Andrew turned back to the bar and searched for a menu. “I gotta eat something; I'm gonna pass out from hunger.”
“Please don't; Flora so hates scenes.”
Andrew looked at Nicola, took a breath, and said, “Would you care to join me?”
Her eyes widened, but she shook her head. “On my income, I can afford to eat here or drink here, but not both.”
“You've chosen wisely, I see.”
“It's a lovely offer, though.”
“Play your cards right and I might treat,” Andrew teased.
“Only if I get to see the cards first.”
“Where's your sense of adventure?”
“Can't afford that, either.”
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Then Nicola surprised herself. “Look, I've probably got enough wilted lettuce and moldy vegetables at home to put together a passable salad for two. Interested?”
“With that mouthwatering description, how could one fail to be? But I'm filthy.”
“I know things seem a little primitive here, compared to your Philadelphia, but believe it or not my cottage has hot water. Even soap. But the wine's on you, and if you hurry you can get something lovely and expensive before the Rock Shop across the street closes.”
“I don't even know if I can move, much less hurry.”
“You run the risk of having me pick it out, then.” She swung her purse on to her shoulder. “See you there.”
Andrew stood looking at the door, dumbfounded. He was having a date.
Flora was back. “Ordering supper, Andy-boy?”
“I guess not. I have a dinner invitation, sort of,” he answered.
“What, with Nicki?”
“So it would seem.”
Flora's forehead furrowed. “Careful how you go, then, me 'an'sum.”
The comment took him by surprise. Was it a warning? If it was, who was Flora protecting?
“What do you mean?”
“Don't get me wrong, now; Nicki's a good soul. But she blows hot and cold when it comes to men … stormy, like. Not that she ever lets 'em get too near. Scares 'em off. Bit of a loner is our Nicki. Lot of artists like that, I reckon.”
“I thought she was an interior decorator.”
“That what she told you? That's her all over. Nope. Artist. Damn fine one, too, if you ask me.”
“Thanks, Flora; careful is how I'll go.”
The Rock Shop, it transpired, did not sell rocks. It took its name from the rock candy it had sold to visitors for years—along with fancy tins of cookies, boxes of handmade chocolates, a selection of local beers and hard ciders, and wine. There was an ice cream counter at the rear.
“You should call this place ‘Guilty Pleasures,’” Andrew said to the attractive, prematurely gray, middle-aged woman at the till. Nicola was nowhere to be seen.
“You'd be Andrew, I'm guessing. Nicki said you'd be along. I'm Sandy.”
Andrew was momentarily stunned by the woman's eyes, which were an arresting shade of bright blue with a hint of lavender. Andrew took her extended hand and introduced himself.
Sandy pushed a bottle of wine across the counter. “She chose this,” she said.
Andrew studied the bottle, an inexpensive Beaujolais-Villages.
“Hmmm,” he said, looking at the shelves of wine bottles behind Sandy. “Let's see if we can't choose something a little better than this, something with a bit more backbone. Ah!” He pulled down a bottle of Moulinà-Vent. Then another.
“Good choice,” the woman said. “That's one of Nicki's favorites, actually.”
“Then why'd she choose the Villages, I wonder?”
“Maybe because the Beaujolais-Villages is simpler, a bit safer?”
“I don't think of Nicola as the simple, safe type,” Andrew commented. “Do you?”
The woman behind the counter had a giggle the sound of a silver bell. She blushed. “I'm sure I couldn't say,” she said.
Andrew didn't believe her for a minute, and he was pretty sure Sandy didn't expect him to. He paid for the wine, thanked her, stepped out the door, then turned and reentered.
“Um, this is sort of embarrassing, but I've just realized I have no idea where she lives.”
The silver bell again, then: “Over the bridge, right into the lane down the south bank of the river, carry on to the bottom, where the quay begins. Hers is ‘the Loft.’ Can't miss it. Enjoy the wine!”
Andrew thanked her again and backed out the door. He felt like an idiot. He stopped in at the Cornish Stores, a little convenience shop, and rescued the last remaining bunch of carnations, which were languishing, like huddled orphans, in a nearly dry bucket outside the door.
“How am I supposed to impress a woman with this?” he complained good-naturedly to André LeSeur, the French shopkeeper who met his wife, Trisha, years earlier on a hiking holiday in Cornwall and stayed on. André, whom Andrew knew well since he did much of his shopping here, gave him the classic Gallic shrug and said simply, “Delivery's tomorrow.”
Andrew slid the money across the counter: “You should be paying me to take these sad things away so as not to sully your reputation!”
André gave him another shrug, then a smile.
“What the hell have I got myself into, Randi?”
The dog barked, then resumed panting happily.
Nicola was shredding romaine with a vengeance, as if she was tearing her hair out—which, it now occurred to her, was maybe what she should have been doing. An egg was boiling in a small pot on the hob, along with four small new potatoes. She had some limp green beans refreshing in a bowl of ice water.
She had no idea why she'd invited this man to dinner. She'd never had a man in her cottage, much less one she'd known for only a couple of days—no, that was a lie: a couple of hours over a couple of days, over a couple of drinks. What was he really doing in Boscastle? Nobody comes to Cornwall from America to build stone hedges—nobody sane, anyway. Maybe he was on the run from someplace or something or someone. At a minimum, she should have done a Google search on him first—Andrew Stratton + architect + Philadelphia. Jesus, the man's sole character reference was a nine-year-old girl! Oh, and a sheep!
Okay, he was pretty good-looking, and neither too young nor too old. Tall enough, too; in heels, she could probably look him straight in the eye. Cute, curly, dark-brown hair salted with gray. And his eyes—good Lord, she didn't even know what color they were; they'd spent all their time together in the dimness of the Cobweb.
Plus, in a week he'd be gone.
This last thought nagged at her—not that she might never see him again, but because that was part of the attraction: He was safe. Not much chance of getting “involved.” Not much chance to screw up, either. But mostly, not much chance of risking her heart. She'd done that once, with Jeremy, and he'd brutalized it. In the few years she'd lived in Boscastle, she'd seen two or three men socially. But these dates had never got much beyond dinner at the pub, and the truth was, that had suited her just fine. Single men her age were scarce in the village, and those there often turned out to be single for a good reason: They were irresponsible, or irregularly employed, or drunks, or abusers, or all four. The best men—men like Anne's Roger—were all taken. Flora told her she should broaden her “catchment area.” She had laughed, because she'd thought Flora had said “catch men area.” Same thing, really. Besides, no one she met seemed able or willing to keep up with her. She used her sharp wit as a sort of entrance exam, and most men failed. They either went all quiet or got nasty, as if they didn't know how to play well with others.
But this Stratton chap gave as good as he got. That took courage. She liked that.
* * *
There was a small slate sign with the name of the cottage attached to the whitewashed wall, beside the door. Just before Andrew knocked, he heard the dog bark, just once.
“Door's open!” he heard Nicola yell.
He stepped directly into a low-beamed room that ran the full width of
the house. The floor was made of massive slabs of slate, rounded and worn by centuries of heavy use. There was a small dining table at one end of the room and a shallow fireplace surrounded by comfortable-looking furniture at the other. The overall color scheme was white and nautical blue, with accents of lemon yellow here and there. There was an expensively framed oil painting over the mantel, but the rest of the artwork was posters and prints suitable to a seaside cottage. He wondered if the house belonged to Nicola or was a rental.
Randi sat in a bright doorway at the back and barked a second time. A summons. Andrew went through to a long, narrow kitchen that ran across the back of the house. It was brightly lit, but the only window, over the deep porcelain sink, looked out onto the cliff face not two feet away. Maybe six feet wide and three times as long, the kitchen reminded him of the galley in a railroad dining car, without the moving scenery. Nicola was squeezing lemon juice into a small bowl with olive oil in it. The tiny room was tangy with citrus.
He held out the carnations. “Wilted flowers to go with the wilted lettuce,” he said.
She laughed. “Screw the flowers; did you get the wine?”
“No.”
“What?”
“Got something better. You have lousy taste in wine. Unsophisticated. Here.”
She pulled a bottle out of the bag and beamed.
“Sandy told you.”
“No, it was my choice. I may look like a mere laborer, madam, but in fact I am a connoisseur of fine wines.”
“And what else, I might wonder? Okay, mister common-sewer of wine, are you equally expert at operating a tin opener?”
“I think I could cope.”
“Good. There's a tin of very expensive Italian tuna just there, and the opener is in that top drawer. Avail yourself. We're having salade niçoise.”
“Ah, I understand now,” he said as he cranked the tin opener. “Romaine lasts forever without wilting, and most of the other ingredients are tinned, preserved in salt or brine, or, like the hard-boiled egg, in a protective shell. So it doesn't matter how old they are. It's like the wine: a vintage salad.”
“Hey! Beggars can't be choosers, and you, my friend, look every inch the beggar.”
Andrew looked down at his clothes.
“Good point. Where can I wash?”
“Out back. With the hose.”
Andrew scanned the room for a door.
Nicola laughed again. “Okay, there's no ‘out back,’ and no hose either, come to that. The loo's upstairs, beyond the bedroom. But first open the wine.”
Andrew found a corkscrew, opened the first bottle, poured her a glass, delivered it with a flourish, and departed, picking his way up the narrow stairs, with Randi leading the way.
The painting on the easel at the top of the stairs stopped him in his tracks. He'd never seen anything like it. Outside, the light was fading, and yet the canvas seemed to glow from within, almost shimmer, the colors radiant. There was nothing representational about the piece but it reminded him of a watery sunrise, or perhaps water at sunrise. Andrew had always liked the way the French Impressionists brought out the play of light on common objects and scenes. Now he realized that Nicola's painting reminded him slightly of Monet's Water Lilies. But it was as if she'd focused a telephoto lens on a tiny patch of pond surface and pushed the color and light to a higher level of abstraction. Flora was right; Nicola was a fine painter.
He looked around. The upper story was a big, airy space. The walls and the cathedral ceiling were painted white and the exposed crossbeams were bare, lime-washed timbers. He didn't know any other painters, but somehow he'd always expected their studios to be chaotic. Not this one. Tubes of paint were arrayed neatly in open trays. He peered at them: cadmium yellow, lemon yellow, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, ultramarine, cobalt blue, viridian, and many more. Brushes of many types stood clean and fresh in clear glass jars. A palette board with dabs of the same colors she'd been using on the canvas lay on a table, covered with plastic wrap—to inhibit evaporation, he guessed. The studio had a wonderfully earthy smell of linseed oil.
He stepped behind the billowy canvas curtain and into Nicola's “bedroom,” which was simply a section of the loft space. It was sparely furnished: a wrought-iron double bed that stood atop a multicolored rag rug; a dresser; a tall Victorian wardrobe, its door slightly ajar with an ivory silk robe hanging from the corner. A few books were stacked on a side table with a lamp. That was it: no television, no other decoration. Almost a hermit's cell. Suddenly feeling a bit like a voyeur, he went through to the bathroom and washed up.
The salad was nearly gone and they were well into the second bottle of wine when Nicola asked Andrew how long he planned to stay in Boscastle. They'd got past the basics: family, school, career—at least the parts each was willing to share.
“Just a couple of weeks. I signed on to the hedge project for a week and came a few days early to beat the jet lag. Then, I thought I'd spend a few more days poking around Cornwall before I leave.”
“Why are you really here?” Nicola asked.
He smiled. “For the salad—which was pretty terrific, by the way, despite your negative advertising.”
She made a face. “You know what I mean; why are you here, in Boscastle, three thousand miles from home … building a stone wall for God's sake.”
“Hedge,” he corrected.
“You're hedging, all right.”
Andrew ran his fingers through his hair and looked past her to the window that opened onto the lane and the river, both now in darkness. He listened to the music of the river tumbling over its rocky bed as it hurried to the harbor. Finally, he returned his gaze to Nicola. In the light of the curious collection of candles she'd set on the simple pine dining table—some short and squat, some slender and tall, all of them white—her eyes shone like freshly mined anthracite. The coppery highlights in her long, wavy brown hair flashed in the changing light of the candle flames.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time. Still does, actually.”
“Is that supposed to be an answer?”
“It's all I have; you ask as if you suspect I'm an escaped felon.”
“Are you?”
He laughed and drank some wine. “No. Though it feels that way sometimes.”
“Because you left your wife?”
He looked up at her sharply. “I didn't; she … we … separated.”
“How many years ago?”
He took a breath. “One.”
Nicola blanched. “Bloody hell. I'm so sorry; I had no idea it was that recent. What an incredibly rude question.”
“Nonsense; how could you know?”
“It's just you seem so … I don't know … calm. Under the circumstances.”
“Do I?”
“On the outside, anyway.”
“Yes, well, I suppose I do.”
“And are you?”
A surge of emotion took him by surprise, a kind of panic. The truth was, he didn't know. He looked around the room, as if the answer were hidden there—on a shelf, under a chair, on the mantel. Had he, during the course of the past year, reached a certain state of calm, of peace? Or had he simply stuffed away his anger and fear? He knew there was at least some truth to Katerina's charges. It was true, for example, that some part of him cringed at expressing strong emotion, as if it were unseemly. Or simply a sign of weakness. But he had loved Kat, and he had expressed it often, in little and big ways—in part to earn her affection, which she rationed. He also knew he was over Kat; her affair had made that easier. But the sense of failure still dogged him. Maybe his calm was just resignation, a kind of giving up.
And the funny thing was that during the last year, no one—least of all himself—had really taken the time to consider or ask how he was, how he felt, or to wait long enough for an answer. Now Nicola waited.
He brought her face back into focus and shook his head. “Probably not.”
She reached across the table and touched his hand.
/> “Good,” she said, smiling. “You'd be a freak if you were.”
“Thank you … I think.”
“No, really. Look, I'm not even sure why I asked; it's none of my business. But now that I have, I'll just say that I didn't tell you the whole truth when I said I couldn't be happier about my divorce. I was shattered for months—and I was the one who left! Somehow that didn't make it any easier.”
She paused and regarded him silently for a moment, her eyes soft as a doe's.
“She left you, didn't she?”
Andrew sighed. “Is my inadequacy that obvious? Yes, she left me. We didn't separate. I lied about that.”
“She was a fool, whoever she was.”
“I don't know …”
“Andrew, please.” Nicola made a face. “I've only known you for a few days, but it doesn't take a clairvoyant to see that you are a good man. For Christ's sake, you try to save sheep!”
“But I couldn't save the marriage.”
“None of us can do that single-handedly.” Then a thought occurred to her. “Did you beat her?”
“What? Of course not!”
“My husband did.”
Andrew looked at the woman across the table, speechless. He couldn't imagine anyone wanting to mar that beauty.
“Your husband beat you? Jesus.”
“I don't think Jesus had much to do with it, frankly,” she said, flashing a smile still fraught with pain.
“I … I don't know what to say. I can't imagine …”
“You know what? I believe you. I believe you can't imagine doing harm to anyone, much less a woman. I suspect you're cursed.”
“Cursed?”
“With being a gentleman.”
“I never thought of it as a handicap.”
Nicola winked at him: “Don't you know that good girls like bad boys?”
Andrew laughed. “I guess I'll never have a chance with good girls.”
Nicola seemed to study him for a moment, then said, “She left you for someone else, didn't she?”
Will North Page 10
