‘To ask your advice about something.’ He waited for her snort of incredulity to pass then added with a smirk, ‘Well, Benjamin did. He’s here. Say hello.’
Her voice changed immediately. He’d have been slightly jealous if he hadn’t found this obvious preference extremely funny. ‘Hello, Ben, darling. How are you?’ Ben offered a muted hello whilst making frantic and universally understandable gestures across his throat.
Feeling charitable, he announced briskly, as if she’d called him, ‘Well, we must go. Things to do…’ and clicked off. They were still laughing, finding themselves extremely amusing, when his phone buzzed with a text. He brought it up. Studying it with him, Ben put down his mug of tea.
‘What does that mean?’
‘I have no idea.’ Aleksey didn’t do emojis, so made to turn the phone off.
‘No, wait. It’s a crown, look. That must mean her? Or him? Is that a sword? She’s going to knight you again?’
Aleksey thought privately it was more likely to be a knife and that the crown was most definitely Phillipa and not beloved. The message seemed more than clear to him, and he was secretly delighted by it. He wondered if he ought to get into this intriguing method of communication, and whether there was a little picture that would represent being the wife of the illegitimate son of a Cornish housemaid. Probably not.
Ben had finished his food by now and was staring slightly gloomily out into the garden, chin on hand.
‘I shouldn’t have shouted at her. I’d better go and check she’s okay.’
‘Take the dogs; they’re always good at smoothing things over with her.’
‘I was thinking of taking you. You’re even better.’
‘Me?’ Aleksey had never seen himself as a peacekeeper. ‘I try so hard to annoy her and wind her up. Please don’t tell me all my efforts have been wasted.’
Ben nodded ruefully. ‘Sorry. You used to try that with me, remember? Didn’t work then, either. Must be genetic: the Rider anti-Mikkelsen-bullshit radar.’
‘Well, that’s a depressing thought.’
They donned jackets and went en masse with the dogs to make it right with the baby tyrant. They tracked her down to the chapel, having enquired at Babushka’s. Sarah and Emilia were pacing out distances down one aisle, for some reason, and Molly was playing hopscotch on the slabs. Jenna was sitting on the altar, contemplating the stained glass, which Aleksey always admired himself, and he wondered, watching her, what she was making of it. When he looked back to the object of their trip, she was missing, her pebble still rolling across the stone floor. Ben gave him a small, private glance and went to kneel by the altar cloth. He lifted up a corner, apparently saw what he expected to see, and so crawled underneath out of sight as well.
Aleksey sighed and sat down in one of the pews to wait. Sarah was giving him anxious glances. He couldn’t see these, as she was at the back of the church now, but he could sense them. She had failed in her duty and probably accepted that he had the right to point this out to her, and possibly assumed he was about to do so now. But this lack of control of her charge had not come about through negligence, but from a genuine unwillingness to venture near their bedroom. And he couldn’t altogether blame her for this reluctance. She probably pictured two naked, muscled, sweat-slicked bodies; leaking erect penises; buttocks slapped and spread; ejaculate spilling, tasted, shared—and obviously, therefore, she’d be right. He wouldn’t particularly want to walk in on her having sex with Daniel Kennedy, if that was even on the cards for such devout, virginal Christians. He’d probably be halfway into a conversation with her before he realised what chaste movements had been occurring beneath the tightly clutched covers.
So she probably felt embarrassed having to apologise for not following Molly, said apology thus entailing explanation she was naturally very unwilling to make, and he was too annoyed by having to admit she was right to mention it himself. But the very fact that she was unwilling to make that walk down the swim lane meant she should have stopped a four-year-old doing just that. But somewhere, vying with his very reasonable annoyance, he also felt guilty that he’d still been in bed at nearly lunchtime, that Ben was off running, and that the girl they paid to look after the child they should possibly have been looking after themselves had been put in such an awkward situation.
Emilia slid in beside him and glanced to the altar. ‘Who do you think is winning?’ He smirked. ‘Can I borrow the car tomorrow?’ His smile morphed abruptly into an audible splutter—shock or astonished amusement he couldn’t tell. Her face went stony. After a moment of considering, clearly strategizing, she commented pointedly,
‘You look like a henpecked husband, making a face like that.’ Attack then.
‘That’s as maybe, but I notice you waited until Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen was out of sight under an altar before you askedmeif you could borrowhiscar.’
‘In what way is it his?’
‘I shall remember you asked me that and mention it to your future husband one day.’
‘I’ll never have one of those if I’m stuck on Dartmoor without a car, will I?’
He turned to face her. ‘You’re going on a date?’
‘Oh, my, God! Did you just put more sceptical emphasis onyouordate? I can’t decide.’
‘So you are?’
‘No! You said date! It’s a meeting! An official meeting.’
She was blushing furiously. He’d never seen her flustered before. It was most satisfactory. He tested his English, just to make sure meeting meant the same to him as it apparently did to her, and asked in his most pompous use of the annoying language, one he’d previously only ever used withThe Family.
‘With whom?’
After some internal struggle, where it seemed she couldn’t work out any way to admit the truth without actually admitting it, she hedged, ‘One of my professors. It’s acoursemeeting.’
