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He led her back into the house, and she gave up her coat to him. He hung it on the hook by the back-garden door, next to his. It gave her a strange feeling ofdéjà vuas if this had happened before—their coats hanging here side-by-side like they lived together in this house, which made no sense unless, maybe, it wasdéjà vufor a time yet to come.
“You look beautiful,” Arthur said, staring at her.
She had dressed as nicely as she could without being too obvious about it—a fashionable grey shirt dress and black boots, all very smart and expensive. This was one of the finest townhouses in all of London, however. She felt like a street urchin playing posh.
“Thank you,” she said simply, as he led her into the kitchen.
They went to the sink and Arthur held out his arm with obvious reluctance. Clearly he was the sort of man who didn’t like being fussed over. The cut—and it was a cut, not a scratch—was fairly deep. If he behaved, though, it would heal quickly.
“Just a flesh wound,” she taunted. He smiled. As Zoot liked to say, a Monty Python reference never went amiss.
She washed the bite out with soap and warm water and felt Arthur’s eyes on her the entire time.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” he asked.
“I should have been nicer before.”
“Why start now?”
Two days ago she would have shot him a dirty look. Now she laughed at herself softly. “I have some bad news,” she said. “Or depending on how much you hate me, it’ll be good news. Do you hate me?”
“No.”
He said it softly, and she felt the word as much as heard it, felt it like a stroking of fingers across her cheek or the gentle press of a kiss on the top of her foot.
Behind the sink was a window that looked out onto the back garden. The trees and plants were listing sideways. The wind was picking up. The house was eerily quiet and the tile floor of the kitchen and the cold porcelain sink echoed the quiet. She could hear her own heart beating.
“Regan? What’s the bad news?”
She dried his arm, put on the plaster, and met his eyes. “I think we both could use a drink, don’t you?”
“Definitely,” he said. “If you’ll go down the hall to the front room, I’ll bring wine. Or would you like something stronger?”
“Wine will do. Red if you have it.”
Regan dried her hands and walked down the hall to the front sitting room where a fire burned behind the grate. The walls were white, the trim black and the furniture Hepplewhite and Chippendale. On either side of the fireplace stood floor-to-ceiling bookcases. She had been prepared for the Godwicks’ shelves to be filled with antiques and bric-a-brac, something she could sneer at, but no, they were stuffed solid to bursting with books. Books about art, and nothing but. Many of the same books she had in her office.
Was Arthur right? Was she just like them?
Or were they just like her?
Arthur entered wearing a clean grey t-shirt, V-neck, and holding two glasses—a glass of red wine and a glass of whisky, neat.
“The whisky’s for me,” he said, handing her the wine. “I have a bad feeling I’m going to need it.”
“And maybe you should sit down, too,” she said.
Arthur sat on the black-and-white striped sofa. A gust of wind blew loudly outside the house. Regan went to the front bow window and looked out just in time to see a newspaper cartwheeling down the street like a tumbleweed out of a Western.
“It’s strange being here,” she said, “at your house.”
Strange and nice, too nice. That same sense ofdéjà vureturned. A cruel tease. There was a world where she didn’t hold back, where she let her feelings for him take root. A world where she and Arthur fell madly in love and lived together in this stunning London townhouse full of art and books and good wine and soft chairs. Marriage to Arthur would be passionate and private, just the two of them, sitting here in this room talking or not talking, up in their bedroom, making love or sleeping. Art galleries, art shows, art auctions… She could have a studio upstairs in a room with north-facing light. They could start a charity, free art lessons for children whose poorly-funded state schools didn’t have art classes. And in the evenings, dinners out, the theater, home again, laughing, a little drunk but only on each other.
God, she wanted it so badly she could taste it. But it could never be. She drank her wine instead.
“Not really my house,” he said. “It’s my parents’.”
She turned around to face him though she stayed at the window, holding the wine glass in her hand. “It will be yours. You’re the heir. The townhouse. Wingthorn. The paintings.”
