“In Hartley-by-the-Sea it is.”
“We had dinner,” Lucy said, dropping her hands. “With Bella and Poppy. That’s all.”
“That’s all? It’s more than I’ve ever had.” And once again she was sounding jealous and bitter. What ashrewshe was. Wearily she rose from the stairs. “I’m going to bed. I have to get up early for breakfast. The Seatons want to be out of here by seven o’clock.”
“I’ll make breakfast,” Lucy offered, and Juliet swung around to stare at her. “Seriously. I have to be up early anyway, and you can sleep in. Sleep it off.”
“I’mnotdrunk.”
“Whatever you say, Juliet,” Lucy said with a smile, and headed upstairs. Juliet didn’t bother answering.
Chapter sixteen
Lucy
True to her word, Lucy got up early to make breakfast for the retired couple while Juliet slept in. The bacon was a bit blackened in parts and the eggs were runny, but at least the coffee was good. Lucy drank a mug of it while the couple gathered their things to conquer Scafell Pike; she’d gotten used to the ebb and flow of B&B life, with walkers coming and going most days. Juliet kept a calendar on the kitchen wall of arrivals and departures, and Lucy saw that a large crowd was expected on the weekend, four couples. They would be fully booked both Friday and Saturday nights.
They, not just Juliet. Was she naive or fanciful in thinking that there was athey, that she and Juliet were on their way to becoming real sisters, and not just strangers linked by the genes of a woman neither of them actually liked?
She put her mug in the dishwasher, left the pans to soak, and made sure the kitchen was as tidy as she could leave it. Then she headed out into a rather bleak, gray morning, a chill wind funneling down the high street and making Lucy go back inside for her winter coat. To think it was only mid-September.
As she headed up the street, she felt that expectant fizz in her stomach at the prospect of seeing Alex again. He’d been away from school all day yesterday at a head teachers’ conference in Barrow, but Lucy hoped that things might have changed a bit between them since their dinner.
Not that anything had actuallyhappenedduring their dinner, even if her hormones had started doing a happy dance when they’d sat on a sofa together. And not as if Alex would ever act anything but professional in the workplace, but . . .
Was it too much to expect some banter, a bit of loitering by her desk, a casual invitation to the pub, just the two of them?
Apparently it was.
By midmorning she could say Alex’s attitude had thawed a little, but he was as stern looking as ever, and hadn’t even made the most offhand of references to their dinner together.
Weren’t they friends now?
She wasn’t the only one who thought so, for a few days after Lucy had had dinner with Alex and his family, Diana stopped by the reception desk before school, leaning towards Lucy confidingly.
“So give me the crack.”
“The crack?” Lucy repeated blankly, and Diana grinned.
“West Cumbrian for gossip.”
“And here I was thinking you meant drugs,” Lucy joked, but Diana shook her head, impatient now to get down to whatever thecrackreally was.
“Someone told me you were leaving Mr. Kincaid’s house atnine o’clock at night.” She spoke in a mock-scandalized tone, but Lucy could tell she was curious.
“Oh—that. It was nothing, really.” And right on cue, she started blushing as if she were hiding something, which, unfortunately, she wasn’t.
“Nothing? I don’t think Mr. Kincaid has had anyone into his house, ever. And you’ve been here all of two minutes?”
“Three weeks since the start of term, actually. I just did a favor for him, that’s all.” In case Diana decided to read some sexual innuendo into that, Lucy clarified hastily, “A bit of—ah, business for Bella, his daughter. No big deal, honestly.”
“What kind of business?” Diana asked, and Lucy just about kept herself from retorting,Not yours.This, she supposed, was the downside of village life.
“Who told you, anyway?” she asked.
“Mrs. Henshaw lives across from Mr. Kincaid. She plays bridge with my neighbor on a Tuesday.”
“Ah.”
