know what this is?’ he said quietly. ‘Where this is going?’
I nodded, keeping our foreheads in contact with each other.
‘You were right,’ he said, in his rumpled Sunday morning voice. ‘I have a secret. One I’ve run from for years. And I’ve never told anyone. I’ve even hidden it from myself at times… But now it’s time to open Pandora’s Box and see what comes flying out.’
Oh, my. Adam wasn’t secretly married, was he? Or suffering from a serious illness? I couldn’t stand it if—
‘Wh—what secret?’ I stammered.
He kissed me again. I lost my balance and kicked a bag of what might have been potatoes.
‘You.’
I wrinkled my brow. ‘Huh?’
He stopped smiling then. I could feel it in the way his shoulders tensed, in the way his lips felt against my cheek as he whispered, ‘You’re my secret, Coreen.’
My mouth opened but no words came out. To my utter horror, Adam’s confession had filled me with more cold dread than if he’d said we were just fooling around, and I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t know what to say, how to respond, but luckily I didn’t have to.
All of a sudden light pounded behind my eyes. I blinked and sheltered them with my hand. When I managed to make sense of what my forgotten retinas were telling me I saw Robert standing in the doorway, a jar of chutney in his hand, his mobile eyebrows hitched as high as I’d ever seen them at finding Adam and me wound around each other in what was clearly the pantry.
‘Excuse me, miss,’ Robert said in a level tone, and reached behind me to return the chutney to its home. He stepped back, but stopped with one hand on the door. ‘I would close the door and tell myself I’d gone momentarily blind, miss, but I think I’d better warn you that Miss Isabella has been looking for you, and the likelihood of you remaining undiscovered is slim.’
I nodded and tried to straighten my wrinkled dress, still within the confines of Adam’s arms. ‘Thank you, Robert,’ I said, in the most dignified voice I could muster.
‘No problem, miss,’ he said. ‘I’ll just push the door and give you a chance to…um…refresh your appearance.’ He swung the door half closed, leaving a few inches of light for us, but I swear as he walked away I saw a naughty little smile on his face.
Another voice—a new one—echoed down the corridor. ‘Talking to the jams and pickles again, Robert? I’ve told you before about the dangers of nipping at the cooking sherry.’ The snorting laughter that followed identified its owner as Marcus.
Adam lifted his finger to his lips. I nodded and tried to silently smooth my hair back into a bun that was now only half there.
Sunshine filled the pantry once more. This time, however, Adam and I were ready. We were standing as far apart as we could in the confined space. My hands were clasped firmly in front of me, and Adam’s were in his pockets. Didn’t do us much good, though. I reckon Marcus rumbled us from the guilty expressions on our faces. Something had to have given us away.
If being caught alone together in a darkened panty wasn’t enough, of course.
‘Well, well, well…’ Marcus said, taking every last detail in. I tried not to squirm, but to hold my head high and mimic that supercilious thing Robert did with his eyebrows. ‘I thought you two were supposed to be brother and sister? How delightfully naughty.’
Adam grabbed my hand and pushed past Marcus into the passage. ‘No,’ he replied, giving the other man a stern look. ‘Not brother and sister. Not in a million years.’
And then we escaped down the passageway into the unyielding brightness of the football pitch-slash-conservatory, where it seemed the sunny Sunday morning had been trapped and held to ransom.
The ancient woods on the fringes of the Chatterton-Joneses’ estate were full of twisting oaks, fresh green glades, dappled sunshine and the kind of quiet that normally got on my nerves. The earth was springy underfoot, carpeted with a layer of old dried leaves and fallen pine cones. Adam and I walked slowly through it, side by side.
These were the same woods Izzi had marched us through only yesterday, but I’d been so focussed on Nicholas up ahead of me that I hadn’t noticed how beautiful it all was, how perfect the stillness and quiet could be. I was starting to realise this wasn’t the only thing I’d failed to see as I bulldozed my way through life.
Izzi’s iron-clad timetable said we should all have some time to wander off on our own and meditate on the identity of Lord Southerby’s killer before we met back in the drawing room for the big finale. Adam and I hadn’t done much of that. We hadn’t done much talking, full stop.
Breathless kissing? Hand-wandering? Yep. There’d been plenty of that going on.
It was so easy to be with him. To be like this with him. And that astounded me. I couldn’t quite get my head around how our relationship seemed to have morphed seamlessly from one thing into another, and I had a horrible feeling it was all a shimmering mirage.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Adam. While everything about him was comfortable and familiar, at the same time everything was new too. I’d never noticed the grace in his easy stride before, had never found myself staring at his sexy little dimples and marvelling at their perfection. That twinkle in his eye I’d always loved? Now I realised it was only for me. When it glittered at me I felt conspicuously giddy.
Why had I never seen any of this before? Why hadn’t I let myself see any of this before? Each time this question wriggled through my thoughts and snuck its way to the front of the queue I sent it packing to the back of the line again. I didn’t think I’d like any answer I could come up with.
I must have been frowning, because Adam stopped walking and turned to face me. ‘What’s up?’ he said, his voice soft and low.
‘I’m a little…freaked out by all of this.’ I pressed my lips together and shook my head gently. ‘I don’t know. It’s all so…’
His expression became serious and he reached for my hand and squeezed it. ‘I know you, Coreen Fraser.’ The warmth in his eyes made my nose do that stinging thing again. ‘I know just how much heartache you’ve had in your life—down to the very last ounce.’
I looked away, unable to look at the truth of what he’d said in his face. He waited while I sucked in air through my nostrils and attempted to quell the stinging. I didn’t cry in front of people. Ever. Not the real kind of gluey, soggy tears that puffed my face up and ruined my eyeliner. I’m not proud to admit it, but I have squeezed a few perfect beads of moisture from the corner of my eye when the occasion demanded it, when it would help me get my own way. But I measured out my tears. I decided how many fell and when. I stayed in control always.
He carried on talking as I fixed my gaze on a holly bush and didn’t turn back. ‘I understand why relationships are something you’ve either deliberately avoided or sabotaged when they threatened to get too serious.’
Did he? I wished he’d tell me.
And I wished Adam couldn’t see past the polka dots and lipstick. I wished he couldn’t look inside me as if I was made of glass and tell me what the writing
