With that, the famous Welsh novelist got up, stepped into her boots, and disappeared into the dark with her dog.
Edie grabbed the rest of the Hobnobs and Cosima’s hand. She was starting to pull her down the hall when Cosima drew her close instead.
“Edie.” She put her hands around Edie’s face. Her eyes were blue, blue, but Edie was afraid to look at them in case they told her yet another story she did not want to hear.
“Yeah?” she croaked.
“We’re not Agatha and Morag.”
She turned to kiss Cosima’s palm. Closed her eyes. “I know that. But I also know I’m perfectly capable of behaving like a wankhammer for at least fifty years, and I’m scared.”
She tried to keep her voice light. Tried to keep her faith intact, and to remember that it, and her optimism, was a gift. Not a curse. Edie wasn’t cursed. The greatest love of her life was not doomed. Even if she couldn’t see the path in front of them, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t find one.
Edie wrapped her arms around Cosima.
Her treasure.
Chapter Twenty
“Morag Tourmaline Beveridge!”
Cosima scrambled to stay with Edie as she burst through the back door of the inn and shouted into the kitchen. They found Morag at the prep table, putting a tea towel over a bowl of dough to proof.
They had left Agatha with Tam at the Gregory Arms. He and Killian would drive her up when they got the all clear. Edie was determined this would be the only grace they extended to Morag.
Cosima didn’t think it was going to be so cut-and-dried.
“You’re back from Spain already?” Morag wiped her hands on her apron and started cleaning the table.
“Correction.” Edie pointed at her. “We’re back from Wales.”
Morag stopped cleaning. She didn’t look at them. “I see.”
“Otherwise known as the end of the trail. ‘X’ marks the spot. But you probably already knew that.” Edie hung her coat up on the hook, rounded the table, sat down on a stool, andfolded her arms, glaring at Morag. Cosima sat next to her, with much less theater.
“The Whippledurn finished with the plastering,” Morag said slowly. “I brought in the paint from the shed and ordered another two cans. Turns out Slate and Thatch roofing isn’t in business anymore, but I was directed to an outfit called LeLand’s, and they’ve taken a look at the roof. That will be next week. Jenny from the manor came, Cosima.”
“Oh.” She blinked. Jenny was the head gardener at the manor, and Cosima had asked her to come over for a garden consult days ago. “I didn’t know she’d be here when I was gone.”
“No trouble. She left you notes. I have them at the reception desk.” Morag folded the rag she had been cleaning with.
“What was your plan, Morag?” Edie leaned forward. “You sent us on this journey, knowing what was on the other end, aware of my preference to get over-involved, and here we are, not a velvet bag of rubies or golden chalice between us. But you knew we wouldn’t find that kind of treasure, didn’t you? Don’t worry, though. We brought the spoils back. We’ve got her stashed at the Gregory Arms, with Tam keeping guard. We’ll figure out how to carve off your seventeen and a half percent.”
“Bronwyn’s here?” Morag didn’t say this to Edie or to Cosima. It looked like she said it to the rising bread dough, but Cosima suspected she was saying it to herself.
A little bit of the bluster seemed to escape from Edie. “She’s here, Morag. She gave us her part of the story, but what’s yours?”
Morag reached for the kettle, banging it against the stovetop in an uncoordinated lurch. After she’d filled it and placed it on the hob, she pulled down the tea tin and mugs. Cosima waited patiently. The inability of British people to talk about anything difficult without first making a cup of tea did not surprise or bother her.
It seemed, however, that the act of making tea was itself soothing enough to allow Morag to speak. “I was sleeping on my feet to make this place go,” she said. “My goal was to make enough to hire my sister, Maisie. She was still at home with our parents, and it was a right nightmare, I’ll say that. When Bronwyn came, I was almost there. The advance payment she sent meant I could make Maisie’s room ready. Then Maisie told me she was pregnant.”
“Fuck,” Edie whispered.
Morag shook her head. “She was grown. It was 1977! Not the Dark Ages, believe it or not. I begged her to come anyway. I knew she didn’t have good memories about growing up in the inn. I didn’t either, but I was trying to make it over into something different. But she said our parents would take the place from me if she came. Long story short, I found out she was right.” Morag put tea bags into the mugs. “Because the universe has a good sense of humor, this was also the first time in my life I fell in love.”
Sitting on the kitchen stool, her feet on the rungs, Cosima had a sense memory of being on the plane to England, feeling as though the floor of the plane had dropped out and she was hung over the clouds, rushing past at six hundred miles per hour. Her mother was gone, Cosima tapped with the immaculate maintenance of her legacy, needing more from Duncan than they had learned to give each other, and then, yes, she fell in love.
It amazed her,amazedher, that everything that had driven her here in a breathless, stomach-twisting compulsion to escape was still true. It amazed her because all of those things felt smaller. Loving Edie hadn’tdistractedher. Loving Edie had made her more capable of tackling these problems.
