“Of course,” said Sylvie.
“You know when there’s a prologue of a killer and he kills someone and you don’t know who and then it’s everyone arriving at the creepy island?”
“You really do love the dark stuff, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?”
Sylvie laughed. “Yes,” she said. “But I also love the sparse, literary ones, and the Updike, and remember the Kingsolver about the foster kid?”
“Demon Copperhead,” said Simon, sighing. “Talk about a first-personvoice.”
“I need to go to sleep,” said Sylvie.
“Oh, Syl, I’m so sorry! You must be knackered.”
“I am,” said Sylvie. “I am knackered. We don’t have as good a word in American-ese.”
“Come, you,” said Simon. He led Sylvie up a narrow spiral staircase with a few nooks and doorways visible as they climbed. “Those rooms are used for storage now; all my childhood junk, but we could make them anything,” said Simon. “Hidey holes or…” He didn’t say “a nursery,” and Sylvie was glad.
“Does Penelope just love this place?” said Sylvie. “And…are some of the books…Thisbe’s?”
“No, this was rubble before the divorce,” said Simon. “I renovated it in the depths of ex-husbandly despair. After I got…money.”
Sylvie paused. “Do you want to talk about the money?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you can,” said Sylvie. “We’ve all made mistakes, Simon.”
“Have you?”
Sylvie considered the question. “I feel more as if mistakes have mademe.”
They reached what had once been the guard chamber, Simon explained, above the entrance arch. Its window offered a panoramic view of rolling hills in all directions, the river, and the castle grounds. “Maybe,” said Simon, as Sylvie took in the view and leaned back against him, “I was making this nest for you.”
Sylvie tried to stay in this British wonderland of blooming flowers and green lawns and quiet spaces. Simon walked ahead of her, leading her down another staircase into the room on the opposite side of the archway, saying she had to see the kitchen, the bathtubs, the small patio. The second side of the gatekeeper’s house held another den with stone walls and Tudor windows, but it had been furnished in ocean tones: a beautiful, sage-green sectional couch with pillows patterned with lemons, warm wooden side tables, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The shelves were empty.
“Do you see the wall art?” said Simon.
A large canvas opposite the bookcase was impressionistic, but Sylvie recognized her mountains right away. “The Bitterroots,” she said, naming the range she’d grown up in. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I mean, who knows, I got it off the internet, but I wanted to make you feel at home. Bigcanvas.com; I was impressed!”
“Come here,” said Sylvie. She hooked his belt and pulled him toward her. They kissed and she felt the length of his body against her. She placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him more and more deeply.
“Syl,” Simon groaned. He pulled himself away. “Wait, I want you to see what I got for you.”
“I know what you’ve got for me,” said Sylvie, trying for sultry. She was aroused, hot, wanted her body to be devoured instead of her mind running away. Sylvie reluctantly stopped kissing Simon and turned her attention to a pile of books on the coffee table. She picked up a fragile copy ofThe Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle. “My favorite Beatrix Potter,” she said, touching the drawing of an adorable hedgehog on the cover.
“Cleo and Emma used to read them to you, right? Beatrix was a strange one. She and her brother boiled dead animals to see how their bones fit together.”
“Oh my,” said Sylvie.
“I also got Sylvia Plath’sThe Bed Book.Not the one your dad left a note in, of course, but a copy, anyway.The Bed Bookis the best book ever written, Sylvie.”
“Isn’t it? With the snack bed that gives you snacks like cake and chicken? And the bed on the back of an elephant? The jet-propelled bed, and the submarine bed…”
“So that’s the start of your library, but you’ve got a lot of work to do over here.”
