Heart of the Cotswolds: England

by M. L. Buchman

  Jane was very amused that Aaron could say he loved her in Spanish far more comfortably than English. It was the only bit of Spanish (other than: please, thank you, and bathroom) that he’d picked up during their week abroad. Abroad because Fosse-on-the-Wold was now home.

  She reached out to hold his hand as a cheery blonde delivered their beers and a pair of menus.

  “Is Bridget off tonight?”

  The blonde squinted at her, “Bridget?”

  “Bridget…” but Jane didn’t have a last name. She’d always just been Bridget.

  “Can’t say as I know who you mean,” the blonde’s accent was musically Welsh, so pleasant to listen to that it took Jane a moment to sort it out. Then the words registered.

  “But—” Her throat went dry.

  Aaron’s hand twitched hard in hers.

  “There’s just me and Malcolm,” the waitress pointed to the bartender, “if’n you don’t be counting my sister and Ma doing the cooking.”

  “But—” the tightness in Jane’s throat clamped off any more words.

  Aaron squeezed her hand hard enough to get her attention, then he nodded toward the fireplace. It took her a moment to see what was wrong. In place of Snoop’s doggy pillow there was now a booth, that looked as if it had been there since the place had opened a thousand years before. The Snoop Doggy Dogg statuette was gone from the mantle as well—a mantle that was too narrow to have ever held it.

  She looked about the room. There were a hundred small differences that no one seemed to notice. Rather than dried hops hanging from the ceiling, there were small bundles of lavender. The stairway to the two rooms was gone, the stone wall seamless across the passage she and Aaron had traversed so many times.

  “Oi. You must be that smashing American couple who’re locals now. Certainly look it. Hang on,” and the waitress hurried back toward the bar.

  Jane could only look at Aaron in desperation. Something had shifted and she didn’t understand it.

  He had that intent hunting-falcon look that came over him when he was thinking hardest. Tracking, analyzing, he scanned the room. But she could see that he was finding no more answers than she was.

  Then he tapped the menu.

  She looked down.

  It was just as aged and well-worn as ever, but the offerings were different. Traditional, but definitely not the same, except for her first meal of whitebait and chips.

  He tapped it again, at the top.

  “The King’s Guard? But we were only gone for a week.”

  “Or maybe we were never here,” Aaron’s whisper did nothing to reassure her.

  The waitress returned with a manila envelope. “Here you go. Elderly chap, very posh, brought this by a couple-a days back and said to give it to the ‘smashing American couple’ when they come in. Figure that must be you two. Be right back. I see an order’s just come up.”

  Aaron took the envelope, which was good. Her own hands weren’t working at the moment. She could feel herself hyperventilating and was doing her best to hold the panic at bay.

  He inspected the contents, then handed across a very official-looking form. She had to blink several times to focus on the words. It was a vehicle title to the bronze MINI Cooper. It was in her name.

  “We were here. But here isn’t here anymore.” She wasn’t making any sense, even to herself, but she somehow knew she was right.

  Aaron started to read the letter that had been in with it.

  “You said you didn’t want the pink Ferrari.”

  “Conrad.” Jane didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He, too, must be gone.

  Aaron kept reading though she could hear how tight his voice was. He read fast as if he feared the letter itself might disappear before he finished it.

  “I hope I was right at taking you at your word and gifting you the MINI for your wedding instead—in truth a much more practical vehicle in any regards. Your cottage is paid off as well, it seemed the least I could make Geoffrey do. They also have reimbursed the money you put down, in recompense for all of the trouble Debbie caused you with the various bureaucracies. Seems they had quite the row over it as he hadn’t known what she was up to—or so he claimed. I made it clear that they don’t dare trouble you again or they shall be disinherited—apparently the only type of threat either can understand and a fate neither would risk.”

  “The cottage?”

  Aaron only shrugged but she could read his relief in the nuanced movement. No more battles. No tight pinch of fear. With the mortgage paid, they’d have time to grow their company now the way it should be. And free of Debbie? That was too big to think about now.

  “Knowing the two of you has been a true joy. I would leave you my number should you ever need assistance, but I know you both will find all you need in the person sitting beside you and in this town you have grown to love. I have been called abroad and should I return, know that I will look in on you. Conrad”

  “Do you think the manor is still there?” It was a crazy question.

  Aaron squinted over at the booth again. “If it is, we might not recognize it. Or at least not know the people.”

  “What does it all mean? Hal, Bridget, Conrad?”

  Aaron folded the letter carefully and handed it to her.

  The paper felt real. At least that much remained.

  He looked around the room and she followed his gaze. There was laughter at the bar and around the pub. Locals and tourists mixed as they always did. Two women sat down at the booth that was there now but never had been before. One of them had a beautiful golden retriever who inspected Jane briefly with his soulful eyes before settling happily at his mistress’ feet.

  Outside the leaded glass window, Fosse-on-the-Wold still bustled with life, vibrant without being hurried. Across the way, a family peered through the tea room’s front window, then went inside. A large tractor drove through town pulling a massive trailer of hay as quickly as if he was alone on an open field. The usual swarm of cars and vans squeezed aside to accommodate him on the medievally-narrow road, then hurried on their way as soon as it was clear.

  Just as she was turning back to face Aaron, a hot-pink Ferrari flashed down the street. She didn’t manage a good look, only enough to know it wasn’t her sister in the passenger seat. She had the oddest feeling that it was actually Hal. Perhaps with Bridget driving? She couldn’t be sure, then a King Charles Spaniel stuck its head out the car’s window and into the wind. Jane wondered if Hal was finally wearing his red Ferrari tie.

  She turned back at Aaron.

  “It’s still home,” she whispered.

  “As long as you’re here with me, it always will be,” he nodded with that perfect certainty of his that always made her feel everything was right with the world. And, however impossibly, it was.

  She’d finally found her heart in England and, by the pressure of Aaron’s firm grip, she knew that was but one of so many precious things she’d never lose again.

  Coming this winter:

  Path of Love: Italy

  Love Abroad B&B romance novel #2

  (Via dell’Amore)

  Coming this winter

  Erica was so done with being done with Dwayne. She was even done with being done with being…

  Yep! There was the crazy loop that her head had been stuck in for, she did her best not to sigh at herself, far too long. Enough was enough, as all but her closest friends were nice enough not to say. And her closest friends—she’d come near enough to chasing them away altogether.

  She sat on the grassy verge of the road, hugged her knees up against her chest, and tried not to look out at the idyllic Italian olive grove perched on the scenic hillside, backed by the vast Mediterranean and the blue sky that looked so perfect that it was easy to imagine the Roman gods still lived there.

  So she had come to the land of love. And since she no longer believed in love, Erica decided that it was perhaps the dumbest decision she’d made in a long line of them.

  She had
always been curious about the Italian coast. Not the famous Amalfi stretch featured in every film since Hollywood directors had first discovered it in the 1950s. No, it was the small coastal towns to the north that she’d always imagined visiting. Ones where the bare bones of history lay upon the hillsides in thousand-year-old churches. Bridges and towers that had inspired Monet and Van Gogh. Especially the little piazzas where she could sit and watch the world walk by in its elegant, Italian fashion while sipping an espresso with—

  But she’d come here alone.

  And that wasn’t the Italy she’d found.

  She crouched at the edge of some impossible switchback, staring down over the scrub-brush edge of the crazy path down the steep hillside—a path carved by the tires of her rental car.

  She’d missed the curve and had plunged fifty feet down the slope through the orchard.

  The car had caromed off two aged olive trees, which had slowed her descent from dramatic to really annoying. Its final resting place against the granddaddy of the orchard was good enough for her. Stomped-on brakes and good fortune had lessened the impact enough that the air bag hadn’t needed to deploy, though she could still feel the harsh line of the seatbelt across her chest.

  She’d left the car there and climbed back up to the roadside, but there was no one to flag for help on the cliff-side road. Her cell phone was still down there in the car. So, she sat and glared at it for lack of anything better to do.

  Italian drivers were crazy, but she’d watched enough television travel shows to be ready for that. Tailgaters? No prob. She’d grown up driving in LA. Manic passing? Nothing a Boston pro wouldn’t try as she’d learned when life had led her there.

  It was the Italian roads themselves she wasn’t ready for. Narrow two lanes the size of a US back-country road were the major thoroughfares of the country. Only the massive Autostrade toll roads had multiple lanes, which were still painfully narrow. As she’d come here to see the countryside not the highways, she’d taken to the secondary highways at the first opportunity.

  Along with every massive truck in the entire country.

  The driving was narrow, fast, and terrifying.

  Had been. She definitely wasn’t getting back behind the wheel for as long as she was in Italy. The car could rot right where it was for all she cared.

  And she was probably in shock, having just survived her descent into the olive grove. Could you tell when you were in shock or not, or did someone else have to tell you? By being able to ask the question, did that mean she wasn’t in shock? Or that she was?

  Or that she was losing her mind? Which wasn’t really in doubt at the moment—she definitely was.

  The gray-green leaves from where the orchard continued up above her filtered the hot Mediterranean sun of May into dappled laser beams among cool bits of shade. Leaves no bigger than her pinkie clustered and overlapped so tightly that she could barely see the white car down the cliff-like slope. Beneath the trees, grass thick with dandelions sought the sunny gaps.

  Maybe she should sit…except she already was. She rested her forehead on her knees.

  Ironically, it wasn’t the two-lane “highway” with its massive trucks and speeding cars that had defeated her. Instead it had been this isolated one-lane road that wouldn’t have been considered a decent driveway back home. According to her map, this narrow, switchbacked, and paved goat trail was the main road into her randomly chosen destination, the tiny town Riva Lontana perched above the Ligurian coast. One blink of inattention, a pair of motorcycles racing up the hill as she’d descended, and she’d plunged off the edge.

  “Perfect metaphor for your life, Erica.”

  So she squatted on the verge and stared at the impossibly blue sky over the miraculously blue sea and wondered how hard it would be to get back to the nearest airport and just go home.

  But there was the car. She should at least let someone know it was there. Maybe someone who could just make it so that it had never happened. The car. The flight to Italy. Leaving Boston. Sleeping with her boss, her married boss, so full of promises and lies.

  How had she been so naive? So…desperate?

  Erica double-checked that her little traffic triangle was perched on the road’s edge behind her. “Every Italian car,” the rental agent had told her as if it was the most important secret to driving in Italy, “has reflective triangle. Must use if in, ah, incidente.”

  It was the only remaining bit of control in her life, placing that foot-high warning triangle beside her on the edge of the road.

  Danger! Here sits a disaster of a woman. Approach at your own risk.

  Better yet: For your own safety, stay clear of this woman!

  Since her car was off the road, its nose crumpled against a massive tree, she figured it counted as an incidente. Her pack was still down there somewhere. Her cell phone too. But, by god, her little red reflective triangle was on the road where it should be.

  A smooth, dangerous sound behind her had her turning in time to see a hot pink Ferrari slide to a stop close behind her. A cheery brunette, whose dark hair spilled down over her shoulders, leaned out of the car.

  “Are you all right, tesoro?”

  “Tesoro?”

  “Chérie. My friend. You do not look happy.” The brunette offered her a pout of sympathy.

  “I’ve had better days,” she pointed down-slope at her car. An elderly gentleman had come from somewhere in the trees and was inspecting the disaster.

  The woman strained to peer over the edge of the drop-off.

  And giggled.

  “Your car?”

  “Rental.”

  “And you are not hurt?”

  Other than her pride, her soul, her… Erica shook her head no.

  “Oh. Everything is okay then.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  The brunette climbed out of the blazingly pink Ferrari. She was tall and generously built. She wore simple Italian chic of silk blouse, tight jeans, and stylish boots that Erica always wanted but could never seem to find. The light leather jacket looked to be for effect rather than warmth. A woman in her prime. Much of Italy struck her that way, which made her want to stamp “Warning: Dowdy American” on her forehead to tell them to stay clear.

  A rotund brown-and-white spaniel followed her and came over to sniff at Erica’s hand. It appeared immune to the triangular warning sign, so she petted it. The dog sighed happily, so she petted it some more. The first thing to go right with her day.

  “I’m called Brigitte. He’s named Snoop. And I am guessing that you need a place to stay.”

  “Well, I’m thinking that I shouldn’t leave town until that is dealt with.”

  “Oh pfft!” Brigitte waved a hand at the car as if it was of no consequence.

  “Shouldn’t I contact the police or something?”

  “Corrado can take care of that for us, can’t you, darling?”

  Erica turned to see that the man who had been inspecting her car had climbed the hill carrying her pack. He handed it and her cell phone over very solemnly. He was an older gentleman who looked to be far above such menial tasks.

  “Is that your tree?”

  “They all are,” his smile was unexpectedly easy and made his blue-gray eyes practically twinkle. “You have parked your conveyance in my olive orchard.”

  “I’m terribly sorry. Let me know if there is any damage. I’ll repay it…” somehow. She was an unanchored craft in the storm that was her life. It wasn’t as if she had some deep bankroll to survive whatever was happening to her.

  “These trees have been standing since long before the Medici first rose to power in the 1400s. They have seen far worse than your piccolo macchina. I shall call Marceto and see that it is returned where it must go. Would you like a replacement?”

  “Not on your life,” Erica blushed. “Sorry, but no thanks.”

  “É finito!” He snapped his fingers as if he could work magic.

  “Henri?” Brigitte was talking into
a cell phone. “Do we have a room open? Sí? Perfetto! I will be home soon and bringing a guest.”

  The woman stepped up and kissed Corrado on both cheeks.

  Was Erica supposed to do the same? Unsure of herself, she held out a hand. He bent over it and placed a kiss on the back of her hand like a gentleman of old.

  “Oh, Corri, you old hound,” Brigitte teased him, but Erica felt touched. “We must find another woman for you. Your wife is long gone now, rest her soul.”

  “She will have to be a very special one,” his smile teased that she must be just like Erica. As if. Besides, he was at least twice her age, maybe closer to three times, though he’d carried her pack very easily.

  “Come! We have a most charming B&B. You must see it. You will never want to leave.”

  Erica’s pack filled the Ferrari’s tiny trunk. She slid into the leather passenger seat, which felt even better than first class looked after a twelve-hour flight in coach. She pulled on her seatbelt, barely in time. Snoop climbed up to sit on her lap and rest his chin on the door.

  The engine roared to life, Brigitte flashed a wave to Corrado, who waved a solemn hand in reply from his olive trees. The Ferrari leapt forward, slamming her back into the seat as they raced down the narrow twisting street she’d barely been creeping along. Snoop leaned his side into her chest and she wrapped an arm around him as his ears flapped out in the wind.

  She was in the hands of strangers and had no idea what came next.

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  About the Author

  M.L. Buchman started the first of, what is now over 50 novels and as many short stories, while flying from South Korea to ride his bicycle across the Australian Outback. Part of a solo around the world trip that ultimately launched his writing career.