Chapter Twenty-Three #3
“I know,” Freddie interrupted. He paused, then added, “I’m sorry, too.
I thought about it for a long time afterward, and always regretted that I didn’t…
I don’t know. Try to see things from your perspective, I suppose.
It felt like too much time had passed, though—I figured you wouldn’t be interested in hearing from me. ”
“I had my head up my arse,” Max said, and Freddie choked out a laugh around a mouthful of champagne.
“Is my sister to credit for removing it?” Freddie asked slyly.
“Ignoring that horrifying imagery, I expect she is.” Max offered Freddie a small smile, and Freddie gave him that blinding Holloway grin in return.
“What’s this?” Vesper asked, sliding onto the barstool next to Max’s.
“Ashbridge has quit his job,” Freddie announced, and Max got to enjoy the novel sensation of watching her gape at him.
“You can’t seriously think that, after what we’ve learned, I’d want to keep working there?” he asked her, tilting his glass at her. She reached over, plucked it from his grasp, and took a sip.
“Of course not. I just thought you might warn me first.” She handed his glass back to him.
“What’s next, then? Back to the Passport Office?
Or something else for the Foreign Office—you could work for an embassy, perhaps?
” The words were uttered casually, almost carelessly, and she didn’t meet his eyes as she spoke.
Max stared at her, frowning. “Why would I do that?”
Vesper shrugged. “It’s still government work, but it’s something different—very interesting, I’d imagine.
And it would allow you to travel—weren’t you saying you’d never been able to travel as a boy?
You deserve to see the world beyond whatever you saw in the war: That’s hardly the same as the canals of Venice that you saw in all those paintings. ”
Max felt as though he were holding a conversation in a language in which he wasn’t fluent. “I have an entire life here in London—I’m not planning to move abroad.”
Vesper shrugged again, giving a careless flip of her hair. “It was just a thought—you’ve nothing to tie you down, after all, I thought you might like to explore something new.” She glanced at him now, lightning-fast, out of the corner of her eye.
Nothing to tie him down.
Was this her way of informing him that she didn’t consider this—whatever it was, between them—to be serious?
If so, it felt like a piss-poor way for her to let him know, particularly with Freddie standing five feet away, making rather a show out of peeling a lemon for garnish while sneaking surreptitious glances at them.
Farther down the bar, Amir was muddling basil, and Max saw him roll his eyes at Freddie.
“If you’re going to eavesdrop, you may as well just do it openly,” Amir said, leaning toward Freddie, and Max watched Freddie blush.
Max turned to Vesper, who had snuck another sip of his champagne. “Well,” he said, reeling from the past three minutes, “I suppose I’ll consider all of that. Thank you for the… er… suggestion.”
“Of course,” she said brightly, her smile blinding and cheerful, even as she still couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’m going to go see if Anna needs any help in the back—and Freddie, have you made any more spell powder this afternoon, or do I need to handle it?”
In a whirl, she was off, leaving Max reeling in her wake.
Freddie leaned toward him, his expression thoughtful.
“That,” he said, with the air of a naturalist having observed fascinating animal behavior in the wild, “was Vesper taking preventative action.”
“Well,” Max said, his voice sounding bitter even to his own ears, “she’s quite ruthless about it. Ensured I didn’t get any funny ideas.”
“Oh.” Freddie laughed. “No. Sorry—you misunderstand. She’s taking preventative action for herself. She’s worried you’re not going to be interested any longer, now that you’re done playing detectives, and so she’s setting you free.”
Max stared at him. “She can’t possibly think that.”
Freddie shrugged. “Vesper’s used to people wanting her for a night—she’s spent the past few years ensuring that she never spent time with a man who would demand anything more. It’s been quite a while since she really cared for anyone, and I think she’s afraid.”
“I can’t imagine your sister afraid of anything,” Max said, even as his thoughts snagged on the memory of the conversation he and Vesper had had at Grenoble’s, the forced lightness of her voice as she’d told him of the married man who had led her on, and the unmarried one who had fallen in love with someone else.
He’d been able to tell, even then, that the memories still bothered her—but only now did he realize how much.
She had a good mask—one of the best he’d ever seen. And he’d fallen for it.
“I don’t think she knows what to do,” Freddie said wisely, “now that she wants someone for…”
Forever, supplied Max’s mind.
He didn’t say it aloud—not to Freddie.
But it whispered to him for the rest of the afternoon, and for a night of fitful sleep.
In the morning, when the papers landed on his doorstep with the scoop of the decade, it was still whispering.