“This is countryside. It’s supposed to be picturesque.”
He huffed. I stumbled, and his arm came around my shoulders. He stopped walking, which also brought me to a stop. His arm around me tightened, forcing me to turn, until we were facing each other. Somehow, I realized it had been his intention all along. The walk, taking the road pitted with potholes, even my stumbling just where the darkness became more complete—all of it seemed to be of his design.
His arm remained firm around my shoulders. His other hand crept up and cupped my chin, forcing me to look up. The icy wind made my eyes water, and I worried that he might suspect I was close to tears.
“This morning,” he said.
I waited. If anyone else had started a sentence like that and left it hanging, I’d instantly have pestered them to finish. With Miles, I didn’t dare.
“I didn’t mean it when I pushed you away.”
“Oh?” I said. “It was just an instinctive reaction?”
His brows bunched together above the pewter gray eyes. If I wasn’t so used to seeing him scowl all the time, I’d have thought he was angry. “It’s unsettling,” he said. “I’ve heard so much about you from your father that I feel I know you, but my rational mind tells me I don’t. I’m struggling to keep apart the Alexandra in my imagination, and the reality of here and now.”
“The reality of here and now?” I jerked my head back with such force that his fingers slipped away from my chin. “That sounds a bit rich from someone who believes in ancient curses with the power to kill.”
His body shook as he expelled a sigh. “What I meant is that I’m used to being in charge of my emotions. I’m a reserved person. I don’t act on impulse. I don’t jump into things. I’m rational. But you make me want to forget caution and reason and logic.” A muscle clenched at his jaw. “The things I feel when I look at you, I need to be sure they’re real, not some mirage born from teenage fantasies.”
“What?” I said, baffled by his final comment. This time I wanted to move away from him, not step closer, but his hands curled over my shoulders, holding me captive.
“The way I feel when I look at you sends all sorts of scary thoughts rattling through my head.” His tone was harsh, reluctant. “If I act on those thoughts, life could become complicated, with you over here and me back in America, three thousand miles away.”
He must have seen the alarm in my eyes, because he relaxed his grip. I wriggled to break loose. For a moment, I thought he was letting me go. I turned away, taking the first halting steps toward the safety of Mill Cottage.
In the next instant, I felt a tug on my arm that yanked me back. “Hell, why did I even try to explain,” Miles growled.
And then he bent his head and kissed me.
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Chapter Eight
How could lips that spent so much of their time clamped into a stern line feel so soft and warm? How could a man so cool and reserved make me burn like a flame? The kiss only lasted a few seconds. Then Miles raised his head and released me, and I stumbled back, trying to draw a breath.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he muttered.
Sanity returned in a cool rush. “I see,” I told him. “It’s like speeding, or eating saturated fats.”
“What?” He scowled at me.
“Kissing me,” I said. “It’s on your list of things that are bad for you.”
“I don’t keep lists.”
“I bet you do.”
The furrow across his brow deepened. He squinted into the distance. “Come on. We came out for a walk.” He clamped his arm around my shoulders, anchoring me to his side, and then we plodded up the slippery hill, using the thin beam of the flashlight to guide us. It was cold and dark, but my pounding heart sent a surge of heat through my veins, and the last thing on my mind was to complain about the weather.
We struggled on through the darkness, all the way up to the crest of the hill, where a rutted track to Layton Manor parted on the left. Every now and then, I pretended to stumble, so I could enjoy his easy strength steadying me. I’m sure Miles caught on, but he played his own part in the charade with aplomb.
“It’s too dark to go any farther,” he said and swung me around, and we retraced our steps down the hill. In exactly the same spot, just before the streetlights began to cut through the darkness, he stopped again. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said. His arm around my shoulders shifted, folding me into him. His other hand crept up and fumbled at my knitted cap, tilting my face up to him.
This time, the kiss was longer and deeper. His mouth fitted itself against mine, tasting, exploring. His tongue slid along my teeth, drawing a husky moan from my throat. I could feel the bristle on his jaw scraping my skin. There was something hungry in the way he crushed my body against his, with undertones that announced intentions rather than asked questions. I twined my arms around his neck, and when my legs grew too weak to support my weight, I simply hung on.
When Miles stopped kissing me, I leaned back to look into his face, fighting to find some order in the tumult of feelings that raged inside me. He stood in silence, his arms around my trembling body, his guarded eyes inspecting me. The intensity of his gaze made my breath catch. And then, he spun me free, and we set off walking again. He deposited me on the doorstep of Mill Cottage with nothing more than, “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Tell Rosemary that sandwiches for lunch will be fine.”
When I pulled the door open, heat flooded out. I went inside, removed my outdoor clothes and floated into the kitchen, where I took my time tidying up the remains of our lunch. I did the dishes, including the pots and pans with burned-on crusts. Then I made coffee, using the machine with filter papers and the slow drip-drip-drip flow, and finally sat down at the table to drink a cup, taking as long as I could.
It was no use. The baby monitor didn’t make a peep. Either Miles had turned the thing off, or the batteries had run out. It frightened me to realize that I was already acting jealous, wondering what he could be doing that he didn’t want me to overhear.
I tried to shake off the thought as I went upstairs. A streak of light shone at the bottom of Aunt Rosemary’s study door. An ancient plastic ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign with a Marriott logo hung over the knob. That was one of Aunt Rosemary’s eccentricities. Other people stole towels from hotels. She pinched ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs that she put to good use. A nuclear war could rage unnoticed while Aunt Rosemary was making love to her computer.
With a resigned sigh, I crept past her door. I undressed, climbed into bed, and fantasized myself to sleep. The good thing about imagined kisses is that they can go on forever, as there’s no need to come up for air.
****
Virtual lovemaking must be as exhausting as real, since I didn’t wake up until nine o’clock in the morning. I stretched my limbs under the duvet, gathering the courage to brace the morning chills. Eventually, I scrambled up and dashed into the shower. I washed my hair a few more times to speed up the fading. Aunt Rosemary had recently had the en-suite bathroom redecorated in gleaming white and I took extra care to rinse all the surfaces afterward, to make sure the pink dye I’d washed out of my hair wouldn’t leave stains.
Next, it was on with the jeans and the sweater. I examined the rumpled garments with distaste. The sensible thing would have been to knock on Rose Cottage door and seek access to my clothes in the wardrobes, but after last night, I was worried that Miles would think I was trying to get him alone.
I located Aunt Rosemary in the kitchen, where she was standing by the window, looking crisp in a beige pencil skirt teamed with a white cardigan and a dangling gold belt. I suspected Aunt Rosemary was the only person in the whole of England who didn’t own a pair of trousers of any kind, either sweats or jeans or dressy pants.
Her gaze landed on me. “Uh-oh,” she said. Her mouth rounded into a pout, her brows edging up. “What do we have here?” she asked, taking inventory of my disheveled appearance and signs of an edgy mood.
/> I shrugged. “I forgot to retrieve some of my clothes last night.”
“It’s your heart I’m more concerned about,” Aunt Rosemary said.
“Don’t be silly. Miles isn’t my type.” I strolled up to the counter and turned my back on her, pretending to be preoccupied with inserting two slices of granary bread in the toaster. “And anyway, I hardly know him,” I added with a dash of defiance.
“Hmmm….” A whole argument was loaded into that single sound.
I glanced over my shoulder, aware of my mistake. Two denials. When you lie, you should never give more than one excuse. I wasn’t even quite sure why I had tried to fool her into believing that I wasn’t already hooked. It seemed unrealistic to think that I could engage in a clandestine romance, and keep the failure that was bound to result from it a secret from her.
“Earlier, you suggested he might do for me nicely,” I pointed out.
“That’s before I got to know him. He’s the sort of man who’ll trap your heart and soul and never give them back.” Aunt Rosemary studied me, a wistful smile playing around her mouth. “It’s going to be hard for you.”
The filter machine finished gurgling and I poured myself a coffee. When I held up the pot, she nodded, pointing to a mug on the table. She crossed the kitchen to sit where she had already set three places for breakfast. I filled her mug, lowered the jug onto a cork mat, and sat down opposite her.
“What’s going to be hard for me?” I asked finally, because she kept smiling that sad smile, and I wanted her to stop.
“To let him go,” Aunt Rosemary replied. “Of all the men you’ve had to say goodbye to, he’ll be the hardest yet.”
“I’ve had plenty of practice,” I said in a tone of sarcasm. “By now, I should know how to go about it, shouldn’t I?”
She blinked. Then she got up and walked over to the counter to retrieve the bread that had popped up. She said nothing more, just went ahead and smeared one of the pieces of toast with orange marmalade and covered it with a slice of cheese. It was a combination she’d picked up from some Swedish boyfriend way back in her youth.
“Then, I guess one more time won’t hurt you,” Aunt Rosemary said as she prepared to bite off a corner.
That was one of the best things about Aunt Rosemary. She always knew when you were about to do something unwise, but she let you go ahead and do it anyway.
“Does it show?” I asked.
“That you’re in danger of falling head over heels for him?” she said. After munching the bite of toast, she added, “I can recognize the dreamy look in your eyes, like you’re seeing the world through a rosy haze. He’ll just assume that you don’t have your contacts in.”
My brows knotted. “I don’t wear contacts.”
“Right,” Aunt Rosemary said, leaping up in response to the rattling at the front door. “That’s exactly what I meant.”
****
Miles made the kitchen appear smaller. Today, he wore jeans and a chunky jumper with rows of tiny snowflakes on a background of dark gray, the color of his stormy eyes. Jealousy stirred inside me. It had to be a gift from a woman. When men wore clothes to match their eyes, they usually were.
He only gave me a casual good morning and settled down at the table. Aunt Rosemary’s curious gaze shuttled between us. I heard her sigh. Then she planted another cup in front of Miles and returned to her seat. The coffeepot was the closest to me, but I feared that my hands would shake if I tried to pick it up. Miles waited a moment. Then he reached past me and poured himself a cup.
“It’s going to be awkward, if the two of you want to pretend that there’s nothing going on,” Aunt Rosemary said.
I threw her an alarmed glance.
To my surprise, Miles leaned back, his posture easing, and turned to look at me. The reluctance he’d shown last night to become involved seemed to have vanished. “How could we pretend there’s nothing going on between us if the village thinks we’re getting married?”
Aunt Rosemary shrugged her elegant shoulders. “I wasn’t talking about that.” She leveled her eyes at him. “Just bring back the baby monitor. Otherwise things could get embarrassing.”
I tried to give her a kick under the table, but Miles had stretched out his long legs and I got him instead. He didn’t flinch, although the corners of his mouth twitched. “I’ve turned the baby monitor off,” he said calmly. “And I’ve taken out the battery.”
Aunt Rosemary shook her head. “I hope this isn’t going to be like having a pair of hormonal teenagers skulking about the house.”
“Stop it,” I told her. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”
Miles reached out and patted my arm. “Take it easy, honey.”
I’d been trying to come up with some sarcastic comment to hide how deep my feelings went, but the endearment threw me off balance. I stole a look at Miles, found him smiling. I don’t know what being in love did to other people, but for the first time in my life, I became aware of the Earth hurtling through the space and spinning around its axis at a breakneck speed.
“I’m not the Big Bad Wolf, you know,” Miles said to Aunt Rosemary.
“You could have fooled me,” Aunt Rosemary replied.
I clung to my seat and tried to make sure the Earth didn’t toss me off.
“That looks good.” Miles leaned over to admire my uneaten piece of toast.
“Oh, it’s bed-and-breakfast now,” Aunt Rosemary drawled. “That’s a different tariff, you know.”
“Put it on my bill,” Miles said. “But if I’m paying, I expect to be waited on.”
“Alexandra?” Aunt Rosemary nodded at me across the table.
I knew she was giving me a ‘leap-up-and-feed-your-man’ signal, but I was rendered too dizzy by the speeding of the planet. Instead of rushing up to the counter to accomplish the task, I sent her an imploring look.
“Oh, all right, I’ll do it,” Aunt Rosemary said. “I can handle a piece of toast.”
Miles glanced from me to her, appearing baffled. I don’t think he’d picked up on the female distress call I’d sent out to Aunt Rosemary. I sat in silence, letting the two of them take care of the small talk while I got my bearings again.
It was scary. Very scary.
****
Twenty minutes later, the world around me had stabilized. I cleared the table, so we could work in the kitchen. I even reloaded the coffee machine while Aunt Rosemary dashed upstairs to retrieve her notes.
“If it’s gold, it can’t be in America,” she said when she was back in her seat.
“Why?” Miles asked.
“It would weigh too much,” she replied. “I don’t think anything less than a million pounds would count as a fortune, and you’d need a hundred kilos of gold.”
“All right.” Miles leaned back. His legs under the table knocked against my feet, his absent-minded touch of apology on my arm making my heart flutter. It terrified me to realize how quickly and totally I had become aware of his every gesture.
“So, we all agree that gold would have been too bulky to hide in furniture?” Aunt Rosemary asked, scanning the table for votes.
Miles made an affirmative sound and I nodded.
“So, it can’t have been shipped to America,” Aunt Rosemary said, scribbling furiously on her notepad. “It has got to be in Layton Manor, or in South Africa.”
“Couldn’t it be just diamonds?” I suggested. “They take up less space.”
“I don’t think so,” Miles said.
“Why?” Aunt Rosemary asked.
“Many predictions are cryptic with obscure symbols.” Miles sat up in the chair and leaned forward, crossing his forearms over the table. “The Layton Prophecy isn’t like that. It’s very specific. The only unclear term is ‘crystal ice’ for salt. I believe that when it says gold and diamonds, it means both.”
Aunt Rosemary nodded and flicked over a new page on her pad. “Now, just in case values were very different in those days, I’ve checked the price o
f gold a hundred years ago. No difference. You’d need the same amount in weight.” She rattled out prices per ounce and inflation factors and pound to dollar exchange rates.
“It could be buried in the ground.” Miles peered longingly into his empty mug. “Six acres offers plenty of hiding places.”
I sighed and walked up to the coffee machine. The two of them were so engrossed in their financial arithmetic that waitressing had somehow fallen onto me.
“There’s chokkie bikkies in the cupboard,” Aunt Rosemary muttered without looking up.
I searched until I found a packet of Milk Chocolate Hobnobs. I spread a dozen on a plate and slid it on the table between them. Aunt Rosemary put out her hand, her eyes still on the notepad. Miles picked up a biscuit and slotted it between her fingers.
“Thanks,” she said, and began to munch.
The scene swamped me with a tide of nostalgia. It reminded me of how my father had been with people around him—Aunt Rosemary, me, even my mother—that seamless harmony of one person supporting others without making a fuss. Miles seemed to posses the same quality. I guessed it was something people acquired when racing a sailboat as a team, or perhaps from any team sport.
“Metal detector,” Aunt Rosemary said. “It ought to be easy.”
“I’ve ordered one. They said fourteen days to deliver.” Miles picked up biscuit and inspected it. For one horrible moment, I thought he might be a health food freak who wouldn’t touch chocolate. Then he lifted the biscuit to his mouth and devoured it in three quick bites.
“That still leaves the other problem,” I said.
“Huh?” Aunt Rosemary looked up from her notes.
“To whom we should make amends. We don’t know who’s been wronged.”
She muttered a soft curse. “I forgot about that.”
My confidence soared. I might be less intelligent than those two, but I had a good practical mind, and I was determined to make a solid contribution to the project.
The Layton Prophecy Page 7
