Now they were still sitting at their little tucked away table at the edge of one of the Beanery's many nooks and crannies.
"I'm a bit offended you didn't grab my Norfolk jacket," he quipped, sipping from his honeycomb latte. "How are strangers meant to know I'm an immigrant if I don't look as if I should be tending sheep somewhere?"
He was currently wearing the jacket in question, a tweedy grey, flecked in hunter green, that strange juxtaposition of the old world and the new. He was wrong, Silva thought. He looked as handsome as he always did, the jacket neither odd nor out of place over his jeans and motorcycle boots, and he certainly didn’t look as if he were a wayward shepherd.
"Do you have a lot of experience with that?” she asked as seriously as she could, but was unable to keep her smile from twitching at the corners of her mouth. “Tending sheep, that is?"
"Not as much as you'd suspect," he chuckled. "My mother has always been the type who take any bit of fluff and turn it into a gown. Knitting, weaving, she did it all. I used to help her card wool when I was young, and dye it. She used to make all my clothes. But she was alwaysveryparticular. It had to be a certain breed of sheep for her wool. She would get to know the farmers, and then she would need shearings from a specific flock. Andthenshe would get to know the flock, and it was only acceptable from specific sheep. Anyway, I would go with her and we’d make a whole day of it. Sheep are very friendly until you try to ride them. I’ve been kicked and head-butted more times than I can count."
Silva laughed, delighted. He had never spoken of his mother like this, beyond telling her that they didn't speak at all.Maybe you really are turning a corner. Maybe the past month actually was all in your head. Her heart thrummed, trying to picture a tiny Tate being bucked off an unwilling sheep's back, giggling at the thought.
"So, I get a call from her a few weeks ago. That's usually enough to knock me arseways for the rest of the day on its own. 'Tate, I need you to send me some wool. I'm trying to buy some and these bastards won't listen.'”
He affected what was apparently meant to be his mother's voice, high and heavily accented. Silva felt her mouth drop open, flummoxed over the fact that he had spoken to his mother as recently as a few weeks ago and hadn’t told her about it.Maybe you can go and visit!
"So she goes on to describe this very specific herd of sheep who graze on this very specific hill. As if I'm supposed to know the sheep personally. Why can't I just climb up the mound and have a conversation with Connel and Junith, they’reverynice sheep, don't I know."
He was laughing as he related the story to her, and Silva laughed along with him, a giddy bubble of warmth filling her chest, already planning on what she would wear, where they would go, how she would make sure to impress his mother.
"So I tell her, 'Mammy, Connel and Junith are on holiday. I don't know how to get in touch with their owner.' The whole area is a strip mall now, dove, there's no fucking sheep to be found. There’s a chippy and a laundrette. No sheep. But she argued with me for the next twenty fucking minutes until I agreed that yes, I would go and have a word with Connel and Junith. Yes, I'll make sure to send her some wool. So . . . that’s the extent of my sheep herding.”
Silva was wheezing. She was still stuck on the image of him as a little boy in her head, trying to envision his messy dark hair and long ears, riding a fluffy sheep down the hillside. "I thought you told me . . . I didn't know you talk to your mother that often. Do we need to go to Ireland and buy some wool? I have a passport. Just need to go home and pack my bag. We can introduce her to a whole new flock."
If this were one of her books, that was exactly what they would do. Change the setting, put the star-crossed main characters in a new situation, and let the romanticism of some faraway place do the job of setting the mood for love. No matter how rakish the rake, he always confessed his undying love to the heroine, and she would accept his hand regardless of his prior misdeeds, eager to begin anew. She could easily imagine them on some bucolic, emerald green hillside, kissing beneath an endless sky . . . happily ever after, surrounded by fluffy white sheep.
His smile was wry, gazing down at his cup.
"Wool I’ve already taken care of. I have a supplier who sends it automatically. Same breed of sheep she’s always used. She's gone through it a bit faster this month, but I've already made the call to increase the order . . . And that was the first time I've spoken to her in three years when she's known me from the beginning to the end of the conversation. It's usually fine at the start. She calls when she needs something, or to complain about something that happened fifty years ago . . . but it doesn't last long."
The bubble in her chest burst, and she quickly reached out to take his hand across the table, mentally berating herself.Why did you say anything?! What couldn’t you leave well enough alone?"I-I'm sorry," she murmured. "I shouldn't have said any —"
"It's fine, Silva. It's not a new situation. But you can understand why I don't want you burning a bridge with your own family. C'mon, dove. I need to buy a jar of peanut butter, lest I’m forced to do heinous things to yours. Take me for a walk through this bleedin' place before you start cryin', so I can ascertain whether or not anyone is actually gainfully employed in this town."
Every day and evening was a revelation.
He had grudgingly proclaimed the bistro to which she took him that first night for dinner "impressively adequate." They walked along the waterfront, hand-in-hand, and it had been so exactly like her daydreams, Silva had pinched herself more than once just to ensure that she had not fallen and bumped her head again.
“It’s so quiet here.” He'd been looking out at the falls, his eyes fixed on some invisible point in the middle distance, as if he were straining to hear something particular and couldn't. Just to the left, the waterfall cascaded over the ledge, pounding downinto the rocks in a nonstop deluge, and just beyond, she was able to hear the braying laughter of patrons leaving one of the restaurants.
“I don’t know about quiet,” Silva laughed. “But isn’t it beautiful?” She’d sighed, looking out over the lit-up falls from their path, thrilled that he was here to see it with her at last.
“Aye. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
She turned happily, ready to throw herself into his arms, but the stricken look on his face froze her. He wasn’t looking at the falls at all, his body turned away, facing her instead. Under normal circumstances, she would have been thrilled for the compliment, but at the anguished look in his eyes, her stomach flipped, sending her into that freefall once more.
Her own alarm didn't go off nearly as early as his, but the damage of those few months waking at his side, it seemed, was done. Her internal clock was set to restaurant time now. Her eyes would flutter open shortly before dawn, finding him already wide awake, watching her sleep.
"Good morning," she would whisper from her side of the pillow they always wound up sharing. When one of his long fingers reached out to trace the edge of her cheekbone, dragging down her jaw to her chin, her eyes closed again.
"You're like some perfect moon goddess carved in stone," he murmured, the pad of his thumb tracing the shape of her lips. "I could look at you for a thousand years and never get tired of the view, Silva."
The routine they had in his own kitchen would be mirrored, played out in hers.
She kept a tin of his rich gold teabags on her kitchen counter, flicking on the electric teakettle she’d purchased as he peered out the window, looking out on the parking lot. She worked from home the whole week from her own little desk, as he sat cross-legged on her sofa, eating peanut butter directly from the jarand paging through one of her books. The one he'd pulled off the shelf was a particular favorite — a noblewoman in disguise, working as a housekeeper in the home of a handsome Duke whose family was forcing him to marry.
"The cats!" she exclaimed in the middle of the afternoon, the day after his arrival. "Who's going to feed your cats?!"
Silva thought his smile was strangely sad as she turned from across the room.
