Chapter 6
Tom
The present
“And that’s it,” Tom said, placing a chunk of hawthorn wood onto the kitchen fire. “That’s about as far as my memory reliably goes up to. Besides going to the cellar and finding the brandy. Obviously, things only got more interesting after that,” he added wryly.
At the table, Amelia cradled her mug with both hands, though she’d finished her coffee long ago.
She was staring into it like she’d stared into the wine yesterday.
“We each had a taste of the brandy while we were still in the cellars, to check it was okay. It must have started working straight away. I remember a few things after that, but I couldn’t swear they weren’t dreams or hallucinations.
” She pressed a palm onto her forehead and let out a shuddering sigh.
“Headache?”
“Mmm-hmm. I came here for Jane Austen and got Stephen King.”
“I have painkillers somewhere,” he said, walking to the cupboards. “I could use some too. Why would we both be so convinced we saw a body if we didn’t?”
“Maybe the cop’s right—we planted the thought in our own heads, and it’s spiraled into something.”
“That is the most logical explanation.” He certainly wanted to believe it, even if he couldn’t bring himself to.
“But I’ll feel a whole lot better once we locate Duncan.
Once I locate Duncan,” he corrected, seeing as this was his puzzle to solve, not hers.
“You can always ring me if you remember anything else.”
“Yeah, I guess. From Bath or wherever.”
He began searching the cupboards for the first aid box.
Not that he was in a hurry to say goodbye, but no doubt she’d want to clear off smartly, given that their escapist bubble had dramatically burst. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d left before he’d woken up.
He frowned. “Amelia, were you about to sneak away when I came downstairs this morning?”
“Uh…”
“That’s a pity,” he said lightly, as he continued searching, “because there’s a codicil in my father’s will.
If I get married before the deal goes through I’ll inherit a windfall and keep the estate and take his title, so I was assuming, seeing as we spent the night together, we would get married and you would become my countess.
” He kept his back to her so she wouldn’t see him smiling.
It felt good to smile, after all the tension.
He’d done a lot of smiling yesterday, come to think of it, which was not at all what he’d expected of his day.
“Ah, well,” she began, her voice noticeably squeaky, “I’m due back at work very soon and it’s a busy time of year, and I’m not looking for a relationship right now, especially not a complicated long-distance one, as lovely as you are, because I can honestly say that if I was looking for someone…
Not to mention that my head’s really not in a good place, and there are probably visa issues and… But I’m sure you’ll find someone who—”
He couldn’t help himself—he started laughing.
“You’re kidding, aren’t you? You jerk.”
He turned. Despite her headache, her eyes were lit up in that hypnotic way they did. “I can’t believe that worked. So I’m ‘lovely,’ am I?”
“What if I’d said yes?” Her efforts to act indignant failed and she started laughing. “That would have backfired on you! Ow!” She slapped her hand to her forehead, wincing. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“If I suspected you’d say yes to something as daft as that, I wouldn’t have asked.”
“You don’t even know me! Lucky you didn’t ask me last night. We might well have driven straight up to Gretna Green, or wherever it is people elope to these days.”
“Maybe we did!” He crossed his arms and leaned back against a worktop. “I do remember you vowing to do things you wouldn’t normally do.”
“I think we did those already. I just wish I could remember them, or perhaps it’s just as well I can’t.”
“It makes a lot more sense now to know that we were tripping.”
“I think we had a very good time.”
“I know we did.” He had only been ninety-nine percent kidding about the will. If she’d agreed, maybe he would have gone along with it. It wasn’t like he had any other plan, beyond a fuzzy idea of returning to London and getting a regular job, a regular flat, a regular mortgage.
But now he could see one clear image in this future, and he was ninety-nine percent sure it wasn’t a hallucination.
A woman like Amelia. Not the actual Amelia, obviously.
She’d made it clear she wasn’t interested in a relationship, she lived an ocean away, and the timing was awful.
But once he sorted his shit out, he’d like to find someone like her.
Someone very much like her.
“God, I need water.” He grabbed a couple of glasses from a cupboard. “You don’t happen to own a railroad, by any chance?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“That’s what penniless aristocrats do, you know,” he said, filling a glass from the jug in the fridge.
“Or used to. Marry an American heiress. Win-win. He’d get money, she’d get a title and an estate.
Consuelo Vanderbilt and the Duke of Marlborough, Winston Churchill’s parents, the Marquess of Hartington and Kathleen Kennedy…
‘Dollar princesses,’ they were called. ‘Cash for class.’” Tom placed the glass of water on the table in front of her.
“Not that I can offer you an estate. I can’t even offer you a bloody painkiller, apparently.
” He started opening and closing random drawers.
“It didn’t take long for the Americans to get wise to the fact that marrying into the inbred aristocracy wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Not to mention that all those enormous dowries were disappearing offshore.
So, instead, the Vanderbilts started marrying the Whitneys, and the Roosevelts the Astors, and so on. ”
“Do you feel guilty for selling it? Her.”
He smiled at Amelia’s correction. It always felt wrong to refer to the house as an “it.” “I try not to think about that.”
“But I bet you do.”
He tsked. “This estate has been in our family for centuries. It’s tough to be the one who calls it, whether or not it’s inevitable.
So many people have devoted their entire lives to keeping her running—the family, servants, employees…
And now it’s my name on that piece of paper that ends it all. ” He shrugged. “But what can you do?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” he said warily. In his experience, when someone asked if they could ask you something, it wasn’t something you wanted to be asked.
“What about your brother? He’s the earl, right? But the way you speak… He doesn’t seem to be involved with this decision. And your mother—that thing the cop said about needing help with him?”
He gave a curt grunt. “My mother hates this place. And talking about my brother isn’t conducive to an escapist vibe. Sorry.”
“Oh no, don’t apologize. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s fine.”
He felt like a pillock for shutting her down, but nothing was guaranteed to ruin a mood quite like his family sob stories. She took a gulp of water big enough to fill her cheeks, then caught him watching her and hurriedly swallowed.
He turned and opened the pantry. As he reached for the light switch, a memory came to him. A man, wearing a mask, standing over him. He couldn’t breathe. There was a hand over his mouth.
No. Not his mouth. It wasn’t his memory.
It was Amelia’s—a story she’d told him last night.
About waking in the night, knowing something was wrong.
He could see it playing out in front of him.
A figure silhouetted at the end of her bed—black clothes, black balaclava.
A hand over her mouth—a second man, leaning over her.
He pulled the chain to switch the pantry light on, and the scene dissolved.
But he remembered the rest of it. How they dragged her boyfriend from their bedroom and told her they’d kill him unless she gave up her bank log-in details.
What was his name—Rory? How they held her at gunpoint while they transferred every last cent she and the ex had saved for their first home.
Then they left, warning her to keep her mouth shut, because they knew where to find her.
She crawled through the apartment, too scared to switch on a light in case it showed something she didn’t want to see. And then her ex had called her name.
Even now, Tom could hear her voice in his head, from last night, fighting the words to get them out: That was when I fell apart. And I still don’t feel like I’m back together, not to where I was.
“Tom?” said the present Amelia, the one behind him in the kitchen. “Is something wrong?”
“The robbery,” he said, turning slowly. “You told me about the robbery. God, Amelia, I’m so sorry.”
“I did? Oh.” She looked a little lost, a little broken. He’d seen that look now and then over the last twenty-four hours, in her unguarded moments. “I don’t usually tell people. Wait, were we sitting on a sofa in a drawing room?”
“Yeah.”
“You hugged me!”
“I guess I did. I mean, I would have. I don’t quite remember that far.”
“You did. You hugged me.” Her voice cracked, as if the hug was significant. “You hugged me like there was no end point. You didn’t pull away.” She straightened. “And then you told me that statistically I was safer now than before it happened.”
“Oh God, did I?”
She pushed away her mug and folded her arms across her chest. “You said the chances of the average person being a victim of a random violent crime once in their lifetime were relatively low. But twice? Almost impossible.”
“I tried to make you feel better by quoting statistics? I’m sorry.”
“No, you had a point. Risk is relative. Safety is relative. No one is ever truly safe, at any moment, no matter where they are or what they’re doing.
It’s just … we need to be able to feel safe, to live our lives.
” She pointed at him, recalling something.
“You told me about being in Iraq, as a soldier.”