Chapter Fourteen #2
There was a wait of perhaps thirty seconds, and then the door opened to reveal Ashbridge, wearing an expression of such honest astonishment that Vesper nearly laughed.
As it was fairly early—not quite ten on a weekend—he was looking rather casual, dressed in a pair of gray wool trousers and what looked to be a hand-knit jumper of a deep forest green.
“Vesper,” he said, his tone as startled as his expression, but he recovered quickly. “I wasn’t aware you knew the hours before noon existed.”
“Is this the bit where I’m meant to laugh at your wit?”
“Did we have an appointment I’ve forgotten?”
“Why don’t you invite me in, rather than discussing this on the doorstep?”
She could see, for a split second, his wariness at war with his innate good manners, but the latter won out.
He beckoned her into the tiny entryway and then led her up a couple of narrow flights of stairs before they emerged on a landing on the top floor.
He opened the door to his flat and said, a bit wryly, “After you.”
Vesper realized, as her gaze greedily took in the contents of Ashbridge’s flat, that she was more curious than she might have liked to admit.
It was small and tidy, composed of a sitting room, a little nook into which he’d set a table and two chairs, and a kitchen.
There was another doorway, its wooden door shut, that Vesper presumed led to his bedroom.
Naturally, she made a beeline for that.
“Excuse me?” he asked, sounding nonplussed.
She cracked the door open and peeked inside.
It was painted a serene white; the bed was tidily made with a dark blue quilt; a green rug covered the bare boards of the floor; atop a wooden dresser, she could see a framed photograph of a couple who she suspected must be his mother and stepfather.
She had not expected the art on the walls, however: A large painting of the sea, done on canvas and framed, was over his bed; above his dresser, a series of still lifes in muted colors; on another wall, a rather charming sort of gallery display of framed advertisements from approximately twenty or thirty years earlier.
She stepped back into the sitting room, considering, and realized that these walls were similarly adorned: There were a couple of landscape paintings above the blue sofa; a mishmash of portraits and still lifes on the wall above the fireplace; even what appeared to be a collection of children’s storybook illustrations.
Vesper blinked, feeling almost charmed. By Ashbridge. What on earth.
“Have you lost your mind?” he asked now, conversationally, and she startled a bit, having nearly forgotten he was there.
“We’ve discussed the warmth, or lack thereof, of your bed enough that I wanted to observe it for myself,” she said, recovering her sangfroid, though she thought that it was a slightly weak effort, not sounding as carefree and breezy as she might have liked.
“It doesn’t look half as spartan as I expected. ”
“I’m flattered.”
She grinned at him suddenly, unable to help herself. He was considerably more amusing than she’d first given him credit for. Something inscrutable crept across his face at the sight of her smile, but she didn’t know how to decipher it.
“Ashbridge, you never said you loved art so much,” she said, instead of puzzling over this further. “You don’t strike me as the sort.”
He shrugged, rubbing at the back of his neck, which she had come to recognize as a small tell—he only did it when he was embarrassed, or uncomfortable.
“My mum used to take me to the museums—to the Victoria and Albert, and to the Tate Gallery, the National Gallery… I think she thought that just because we—well, just because we didn’t have a lot of money didn’t mean I shouldn’t be exposed to some culture.
And I loved it—could’ve stayed all day, even as a boy.
I’d never traveled anywhere beyond the seaside in Kent, and it opened my eyes to the rest of the world.
I would look at paintings of the canals of Venice, and imagine that I was there, too—it made the world feel so much larger.
Of course,” he added, his voice turning slightly bitter, “I did end up seeing a bit of the world, thanks to the war. It wasn’t quite what I’d imagined. ”
Vesper moved closer to him as he spoke, strangely riveted.
He was looking at her, but she had the strangest sensation that he wasn’t seeing her at all in that moment.
He blinked and met her eyes, a smile crossing his face.
Combined with his mussed hair, and his jumper, and the fact that a quick glance down confirmed that he was in his stocking feet…
Well, he didn’t look like Ashbridge at all.
Even his gray eyes seemed warmer, less unreadable.
Vesper thought, a bit wildly, that it was probably for the best that this Ashbridge seemed to exist only in the privacy of his own home, before noon on weekends, and not anywhere else.
“Are you going to tell me what the ever-loving hell you’re doing here, now?” He broke the spell.
“I have devised a plan,” she announced. She dropped her handbag onto the battered wood coffee table, shed her coat onto an armchair, and sank onto his sofa. It was surprisingly comfortable—Sheep would have approved.
“Oh, no,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she confirmed. “You’re not going to like it, and I’d wager you’re going to pitch a bit of a fit about it, so why don’t you spare me the bother of having to listen to all that and instead leap to the point where you agree to go along with it?”
“No,” he said, crossing his arms. “I expect I’m going to be very wedded to that bit in the middle, actually.”
She sighed. “It was worth a try. We’re going to go to the Duke and Earl.”
He blinked. “The—wait.” A look of dark suspicion crossed his face. “Isn’t that the one club left that’s men only?”
“Gentlemen only,” Vesper corrected him, in her poshest voice. She was attempting to sound like a combination of her grandmother and the Prince of Wales, but merely succeeded in sounding like she was a lifelong smoker with some sort of lung infection.
“And how, precisely, do you propose we sneak our way in there?” he asked. He was still standing, arms crossed, staring down at Vesper in a bemused sort of way that clearly conveyed that he had no notion of how his peaceful Saturday morning had gone so far wrong.
“You might have noticed that Freddie and I look rather similar,” Vesper informed him cheerfully, and his expression darkened further.
“Vesper—”
“And Freddie has a membership.”
“Freddie is also about six inches taller than you are, and lacking in certain—er—”
Here, he broke off, and Vesper leaned forward, delighted. He was blushing; the color was high in his cheeks, and he tugged at the collar of his jumper as if it were suddenly choking him.
“Yes, Freddie hasn’t got breasts, thank you Ashbridge, I’m aware. I expect I’ll manage to work around this problem with a bit of clever dressing.”
He was blushing more furiously now at the word “breasts,” which Vesper found a bit bemusing, considering he had, in fact, once seen the breasts in question, under less-than-ideal circumstances. Shouldn’t she be the one blushing? Only one of them had humiliated themselves that night, after all.
“Why do we need to go there, particularly?” he asked now, recovering enough to speak, though not quite meeting her gaze.