by Kate Hardy
When it was time for the eulogy, Hugo stood up and went into the pulpit.
For a moment, Alice caught his eye and it felt like an electric shock.
No, absolutely no. It was totally inappropriate to feel that tug of attraction towards someone at a funeral, and it was even more inappropriate because she and Hugo were on opposite sides. During the last couple of weeks, he’d continued to refuse to change his position about building the butterfly house, so Rosemary’s house was going up for sale. Alice had responded by putting together a business plan for the university, asking them for a grant towards buying the house and building the butterfly house; she’d also set up a crowdfunding page and a campaign to save the house. Finally, she’d applied for outline planning permission for changing the use of the house and building the butterfly house in the garden.
Everything was going at a speed she wasn’t entirely comfortable with, but she had no other choice; she needed to be ready in case Hugo decided to put the house up for immediate auction rather than selling it through an estate agency. Without the money—or at least the promise of it—behind her, she couldn’t buy the house and she couldn’t fulfil Rosemary’s dreams.
She looked away, and Hugo began speaking. Unlike the other day, his voice wasn’t full of coldness and sneering; it was full of warmth and affection and sadness. And Alice was utterly captivated.
‘I feel as if I should be reading Ophelia’s speech up here about flowers, suggesting rosemary for remembrance, because we’ll always remember Great-Aunt Rosemary. When I was a child, I spent a lot of time in her garden, and she’d tell me all about the butterflies and the birds and the flowers. So I’m choosing to read something by her favourite poet, Thomas Hardy; Rosemary noticed things, and I remember her reading this to me when I was a child and telling me that the first verse was about butterflies.’
This was personal, Alice thought. Heartfelt.
And the way he delivered it was full of love and meaning. His voice was clear and beautifully modulated; although it didn’t wobble in the slightest, because he was clearly determined to do well by his great-aunt, she could see the glitter in his eyes to show that tears weren’t far away.
‘“When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say, ‘He was a man who used to notice such things’?”’
It was the perfect poem to choose. Just as Hugo had suggested, it was full of butterflies, and it reminded her of Rosemary. Rosemary Grey had definitely noticed things—not just the environment, but also people. Alice had found herself able to open up to the older woman.
A woman who used to notice things.
A woman who was kind and passionate and inspirational.
And Alice was really going to miss her.
* * *
Hugo could see Alice Walters sitting at the back of the church. Today, she wasn’t the polished, sophisticated woman who’d sat in the solicitor’s office and argued with him. She was wearing plain black trousers and a silky black top, and her hair had the slight natural curl he’d noticed in her official university photograph.
Was she here to pay her respects to Rosemary, or to keep an eye on her own interests?
Hugo knew about her crowdfunding bid to buy the house, and Alice Walters exasperated him thoroughly; yet, at the same time, there was something about her that intrigued him.
How ironic that the first woman he’d really noticed since his wife’s death was on the opposite side to him. And this was his great-aunt’s funeral. He needed to finish his eulogy and give Rosemary the send-off she deserved, not start mooning about a woman he didn’t really know and whom he strongly suspected of being an ambitious gold-digger.
So he shared his memories, making sure that every single person in the congregation—except possibly the woman sitting in the last pew—had something to share, too. Rosemary would want to be remembered with love and with smiles, and he was going to make that happen.
Though he had to hold his mother’s hand through ‘Abide With Me’ and clasp his father’s shoulder; the verse about death’s sting and the grave’s victory caused both of them to stop singing, choked by emotion.
He followed his parents behind the coffin as they left the church; again, he couldn’t help glancing at Alice. Her face coloured faintly as she caught his gaze, and he was horrified to feel awareness pulse through him again. Not here, not now, and—actually, no, he didn’t want this at all. He was done with feeling. It had broken him nearly three years ago, and he never wanted to repeat it.
He’d expected her to be gone by the time the committal had finished, but instead she was talking to some of Rosemary’s neighbours in the churchyard. From the way they were chatting so easily to her, he was pretty sure they knew her. Liked her, too, because they were smiling rather than giving her suspicious looks, the way half of them had looked at Chantelle.
Had he judged Alice unfairly?
In which case, he’d really let his aunt down. Then again, if Alice was as ambitious as he suspected, he didn’t want her to get away with using Rosemary. He needed to get to the bottom of this.
Guilt had the upper hand at that moment, so he walked over to her and gave her a nod of acknowledgement. ‘Dr Walters.’
‘Mr Grey,’ she replied, her tone equally formal.
‘Perhaps you’d like to join us for the wake?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Seriously? I didn’t think I’d be welcome.’
Today, her manners were as blunt as the hint of her accent. He rather liked that. It suggested that she was straightforward. Or was that a double bluff from an accomplished and ambitious woman?
‘I don’t want to cause any upset to your family,’ she continued. ‘Today’s about Rosemary and your memories of her, and I don’t want to do anything that takes away from that.’
A gold-digger would’ve said yes to the invitation without hesitating and would’ve been charming rather than blunt. Maybe he really had misjudged her. Even though she’d set up that crowdfunding site to buy the house.
This wasn’t about Rosemary’s house. It was about Rosemary. About saying goodbye. And he needed to do the right thing. The kind thing, as Rosemary would’ve wanted.
‘You’ll be welcome,’ he said. ‘It’s in the hotel across the road, if you’d like to join us. I’ll leave it to you to decide.’ He gave her a nod of acknowledgement, then went to join his parents.
* * *
Hugo Grey had actually asked her to the wake. Alice couldn’t quite get her head round this. They were on opposite sides. He didn’t have to be nice to her. Yet today he’d chosen to be kind.
So she followed the straggle of mourners across the road, accepted an offer to sit with Rosemary’s neighbours, drank tea from a pretty floral china cup and ate a scone with jam and cream. Rosemary, she thought, would’ve enjoyed this.
But all the while she was very aware of Hugo Grey.
The way he read poetry.
The sensual curve of his mouth.
And this had to stop. Even if they weren’t on opposing sides, she was absolutely hopeless when it came to relationships. After Barney, she hadn’t dated for a couple of years, not trusting her judgement in men, but then she’d met Robin, who’d seemed so nice at first—and the opposite of Barney. Down-to-earth. Except Robin had wanted her to change, too; she hadn’t been girly enough for him. After Robin, there had been Ed, who hadn’t minded how she dressed—but he’d wanted her to be less of a nerdy scientist, so she’d fit in with his artsy crowd. Then there had been Henry, who’d broken up with her because he’d wanted someone whose career would be less stellar than his.
Everyone she’d dated seemed to want to change her. It didn’t matter whether they’d met through work, through a friend of a friend, or a dating app that should’ve screened them so they were the
perfect match.
Maybe she was the one at fault, for picking men who couldn’t compromise. And every break-up had knocked her confidence a little bit more.
Not that it mattered, because nothing was going to happen between herself and Hugo. He might already be involved with someone else. All she really knew about him was that he was Rosemary’s great-nephew and he was an architect. One who’d won a couple of awards, according to the Internet, and was a rising star in the industry; but she hadn’t looked up his private life because it was none of her business.
Even as she thought it, he walked over to her, carrying a cup of tea. ‘Dr Walters. May I join you?’
Short of being rude, there was only one thing she could say. ‘Of course, Mr Grey.’
‘Can I get you some more tea, or something to eat?’
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Alice said, suddenly feeling gauche and tongue-tied.
And he clearly wasn’t going to make it easy for her, with small talk. He simply sat down beside her and waited.
Given that he reminded her so much of Barney and his entitled friends with their over-elaborate code of manners, was he waiting for her to make a mistake? Not hold her cup properly, or use the wrong bit of cutlery, or...
No. She was being unfair to him, especially as he’d been kind earlier. They were strangers, and this was his great-aunt’s funeral. She’d try to meet him on common ground. ‘Your eulogy was very good.’
He inclined his head. ‘Thank you.’
Wasn’t it his turn to make a comment, now, to keep the conversation going?
When he didn’t, she added, ‘I liked the poem.’
‘My great-aunt loved poetry,’ he said. ‘Hardy was her favourite poet, but she loved Keats as well. And Christina Rossetti—whenever I hear leaves rustling in the trees, I think of Rosemary reading me that poem, or when I see the moon in a cloudy sky.’
Hugo Grey liked poetry? Now that she hadn’t expected. But she knew the poems he’d mentioned. ‘“The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.”’
He looked surprised. ‘You know that one, too?’
She nodded. ‘My grandmother loved that one. She read it to me a lot when I was a child.’ And she could hear it in her head, in her grandmother’s broad Yorkshire accent.
Just for a moment, the crowded room was forgotten: it felt as if it were just the two of them, the poem echoing down the years to them and joining them together.
‘“Watch for me by moonlight. I’ll come to thee by moonlight,”’ he whispered.
And she could imagine Hugo as the highwayman of the poem, with his breeches and his velvet claret coat, lace at his chin and a French tricorn hat on his hair.
Her mouth went dry as she thought of Bess loosening her black hair in the window, and her highwayman lover kissing the dark waves. What would it be like if Hugo kissed her hair, her cheek, the corner of her mouth?
It made her feel hot all over—and ashamed, because this really wasn’t the time or place to be thinking like that. Though, given the sharp slash of colour across his cheeks, she had a feeling that he was thinking something very similar indeed.
And she couldn’t make a single word leave her mouth. They were all stuck in her throat.
This was terrifying. She hadn’t been this aware of anyone since Barney. But she knew her judgement in men was hopeless and she’d given up trying to find Mr Right. Burying herself in her work had been much safer. Looking at butterfly pheromones and ignoring human ones.
* * *
Quoting poetry. How stupid Hugo had been to think that was safe: Hardy, Keats, Rossetti and their images of nature.
But of all things he’d chosen to quote ‘The Highwayman’. And it wasn’t about the moon as a galleon, the road over the purple moors. It was about Bess the landlord’s daughter and the highwayman, the woman plaiting her hair and the man kissing it, promising to be back for her. The jealous ostler with his hair like mouldy hay, betraying the highwayman to the redcoats. Bess saving him temporarily with her own death. Love and passion and death.
Alice Walters’s eyes were grey, not dark. Her hair was light brown, almost a nondescript colour, rather than the exotic long, black curls of Bess. She didn’t have a red ribbon tied through her hair in a love knot.
And yet remembering the line of the poem made Hugo want to bury his face in Alice’s hair.
Would she smell of roses, vanilla or honey?
Oh, for pity’s sake.
He hadn’t so much as noticed another woman in the last three years. He hadn’t wanted to. Emma was the love of his life, and after her death he hadn’t wanted anyone else.
So what was it about Dr Alice Walters that drew him, made him actually notice her and react to her like this?
Rosemary would no doubt have said this was a good thing. That Hugo would never forget Emma but it was past time that he started thinking about moving on, finding someone to share his life with rather than spending decades and decades alone. He’d half-suspected that was why she’d tried to get him to meet her friend Ally, and it was why he’d made himself unavailable. He didn’t want anyone else.
Maybe he did need to move on. But his first choice definitely wouldn’t be an ambitious lepidopterist, a woman whose motives he hadn’t yet worked out. He didn’t even like Alice Walters.
Though he had to acknowledge that he was attracted to her. Not to the glossy, brittle woman from the solicitor’s office, but to this woman, a woman whose lips had parted ever so slightly and he was incredibly aware of the shape of her mouth. It made him want to lay the palm of his hand against her cheek and rub the pad of his thumb against her lower lip.
And he was at his great-aunt’s funeral.
This really wasn’t the time or place to be thinking about touching someone, kissing them.
Time seemed to have slowed to treacle. It felt as if he were hearing things from underneath an ocean, slow and haunting like a whale song rather than the trill of birds.
Say something.
He needed to say something.
But moving his lips made him think about her lips. How soft they might be against his own. Pliant and warm and—
‘Hugo? I’m so sorry about your aunt.’
He looked up. Saved by Millie Kennedy, Rosemary’s neighbour.
‘Thank you, Millie.’ He accepted the elderly woman’s hug. ‘Have you met Dr Walters?’
‘Our Ally? Of course I have. Lots of times. She’s been working on Rosemary’s book.’ Millie hugged Alice, too. ‘Good to see you again, love. I’m glad you could make it. Our Rosemary deserved the best send-off.’
Millie was nice to everyone, Hugo knew. But she seemed to know Alice quite well, accepting her as one of her own. And surely a gold-digger wouldn’t want to get too close to anyone other than her target, in case she was caught out? So maybe Alice wasn’t one of the bad guys. Maybe he’d just become a miserable cynic since Emma’s death, seeing the worst in the world.
‘I really ought to get back to my students,’ Alice said. ‘But I wanted to pay my respects to Rosemary.’ She stood up, and Hugo realised that without her high heels Alice was a good six inches shorter than he was. Petite. Cute.
And it set alarm bells ringing in his head. This woman could be very dangerous to his peace of mind.
‘Thank you for inviting me to the wake, Mr Grey,’ she said politely, and held out her hand to shake his.
It would be churlish not to shake her hand, he thought. But he regretted the impulse when the touch of her fingers against his made him feel as if an electric shock had zapped through him.
‘Thank you for coming to Rosemary’s funeral,’ he said, equally politely. There were other things he wanted to say, but absolutely not in front of Millie. ‘I’m sure we’ll be in touch.’
Touch. What a stupid word. His libido seized on it and threw up all kinds of image
s of her touching him, and he could feel the heat rising in his face.
What was it about this woman that made him feel like a gauche teenager?
And what was he going to do about it?
* * *
Alice surreptitiously checked her hand when she left the hotel. Shouldn’t there be scorch marks on her skin from where Hugo Grey had touched her? Because it had felt as if lightning had coursed through her when he’d shaken her hand.
This was crazy.
She didn’t react to men like this.
Maybe she was going down with some peculiar virus.
She was very glad to get back to the safety of her office and a tutorial with her students. And she was not going to spend her time mooning over Hugo Grey. She had things to do. Students to teach, Viola’s journals to finish editing, a crowdfunding campaign to run...
But it was hard to concentrate. She kept drifting off and thinking about him. Which really wasn’t her; she never let anything get in the way of her professionalism. Why was she letting Hugo Grey affect her like this?
‘Alice Walters, get a grip,’ she told herself out loud. ‘He was just being polite when he said he’d be in touch. You’re probably never going to see him again. He’s going to sell the house, you’re going to buy it, and that’s that.’
Though she revised her views, the following Monday, when she had the letter from the planning officials rejecting outline permission for the butterfly house.
She’d given them solid reasons for the change of use to the building and the construction of the butterfly house. The fact the planning office had turned her down made her think that someone had pulled strings—someone who clearly had contacts within the department.
And she had a pretty fair idea of who that someone had to be.
Hugo Grey.
Anger simmered in her heart all morning, through all her tutorials, to the point where she had to ask her students to repeat their answers. Her afternoon was scheduled for working on a paper, but she decided to catch up with that later. Right now she had something much more important to do: pin Hugo Grey down and make him fix the mess he’d made.
