‘Iceland?’ She couldn’t act cool about this. It was all coming back to her. He’d spoken in his own language as though she too would understand it, and…oh no, she’d fallen on him, sending them both flying.
No matter how much attention she paid her lunch or in fussing the little dog, she couldn’t shake the embarrassment or the sense that Jowan knew what she was thinking (that the man had been so earnest and somehow solid and impressive) and that was what was making his eyes shine.
‘He’s only a hundred yards up the cobbles if you want to take a wander to find ’im,’ he said. ‘Mind you do it before the winds get any higher. Up-along’s a tempestuous place to be when a gale’s howlin’.’
‘Good to know,’ Alex replied quietly.
‘Tuck in, there’s another helping waiting for uz,’ he told her.
Neither of them said a word as they finished their meal, Jowan because he was staring into the fire and taking big bites, and Alex because the simple comfort of this place made her feel like she was in danger of bursting into tears and making an even bigger fool of herself than she already had.
She shuddered. Imagine crashing her boat and needing to be rescued, then making that poor bedraggled doctor come out in this wind to see her when she was completely fine! Only exhausted and dehydrated, the doc had said. He’d prescribed fluids and rest and no more sailing. Some chance, with her ferry beached and broken.
But the fire and the food, along with Jowan’s soft, quiet way made up for some of that shame. And he hadn’t asked any questions, not even pressing her for her name. She liked that about him most of all. So she ate in silence, knowing the questions would come soon enough.
Questions, she thought with a sigh, such as, why had she been at sea all alone for so long, and so underprepared for a voyage, too? What was to be done about the boat? Who even was she and where on earth did she belong? And, the one that upset her the most, was there really nobody out there worrying about her right now and wishing they could reach her?
There was time enough to think about these things later. Right now, she was dry and warm, and there was a friendly mutt, a gentle-mannered host who put her in mind of a pirate that hadn’t put to sea in many a year and, insinuated into everything in the little cottage, there was the feeling of being watched over somehow. It was the presence, Alex thought, of the woman who had once lived here and was loved so much she never really left. Jowan’s Isolde.
The whole thing felt curiously like coming home, so she let herself indulge in the faulty feeling, like a cuckoo chick in a warbler’s nest, singing to be fed.
So what if it wasn’t real and she couldn’t stay? She’d lie to herself for a short while and she could cry later. She was going to hold on to all of her secrets. Nobody was going to pity her or pry into her sorry situation here. They needn’t even know her name. She’d be untraceable, and as soon as she was recovered, she’d be on her way again, to anywhere but Port Kernou.
Chapter Eight
Magnús Receives an Invitation
Magnús had burnt the first cake – not too badly but it was definitely singed. He’d been peering out the bedroom window, trying to crane his neck and catch a glimpse of the harbour – not possible at this angle, he’d found – and for a few moments forgotten he now had a café to cater.
He’d shaken his head coming down the winding stairs, telling himself to concentrate; there was a second batch of cake mix to deal with.
He’d been looking for her boat on the shore, he admitted, as though checking it was definitely real and not something he’d dreamt.
This morning’s events had certainly taken on the haziness of a dream. He worried he was losing his grip on reality, and he’d only been here one night. What would he be like at the end of a fortnight? He couldn’t explain his reactions at all. He was pragmatic and realistic, not at all the type to lose himself in daydreaming.
He weighed out the flour all over again, cracked the eggs and mixed and folded. That felt real, at least.
Just as the secondJólakakawent into the oven, Magnús’s spine stiffened at the brassy sound of the bell ringing from the shop. An actual customer.
Two in fact, he discovered, as he stooped under the low door from the café. Men, his age, or a little older, he reckoned, and holding hands.
‘Hallo,’ he said, approaching the till. ‘Welcome to my bookshop.’ The words were already out but he still clamped his lips shut in surprise. What on earth?Mybookshop? Not good. None of this was permanent – not that he wanted it to be more than a holiday. Not at all.
‘You’re Magnús?’ asked the slighter of the two, and seeing the bookseller’s surprise, quickly added. ‘I’m Izaak, one of the volunteers, and this is Leonid.’
Leonid wore glasses and had thick, curly blond hair, with eyes as blue as Magnús’s and an endearingly big gap between his front teeth.
Once hands had been shaken, Magnús asked, ‘Can I help you, or are you here to help me?’ He pressed his palms together awkwardly. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything I need.’
‘We’re after a book, any books in fact, on camellias?’ said Izaak.
‘Camellias?’ Magnús repeated, his eyes shooting around the shop. ‘The flower?’
‘Shrub, actually,’ Leonid put in.
‘Leonid is Minty’s new gardener up at the Big House,’ Izaak announced proudly, in what Magnús had decided was definitely a Polish accent. ‘She brought him in to rescue the camellia grove that the gardens were once famous for.’
‘A long time ago,’ Leonid added, not telling Magnús that Minty had really brought him from Moscow so that Izaak, her loyal estate gatekeeper and groundsman, would have a chance of living with the love of his life who’d been languishing in a Russian university and unable to leave the country for years.
