The Art of Inheriting Secrets(42)

“I love them. English cookies are one of the best things about this country.”

His grin flashed, and he poured tea into two mugs. “Do you not have them in America?”

“Not like this.”

He chuckled. “What does that mean?”

“English biscuits are so . . . restrained.”

“As we are,” he said, smiling. “Sugar? Milk?”

“Both, please.”

He stirred them in and set the cup close to my right hand, then gave me a pair of digestives on a paper napkin. “We wouldn’t want to disturb Billi, would we?”

“No.” I stroked his fur, down his belly, finding quiet in the movement. Again, I found my breath easing. Life had been completely insane for months now. “How old is he?”

“Don’t know, really. He showed up in the back garden one day, as if it were his home, and never left again.”

“Someone must have missed a cat like this!”

“I searched for an owner, went to the veterinarians in the area, the rescue centers, all the things you’re meant to do, but never found one.”

I looked up. “He must have been meant for you, then.”

He nodded, a little sadly, I thought. “He came to see me through the breakup.” He tugged Billi’s ear, and the cat meowed softly, pleased. “Do you have pets?”

“I did. A dog. He died a few months ago.”

He didn’t look away as people so often did when you confessed a grief. Just kept looking at me directly for a moment, then said, “So you’ve broken your leg and lost your dog and your mother and inherited a title you knew nothing about in just a few months?”

I raised my eyebrows. “It sounds like a lot when you say it like that.”

“It does. It is.”

“The leg and the dog happened the same night.” I took another sip of tea, finding it did somehow fortify me. “He was very old for a shepherd mix, nearly sixteen, but it happened kind of suddenly—he just couldn’t breathe one night, and I rushed him to the vet, but they couldn’t do anything.” I cleared my throat. “It was a rainy night, and I was not in the greatest shape on the drive back, and I just wrecked the car.” A whispering memory of breaking glass, flashing lights, the look of worry on the doctor’s face as she examined me. “It’s mostly a blur, but I shattered my right tibia, punctured a lung, and was in the hospital for nine days.”

“Olivia!” He leaned forward and circled one hand around my forearm, almost exactly the same gesture of comfort his sister had used. “Perhaps you need some brandy in your tea.”

I laughed. “The cat will do. And biscuits.” I looked away from the kindness of his gaze, feeling embarrassed and revealed and somehow relieved, as if offering the story took a little weight out of the bag of awfulness I’d been carrying around with me.

When the quiet stretched, I looked over at him. “Sorry—that was probably too much.”

His hand lingered, fingertips against my inner wrist. “Not at all. I was trying to think of a way to say how sorry I am that all those things happened in a way that wouldn’t be dismissive.”

That river of emotion that was traveling so close to the surface of my skin nearly overflowed again, and I nodded. “Thanks.”

As if he sensed that, he straightened. “Let me tell you about those books.”

“Please.”

“I’ve always been a reader, but when I returned to the village, I did nothing but read for an entire year. I had failed at everything I’d tried and couldn’t bear to talk to people, so I rented this cottage from a friend of my mother, and Billi and I holed up here, and I read.”

“That was the end of your marriage?”

He nodded, with a wry twist of his mouth. “She’s an architect in London. She wanted me to be—” He sighed. “Something I couldn’t be.”

I wanted to prompt him with questions, but it seemed the wrong thing in this quiet afternoon. I nibbled the digestive and waited. He brushed curls out of his face, then held them away for a long moment as he stared into the near past. “It didn’t last very long, only two years.”

“Oh, ow!” I covered my heart with a hand. “I’m sorry.”

“I knew better. I should never have begun, and I knew it, but—” He sighed again, lifted one side of his mouth. “She was the corollary of that beast women like—only men are simpler than women. Drama,” he said and shook his head. “So much drama.”

A Taylor Swift song popped into my head, and I sang a line.

Samir laughed. “Yes.”

“Pavi told me you both went to London for school. Did you drop out to become a thatcher?”

“No. At university, I read literature. I became a professor.” He plucked a broken piece of biscuit off the plate. “A writer.”

“Really? What kind of writing?”

“Novels. Nothing you’ve read, I’m sure. They never particularly did anything out in the world.”

“Wait. You’ve written actual novels? More than one?”

I saw the tension in his shoulders. “Three. All but the first complete failures, and I learned my lesson.”

For a minute, I held the knowledge in my mouth, rolling it around like a hard candy, sweet and lingering. It brought certain things about him into focus—his attention to detail, his long memory, his encyclopedic knowledge of the house and village and land. His intelligence.