After a long time crying into the pillow, she lay on her side and let the tiredness come for her. The last clear thoughts she had were accompanied by an image of Ben sitting on the mooring post on the quayside watching for her. Could that be true? Or was Eve making it all up like she’d bemoaned her poor husband and his neglectful ways? How much of that had been true? It sounded very much like she’d cheated on him before, and thatshewas the problem with that marriage. Then finally, she thought of Eve and Maxwell’s little boy, Stevie, only four and a half and so tiny for his age, and so very pale and quiet. What on earth had that poor lad lived through, shunted from pillar to post, moving house every time his mum messed up again?
Eve would never be happy wherever she went and the thought of her little family trailing after her galled Alex even more.
How on earth could Ben have thrown himself at her when he too had met their little boy umpteen times? There was even a box of Lego under her Christmas tree for him back in Port Kernou. He could cheat on Alex in the heat of the moment, sure, but he’d been able to forget about that kid and Eve’s husband too, willing to cast them gleefully aside along with his shirt.
Alex sank into a heavy sleep, more determined than ever to stay away from the whole embarrassing, awful affair. At least now she didn’t have to worry about the village looking for her.
If she’d been calmer and less tired, she might have checked her phone once more before switching it off that night.
She might have seen her message to the Port Kernou harbour mistress bouncing back undelivered.
Unaware, Alex slept and dreamed of spending a whole day in a peaceful little bookshop café, the very idea of which felt very much like the excitement of a near kiss with a handsome man, the anaesthetising magic of champagne bubbles, and the thrill of Christmas coming, all rolled into one.
Chapter Thirteen
Bookselling
Magnús was turning the sign on the door so it read ‘open’ when Alex arrived along with Jowan and two big bags of ingredients they’d picked up at the visitor centre shop at the top of the village.
Magnús had chosen his outfit a little more carefully than usual; boots, black winter cargos and a thick black jumper over a fitted grey Henley had seemed appropriate, and he’d spent time scrubbing his cheeks and tidying his beard. He’d pressed cologne to his neck while looking in the steamy bathroom mirror, telling himself it would all be fine. ‘Þetta reddast. It’s just a normal working day.’ Yet he hadn’t been able to face his morning coffee. He blamed the champagne while knowing full well this wasn’t the same as any kind of hangover he’d had before.
A nervous hunger lay in his stomach when he welcomed Alex into the shop and he was immediately hit by a wave of something sweet.
‘You smell good.’ The words were out even before he’d said good morning.
Jowan hadn’t been able to hide how amusing he found this as he made his way past the pair and into the café with the shopping bags.
‘Thanks.’ Alex seemed more shy this morning, and somehow more ethereal. She was pale, like she hadn’t slept until the early hours, much like Magnús. ‘I tried on some perfume up at the visitor centre while we got the stuff for today. This one’s called Highland Coral Beach.’ She lifted her crooked wrist to his nose, and the action softened his insides. Why was he being like this?
He was going to ask her if she’d bought herself a bottle but decided not to. He had no idea how she was financing her Clove Lore escapade or what she did for a living back home, wherever that was exactly. Did she have any money for luxuries like perfume? Instead, he told her he liked the scent very much.
Alex didn’t move from the doormat and Magnús’s feet seemed somehow stuck as well, so they stood in her soft aura of lavender and heather mixed with the chilly sea salt air she’d brought inside with her.
Timidly, they assessed one another. Was she going to mention it, Magnús wondered? The way they’d almost kissed? He’d thought of little else since yesterday, half tortured by the idea that she must regret their champagne-fuelled closeness, and half maddened by how much he wished he’d ignored his natural reserve and instead pulled her closer and pressed his lips to hers like he’d wanted to.
Now it was daylight, and there was only coffee, no alcohol, and they had work to do. It wouldn’t happen again and it was dawning on him that not kissing her would be his biggest regret about this whole trip.
‘Right, anythin’ else you two need?’ Jowan was back and rubbing his hands for warmth. ‘There’s fresh logs outside by the steps. Better keep the fire going all day.’
Although it was hard to turn away from Alex’s face, so soft today, and so sleepy, Magnús thanked Jowan.
‘Oh, and I’ll be back down in a mo’. I’ve a Christmas gift for you both, well, for the shop. Just nippin’ up to get it from Minty.’ He tapped the side of his fine nose with a finger and winked before starting for the door.
‘Tell her we said thank you again, for last night,’ Alex said hastily. ‘It was lovely.’
‘That it was,’ Jowan replied, as if thinking back to standing by the ballroom fireplace, head bowed over Aldous in his arms, talking in hushed voices with the lady of the manor.
‘Give uz an hour, I’ll be back,’ he told them with the cunning look of a man who might be cooking up a secret plan to bring a little Christmas cheer to the Icelandic bookseller who always looked so serious and weary except, he and Minty had observed, when in the company of a certain Cornish girl.
‘We’ll be here,’ Alex chimed, as Jowan drew the door closed and the shop fell silent.
Magnús kept his eyes fixed on his guest as she glanced around the shop like she were seeing it for the first time.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ she remarked, her eyes dancing between the hand-painted signs in curly gold script above each set of shelves, all the late Isolda de Marisco’s work:Philosophy and Psychology, Sciences and Mathematics, History, Biography, Geography, Popular Fiction, Poetry, Literature and Rhetoric, Queer Lives and Loves, Natural Sciences, Arts and Crafts.The Borrow-A-Bookshop had it all.
On the low shelves and in willow baskets under the spiral of cast iron stairs crouched theChildren’s Literaturearea with its own pretty sign in gilded lettering and bright rugs on the floor for kids to sit upon and read, and beside that, the low armchair in front of the dark hearth.
‘Your fire’s gone out,’ Alex told him, avoiding his gaze, and for a second Magnús wanted to tell her it really hadn’t; he was still burning ardently inside.
