A Hopeless Romantic (26 page)

She took a deep breath. “Thanks,” she said. “A lot.”

“No,” said Nick. “Thank you. You have no idea.” He held her hands tightly, but his face was in shadow under the tree and she couldn’t see his expression.

“You neither,” she said.

“Well, let’s just agree we’re both total screwups, and we won’t fight about it,” he said.

“What are you a screwup about?” Laura said, curiosity getting the better of her.

“Trust me, Laura, we don’t have time for that now,” said Nick. “I won’t bore you with the many ways in which I’ve screwed up. You wouldn’t want to see me again.”

He didn’t sound self-pitying, merely detached, amused. It was impossible to gauge his real meaning, so Laura said cautiously, “Nick, about what I said earlier.”

“About what?”

“About that guy—the one I—”

He kissed her. “Forget about it.” His hands tightened on hers again; there was hardly any gap between them as they stood facing each other, her hips pressing into his. “That was then. This is now.” He stopped. “This
is
what this is, isn’t it?” He threw the question out snappily, as if it didn’t really mean anything.

Laura said hesitantly, “Nick—”

“I know,” he said, his voice full of laughter. “Let’s worry about that tomorrow. Or whenever.”

“Absolutely,” said Laura, as the sound of a heavy engine grew louder, coming toward them. She turned her head—there was the bus, its incongruous primary colors out of place in that lovely old street, this perfect, perfect evening.

“See you tomorrow.”

“Seven o’clock,” said Laura. “Tell Charles thanks for letting you out another evening.”

“I’ll tell him,” he said. “The Marquis of Ranelagh says thank you.”

“I’m honored,” said Laura, as the doors shuddered open.

He leaned down and kissed her, hard and swift, again. “Bye, gorgeous,” he said casually, stepping back onto the pavement.

The bus driver gave him a salute, doffing an imaginary hat. Laura sat down by the window and smiled at this piece of faux courtesy. She waved at Nick as the bus rolled gently down the road, out of the village, toward home.

She put her head against the glass and found she was smiling insanely, grinning ear to ear. She pulled her book out of her bag and tried to read, but couldn’t concentrate. Nick. Nick! Nick. She couldn’t stop smiling, and she told herself she had to calm down, that Mrs. Danvers would not be pleased at her schoolgirlish behavior. She pinched herself on the arm. Good grief, she was almost having a relapse. No. No more old Laura. She carried on looking out the window, thinking how sudden, how strange the whole thing was. She
mustn’t
start being her old self again, the person who had taken up running to impress a boy at university and sprained her ankle. The person who had convinced herself that the man who’d painted the office, Julian, was her future husband, because they both had grandmothers called Mary.

The book fell from her lap as the bus swung around the corner. Laura put her hand over her mouth and yawned. She ran her hand down over her lips, her neck, to her breastbone, wanting to remember how it felt to kiss him, touch him. She bent down to pick up the book, and saw that the postcard her dad had given her had fallen out and skidded across the scuffed lino floor. Smiling with recognition, glad Nick hadn’t seen it, she picked it up, and turned it over, and her mouth fell open with shock.

The seventh marquis smiled up at her from the card, his dark, intelligent eyes boring into hers. She gasped.

It was Nick. It was the spitting image of him. How could she not have seen it before? The hair, his eyes, the bony, rather arrogant face. Just a hundred fifty years earlier. She turned it over again, as if to check that she hadn’t picked up another postcard that happened to be lying on the floor of the Coastal Hopper. She read the caption on the back: “Dominic, Seventh Marquis of Ranelagh, Earl of Albany Cross, 1867–1928. In 1895, the
Illustrated London News
called him ‘England’s Most Eligible Bachelor.’”

Dominic. Nick.

chapter twenty-two

I
s it okay if I stay with Naomi tonight?” Laura asked casually the next day, as she was pushing the trolley around the supermarket with her mother.

Angela was humming with nerves, rapidly repeating ingredients under her breath. She turned her attention momentarily away from the bag of onions she was holding, and squeaked slightly as someone pushed past them. It was lunchtime, it was Friday—the supermarket was packed full of locals and holidaymakers alike, stocking up for what promised to be a boiling-hot weekend—perfect barbecuing weather. Laura waited behind her. She was tired and hadn’t slept well. Her head ached.

“Lulu doesn’t eat meat, does she?” Angela said, not listening.

“Lulu doesn’t eat anything, Mum,” said Laura, prying the onions from her mother’s frenzied grip and picking up a smaller bag. “Here, Mum, you wanted red onions. I asked you a question, do you know what it was?”

“Er…” Angela had wandered down the aisle and was looking at crisps. “Annabel’s always so snooty about these,” she said, brandishing a huge packet of semi-posh crisps. “Says they’re full of additives. But I rather like them, what do you think?”

“I think they’re great, and Gran likes them, too, remember? She asked you to get that exact flavor,” said Laura patiently.

“Oh, my goodness,” said Angela. “My memory.”

“Mum!” said Laura. “It doesn’t matter what Annabel thinks. Or what she wants. Gran’s
your
mum, isn’t she? And this is
her
birthday! Isn’t it!”

“Yes!” said Angela, slamming her fist down into the crisps section. There was a loud crunching sound as several packets burst. “Oh, dear,” she said, looking amazed at her own strength. “Good grief.”

“She winds you up,” said Laura. “Don’t worry about her. Simon’s coming back tomorrow, it’s Granny’s birthday, the sun’s shining, and everything’s fine.” She pushed the trolley on, blocking her mother’s way. “Now, is it okay if I stay with Naomi tonight? I’ll be back early tomorrow to help you before the others come, I promise.”

“Yes!” said Angela. “Bless you, darling. You’re quite right. Yes!”

“Yes to Naomi?” said Laura, hopping from foot to foot with frustration.

“Naomi?” said her mother, as if hearing the name for the first, not the third, time. “Oh. Again, dear?”

“Yes, I know,” said Laura. Her head was throbbing. “I’m sorry, but tonight is my last night, and it’s been so lovely to meet up with her again.”

“You’ve really enjoyed it, haven’t you?” said Angela, stopping to look at her daughter.

“Yes,” said Laura. “Yes, I have.”

“Do you think you’ll stay in touch?”

Laura gazed into the distance. “Not sure,” she said. “We need to talk about that tonight. About a lot of stuff.” She came back into the present with a jolt. “I—er, I mean, Naomi needs to sort all that out. With her ex. She’s got a lot of things to sort out.”

“Ah,” murmured Angela sympathetically. She picked up a bag of salad. “What about this? Looks nice.”

“It’s washed in tons of chlorine, and it’s really ecologically unsound,” said Laura, throwing the offending bag of salad back. “Oh, Mum,” she said in a rush of confidence, “I don’t know what she’s doing, to be honest.”

“Why?” said Angela, her head on one side. “Oh, dear. Why, what’s the problem with her boyfriend?”

Laura was silent for a moment. Then she said slowly, “She’s only just met him. But she thought—she thought he was great. That they were really good together. But he’s kind of lied to her.” Her eyes filled with tears; she turned toward the bags of salad again. “Oh, look,” she mumbled in a muffled voice. “Watercress.”

Angela wasn’t really paying attention, having drifted toward the vegetables. “Oh, dear. That’s a shame,” she said vaguely, covering her tracks, her eyes scanning the shelves like an SAS operative. “Carrots, ooh, yes,” she said. “Leeks.”

Laura leaned against one of the shelves and put her hand to her forehead. She felt hot and rather tired. A night of sleepless tossing and turning, of reaching out to grab her phone, wanting to text him and say, “I know who you are,” of wrestling with the knowledge she had now acquired, had brought no more answers. She liked him; he liked her—wasn’t that enough? It didn’t matter, did it? she told herself, through the long night, as the sky filled with light and the morning came. Surely this didn’t really change things?

Then, following simultaneously on, would come the doubts, the questions. Was it really true that he was this person? Someone she felt she knew, and now just didn’t know at all? She couldn’t reconcile the two: Nick, who loved thin chips, made her laugh, and kissed her as if it was just right; and the Marquis of Ranelagh, this symbol of ancestry and wealth, of formality and duty—this person about whom she had heard so much, as if he were a thing, rather than a living, breathing man. She had turned over and over in bed till the sheets were loose and crumpled, trying to make sense of it, desperate for some calm. That house—the treasures inside it—the history—the family, Lady Rose, Lady Lavinia…the mother who’d left him, the scandal. The publicness of a life like that. Then she knew why he hadn’t told her, and she felt a cold feeling start inside her, that this was stupid, doomed, that she shouldn’t take it any further.

After all, she’d only just met him. Perhaps even worrying about it was stupid. Perhaps thinking about it was the last thing to do. She wasn’t angry with him, or even with herself, for once. She just wanted to see him again, to be with him, and perhaps then she would know what should happen next. Because at the moment, she wasn’t sure.

“Naomi’s boyfriend lied to her, did he?” Angela said vaguely, putting some leeks into the trolley. “Oh, dear.’

Laura shook herself out of her reverie, and followed with the trolley. “Well,” she continued, not really minding whether her mother was listening or not, “yes. She knows he’s lied. But he doesn’t realize she knows.”

“What did he lie about?” said Angela, looking curiously at her.

Laura said sadly, “About who he is.”

“What, is he a convict?”

“Kind of. The opposite. Sort of.”

Angela looked at her daughter as if she were mad, and Laura said hurriedly, “Well, she doesn’t know what she should do about it now. And that’s not even the biggest issue,” she continued, warming to her theme, as Angela made sympathetic noises and moved around the corner to the condiments, where she bent over slightly, humming and putting her finger to her lip, to run her gaze over a row of mustards. “The biggest issue is, now that she knows he’s what he is, that makes
everything
different.”

“What would your grandmother say?” asked Angela. “Dijon? Or whole-grain?”

“Dijon,” said Laura, plucking a jar viciously off the shelf and throwing it into the trolley, where it clattered loudly.

Angela frowned, obviously rewinding the sounds in her head so she could respond to her daughter’s last sentence. “How is everything different?” she said with astonishing clarity. “Does him having not told the truth about who he is really make that much of a difference, if she feels that strongly about him? Doesn’t matter if he’s a convict. Unless it’s for something
really
awful, of course,” she said, lowering her voice. “But it doesn’t, does it?”

Laura stopped still in the aisle. “Don’t know,” she said, chewing her lip. “I’ll have to see. See her and see.”

“It is Dijon she likes, isn’t it?” said Angela, moving on. “Ask your grandmother when we get home, just to make sure.”

“I’ll ask her,” said Laura. “Good idea.”

Before lunch, as Angela stood in the kitchen chopping, dicing, preparing marinades, getting things ready for the next day, and George crouched down by the barbecue, oiling it, speaking tenderly to it as if it were a temperamental dressage horse, Laura wandered out onto the terrace, carrying a huge bowl and a massive bag of broad beans to shell under her arm. Mary was crouched over a flower bed, deadheading a pink scented rambling rose that clung to the side of the house. She was wearing sunglasses and had tied an old printed scarf over her hair.

“Ah,” she said, standing up with a groan as Laura approached. “Come and talk to me.”

“I will,” said Laura, pulling a chair up to the table and sitting down.

Mary brushed the dead leaves off her gardening gloves, and winced as she bent down again. “Got everything you needed this morning?”

“Absolutely,” said Laura. “You like Dijon, not whole-grain, mustard, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mary. “Loathe whole-grain. Those little bits. In fact, I was thinking we should have some mayonnaise, too. Xan used to make garlic mayonnaise, you know. Delicious, it really was. When we were in Morocco, he—”

Wanting to steer her thoughts in a different direction, Laura said, “Sorry, Gran.” Mary looked up, rather crossly. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” her grandmother said. She leaned against the slatted wood of the house and undid the scarf covering her hair, shaking it out. “What’s on your mind, darling?”

“You—you said you’d met the marquis’s mother,” said Laura hesitantly. “Vivienne something. Didn’t you?”

“Golly,” said Mary. She patted her cheeks. “Vivienne Lash. Yes, ages ago. Xan and I met her and Freddy both, when we were living in the south of France for the summer. Saw quite a bit of them, actually.”

“Have you met her son?”

“The new marquis?” said Mary. “Oh, no. She was the outcast, you know, darling. She left his father when he was—ooh, barely a teenager, I think.”

“Right,” said Laura, not really knowing what to ask next, or what she was hoping to get out of this conversation. “So—did she talk about her children?”

“Vivienne?” Mary sat down next to Laura and lifted up her sunglasses. “Not much. Think it was too painful for her. We knew all about it, of course. Everyone did.”

“How come?”

“Well, it was a huge scandal. Massive. Kept the tabloids busy for weeks.”

“Really?” said Laura. “Why on earth? People run off with people all the time.”

Mary smiled at her. “Oh, darling. You are naïve about things like this. Just because it doesn’t interest you, just because you’d rather read about it in the pages of a novel, doesn’t mean it’s not endlessly fascinating to the rest of the public. Or the newspapers, at least. No, it was all rather juicy to them. For a variety of reasons.”