About Last Night (22 page)

He thought she loved him. Last night, in bed, he’d been certain of it. But this morning, nothing felt right. He kept catching her looking at him as if he’d just broken her heart, and he didn’t know why. He’d tried asking. She brushed him off.

The tour hadn’t helped. She’d made jokes that were just this side of impolite about the furnishings and fixtures. The sight of the ballroom chandelier seemed to jangle her nerves like fingernails on a blackboard.

If he wanted to get anywhere with her, he needed her to lower her defenses. That meant getting her out of this house and away from his family.

Nev cleared his throat, and Cath and his father looked up, startled.

“Nev! We didn’t hear you arrive,” his father said.

“I noticed that. I was beginning to think even the Blitz might not distract the two of you.”

Cath grinned. “You didn’t tell me your father had such a wonderful collection.”

His father was smiling, too. “You didn’t tell me your wife had such a good eye.”

Nev crossed the room and put an arm around Cath’s waist, gratified when she softened into his side. “You two are a match made in heaven.” He pushed his luck and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. She smelled wonderful, warm and spicy, like an orange studded with cloves. “I don’t want to intrude on your fun, but I was hoping to take Cath out for a while.”

“By all means,” Richard said, with a wink to Cath. “We’ll have plenty of opportunities to talk about art later on.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“It’s a surprise.”

He took her to Whipsnade zoo, where she fawned over the marmosets and made him buy her an ice cream even though it was windy and cool—not ice-cream weather at all. At the
overlook, she sat between his thighs in the grass and ate her treat as they took in the view of Dunstable Downs, the rolling hills interrupted by patches of farmland and irregular groupings of trees. The whole world spread out before them, green and golden and blue. She called it “twee,” but he could tell she liked it when she turned to give him a sweet, creamy kiss.

Capturing her head in his hand so he could kiss her properly, he tried to push aside the unwelcome thought that this was the first and last time they would ever spend an afternoon in the countryside together. He kept catching himself thinking he’d inadvertently engineered a catastrophe, and soon—tomorrow, the next day, the day after that—the worst would happen, and he would lose her. And it would be his own fault.

He told himself he was being absurd. They’d been so close last night. They’d spoken plainly in the dark. She’d told him about her daughter.

She loved him. She hadn’t said it, but she did. Whatever happened, they would work it out.

He couldn’t make himself believe it.

They went for a curry, teasing each other over tamarind sauce and garlic naan. He drove her back to Leyton and made her wear the boots to bed.

All of it felt like stolen time, an end rather than a beginning. But he didn’t know why, and he didn’t know what to do differently.

Cath woke up to the sound of rain. She wrapped an arm around Nev’s back and snuggled into him, lazy and content. He stirred, groaned, and rolled over, his arms reaching out automatically to pull her against his side.

She’d figured out how to stop saying good-bye. All she’d had to do was remember about Limbo: neither Heaven nor Hell, Limbo was the timeless, colorless eternity spent in between. The nuns had always tried to make it sound scary, telling her and the other schoolgirls to pray for
the lost babies in Limbo awaiting redemption and their release to Heaven, but Cath had been a skeptical kid, and in her head Limbo had always been the most peaceful place. Better than Heaven, with all those mincing angels and their harps.

She and Nev were in Limbo, but they were here together. They had a couple more days before Hell.

“You and me and rain on the roof,” Cath sang quietly.

“What’s that then?”

“It’s the Lovin’ Spoonful. Dad had the tape. He used to play it in the car.”

“Ah.”

She listened to the rain and relaxed against Nev, enjoying the rhythmic rise and fall of his bare chest beneath her cheek.

“This is nice,” she said.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I suppose we’ll have to go downstairs eventually.”

“Eventually,” he agreed, stroking his hand down her side. When she was curled against him, he could easily reach almost to her knees. It made her feel safe, sheltered.

“What’s on the agenda for today?”

He exhaled, eyes on the ceiling. “I’m afraid we can’t escape two days in a row. We’ll have to spend the morning in the parlor with Mother. If we’re lucky, no blood will be spilled.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to let her pull out our fingernails one at a time?”

“We’ll be all right, love. We just need some armor. I always take my sketchbook and affect to be drawing.”

“Oh. Well, I have a book. Is reading acceptable?”

“Only if she approves of the author. Is he English?”

“No, but almost as good. It’s Ishiguro.
Remains of the Day
.”

“You’ll be perfectly safe.”

He smiled enough to make his dimple show up for a visit, and then he rolled on top of
her, wedging a powerful thigh between her legs. “We don’t have to go down there just yet,” he said, his breath warm against her neck.

Cath wrapped a leg around his hip and pulled him closer. He was hers. Nobody else’s but hers. For as long as they stayed in Limbo, he’d be hers, because here, they were outside of time. They were outside of everything. “You have some ideas about what we might do instead?”

“Several.” He began kissing his way down her stomach, his palms sliding to her knees and pressing her legs apart until she was completely exposed to him. “I’ll just show you, shall I?”

It was late morning by the time they made it to the parlor. Winston and Company weren’t around. Cath hadn’t seen them since Friday night, and she wondered who was avoiding whom. Probably Nev was trying to spare her his brother’s contempt. He was sweet like that.

Richard read a book on the couch. Evita sat opposite him, frowning down at a pile of knitting on her lap.

How about that? She and Evita shared a hobby.

Cath took the safe seat beside Richard, while Nev said their good mornings and settled down in the window seat with his sketchbook. The sight of him curled up there in the gray light of the rainy morning made her heart ache. She loved him too much. Much too much. She had to look away and remind herself again about Limbo.

Her eyes returned to Evita, who had a few balls of yarn going and was peering at an elaborate chart as she knit, glancing at the needles only occasionally. The piece was wide enough to be a woman’s sweater, though Evita had only finished five or six inches of the familiar Fair Isle pattern.

“That’s a Starmore, isn’t it?”

Evita looked up quickly, but if Cath had surprised her, she concealed it well. “Yes.”

“Can I see it?” She was already crossing the room, in full knitter mode and anxious to
inspect the work-in-progress. Alice Starmore’s patterns were famous for their intricate, beautiful color work.

Evita held the needles out to her.

“Oh, it’s from
Tudor Roses
,” she said, recognizing a pattern her mother had once knit. “But you’ve changed all the colors.” Gutsy. Starmore’s patterns used a dozen or more different hues, and finding substitutes that harmonized as well as the originals was a dicey job. Evita had done it, though, softening the original palette with cream and pastels to make the design younger, fresher, and more feminine.

“It’s for Beatrice,” Evita explained. “I thought the original colors were too grown up for her. But honestly, I don’t know why I bother. It’s meant to be for Christmas, but she never wears anything I make her.”

Cath wanted to be able to offer a polite denial, but there was no point. Beatrice would certainly reject the sweater, which would be beautiful and also completely stodgy and way too English. Very much everything a thirteen-year-old girl rebelling against her family was honor-bound to reject.

“Yeah. She’ll hate it.”

There was a spark of something interesting in Evita’s green eyes then. Surprise? Admiration? Whatever it was, for an instant Cruella looked remarkably like Nev. His height, his demeanor, and his smile were all Richard, but that predatory gleam Cath so loved had come from his mother.

Huh. Come to think of it, Richard was sweet almost to a fault, whereas there was a lot of steel in his son. The realization made Cath curious whether she could forge a connection to the Dragon Lady. “You know, I’ve done some designing for the younger knitting crowd. If you want, I bet I could come up with a pattern that was more Beatrice’s style.”

Evita frowned. She looked like Nev when she did that, too. Wild. “I appreciate your willingness to help, but I’ve already put a fair amount of time into this. It will have to do for this Christmas.”

Could she say
pish-tosh
? She
so
wanted to. Instead, she said, “Come on. You’re only about twenty percent done. It’s going to take you at least thirty hours’ work to finish that, and then she’s just going to wad it up and throw it in the back of her wardrobe. It’s a complete waste of your skill.”

This time, Cath was sure she caught admiration in Evita’s cool, assessing gaze. Evita enjoyed being challenged. Like mother, like son. How hilarious that the lessons Cath had learned from one Chamberlain would apply to another.

She forged ahead. “I’ll just show you what I have in mind. Nev, honey, can I borrow that?” She crossed quickly to the window, where Nev handed her the notebook and his charcoal pencil, his lips all sexy bemusement. She kissed him quick. Couldn’t help herself.

But the sight of her face on his sketch pad caught her up short. He’d drawn her from the neck up, her head against a pillow, hair mussed, eyes wide and liquid, mouth slightly open. The very image of a thoroughly satisfied woman. She flipped quickly through the book, looking for a blank page and trying to get a grip. There were other drawings of her. Maybe two dozen.

They’re just pictures. Not love letters. Pictures
.

They were love letters.

“You’ve been drawing me,” she murmured.

“I can’t help it. I hope you don’t object.”

She didn’t object, but she hadn’t needed to know how much she was going to hurt him. It wasn’t something she’d let herself think about, and now she wouldn’t be able to avoid it.

She was going to hurt him bad.

“They’re beautiful,” she said quietly.

He captured her hand and turned it over to press a kiss into her palm. “They don’t do you justice.”

She sank to the ground beside him, a little dazed, and began to draw. Twenty minutes later, she’d discarded a few ideas and come up with one she liked, a chunky cabled tunic with short sleeves and a cowl neck inspired by some designer sweaters she’d recently seen. She
sketched it on a tall, thin thirteen-year-old frame, pairing it with black leggings, a long-sleeved black shirt, and boots, and then she handed it to Nev. “What do you think?”

Nev studied the drawing for a while. “The tattoos are your own designs, aren’t they? I had no idea you were such an artist.”

“I only draw a little. It’s nothing like what you can do.”

“Nonsense.” He plucked the pencil out of her hand and quickly filled in Beatrice’s hair and features where Cath had put the barest suggestion of a head. “I think she’ll love it.”

Satisfied, Cath crossed the room and presented the sketch to Evita, who’d spent the interval continuing to labor away on the Starmore sweater.

Evita took one look at the sketch and wrinkled her nose. “It’s a little mature for a girl her age, don’t you think?”

“This is the style now. Half the sweaters for sale at H and M are variations on the theme.”

“No one in this family shops at places like that,” Evita said bluntly.

“I do,” Cath said, just as blunt. “They have good stuff.”

Evita frowned and pursed her lips, but Cath knew she was wavering. Time to push. “You have to choose the lesser of two evils, Evita. Either you spend dozens of hours knitting her a sweater she hates because it looks like something her grandmother would wear, or you spend ten hours knitting her something she likes because it makes her look like a tramp.”