A Lady Under Siege(32)
“I wasn’t about to,” Meghan grumbled. A couple of the slivers of glass were so microscopic the broom was passing over them, leaving tiny glinting irritants that stoked her annoyance.
“And don’t make any for yourself, either,” he said cheerfully. “I brought you one, and some croissants. I asked myself, does she seem like the croissant type or the Danish type? Went with the croissant—you can add jam to a croissant, but scraping the jam from a Danish, it’s just not done.”
“That’s very good thinking!” chirped Betsy, prancing into the kitchen all smiles.
“Stop right there,” Meghan ordered. “Don’t come any closer in bare feet.”
“You I got tea,” Derek said to her.
“Black tea?” Meghan frowned. “She’s too young for caffeinated drinks.”
“I bet she likes Coke,” Derek responded. “That’s got a hell of a lot more caffeine than an innocent cup of tea.”
“She doesn’t drink sodas either,” Meghan answered sharply.
“You’re always getting me in trouble with your mother,” Derek teased Betsy.
“I drink ginger ale, sometimes,” she announced.
“That’s not caffeinated,” said Meghan. She stood up, surveyed the floor, and decided it passed muster. She went to empty the dustpan with its shards of wineglass under the sink.
“How’d you break that?” Betsy asked.
“I didn’t. He did,” said Meghan curtly. At the door she unknotted and removed the rope she’d strung the night before, her last line of defence. She opened the door and let him in. He crossed the threshold carrying a bag of croissants in one hand, and in the other he balanced the coffee and tea, one atop the other in their plastic-lidded paper cups. “Better be careful!” Betsy giggled delightedly, and Derek played to his audience of two, like a court jester or a clown at a birthday party, pretending to almost stumble and bobble the drinks. His cavalier style, which Meghan saw as deliberately courting disaster and further spillage, infuriated her. And yet when he set the cups upon the kitchen table, and turned around to look at her with his big open face, a strange emotion seized her.
The events of the previous night came flooding back to her, and her mind filled suddenly with images of the same sharp blue eyes, broad forehead and large mouth, seen precisely as Lady Sylvanne had seen them, in the bedroom of a sickly twelve-year-old girl. She was looking into the face of Thomas of Gastoncoe.
“Something wrong? Derek asked.
His words made her aware that she’d been blatantly staring at him, as if he were a painting, or a photograph.
“Mom, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Betsy.
“Not a ghost,” she said, flustered. “I’m fine, really. Derek has come to fix our door, so why don’t—”
“And our fence,” the girl interrupted.
“That’s right, and our fence, so why don’t we let him get on with it?”
“But we haven’t had our breakfast.”
“He has, I think.” He nodded in confirmation. “Let’s go get properly dressed, come back and eat up quickly, and get out of his way.”
“You won’t be in my way,” said Derek. “And this won’t take ten minutes. The fence is another matter, it’ll take a bit longer. I bought a couple of two-by-fours to reinforce it.”
“That’ll be fine,” Meghan said. She fought a continuous urge to stare at him. Thomas of Gastoncoe. A dead ringer.
“I’m going to have a sip of tea,” Betsy announced, putting on a British accent. To her great surprise, her mother didn’t say anything in response. She picked up the paper cup and brought it to her lips, and still Meghan paid her no heed. She sensed that her mother was suddenly preoccupied with Derek, and the feeling brought a pang of jealousy.
“I’m drinking it!” she declared.
“Fine, go ahead,” Meghan answered absently. “I’m going upstairs to get dressed.” She hadn’t figured out how to broach the matter of her dreams with Derek, but she knew one thing: it should not be done in pyjamas.
UPSTAIRS SHE WAS ABOUT to pull on a pair of jeans and a tank top—her usual Saturday uniform—when she decided a shower would clear her head and help sort her thoughts. Under the warm spray she gave her mind up to Sylvanne and Thomas. They had finally come together, they had clashed, and she had lived it—she had felt the ferocity of Sylvanne’s hatred of him, and it made her shudder. Then she recalled how Thomas has spoken the name Meghan, how he had described her. He called me a great beauty, she remembered, and the flattery pleased her. It’s too long since I’ve heard anything like that from a man, she thought, smiling to herself. Drunken Derek yelling “You’re cute when you’re angry!” doesn’t count. She remembered how Thomas had spoken of Derek’s life with incomprehension—what were the words he’d used? Dissolute and pointless. Dead on. With a sudden shock she realised she had left her daughter alone downstairs with that very man, a man she barely knew, a man she habitually described to friends as the obnoxious drunk next door.