“That was arouxfor the gravy, and all of you distracted me, and youknowit.”
She grinned, slipped her shoes back on, and was out the door before I could say anything else. I stood in the middle of my kitchen for a long moment with the scarf draped over my hand, looking at the door she’d just walked out of, feeling something warm and complicated and very hard to name behind my ribs. Then I turned back to the soup because I was not, in fact, going to burn it.
The next hour passed in a blur of small, fussing tasks—stirring, tasting, adjusting the heat, wiping down a counter that was already clean, rearranging the shortbread on its plate three separate times before admitting to myself that shortbread did not require arrangement. At eleven-thirty, I made myself go get dressed.
Cream sweater, like Paige said. The jeans I always wore. The small silver earrings I almost never put in because they always felt too fancy for the life I lived. And then, slowly, I looped the scarf around my neck once, the way Eliza wore hers, and looked in the mirror.
I stopped.
Paige had been right about the sweater. Eliza had been right about the green. Together, with the scarf loose at my throat and my hair down over my shoulders, I looked like a person I recognized and also didn’t. I looked like the best version of a regular day. I stood there for longer than I should have, staring at the woman in the mirror, and then I made myself look away before I could get any more stupid about it.
I went back to the kitchen and had a brief, one-sided conversation with the cats.
“Behave,” I told them. They stared at me. “I mean it. All three of you. Darcy, I know you’re going to do your thing, just—don’t knock anything off the bookshelf, please. Knightley, you’re fine. You’re always fine. You’re my good boy. My sweet little baby.” Knightley blinked at me with slow, dignified approval. “Wentworth.” I pointed at him. “Wentworth, listen to me. You are not allowed to climb Jasper like a tree. You are not allowed to launch yourself at him from any surface. You are not allowed to sit in his lap and meow directly into his face. Do you understand me?”
Wentworth looked me in the eye and said nothing.
“I don’t trust you.”
He flopped onto his side and exposed his belly, which was what he did when he wanted to be forgiven for something he hadn’t done yet.
“I really don’t trust you.”
The soup was simmering low. The sandwiches were stacked and ready to go into the pan. The shortbread was cool andresting on a plate under a linen cloth. Everything was fine. Just fine.
I caught myself smiling at the stove and had to look away from it. I was nervous. I was nervous in a way I had not been nervous in a very long time. Not the nervous that made you want to call the whole thing off—the other kind. The kind that lived right underneath your skin and made everything feel a little brighter and a little more fragile. I’d forgotten what this felt like. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt it likethis.
The clock on the stove clicked over to eleven fifty-nine. A few seconds later, someone knocked on my door.
Of course,I thought, and went to answer it. Precisely on time.
Jasper was standing on my landing with a small bunch of wildflowers in one hand and a look on his face that said he had been waiting for this moment since he’d left my shop yesterday afternoon. The wildflowers were the kind you’d pick up at the little stand by the feed store—daisies and black-eyed Susans and a few sprigs of something blue and lacy I couldn’t name, wrapped loosely in brown paper. His eyes went to the scarf at my throat and stayed there for just a second longer than they needed to.
“Hi.”
He held the flowers out. “I didn’t know if you liked flowers. I took a guess.”
“I love flowers.” My voice came out steadier than I’d expected it to. “Thank you.”
I took them and stepped back to let him in. The second he crossed the threshold, the apartment changed. My apartment, my space, my smells—old books and vanilla and now tomato and butter—and him in the middle of it, suddenly and undeniably there. His boots made a different sound on my hardwood than I was used to. His shoulders took up a different amount of spacethan anyone else’s. He stood just inside the door and looked around slowly, taking it in, and I watched him look.
“It’s nice,” he said quietly.
“Thanks.”
“Smells amazing.”
“That’s the soup. And the shortbread. The apartment usually smells like shortbread, actually. I bake a lot when I’m nervous.”
“You were nervous?”
“Shut up. I mean, no,” I scoffed. “I’m fine. Are you nervous?”
“A bit.” The smallest smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.
“Well, I’m not scary at all. Most of the time.” I turned to put the flowers in water before I could do or say anything stupider, and that was when I noticed the cats had already assembled.
They were arranged in the hallway like a tiny, inscrutable welcoming committee. Darcy at the back, tail curled neatly around his feet, watching with the expression of a magistrate waiting to be impressed. Knightley was in the middle of the hallway, sitting upright and regal, his yellow eyes tracking Jasper with calm, steady interest. Wentworth front and center, already at Jasper’s feet, tail straight up, head tilted, halfway to committing.
