Chapter Eight
It took the better part of three hours and I couldn’t feel my fingers by the time I finished, but when I finally stumbled to bed, I had it. I slept until Helen gave me a light shove and told me that butler Stephen had just brought breakfast. I sat up and she handed me a plate of food. I usually limited my morning meal to Greek yogurt and fruit, but there was enough in front of me to feed a teenage boy with a gland problem.
“Ooh, full English,” I said happily. I started with the eggs and bacon. “How did you know I needed stoking?”
Helen nibbled a spoonful of muesli. “I got up to go to the bathroom about three in the morning and saw you sitting outside.” She was familiar enough with my methods to know that when I was working out a hit, I would hunker down with a six-pack of Big Red, drinking and chain-smoking Eves until I had it. The QM2 didn’t run to Big Red, but at least the nicotine did the trick. “Did you get it?”
“I got it,” I said around a mouthful of baked beans. I shoved a piece of Cunard stationery at her. There were a few rough sketches on the page along with a series of bullet points. She studied the pictures and skimmed the list.
“Risky,” she said finally. “But doable.”
“If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it,” I told her honestly.
She shook her head and dropped the paper on the bed next to me. “I think this is as good as any other plan.”
I buttered and jammed a piece of toast. “An underwhelming reaction. Are you afraid of cracking your Botox or just unenthusiastic?”
She pitched a pillow at me and I batted it away, protecting my toast. “I have never used Botox,” she informed me. “Fillers only.”
I scrutinized her face. “Looks good.”
Her gaze slid past mine, and she went to check her reflection, smoothing a spot between her brows. “You think?”
“Helen, you are one of the five most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in person and definitely the least vain. Why are you looking in the mirror like Snow White’s stepmother?”
She straightened, her expression surprised. She couldn’t have done that with Botox, so I guessed she was telling the truth. “Actually, I always related to the Evil Queen,” she said as she turned back to the mirror.
“Why? Unless you have a stepdaughter I don’t know about. Or a boy toy. I always suspected the Evil Queen had something dirty going on with the huntsman,” I added, crunching into my toast.
I could see her image in the mirror. To my surprise, her reflection went pink from her collarbones to her hairline. I nearly choked on my toast.
“You’re kidding.”
“He’s not a boy toy,” she said firmly. “He’s only seven years younger than I am. But…”
She trailed off and came to sit on the edge of my bed. I felt stupid I hadn’t suspected it. During our last mission, Helen had shuffled around like a woman who was running on a battery with half a charge, so bowed down by grief she couldn’t even stand upright. But now she was practically glowing.
“He’s the first since Kenneth died?”
She nodded, clasping her hands together.
“How long have you been seeing him? Is it serious? Tell me more, tell me more, like does he have a car.” I fluttered my lashes at her in my best impression of a Pink Lady.
She grinned. “It’s been going on for seven or eight months. And I wouldn’t call it serious. Or a relationship. He lives in Brussels and travels a lot, and I’m at Benscombe, so we just get together when we feel like it. We meet up in Paris or Amsterdam. London if he’s over on business.”
“Helen Randolph, you have a friend with benefits,” I said.
“No, that’s what you have with Taverner,” she corrected. “I just have benefits. I don’t consider him a friend.”
“You mean you only get together to get laid?”
Her blush deepened. “You’ve been spending too much time with Natalie. I prefer to think of it as a mutually satisfactory arrangement.”
“Satisfactory?” I hooted with laughter. “If it’s only satisfactory, you should consider an upgrade.”
“Fine, it’s more than satisfactory. It’s…rapturous,” she said, grinning suddenly.
I grinned back. “I’m happy for you.”
She sobered just as fast as she’d smiled. “It’s just that, lately, I’ve begun to wonder if I wouldn’t like something more. Not necessarily from Benoit. Or maybe from Benoit. I don’t know.”
Her fingers plucked at the bedspread, pleating and unpleating.
“What’s holding you back?”
She shrugged, but when she looked up, her eyes were fearful. “What if he doesn’t want that? What if I think I want it and I really don’t? How do you even start something permanent with someone at our age? I mean, when you get together for—what does Natalie call them? Butt dials?”
“Booty calls,” I corrected. “And nobody says that anymore. I think it’s ‘Netflix and chilling’ now.”
She flapped a hand. “Whatever the kids are calling it these days. The point is, I know when I’m going to see Benoit. I have time to prepare. I take care of stray hairs and the callus on my big toe. But a relationship is different. Someone who’s around all the time is going to notice I wear my glasses on a chain around my neck and spend my morning with the New York Times crossword.”
I patted her arm. “Any man who loves you is going to love you even when you look like a demented librarian with glasses on a chain and crossword in hand. I don’t know what to say about the big toe except maybe book your pedicures a little closer together.”
She gave me a gentle shove and I grabbed her shoulder, peering closely at her face. “And don’t worry about that mustache. Some men have a kink for that.”
“That lip is as smooth as a baby’s ass cheek,” she told me. “I waxed just last week.” She grabbed the last piece of toast, and I was glad to see she was looking more like herself. Helen’s widowhood had brought with it a crisis of confidence that had paralyzed her at a particularly inopportune moment. But she’d redeemed herself, and the time since seemed like it had done her a world of good. Throwing herself into a project had been the best possible thing for her grief, although I suspected getting stuck into more than just the Farrow & Ball tins had been the real magic.
She picked up the list again and read it through, over and over again, just like we’d been taught, until she’d got it memorized. “I’ll let the others know and then I will get the things on the list that we need from the shops.”
“Get them to put everything in a big bag,” I called after her. “We’re going to need it.”