Chapter 10 Savi
Savi
Savi sighed as she finally took her seat on the Lakenheath railway carriage.
The morning had been…hectic.
She’d woken to find that she wasn’t in her old bedroom with Alex. Instead, she lay in George’s bed, the book she’d been reading to him splayed across her chest, and George himself nestled under her arm.
One look over at the bejewelled carriage clock had her sneaking from the nursery as fast as her legs could carry her, only to find that Alex wasn’t in their bedroom; he was in the breakfast room downstairs being monopolised by Raj.
Roadworks made their three-mile drive to King’s Cross Station about as chaotic a journey as she had ever undertaken—and she’d been to Cairo.
Now, though, safely seated in the private carriage once more, there was nothing to do for the next eight hours but talk.
But Alex hadn’t said a word to her all morning.
He’d barely even looked at her. Even now, he averted his gaze, focusing solely on the rows of terraced houses streaking past the window, the pace increasing as the train picked up speed.
The passionate, almost primal man he had revealed last night had vanished, replaced with the gentlemanly shroud he cloaked himself in.
Once the racket of the steam engine had calmed, Savi broached the subject. “I’m sorry for not coming back last night.” She spoke quietly, uneasy with how she’d effectively abandoned him—regardless of how unintentional it had been. How long had he waited for her before giving up?
Alex’s throat swallowed. There was a slight shake to his head. “You have nothing to apologise for. If you aren’t comfortable with some of my…interests, then you’re under no—”
“Oh!” Savi blurted out. “Oh, no. I didn’t stay away because I wasn’t interested, Alex.
George had a nightmare, and I was reading him a story, and the next thing I knew, it was morning.
” The relief on his face was palpable. “And just for the record, I am comfortable with your interests. I very much enjoyed seeing you…let loose.”
His intense gaze tangled with hers across the table between their seats. “You did?”
She nodded, a coy smirk hovering at the edges of her lips. “You’re so formal, so proper. I’ve been wondering if you ever let loose. Allowed yourself to be ruled by your instincts.” What a privilege it had been to see the fire in his eyes in the bedroom.
If she didn’t know better, she would have said he was blushing. Even so, he lounged back in his seat. “Last night was the first time those instincts came to the surface. Don’t misunderstand me, I’ve bedded women before, but I’ve never wanted to…”
“Impregnate them?” Savi guessed.
Alex’s nostrils flared, as though he was a predator following her scent. “Quite.”
Her heart fluttered. It was a heady thing to know she was the catalyst for these desires coming to the surface. “Is it something you’d like to explore further?”
“You wouldn’t object?”
Savi shook her head. “I had a dalliance with an artist visiting Oxford a few years ago, and he—” She stopped talking, realising they hadn’t touched upon another of last night’s revelations. “You didn’t seem angry last night when you learnt I’m not a virgin.”
He rolled his eyes. “When I told your father I was looking for a wife, I told him I didn’t want a girl.
I wanted a woman, one established enough to have formed her own opinions and, yes, had her own experiences.
And Christ, Savi—you’re an artist. I’m sure you’ve had some very interesting experiences indeed. ”
“Perhaps.” She shot him a sly grin.
“But you’ve previously been with a man who wanted to impregnate you?”
“I have.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Alex hesitated, as though he was choosing his words very delicately. “Did you become pregnant?”
“Heavens, no.” Fernando had been nice, and she’d enjoyed their bedroom activities, but she hadn’t wanted a child with him. “He used a condom, and I used a pessary, as always.”
Alex’s brows pinched together. “A pessary?”
“It’s a small rubber cap shaped rather like a policeman’s hat. An inverse condom, if you will.”
“And it’s, uh.” He cleared his throat. “Inserted?”
“Into the vagina,” she replied, enjoying how flustered the conversation was making him. “Yes.”
“I never knew such a thing existed.”
“They can be quite difficult to get,” Savi admitted, thinking back to when she first attempted to purchase hers. “Especially because some chemists feel they can police who is worthy of contraceptive devices, but I managed to find a catalogue to purchase mine.”
There was a brief silence before Alex reached across the table to take her hand. “I’m relieved to hear I didn’t scare you off.”
Savi nibbled on her lip to hold back her smirk. “You only made me more intrigued.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He glanced out of the window, a bar of sunlight travelling across the lower portion of his face. “How was your evening prior to the intrigues?”
Her amusement withered somewhat. “It was lovely to see the children again,” she said truthfully. “Albie reminds me so much of George at his age.”
“But?”
With anyone else, Savi would have kept her mouth shut, but there was something about him that made her want to open up.
“It’s nothing to do with the children. The bedroom we were given was the one I grew up in.
For years, it’s remained much as it was when I left for university.
I’d left behind a collection of…oddities, for want of a better word. ”
Alex leant forward, his elbows resting on the table. “Oddities?”
Please don’t be disturbed by this. “I’ve always been fascinated by animals, and I’ve always wanted to draw them. Belgrave Square, however, isn’t exactly a hub of animal activity.”
“No, I can imagine the subjects were rather few and far between other than pigeons, foxes, and rats.”
“Precisely, but my mother took me into an oddities’ shop one day—”
Alex flashed her with a rakish smirk. “Is this the famous Hugger & Mugger once more?”
How had he remembered that? “It was! Anyway, one day we went in there and they had a number of animal skulls—”
“Ahhh,” he breathed, understanding clear on his face.
When he didn’t appear disgusted, she went on.
“Raj hated them. But over the years, I built up quite a collection of animal-related oddities, from simple skulls to taxidermised parrots to preserved butterflies. When I went to university, we were only allowed to bring a trunk’s worth of belongings, so I left my collection at home.
Ma and I packed them away in the chest of drawers next to the window.
They were there when I stayed with Raj and Katherine in December, but… ” Savi gave a listless shrug.
“They might have just been moved.”
She doubted it. If they’d been found, there was every chance they had been binned.
“Perhaps. I should have taken them back to Oxford when I had the chance.” Savi shrugged.
At the end of every visit, she’d always intended to bring a spare trunk with her next time, before arriving months down the line, having forgotten yet again. “Nevertheless, we live and we learn.”
And she had learnt a great deal about her husband—although the words prompted another of last night’s discoveries to resurface.
“Actually,” she began. “I was talking to Katherine last night.”
“Mmm?”
“She wasn’t gossiping, I should add. There are many differences between my situation and hers, but Katherine’s father married her off to her first husband without them ever meeting, so I do think she was trying to ensure my well-being.
” Savi waved a hand as though pushing the explanation aside, knowing she was overexplaining but helpless to stop it.
“Anyway, she asked how I was getting on with your family. I said Lily was as lovely a sister-in-law as anyone could wish for, but then she asked about your brother.”
“Ah.” Alex ran a hand through his hair, his fingers threading through the white above his forehead before it transitioned into dark brown. His jaw tightened. “May I ask what she said about him?”
“Only that he’d had some difficulties after the war,” she said quietly, wondering if she was stepping on the cracks of a deep familial division. “And that he wasn’t at our wedding.”
The tension in his expression loosened. “Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
The stormy intensity in his gaze ebbed away. “She isn’t wrong,” he conceded. “Ben has had a lifetime’s worth of difficulties since the war.”
So that was the Ben that Lily had mentioned the other day. Not her beau—her brother.
“He was blinded in a mustard gas attack during the war.” Savi sucked in a breath, but Alex continued.
“He was actually the reason I got involved with things like the sanatorium. Ben stayed at Craiglockhart Hospital for a time, but there was nothing to assist him once the hospital closed, and there were so many men like him in need of help.” His throat shifted.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m quite protective of him. ”
“There’s no need to apologise. It’s understandable.” Savi bit her lip, looking out of the window as the train roared through a station. Her heart pounded, but she had to ask. “Does he live at the sanitorium?”
“No, no,” Alex breezed through the denial. “He prefers to live by himself. Even before his injury, he wasn’t what I’d call a people person.”
“I can understand that.” Savi laughed, trying to fight off something that felt like disappointment. She should be pleased that Alex’s brother wasn’t in the sanatorium, but she was desperately trying to find some excuse to visit in the hopes of finding her mother.
Yet the closer she came, the more her certainty slipped.
Because what if she was wrong? What happened if she visited and there was no sign of her mother? What if her mother had been dead all along, and Savi had been chasing a ghost?
A lump grew in her throat, stubbornly refusing to be swallowed.
Before it robbed her of her ability to speak, Savi excused herself, making a beeline for the toilet.
The moment she locked the door behind her, a deluge of tears soaked her cheeks.
She’d lived with the grief of her mother’s death for five years now.
Yet it had never left her, even after all this time.
There had been so many different things she’d grieved over the years.
The first Dipali without her. A stranger walking past wearing the same perfume Ma used to wear.
Knowing Ma would never meet her hypothetical grandchildren.
Realising she would never taste Ma’s sandesh again.
Finding an old letter tucked into a book and tracing Ma’s handwriting.
Watching Raj re-marry like Ma meant fucking nothing to him.
Savi’s theory had given her hope, and, god strewth, she didn’t want to go back to life without it.