Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Arthur
We turned the horses toward the yard at a brisk canter. The fields, so wide and forgiving a moment ago, narrowed to the hard geometry of fences and brick. Gravel spat under iron shoes as we cut through the last gate and into the stable lane.
Mr. Pembroke, the head groom, appeared as if conjured up, cap shoved back, with two lads on his heels. “Sir.” He had a hand on the bay’s bridle before I’d even swung my leg over. “We’ll see to them.”
“Thank you.” I dropped to the ground, legs buzzing, and handed the reins over. Bryce was already out of the saddle, his gelding snorting once as if to say he objected to the sudden end of sport.
I nearly snorted too.
“We’ll cool them,” Pembroke said, reading the urgency in our faces. The lads led the horses away at once.
Bryce glanced at me, apology and adrenaline sharing space in his eyes. “I’m so—”
“Don’t,” I said, too fast, then softened it. “I know it isn’t you.”
It was the timing. It was the universe. It was the exact second before our mouths would have met, choosing to announce that I was, in fact, still a Windsor, and he was still inconveniently the United States’ representative.
I felt the flare of temper I almost never let myself feel—hot, childish, ridiculous.
If I’d been fifteen, I’d have stamped my boot.
We cut across the yard. Mummy’s Labrador Chico dozed on the warm flagstone and thumped his tail as we passed. Somewhere I heard a radio murmuring cricket scores. The sky had sharpened to that clear, late-afternoon blue, and I resented it for being beautiful when I wanted to be cross.
“This way,” I said, and we took the side path that slipped behind the service wing to the boot room entrance—what Americans call the mudroom, which is sensible but sounds as if it ought to be hosed down twice a day. The oak door was unlatched; I shouldered it with my hip and waved Bryce through.
Rows of Wellingtons stood to attention, riding boots polished to a quiet shine, sticks and crops and old tweed caps lined up like soldiers who’d gone soft but refused to admit it. A sink, a rack of brushes, and a peg with my childhood hacking jacket still hanging there like a ghost.
Bryce moved with purpose that did not quite hide the tremor underneath. His clothes lay folded on a bench, briefcase atop them like a period at the end of a sentence.
“I’ll return these clothes tomorrow,” he muttered breathlessly, slinging the strap of his briefcase over his shoulder. “If that’s all right.”
“Of course,” I said, then heard my voice come out too tight, and tried again. “Keep them as long as you need.”
He was already fishing out his phone, thumb moving with professional muscle memory. “Lewis,” he said into it, the word crisp as a salute, then met my eyes and winced in apology, already halfway to the next room.
I followed, because of course I did. We cut through the little passage where light fell in squares on old tile, into the service corridor that opened on a narrower hall—family photographs, dog portraits, a watercolour of Mummy on a grey mare clearing a brush fence.
Bryce walked and listened in the same breath.
“I’m on my way,” he said into the phone, and then, listening again: “Understood. Ten minutes to the car, ninety to London, faster if we don’t encounter traffic.
” A pause. “Tell Security to alert the gate. No statements until I’ve had eyes on the sitrep. Yes. I said no statements.”
His tone made me want to laugh and kiss him and push him up against the nearest panelled wall, which was inconvenient, since we were walking past the pantry and Mrs. Sumner was almost certainly within earshot.
We reached the small vestibule that gave onto the front hall. The main double doors stood open to the deep porch. Outside, the SUV idled, driver at attention, the sense of now rolling toward us like a tide.
Mummy entered from the morning room, a file in her hand, Benson hovering a respectable distance behind. She took in the tableau in one glance: Bryce with the phone at his ear, me with too much colour in my face, the driver shifting his weight on the gravel beyond.
“Oh, how dreadful,” she said, with genuine sympathy in her voice. “Must you fly?”
Bryce had one foot over the threshold already. He turned his head slightly, pressed the phone to his shoulder. “Ma’am—my apologies,” he said, breathless and composed all at once. “We had the loveliest time.”
I could have stood there forever with those five words ringing in the air like a bell. We had the loveliest time. As if it were already a memory. As if it had not been interrupted at the one point I most wished it would not be.
“I’ll call you later,” I said, and hoped it didn’t sound like a plea.
He looked at me—really looked—and bit his lower lip. It wasn’t coy. It was, for once, unguarded. “Please,” he said softly, then straightened, returned the phone to his ear, and stepped outside.
The driver had the rear door open before he reached it.
He slid in, the door shut with that solid, expensive thunk, and in the same moment Benson moved to the bellpull as if to summon tea for a person who was no longer present.
The SUV eased off the turning circle, tyres whispering over gravel, then found the drive and gathered speed.
Through the trees, the black shape threaded away toward the gate.
I stood where I was, and my breath found its way out again, but my pulse hadn’t quite received the memo.
Mummy placed her hands on my shoulders—lightly, carefully, as one steadies a young horse without crowding it. She tilted her head, assessing, her mouth making that small thoughtful shape that meant she was deciding whether to be kind or truthful.
“That didn’t go the way you wanted it,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.
I stared at her, stunned. Mummy made a profession of not noticing anything she could not fix with a schedule and a set of rails. This—this—she noticed?
“How extraordinarily perceptive,” I said, which was my way of admitting the wound without showing it bleeding.
She smiled. “One does not need to be a genius,” she said. “One only needs to have been young once.”
* * *
I wore a path in the old rug between the wardrobe and the window, phone in my hand like a talisman that refused to work. I’d rung Bryce twice; both calls slid straight to voicemail. Sensible, of course—if it was truly urgent, he’d be surrounded by staff and security.
I felt absurdly like a teenager: keyed up, impatient, too aware of my own pulse. It wasn’t like me. I didn’t do this—this hovering at the edge of whatever this was after a single afternoon.
I set my phone on the duvet. Picked it up again, then set it down.
A soft knock—then Mummy let herself in without waiting. “Are you staying for supper?” she asked, as if inquiring about the weather.
I opened my mouth to say no—I usually fled back to my flat rather than be trapped in Strathmore’s gentle nostalgia—but the thought of being alone with my thoughts (and my phone) made something in me recoil. “Yes,” I said. “I am.”
She lifted an eyebrow. She had not sent Benson; she had come herself.
That meant she wanted to see my face when I answered.
“Very good,” she said. “It will be casual. Just the two of us. Steven’s in Glasgow for the British Eventing Foundation dinner.
” A faint sniff. “Rubber chicken and speeches. He adores it.” She checked the clock on the mantel. “It’s time now.”
“Give me a few minutes,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”
She turned to go. The door was half-closed when the question leapt out of me, unplanned. “Mummy—would you mind if I spent the night?”
She paused, hand on the latch, and looked back. For a moment she said nothing, only took me in: jacket still on, cheeks too bright, the phone sitting like a sulk on the coverlet. The smallest smile touched her mouth.
“Not in the least.”
* * *
I opened my eyes to a choir of feathered alarm clocks outside the window and immediately thought uncharitable thoughts about all of them. I never woke this early. It was the room, of course. In this house everyone rose at dawn as if the sun had personally invited them to a bloody committee meeting.
I yawned, stretched until my shoulders popped, and Bryce’s face flickered through my mind—sunlight on dark hair, and the hint of a smile that promised trouble of the best kind. I groped for my phone on the nightstand, thumbed it awake, and prayed for at least a text.
Nothing.
I set it down. Picked it up. Considered throwing it at the wall, which would be both satisfying and expensive.
A small knock, then the door opened and Mummy came in carrying the morning paper as if she’d been cast in the role of Maternal Figure. I propped myself on an elbow, tilted my head, and stared. Since when did she bring newspapers upstairs?
She perched on the edge of the bed, crisp as always, and turned the front page toward me. A photograph of runway lights and police tape; a bold headline stretched like a trumpet blast: SUSPECTED RUSSIAN DRONES HALT OPS AT US AIRBASE. The subhead mentioned RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire.
“I knew it had to be important,” Mummy said. “Americans are usually so anxious to be around us”—I rolled my eyes—“that it takes something very important indeed to rush one away.”
“Mm,” I said, eloquent as a doorstop.
“Breakfast?” she asked.
“Yes. I’ll be down in a few.”
She smiled—actually smiled—and stood. “Good.” She paused at the door, glanced back, seemed to approve of something in my face that I couldn’t identify, and left.
I picked up the paper and skimmed: precautionary lockdown; RAF Police and Gloucestershire Constabulary; investigation ongoing; no injuries; attribution premature. I tossed it to the floor and sighed.
“Damn those Russians,” I muttered. “They bloody ruin everything.”
But even as I said it, something inside of me calmed down.
Of course he hadn’t rung. If he’d been anywhere near the centre of it, he would have been surrounded by staff, ushered into secure rooms, and handed statements.
Bryce had excellent reasons not to call.
The thought—ridiculous as it was—warmed me.
Maybe yesterday wasn’t a figment of my imagination conjured by horses and too much sun.
“Oh do stop,” I told myself, climbing out of bed. “You are acting like a complete fool.”
In the bathroom, the mirror returned a candid opinion: dark circles, hair like a hedgerow, and the faint crease between my brows that arrived whenever I stayed up arguing with my own thoughts.
I splashed water on my face and told my reflection to behave.
After breakfast I’d drive back to London, crawl into my own bed—far more civilised than this mattress from the reign of George V—and hide behind a book until the world remembered how to be dull.
I was towel-drying my face when my phone buzzed somewhere near the bed. I bolted—bare feet on old boards, heartbeat tripping—and snatched it up, already braced for a calendar alert or, worse, nothing.
A text from Bryce:
Forgive the radio silence—locked down handling the Fairford situation. You’ve seen the papers, right? I’m safe, just tired. Not free to talk yet, but I would very much like to see you. Could we meet later this week? I’ll ring as soon as I’m clear.