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"Jan, I'm starving..." Harry' s deep, resonant voice ripples over me and I let myself savor the familiar thrill his voice always inspires before I look at him. He stops speaking when he sees me.
The blood drains from my face as I watch his smile evaporate and his eyes turn flat and cold. I stare at him, unable to look away. The end of his nose is red, chafed by the cold and his hair is a mass of unruly curls on top of his head. His mouth is closing over his beautiful teeth, with those slightly longer than average canines, the last to disappear.
"What in the world is going on here?" Jan says incredulously and I turn to look at her. She's pointing between the two of us looking at us, her gaze stern, her eyes wide, her eyes brows so high they disappear into the creases on her forehead.
"Nothing,” I say looking back at Harry, his expression unchanged and hard. “I've got to go get ready for dinner."
And then, I run for my life.
21
Harry
"Tonight is lovely, wasn't it?" Camille whispers from the chair next to mine.
Lovely is not how I'd describe this clusterfuck, so I don’t say anything.
“I have a photogenic memory, I know I've seen you before," Camille shouts across the table to Addie.
I stifle my sigh. This is the third time she’s said this. It has made dinner at best, awkward. Addie puts her fork and knife down and looks Camille in the eyes with barely masked annoyance.
"Maybe. I live in London. Maybe you just saw me in passing," she’d said. Her shoulders were slightly hunched in discomfort, but a smile played on her lips at Camille's use of the word photogenic instead of photographic. Everyone at the table, except Freya, was trying not to laugh.
"No, I loathe London. I only go when forced. Where in London do you live?" she asks. Her tone was imperious, turning her question into a demand as she addressed Milly.
"I don't live in London," Milly returns quietly and hooks her thumb at Addie, “she does.”
"Oh, so sorry. It's so hard to keep all the details straight," Camille says, not sounding the least bit apologetic. "I've lived in Coventry my whole life, and our circle of friends is small - mainly the landed families in the area - I'm not used meeting such exotic women." You’d think she was saying she was the queen of England by the imperious tone in her voice.
"They are rather exotic, aren't they? Like beautiful blooms in a sea of stones. They always stand out,” their father says, grinning at his three daughters.
"Yes. Quite!" My mother says enthusiastically. "Your daughters are lovely. They're going to cause quite a stir this week."
"Oh, will there be lots of eligible men here?" their mother asks excitedly. "Lilly's single, it would be wonderful if she could meet someone this weekend."
"Mom." Lilly's voice is pleading and quiet. It stirs a pang of sympathy I don't want to feel in my gut.
"Will you all stop talking about us like we're not here?" Milly says. A smile appears on her lips, but her eyes are quite serious when they rest on her mother.
"You can join in the conversation, no one's stopping you," their mother says, not the least bit chagrinned at Milly's rebuke.
"I'll join in by changing the subject," Milly says. My mother claps her hands together excitedly and I see Lilly’s shoulders drop in relief. My anger spikes.
"Are you single, Lilly?" I ask. The entire table stops to stare at me. I immediately regret my outburst when I see her head drop and her eyes slide to me, allowing me to
see how pained she is by my question.
"I'm sure that's none of your business, Harry," Freya says. There’s a laugh in her voice and a twinkle in her eye that I know is completely false. She turns to look at Lilly for the first time this evening. "Ignore him Lilly. There'll be plenty of available men here at the wedding. I'm sure your dance card will be full," she says. It's only because I know Freya so well that I hear the challenge in her otherwise perfectly cordial tone.
"Yes! Dance Cards!" Cara exclaims from across the huge table we're all sharing. "We're having dance cards at the reception. I'm so excited. It's going to be like a fairy tale."
The conversation turns to the wedding details and my awkward outburst is forgotten.
It's after one in the morning when I get back to the house from taking Camille home. The library's light is burning bright and I know I'll find my father there. He used to fall asleep in his chair when we were children and still lived here.
I walk in expecting to see him with his feet up, his head resting on the winged back of his favorite chair. Instead I see her. Lilly’s head is bent of over the computer, those ridiculous headphones over her ears as she sits in my father's chair typing furiously on her keyboard. The click of her fingers on the keyboard is the only sound in the entire room. Her hair, as unrestrained as I'd ever seen it, falls forward and hides her profile from view. But her face is burned into my memory. I’d never be able to forget what she looks like, even if I desperately wanted to.
She’s dressed in dark gray flannels and her feet are encased in thick woolen socks. There’s a thick white blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The room is cold and the fire has been banked. I walk over to the fireplace and prod the logs with poker, coaxing them to reignite. The room is silent. She's stopped typing but neither of us say a word. I steel myself before I turn around.
