In the ballroom, the reality of what’s happened to my partners is clear in the menu on a shoe string. “Only mash and gravy,” Haneen says apologetically.
Only she can create so much flavour out of mashed potato, carrot and butternut squash or rich onion gravy. The joy around the table makes it taste even better.
No wine though. Or dessert.
Tonight, we only get buttered bread with honey. “From the beehives in the Channel Islands,” she explains when I’ve tasted it. “My brother and his wife own a honey business and they sent us a crate of the stuff.”
It is gorgeous, I lean to whisper to her, “I love it.”
“As far as donated honey on toast goes,” she says in her usual kind voice.
“Are things really this bad? I’ll need you to bring me up to date on the full scale of the threat hanging over Kendric House?”
She waves this away with an easy smile. “Tomorrow is soon enough. Wait until you’ve settled in and unpacked.”
I glance around the table at my fellow profit participants, my partners. There’s not shortage of talent and drive here. Surely together we will find a way out of danger.
A warm hand squeezes my shoulder making me look up. Osian, who’d disappeared for a bit, has comes back. “If you’ve finished dinner, shall we say good night,” he says quietly, offering me a hand.
“Where are you taking her?” Shirley pretends to be shocked. “Her apartment is let to tourists.”
“You can stay with me.” Gethin calls out from his wheelchair. “I have a spare bed.”
“In your dreams,” Vanessa rolls her eyes.
“Come on, Evan, you must have vacant rooms to offer her,” Someone shouts.
I can’t see who it is because I’m looking down at my feet letting my hair screen my red cheeks. There’s no way in hell I’m walking up the curving stairs, hand in hand with Osian while everyone watches.
“Stand down all of you.” He says, drawing me closer. Then he makes it all worse by pressing a lingering kiss on the side of my head.
Cheers and whistles explode everywhere, and exclamations of “At long bloody last” and “you kept us all waiting long enough.”
My face burns
“This is even worse than being caught on camera back in Styler’s green room.” I whisper to Osian.
He clearly doesn’t feel the same, his grin is wide enough to span the room. He just laughs. “Quiet, you lot. Stop embarrassing her or she’ll run back to Suffolk.”
“Let me go upstairs ahead of you.” I beg him in an under tone.
“Your wish is my—” he begins.
“—your silent obedience.” I tell him hurrying to the stairs.
In a moment I’m upstairs and a couple of seconds later he takes the stairs two at a time and catches up with me. We hurry out of sight along the corridor into the west wing, past several doors, past more restored mosaic panels and eventually past my old door.
I can’t help a glance up at the stained glass panel of the blue lady. I send her a silent greeting.
At last, we reach his apartment, and he unlocks the door but doesn’t let me go in. Instead, he puts an arm around my waist and another behind me knees and lifts me up to carry me over the threshold.
“Oh my. Aren’t you the romantic, suddenly.”
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” he says putting on an American accent. “After long years without romance, I have so much to make up for.”
His sitting room looks the same as always; the place where so much happened between us. The day he rescued me from the thorns and tended to my wounds. The microwave dinner we had at his table. And of course, the sofa where we…
“I know you don’t like my leather furniture. You won’t have to put up with it after tonight.”
