Chapter Ten #2
“I wouldn’t,” Cosima confirmed. “I would make it back in interest by the time I’d Venmo’ed it to you.”
“Don’t be vulgar,” Morag chided. She turned back to Edie. “I will pay you to go on this treasure hunt.”
“And then what, I give you the treasure? What labor or goods are you getting in return?”
Something passed over Morag’s face that made Edie’s heart skip a beat.
It was something sad, and she had never before seen Morag be sad.
Morag, as far as Edie was concerned, should not ever be sad.
She should only and always be as scary and self-satisfied as she’d appeared in the smoking-hot photograph they’d found in the guest book, and should not ever die, additionally.
It was possible Edie had attached herself to Morag.
“I can admit this place could use a facelift,” Morag said. “No, that’s too drastic a statement. More like a bit of tasteful Botox.”
“You’re not making sense,” Edie told her. “Do you need to sit down? Or a cracker?” But there was a flutter in Edie’s belly. A good flutter.
“For heaven’s sake. In exchange for your travel money, I’d like a menu update, within a few parameters, and a new vision for the lounge.”
“God! Morag! Are you being serious right now?” Edie had a thousand thoughts at once. “You know, if we’re getting into the lounge, I have an idea for—”
“Just the menu and the lounge. There have been developers sniffing around for years. I spoke to a man at the tourism board meeting. It’s time I sold, and with your updates, the inn will fetch a better price.”
Edie’s flutter stilled, leaving a vaguely sick feeling behind. “What kind of developer?”
Morag’s mouth turned down at the corners. “An outfit that does real estate holdings. Avista? Avessa?”
“Avissa,” Cosima said with a tight nod. “They’ll be most interested in the land, not the hotel. Is the building listed on the National Register?”
“Grade II. He said it’s likely as not they’ll leave the inn to sit and build around it, but if it’s up to a ‘modern aesthetic standard’ he may be able to convince his management to put in a higher bid, perhaps even start off a bit of an auction.”
I was only kidding. That was what Edie wanted to say—that she hadn’t meant it when she’d asked Morag to put her to work, that she didn’t know how to clean out and redecorate the lounge, that she had no ideas for the menu and hadn’t been prowling all over this inn thinking up a hundred different ways to apply elbow grease and make it shine.
Edie liked this inn, but she didn’t like it for Avissa, a name that sounded like a snake’s hiss. She’d set herself up to be disappointed again. She’d imagined too many things that could never be true.
At least with Cosima she’d known her imagination had gotten away from her. Her feelings about the inn had snuck up on her. “Listen, Morag…” Her mouth was so dry. She felt a little sick.
“Please do it.” Cosima cleared her throat. “Let Morag hire you. I want to go, and it’s likely not recommended to treasure hunt alone. There were plenty of clues today we needed both of us to solve, not to mention what might have happened if you’d been alone with that ewe.”
“What ewe?” Morag interjected. “Did Bert’s sheep get after you girls?”
Edie wrapped her arms around herself. She knew what Cosima was doing. Cosima was a good person, fundamentally, who believed Edie wouldn’t disappoint her if she could help it, so Cosima was pretending to need Edie so that Edie could go.
Thank goodness Edie was also impulsive.
“Okay.”
Cosima looked at Morag, who raised her eyebrows. “Okay? As in, yes, we’re setting off tomorrow?”
“It looks like it.”
Cosima grinned. It was one of her genuine smiles, the kind that made creases at the downturned corners of her eyes, and Edie’s inconvenient flutter moved inconveniently lower and became more like a heavy pulse.
But she could ignore that. She could. She could politely refuse to think about what it would be like to rub her bottom lip against Cosima’s grin and how her curls would feel against her cheek while she was softly biting Cosima’s neck.
She was a grown-up. Ish. She would figure out how to go on this treasure hunt and be around Cosima and not let it turn into reckless hope.
Cosima turned in her stool to face Morag. “There are a few matters to arrange and clarify.”
“Oh?” Morag had slipped her arms out of her wool coat and hung it on a tree by the door. Now, she moved to the Aga to retrieve the kettle and carry it to the sink.
“Yes. We’ve paid you room and board to stay here.
You will be transferring a portion of Edie’s paid stay, of course, to apply to accommodations on this trip, with any overages taken care of by Edie using her expertise on behalf of the inn.
However, in my case, I would be paying my own way on this hunt. ”
“I can arrange for a refund.” Morag’s eyes were actually twinkling.
“No. There’s something I want in exchange for my unused room and board.”
“Which is?”
“Access to the garden and greenhouse. And an account at the garden center in Grantham.” Cosima crossed her arms.
“You’ve already been stomping about in my garden.” Morag said ‘my garden’ like it was a patch of zinnias and a few herbs instead of a vast, walled space of sentient botanical monsters.
“As a guest I have, but I want real access. Pruning and digging and repairing access.”
“Fine. Don’t move the roses or use power tools during quiet hours.”
Cosima bit back a smile, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip in a way that confirmed for Edie that her casual questions about Morag’s garden on the day they went on their hedgehog walk had not been casual at all.
Cosima had a thing for gardens. She was a garden person, and if she’d come far enough to convert her yearning to poke at Morag’s crumbling relic of a garden into a formal request, it meant that she was feeling better than the version of Cosima in an HP Sauce–stained robe whom Edie had been so determined to help.
And Edie was so glad.
This gladness was incredibly dangerous. These were feelings. Like-her feelings. Sudden-recall-of-the-way-Cosima-had-looked-at-her-at-the-stile feelings. Soft skin, shuddering breath, gripping hands, psychic elation feelings.
When she’d found Gregory Place on the internet and did the mental no-money math, she had imagined a small respite of a hermitage from which she would emerge practical. These feelings were not practical. They were precisely what she’d been trying to avoid.
“I have some conditions, too.” Edie crossed her arms. She didn’t know what her conditions were, but she was ready to improvise.
“Which are?” Cosima’s tone was back to imperious.
“We should have the same budget.” Edie tried to match Cosima’s tone. “It’s not fair if your money means we can buy our way to every clue or bribe someone.”
Cosima made a noise like a sharp bark. “I would never!”
“You don’t think you would, but I bet your threshold of using money to solve a problem is much lower than mine. Also, if we manage to make our way to the places on the map like France or Italy, I want to see more than the inside of the Four Seasons.”
“I’m not actually a princess. I don’t have a rider for my accommodations wherever I go.”
“But do you agree?”
“Of course,” Cosima said through her teeth.
“My second condition is that we come up with a system for resolving disagreements. If you believe the answer to a clue or the next action is one thing and I’m inclined toward another solution, we’re not going to have time to fight about it and then wait a week for you to emerge from your rooms. My time here is up at the end of the month. ”
Suddenly, the four weeks Edie had carved out to heal felt like a pinch of sand in an hourglass.
“We’ll resolve it like we do in business,” Cosima said. “We take the dilemma to a third party to decide after we present both of our cases. Whatever this third party says goes. We can alternate choosing a third party.”
Edie smiled. “I accept. Finally, we have to agree on what to do with the treasure. If we find it.”
“What do you think it is?” Morag asked with a noisy sip of tea in a tone that was too jokey. In addition to being falsely bright, it struck Edie as … nervous.
Edie narrowed her eyes at the older woman. “What do you think it is? A grimoire? Flying potion for your broomstick?”
“I don’t need more riches.” Cosima’s voice was prim.
“Ugh. You know that makes you sound more Mary Sue. And I don’t want you handing them over to little old me. Your head would explode with gratified charity.”
“You know what?” Cosima pointed at Edie, her cheeks a little pink. “Fine. We split it. If it is remotely splittable, that’s what we do. Fifty-fifty. And I’ll call my personal lawyer to draw up the contract.”
“And I’ll call my half sister Meadow, who is a lawyer, to talk to your lawyer.” Meadow was an attorney for a school district in Florida, not really a treasure contracts kind of lawyer, but she was also free and had drawn up Edie’s LLC for Fauxmage perfectly well.
“Fifteen percent,” Morag said. “No. Make that twenty.”
“What?” Edie and Cosima’s outraged exclamations were perfectly matched.
“It’s my guest book.”
“Fine,” Edie said, at the same time Cosima said, “Seventeen.”
“Seventeen and a half.” Morag nodded. “But if I die before I spend it, my will’s not to be contested by you lot.”
Cosima held out her hand to Morag. “Deal.”
“What is this?” Edie gestured between the two of them. “Cosima is not the CEO of this treasure hunt.”
“She is as far as I’m concerned,” Morag said. “I’m not worried if you sic someone named Meadow on me, but Cosima likely owns an entire firm of lawyers.”
“We start tomorrow,” Cosima said. “Eight AM.” She stood up and literally sailed from the kitchen.
Edie was not sure she had balanced the scales sufficiently. “You need to brace yourself for some changes around here,” she told the innkeeper. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll love my updates so much that you decide not to sell to a soulless real estate outfit!”
Morag made a chuffing sound that Edie couldn’t quite categorize. “Warn me the day you pull up the carpet in the lounge. I’m allergic to dust.” She removed herself from the kitchen.
Edie had definitely not managed to balance the power. In fact, the more she thought about it, walking up the stairs to her room, brushing her teeth to get ready for bed, the more she wondered if she might have been had.
But she couldn’t stop grinning into her pillow as she fell asleep.