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Chapter Thirteen
Bookselling
Magnús was turning the sign on the door so it read ‘open’ when Alex arrived along with Jowan and two big bags of ingredients they’d picked up at the visitor centre shop at the top of the village.
Magnús had chosen his outfit a little more carefully than usual; boots, black winter cargos and a thick black jumper over a fitted grey Henley had seemed appropriate, and he’d spent time scrubbing his cheeks and tidying his beard. He’d pressed cologne to his neck while looking in the steamy bathroom mirror, telling himself it would all be fine. ‘Þetta reddast. It’s just a normal working day.’ Yet he hadn’t been able to face his morning coffee. He blamed the champagne while knowing full well this wasn’t the same as any kind of hangover he’d had before.
A nervous hunger lay in his stomach when he welcomed Alex into the shop and he was immediately hit by a wave of something sweet.
‘You smell good.’ The words were out even before he’d said good morning.
Jowan hadn’t been able to hide how amusing he found this as he made his way past the pair and into the café with the shopping bags.
‘Thanks.’ Alex seemed more shy this morning, and somehow more ethereal. She was pale, like she hadn’t slept until the early hours, much like Magnús. ‘I tried on some perfume up at the visitor centre while we got the stuff for today. This one’s called Highland Coral Beach.’ She lifted her crooked wrist to his nose, and the action softened his insides. Why was he being like this?
He was going to ask her if she’d bought herself a bottle but decided not to. He had no idea how she was financing her Clove Lore escapade or what she did for a living back home, wherever that was exactly. Did she have any money for luxuries like perfume? Instead, he told her he liked the scent very much.
Alex didn’t move from the doormat and Magnús’s feet seemed somehow stuck as well, so they stood in her soft aura of lavender and heather mixed with the chilly sea salt air she’d brought inside with her.
Timidly, they assessed one another. Was she going to mention it, Magnús wondered? The way they’d almost kissed? He’d thought of little else since yesterday, half tortured by the idea that she must regret their champagne-fuelled closeness, and half maddened by how much he wished he’d ignored his natural reserve and instead pulled her closer and pressed his lips to hers like he’d wanted to.
Now it was daylight, and there was only coffee, no alcohol, and they had work to do. It wouldn’t happen again and it was dawning on him that not kissing her would be his biggest regret about this whole trip.
‘Right, anythin’ else you two need?’ Jowan was back and rubbing his hands for warmth. ‘There’s fresh logs outside by the steps. Better keep the fire going all day.’
Although it was hard to turn away from Alex’s face, so soft today, and so sleepy, Magnús thanked Jowan.
‘Oh, and I’ll be back down in a mo’. I’ve a Christmas gift for you both, well, for the shop. Just nippin’ up to get it from Minty.’ He tapped the side of his fine nose with a finger and winked before starting for the door.
‘Tell her we said thank you again, for last night,’ Alex said hastily. ‘It was lovely.’
‘That it was,’ Jowan replied, as if thinking back to standing by the ballroom fireplace, head bowed over Aldous in his arms, talking in hushed voices with the lady of the manor.
‘Give uz an hour, I’ll be back,’ he told them with the cunning look of a man who might be cooking up a secret plan to bring a little Christmas cheer to the Icelandic bookseller who always looked so serious and weary except, he and Minty had observed, when in the company of a certain Cornish girl.
‘We’ll be here,’ Alex chimed, as Jowan drew the door closed and the shop fell silent.
Magnús kept his eyes fixed on his guest as she glanced around the shop like she were seeing it for the first time.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ she remarked, her eyes dancing between the hand-painted signs in curly gold script above each set of shelves, all the late Isolda de Marisco’s work:Philosophy and Psychology, Sciences and Mathematics, History, Biography, Geography, Popular Fiction, Poetry, Literature and Rhetoric, Queer Lives and Loves, Natural Sciences, Arts and Crafts.The Borrow-A-Bookshop had it all.
On the low shelves and in willow baskets under the spiral of cast iron stairs crouched theChildren’s Literaturearea with its own pretty sign in gilded lettering and bright rugs on the floor for kids to sit upon and read, and beside that, the low armchair in front of the dark hearth.
‘Your fire’s gone out,’ Alex told him, avoiding his gaze, and for a second Magnús wanted to tell her it really hadn’t; he was still burning ardently inside.
‘Ó, Já!I’ll bring the logs in.’ He was sure he heard Alex chuckle as she made for the café.
Turning for the door, his insides butterflied at the exasperating, astounding way she affected him. How was he supposed to do this?
They’d committed to a day’s bookselling, but all he really wanted to do was stare at her. Ridiculous, not to mention impossible. These feelings, whatever they were, were all startlingly new to him, and they were accompanied by a sense of needing to practise caution.
Alex seemed even more of a rare treasure now than she had when he’d pulled her from the sea. Seeing her looking fatigued and pale this morning had awakened a desire within him to look after her; another new sensation for him. Even so, something told him Alex would not appreciate this impulse. She’d already shown him she wasn’t delicate or some kind of sea-maid in distress. When she’d spoken last night, she’d practically fired sparks of enthusiasm and self-will from her body.
That excitement, he reminded himself, had come from her bursting desire to run the café today – an opportunity she clearly hadn’t known she wanted until last night.
With a swallow, he told himself that if anything was going to spoil her day, it wouldn’t be him. This might be her only chance to do this thing, to connect with her mother. Whatever she gained from washing ashore here, and whatever it was – in addition to her grief at losing her mother – that she was running from, Magnús was determined that she’d be allowed to enjoy this respite. He wouldn’t make it awkward or unhappy for her.
No, he told himself with stern conviction, he’d keep his distance and let her play until her heart was content and he’d keep all thoughts of kissing her buried away.
