The Art of Inheriting Secrets(102)

The one person I’d not seen and had expected to was Rebecca. All afternoon, I’d half waited for her arrival, but she never showed, nor had her husband. Odd, considering how solicitous they’d been. I wondered what had happened.

As the last truck bumped down the road, the sun played peekaboo with a bank of lavender clouds. Samir had driven his parents home and now returned with a pack over his shoulder. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you how lovely you look,” he said and bent to kiss me.

I met his kiss, twining my fingers more tightly around his. “So do you. I love that color on you.”

“I’ll wear it every day if you like.” He raised his head and touched his nose to the tip of mine. “God, it feels like a year since we had time together.”

“I know.” I tugged his hand. “Let me show you my new flat.”

“That went very well, I thought,” he said as we walked hand in hand over the path to the carriage house.

“It was a great success, and Jocasta raved about Pavi’s food, so that will be good for her when the show airs.” The shadow of his mother’s comments rippled over my pleasure, but I brushed them away. “I’ve been reading your books.”

“More than one at once?”

“Dipping through them to see what I see.”

“Mmm.” Against the gold-and-lavender sky, his profile was still. “You needn’t give me reports. Everyone always feels they must prove they have read them, but I don’t need that.”

“You’re very funny, but not in a mean way, which I love, and there’s a tenderness in your approach to the world that I find very touching.”

“Tender? I don’t know that I’ve heard that before. What do you mean?” He paused, and I had to smile—what writer could resist hearing more about the perception of his work? I myself could never resist.

“You really see things as they are. The beauty—or maybe the particularity—of everything, and you’re fond of it all. Awe is in all of it.” I inclined my head. “There’s a lot of wisdom in that, being so present.”

“Awe,” he said quietly, brushing hair away from my face. “Thank you.”

“I’m awed by you,” I said. “I feel like I made you up, that you can’t possibly be the man you seem to be.”

“I’m as flawed as any,” he said.

“I know. I see you, you know.”

He swallowed. “And I see you.”

“What do you see?”

“Intelligence and curiosity and open-mindedness. A certain delicacy, a little brokenness.”

“My mother.”

He nodded. “And your dog and the loss of your health and your work. You became unmoored when all those things happened.”

“I did.”

“You’re afraid too. Afraid you won’t find your place, that if you do, it might be taken.”

The words cut a bit too close, and I scowled at him. “That’s enough, sir.”

He grinned, but then his attention was caught by something behind me. “Oh, look!” He turned me gently by my shoulders, and there in front of us was Rosemere, the sun striking the windows with gold, setting the stones afire with rose.

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed. He stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders, and I covered one of his hands with my own.

“It’s been standing here for six hundred years,” he said quietly, “those very windows looking out to those very same fields. It’s hard to even imagine what that means, six hundred years.”

“I know. All those lives, the mornings and the evenings, the dinners and the disasters and the Christmas mornings. So many of them.”

“And there will be more, because of you.” He kissed my head, and I leaned into him.

“Thank you, Samir,” I said.

“For what?”

“For just . . . you.”

He wrapped his arms around my shoulders. “Thank you for the very same thing.”

Later, after we’d reunited properly after four entire days apart, we puttered into the kitchen. “I have everything you need for chai,” I said proudly, opening a cupboard. “Will you make some? I’ll make my very special broiled cinnamon toast.”

“Done.”

My phone rang, and when I glanced at the screen, I saw that it was the constable. “Hmm,” I said and answered. “Hello?”

“Hello, Lady Shaw. I’m calling with some news. Is this a good time?”

“Of course.” I widened my eyes at Samir, who plucked a banana out of a bowl and peeled it. “What’s up?”

“We’ve been coordinating with the Turkish government and local officials, and we’ve made several arrests in your case.”

“My case?”

“The serious fraud case? Regarding Haver and various others?”

“Oh!” I realized that my solicitor had actually undertaken the work of getting the police on the case. “That’s great. Who was arrested?”

“Jonathan Haver was picked up in Rome, Rebecca Poole and Tony Willow in London, and”—he paused—“Judith and Rick Vickers, your former caretakers, en route to England.”

My mouth dropped open, and I looked at Samir with wide eyes. “Wow. That’s incredible. Do you need me to do something?”