She snorted. ‘Mark? Not likely. He’s…not much of a catch for most young women.’ Aleksey mulled this over, extremely puzzled. He thought he was an extremely good catch—and not just for a woman. Perhaps sensing his puzzlement, she explained, ‘I’ll be having a conversation with him, but when I glance over, he’s reading a book—totally engrossed, oblivious to me entirely. Now, I’m not implying my conversation is riveting, but—’
‘—I have not been bored in your company once. Especially during our standoff over fish guts.’
She grinned. ‘Ah, yes. Who won that?’
‘Oh, you did.’
She grunted her scepticism. ‘How did you and Ben meet? You seem an unlikely couple.’
In other circumstances, possibly if he’d not been drinking all day, he’d have pointed out that he was allergic to that word, but instead, feeling extremely mellow, he replied with a smirk, ‘I suspect that if you pointed that out to Ben he would agree with you.’
‘What would I agree with?’ Ben narrowed his eyes at him as he came back in.
Laughing, Morwenna accepted a cup of coffee, and explained, ‘You two. You seem very dissimilar but—’ before Ben could object, which she had quickly anticipated he was going to, she spoke over him, ‘—fluid together—the great battle in the shed is a good example. You moved together as if you were in a dance and knew the steps intimately without needing to speak.’
‘I remember falling over and being kicked in the balls, but thanks.’
Morwenna held up her cup in salute.
* * *
It was very late by the time they made it back to Kittiwake. It was interesting, observing Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen out of steam. It wasn’t something Aleksey got to enjoy very often. One of the things Morwenna could have pointed out about the differences between them, and been entirely right, was that Ben seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of repressed energy and always needed or wanted to be doing something physical, whereas he rarely stirred himself to do very much at all. But now he wanted to talk and Ben wanted to sleep. It was extremely novel and obviously nothing to do with their respective levels of activity all day.
‘You’re not looking!’
‘I don’t want to look at anything except the inside of my eyelids.’
‘You are being very boring, Benjamin. It is something very good. Look.’
‘I suspect I’ve seen it before.’
Frustrated, Aleksey carefully picked up each gold disc, which he’d put down on the pillow next to Ben’s face, and one by one placed them over Ben’s eyes. Ben sighed and picked them off, holding them up, blinking tiredly. Then he sat up and reached for his phone, switching on the torch app. ‘Where did you get these? Are they real? Real gold?’
‘Eames thinks they are. I tend to agree with her. Molly gave them to her in exchange for books.’
‘What?’
‘On Boxing Day.’
‘Oh, God, do you think they’re Jennifer’s and she sto—got mixed up?’
Aleksey took them back. ‘That is what Morwenna wondered. She thinks they’re jewellery, not coins.’
‘Maybe Jennifer gave them to her and didn’t tell us? Maybe they were Katie’s—part of a bracelet or necklace or something—so they went with the photos and the dress?’
Aleksey pursed his lips, mulling this over. It was entirely possible.
He sighed and lay back. ‘I suppose we should be glad your daughter hasn’t taken to trading in feet.’
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Six
They were returning to Devon the next day, so the boat on the trip to St Mary’s to take Morwenna back was crowded with dogs, cats, and the remainder of the family. He did not have a chance to ask many things he had meant to. It had occurred to him, as he’d lain awake the previous night listening to Ben breathing alongside him, that he still didn’t fully understand the reason for Morwenna’s feud with the museum director. Nor had he had the opportunity to raise the tricky subject of her disappeared family, which he had been intending to do. Neither had they solved the mystery of the gold. It was frustrating, an itch he could not—was not allowed to—scratch. They arrived home to Devon into a scene of complete chaos, and Ben did not want him to stir anything by questioning Molly or staring into any abysses other than the one which greeted them as they drove up the old driveway that ran along the ridge sheltering their valley home. Even Miles, reading on the backseat, lifted his gaze myopically and whispered, awed, ‘Wow.’
There was a huge marquee erected on the lawn in front of the house. His beautiful architectural masterpiece wasn’t even visible behind it. Thousands of small, wizened people in anoraks with happy smiles plastered on their faces appeared to be decorating all the trees in the woods which led from this great construction to the chapel, creating a long bower of branches covered in ribbons. He slunk further down in the passenger seat and remembered morosely that he had given his permission for all this. Not only was he losing the young woman who cared for Ben’s tyrannical daughter, but his house was now crawling with freaky Christians. They were so annoyingly happy all the time. It was exhausting. He could have sworn they were singing as Ben brought the car to a stop with his habitual skid on the gravel. He did not recall singing untilafterhis first wedding, and he’d not uttered a peep of any kind for his second. And he definitely didn’t remember being very happy about either.
Fortunately, Babushka had opened her cottage for these revellers to use as Wedding HQ, so at least his house was Christian-free. But he could see the marquee out of the kitchen floor-to-ceiling glass. It was all he could see now. He retreated to his study and, feet up on his desk, smoking, he placed the gold discs down alongside his computer. Then he took a picture of them and winged it off to Peyton. That done, he sent the name Randal Eames to him as well. As an afterthought, he added Eliam Colter and Jerome Barthrop.
