing. But before Tilly could muse further, a sense of unease prickled, and she turned from the window.
Sebastian had angled the rearview mirror toward himself and appeared to be rubbing his eye. But it was a ruse; he was watching her. His eyes delved deeper—with curiosity, lust, wistfulness? Or was it need? Did he need her the way she had needed him after David died? If she were closer, she could concentrate on Sebastian’s eyes. Were they gray, the color stated on his passport, or murky green, the color of ocean reflecting storm clouds? Before she could decide, he looked away.
Terrific, she’d have to forgive him after all.
* * *
She wanted to stay asleep, but hushed voices intruded, waking her before she was ready. Where was she? Oh, right, still ensnared in the Discovery. Rowena whispered, “Want me to tell her?” and Sebastian replied, “No, I’ll take care of it.” And Tilly decided to play possum.
“Doing all right?” Rowena asked. “Sorry. Bloody stupid question.”
“Yeah.” A lighter flicked. “Bloody stupid question, darlin’.”
Darlin’? Said in jest and the dropped g made all the difference, but a term of endearment passing between Ro and Sebastian? Tilly held her breath, hoping that for once Sebastian would spill his emotions, not conserve them. But he remained silent, curled in on his thoughts like a turtle marooned in the middle of the road. And Tilly had to move; her buttocks were numb.
“Aha,” Rowena said. “Sleeping Beauty and my little prince stir. Did we nap well, my darlings?”
“Not especially.” Tilly’s neck cricked and she tugged on it.
“We’re here, Mom! Look!” Isaac grabbed at her. “We’re here!”
The road dipped under an arc of overhanging beech trees. Ivy-covered banks rose on either side of the car, and they were thrown into a leafy tunnel of silvery shade. Tilly wanted to scream her happiness, to rush from the car and kiss the ground. Who gives a monkey’s about anything! She was home, back in the place where life waited for her, unchanged. She lowered her window and inhaled cool air and the smell of fresh-cut grass. No heat, no humidity, no cicada buzz, nothing but the bleating of sheep.
They emerged into brilliant sunshine as the bank slipped into a hedgerow of hawthorn, bindweed and elder knotted with blackberry brambles. A blue tit churred, and Tilly’s heart answered with a symphony of joy. Isaac’s first English summer! He was in for such a treat.
A woman clopped by on a piebald horse and touched her velvet helmet in greeting, but Rowena, ever the sun-slut, was oblivious. “The sun!” She pointed and bounced like a child tied up with excitement on Christmas morning. “Oh, the sun!”
Rowena continued to pay more attention to the sky than the road, but thankfully, drove below the speed limit. Not that she would ever speed through a village.
“Now, poppet. What shall we do for this trip’s outing?” Rowena said. “Isaac and I always have a day out,” she explained to Sebastian. “Of course, being here in the summer has so many more possibilities. Tilly and Isaac normally come back for Christmas. Well, not to celebrate Christmas, since they don’t.”
“You gave up on Christmas?” Sebastian held his cigarette to the window, but turned briefly.
“My husband was a practicing Jew.” Tilly watched a streak of smoke leak out through the open window. “And since we have a liberal rabbi, Isaac’s been raised in the Jewish faith. He thinks Jesus lives at the North Pole with twelve reindeer, don’t you, Angel Bug?”
Isaac rolled his eyes. “Mom! I haven’t believed that since I was young.”
“I converted after David died. It made sense for Isaac.” Which was true. A five-year-old could hardly go to synagogue alone. At the time she had told herself she was giving David a final gift, and maybe, back then, she’d believed it. But today she saw her conversion for what it was: an act of atonement. No. She shoved the thought aside, but there it was again, coiling in her gut: guilt, the universal motivator for every major decision she had made in the past three years.
They crawled around the curve of the church wall and passed the yew trees that marked the mass graves of medieval plague victims. Beyond, fields dotted with chestnut trees and grazing sheep tumbled over the horizon. Tilly held her breath and waited. Nothing must taint this happiness percolating in her heart, because any minute…yes! She exhaled as they emerged on a small rise. Waves of pink and red valerian poked out from the foundations of the ironstone cottages hugging the High Street, their thatched roofs spilling toward strips of garden stuffed with lupines, delphiniums, fading roses and gangly sweet peas. Tilly’s eyes scooted over every plant. How she had missed the gardens of Bramwell Chase, with untamed perennials rambling into each other and lawns dotted with daisies and clover. These were real gardens, not the landscaped yards of Creeping Cedars with squares of chemically enhanced grass, rows of shrubs lined up like marines awaiting inspection, and the gag-inducing smell of hardwood mulch.
“Now, dear heart,” Rowena said to Isaac. “Name your outing. But not Legoland again. That gift shop bankrupted me last time. What about the Tower of London? You can see where they chopped off heads. And the crown jewels are good for a quick look-see.”
“How about Woburn Safari Park?” Sebastian gave a shrug. “Archie and Sophie—” aha, that was his daughter’s name “—love it. Monkeys climb on your car, parrots take nectar from your hand.” Isaac sat still, mouth open. “And the gift shops are terrific.” Sebastian gave Rowena that smile, the one that was more of a twitch at the right corner of his mouth. Tilly twisted her legs around each other.
“Fab idea. I—” A mechanical rendition of “Rule Britannia” chimed from Rowena’s lap. “Bugger. Phone.” Rowena rootled around in the folds of her skirt. “Sebastian? Take the wheel.”
Cigarette dangling from his mouth, Sebastian shook his head in disapproval, but reached across and grabbed the steering wheel while Rowena chattered into her cell phone. Sebastian had grown up fawned over by women—his grandmother who had lived with the family, his mother, his two older sisters—and yet he’d always been oblivious to sexual cues, incredulous when confronted by lust. His effortless movements, however, suggested that he was finally comfortable with his sexuality. Which was good for Sebastian—Tilly gulped—bad for her. Life was so much easier when she had thought of him as dead. God, she needed out of this car.
“Cool,” Isaac said. “Rowena can drive without any hands.”
“Not cool.” Tilly raised her voice. “Dangerous and illegal.”
“That was Daddy. Thanks, Sebastian.” Rowena snapped her phone shut and reclaimed the steering wheel. “Sends oodles of love. He and Mother are scheming to open a rest home for aging ex-pats. Think we should invest, Haddy? You could wheel me around in my bath chair while I find us a couple of geriatric Adonises. So many men, so little time.”
Flashes of Rowena’s ex-lovers whizzed through Tilly’s mind. Poor Ro, she could never find enough love, whereas Tilly had had more than her share.
“But Isaac’s my main squeeze.” Rowena fired off a string of air-kissses. “Aren’t you, poppet?”
“Yes. I. Am.” Isaac thrust out his chest with eight-year-old machismo.
Tilly stretched and yawned.
“Feeling icky?” Rowena asked.
“Bit tatty round the edges.”
“Rats. So you won’t want to join us for lunch. Well I did say—didn’t I, Sebastian—that you’d be too tired. We’ve a table for two booked for noon at The Flying Duck. I could easily make it four. But I can see you’re both pooped.”
Isaac sprang up and down silently as if to contradict her.
Tilly rubbed her temples. A table for two?
“Nope, much better plan!” Rowena thumped the center of the steering wheel, and the horn sounded. Tilly and Isaac jumped. “Come to Sunday lunch at the Hall! Tilly, bring your mother. Sebastian, bring the children. Isaac? It’s time Aunty Ro taught you croquet. Croquet? What am I saying? Ever played cricket?”
“No. But isn’t it the same as baseball? I’m good at that.”
Sebastian doubled over and appeared to be choking.
“Poppet, we need to educate you in the ways of cultural diversity. And it just so happens that this man sitting next to me, the one who’s about ready to pop his clogs—” Rowena smacked Sebastian between the shoulder blades. “Which, by the way, is an excellent reason for never taking up smoking, filthy habit.” Rowena grabbed Sebastian’s cigarette and sucked on it. “This man was the youngest pupil in the history of Rugby School to make the first X1, which is V.I.S.”
“Very Important Stuff!” Rowena and Isaac squealed in unison.
Tilly didn’t join in the laughter. She was chewing on her thumbnail, wondering why she had forgotten about Sebastian and the first X1, and why Rowena had remembered.
Chapter 9
Tilly watched the Discovery tear out of the driveway and tried not to feel like the duped heroine in an episode of The Twilight Zone. Ro and Sebastian were locked in some conspiracy, and her mother? They hugged, and Tilly’s fingers touched bone. Her mother had lost more than weight since Christmas. She had shrunk in on herself; she had aged.
“You look washed out,” her mother said.
“And you look tired. The life of leisure too much for you?”
“You know me. I rarely sit. Having this much time—” Her mother cleared her throat. “Makes me feel old and dependent.”
The shrill cry of magpies accompanied by a throaty cuckoo-cuckoo sneaked up from the paddock. As a child, nothing delighted Tilly more than the first cuckoo of the season. And everything in Tilly’s favorite garden was as it should be. The cherry tree was wrapped in stockings to keep birds from the fruit, the herbaceous border was a mass of pinks, blues and lavender, and clusters of white rambling rector blooms smothered the stone wall. Her father had planted that rose. How he loved his roses! How her mother interfered when he tried to tend them. But today, Woodend was a flat canvas; it didn’t soothe.
In Tilly’s mind, her mother was always forty years old, plowing through the black waves off the coast of Cornwall with her neck rigid and her hair dry. This morning, however, Mrs. Haddington looked less like a woman defying the Atlantic Ocean and more like an old dear who hadn’t noticed that the left side of her silk blouse hung over the waistband of her skirt.
“I was so bored yesterday, I attempted to knit a tea cozy for the church bazaar.” Her mother tucked in her blouse, then puffed up her thick, white bob. “Which is utterly ridiculous, given this.” She waved her bandaged hand. “How was it, seeing Sebastian again?”
“Mum.” Tilly issued a warning.
Her mother nipped a leaf from the Lady Hillingdon rose that snaked around the back door. “Black spot.” She tutted. “You’ll have to spray. Marigold says it’s a nasty separation. Between Sebastian and Fanny.”
“Fiona.” Tilly watched a pair of sparrows frolic in the stone birdbath. “And Marigold knows this how?”
“She heard it from Sylvia, who heard it from Beryl, who has the same woman-that-does as Sebastian—Mabel Dillington. There’s more.”
Tilly had always wanted eyes like her mother’s. Eyes you couldn’t ignore. Eyes that were the bright blue of a Carolina sky. Tilly’s eyes were pale and translucent, the color of porcelain brushed with a robin’s-egg wash. They made her look ethereal, when she yearned to be an Amazon.
“There’s evidence of a relationship.” Her mother had yet to blink.
Tilly scuffed her Doc Martens boot through round, evenly sized pebbles in coordinating sand tones. Unlike Tilly’s gravel, which was made up of lumps of quartz and splinters of gray rock, her mother’s driveway was perfect. “I’d forgotten how rumors fly in this place. Shame on you for listening.”
“Hardly rumor. And there’s no need to be sanctimonious. Mabel saw the Discovery parked outside Manor Farm yesterday at 6:00 a.m. Now. Where did Isaac and Monty disappear to?” Her mother hobbled up the stone step and through the back door.
Tilly raised her face into the damp, morning air. The sun had vanished, replaced by a fine Scotch mist. So they’re having sex. Big whoop. I just need to figure out how to avoid them for six weeks.
An empty truck rattled along the High Street. Empty trucks—when did she stop calling them lorries?—sounded different from heavily loaded ones. It had to do with the way they hit the dip on the corner. She gazed through the gateway, the place where she had met David. And then she stared back at the house, the place she had longed to run to after he died. After he died because of her. She’d grown used to the guilt, but it was always lurking. And when she was tired, as she was now, it thudded inside her skull like a migraine.
“Tilly! Phone!” her mother called from the kitchen. “A James Nealy?”
* * *
“Good flight?” James grabbed the rail on the treadmill, let go and repeated. Six times. Would she shriek? Accuse him of being a two-bit stalker? But despite what the voice had told him yesterday—over and over—he wasn’t a stalker. Although he had memorized the state harassment laws just to make sure.
“Are you an insomniac?” Tilly said. “It can’t be much later than 5:00 a.m. your time.”
He had prepared for incredulity or hostility, nothing else. And yet she’d asked about his sleep habits. What did that mean?
The treadmill whirred beneath him. “I exercise every morning from four-thirty to six-thirty.” That was probably more information than she needed.
“You get up at four-thirty? Are you crackers?”
What the hell did crackers mean? Who knew, but it didn’t sound good. So yes, clearly he had given her too much information. She was probably freaking out at this very moment, dialing 911 on her cell phone to report him for infringing the state harassment law that included: To telephone another repeatedly, whether or not conversation ensues, for the purpose of abusing, annoying, threatening, terrifying, harassing or embarrassing any person at the called number. Was he annoying her?
“Have you made a decision?” He spoke quickly, a preemptive strike in case she was considering hanging up.
“James.” Her voice dragged with exhaustion. He should’ve waited another hour at least, given her a chance to unpack. But it had taken all his restraint to not call her at 4:30 a.m. “I promised you an answer in September.”
“Can’t wait that long.”
“You’re worse than a child. Isaac was never this demanding, even at three.”
His pulse slowed as her accent, soft and warm, soothed him. He actually thought about crawling into bed and going back to sleep. After he’d showered, of course. “Do you talk to all your clients this way, or just me?”
“I have wholesale customers, not clients, for this very reason. And no, I haven’t given your project one iota of a thought. I just walked in the door after twelve hours of traveling, and all I care about is where I packed my toothbrush and whether there’s a pair of clean knickers nearby.”
“Is that so?” An image assaulted him, of Tilly wearing nothing but a scarlet thong and gardening gloves. He shook back his hair and upped the speed on the treadmill.
“How did you track me down?” Tilly asked.
