“Everything,” she said bleakly. “Absolutely everything.”
“Were you not close, as barneys?” he asked, and she smiled a bit at the Cumbrian word for children. Peter’s genealogy stretched back to the Vikings, she suspected, who had come to the Cumbrian coast a thousand years ago. There were some who said the old Cumbrian dialect was closer to Icelandic than to English.
“No, we weren’t. I’m eleven years older than Lucy, and we have different fathers.”
He nodded slowly, and for a moment Juliet didn’t think he’d say anything more. And maybe that was better. Did she really want to talk about how much she resented Lucy? It would only make her seem petty and childish.
“But you invited her here, all the same,” he finally stated.
“Yes, but I didn’t expect it to make me feel so . . .” She stopped then, not wanting to put it into words.
“That’s what family does, though, don’t they? Make a hocker-up of everything.”
“A hocker-up . . .”
“A bloody mess,” Peter said with an unexpected grin. “You’ve been here neardickyears, Juliet, and you don’t know the Cumbrian yet?”
She laughed, surprised and strangely gratified to be teased. “Dickyears. Sounds a bit dirty. Would that be ten years?”
He nodded. “Surely you’ve learned the counting.”
“Onlyyan,tan,tethera.” She knew many sheep farmers, and even some schoolchildren in the playground, used the ancient number system for counting sheep.
“Methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick,”Peter finished.
“Definitely sounds a bit dirty,” Juliet said, and wondered if she was actuallybanteringwith Peter Lanford. She felt unbalanced by the conversation, or maybe just the whiskey. “Anyway, I’m still an offcomer, aren’t I?”
“Only in your mind, maybe.”
And just like that, the teasing tone dropped and she felt exposed, revealed by his words and his perception, and she had nowhere to look, nowhere to hide. She stared at him helplessly, unable to come up with a response. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—Peter Lanford didn’t seem to need one.
“Well, it’s bound to get easier with time, if you let it.” He took her glass. “And I’ll see to that wall on the morrow. Can’t have my ewes moidering you and eating all your rosebushes.”
“They’re not moidering me,” Juliet protested, the Cumbrian word for “bothering”sounding as awkward coming from her as it did easy coming from Peter. “And I didn’t say they were eating my rosebushes.”
Peter gazed at her, a smile lurking in his eyes. “You didn’t have to.” Juliet stared back, discomfited, sensing a depth behind Peter’s silent stillness that she’d had no idea was there. It felt akin to jumping in the sea and finding out it was far deeper than you’d imagined, and instead of resting your feet on solid, sandy ground, you kicked uselessly through the water, in over your head.
“Thank you for the whiskey,” she finally said.
“Anytime, Juliet,” Peter answered. “Anytime.”
She left Peter’s house and strode down the dirt track, stumbling a bit in the darkness. Back at the house she tidied up the kitchen before going up to bed; she’d told the Scottish lads to lock up after they came back after the pub’s last call. She paused for a second on the landing, but all was quiet from Lucy’s room.
She’d just changed into her sensible fleece pajamas and was getting into bed to read the gritty crime thriller that was ablessed escape from her own life when she heard a soft, hesitant knock on the door. She slid out of bed and went to open the door, surprised to see Lucy even though it couldn’t have been anyone else.
“Do you . . . do you have a moment?” Lucy asked, and Juliet nodded. Lucy came into her bedroom, looking young and vulnerable with hair frizzing all about her face; she was wearing a pair of pajamas covered in dancing Snoopys. Juliet waited, arms folded. “How well do you know Alex Kincaid?”
Juliet blinked. “Not very well.”
“Do you know him well enough to know how he might take a . . . a bit of advice?”
“It depends what the advice is regarding.”
She must have had some kind of skeptical look on her face, because Lucy let out a little laugh and said, “I know you’re probably thinking there’s nothing I could advise him on.”
“I don’t have an opinion on the subject.” She sounded so prickly. So prissy. And yet she didn’t know how to keep herself from it.
“Well, it’s what I would be thinking,” Lucy said. “Except in this case . . .” She hesitated, and Juliet raised her eyebrows.
