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“A few? When we were children, you mean.”
“Count, you were fourteen when we met. Hardly a child.”
“And you were eleven. And definitely a child.”
“Well, anyway. This was when we were a bit older. I hid in the orangery, do you remember? You and Ed didn’t find me for hours. It was the best hiding place. I wonder if that’s why I thought of it the moment I got on the plane.”
“You felt like hiding?”
Something flickered across Pea’s sunny face, like a candle blown by an unseen wind. “No. Of course not. I guess it just reminded me of happier times.”
“If I recall the day you’re thinking of, Edward got bored of looking for you after five minutes and was later found flirting with the kitchen staff. And I…”
He had known where she was the whole time but had let her think she was hidden well. After twenty minutes, he had come to retrieve her from the half-derelict orangery and discovered her daydreaming so hard she didn’t even hear him. He had watched her for a while as she looked at whatever it was she was seeing: the dust motes floating in a shaft of golden, early autumn sun; or the way the cracked glass in the orangery windows diffused and refracted the light into hazy star-burst rainbows if you squinted just right; or maybe the robin’s nest that was tucked into a high corner; or maybe the purple-dog violets clustered around the sagging door. Those were the sorts of things he usually looked at when he came to sit for a while in the quiet, sun-warmed space. That time, though, he had looked only at her, at her wide grey eyes, face turned up to the sun, hair loose and wild as always.
He hadn’t wanted to intrude. He had gone back to the too-big, too-quiet house and waited for her to give up the game and return.
But she hadn’t, of course. Typical Pea. Eventually darkness had drawn in, the weather had turned, and Leo had run through the gathering storm to bring her back to the house. He had found her standing in the rain, laughing, barefoot, and muddy.
“It’s warm!” she had cried, “the rain is warm!”
She was soaked through, her curling hair dark with water, her t-shirt plastered to her skin—to her small breasts, her slim body. She had been fifteen and he had been eighteen. Far too old for childish games. But she was his best friend’s little sister, so what other option did he have except to play along?
“You’re an idiot,” he had said and taken her cold hand and hauled her back to the house.
Now, Pea smiled at him across the breakfast room. “You came out in the storm, and you found me.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” he said. “It was only a shower.”
Chapter four
Leo
Itwasahotday, even for late August. They walked from the back of the house and along one of the cobbled paths that ran through the walled kitchen garden. The garden’s walls were made of old brick topped with stone, and flowers grew in the crumbling mortar. Leo only kept three gardeners on his staff, and the vegetable garden was a little wild, beans tangled with sweet corn, pumpkins sprawling through the rows of beetroot, camomile growing along the path.
Pea kept wandering off the path, of course, picking raspberries off the canes, crushing mint between her fingers. She found some pea plants and snapped off a couple of pods, splitting one open and offering it to him.
He eyed the neat little row of green beads. “They’re raw.”
“They’re delicious.”
He took the pod dubiously and ate one of the fresh peas. It tasted both earthy and sweet. Pea ran ahead, exclaiming something about gooseberries. She wore denim cut-off shorts, and he could see the faintest shadow of her bra through her white cotton top. Was it pink? Cerise?
There was a wooden gate at the end of the walled garden, and beyond it, past a little patch of lawn that had been left to grow wild for the sake of the bees, was the cottage, and the gleaming, white-framed orangery at its side.
There was a path mown through the long grass, just wide enough for one person. Leo followed Pea, eyes tracing the line of her tanned legs, her lithe body. The sound of crickets was loud all around him, and the sun burned hot on his neck.
Pea slowed down as they neared the cottage then stopped, shading her eyes with her hand. “I don’t believe it…” she murmured, then sprang forward with a cry of excitement. Leo watched her run toward the cottage and smiled in a way that started deep inside his chest and would have surprised anyone who knew him. But there was no one there to see it.
Pea
“You’ve completely restored it!” exclaimed Pea, standing inside the little cottage’s single ground floor room: a farmhouse kitchen that opened onto a snug living area with a fireplace almost the width of the end wall.
“It was mostly my aunt. I just signed the cheques.”
Pea turned in a circle, taking in the leaded casement windows, the beamed ceiling, the clay tiled floor. The furniture was the exact right mix of traditional and fresh.
She wandered over to the scrubbed pine kitchen table and absently picked up a lemon from the vintage bowl in its centre. The Count watched her, his arms crossed. He was, as always, dressed simply and neatly in suit trousers and a crisp shirt.
