The Art of Inheriting Secrets(49)

In time, perhaps he would trust me enough to share. In the meantime, there were plenty of other things to occupy my thoughts.

It started to pour just before we left his cottage, and we both were drenched before we even made it to the car. Laughing, we tumbled in, dripping, and I wiped my face. “Nice to have sunshine while it lasted, I suppose.”

“April showers bring May flowers.” He started the car. “My father will be glad to see you again. He spoke highly of you.”

“Really? I felt like I might have brought up bad memories.”

“Well, sure. You did. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t like you.” The windshield wipers—windscreen, I corrected myself—slapped hard against the heavy rain. “He’s never stopped wondering what happened to his sister. The loss killed my grandmother.”

“It’s tragic. I can’t imagine how that would feel.”

“Nor I.” He swung into the back of the restaurant. “Ready to make a run for it?”

“I don’t know about running, but I’ll hobble as fast as I can.”

“Three, two, one!”

We slammed our doors and ran for the building, where a rectangle of light formed a beacon falling from the door of the kitchen. Pavi appeared, dressed in chef’s whites, and flung open the screen. “Hurry!”

I ran in first, nearly falling flat on my back when my feet went skidding across the floor. Pavi caught my wrist, and Samir caught my back, and I was upright again before I even really had a chance to register that I had almost fallen. “Whoo! Thanks!” I wiped my dripping hair from my face. “It’s raining cows and chickens out there!”

“Where is your umbrella, Samir?”

He shrugged. “Somewhere. We’re all right, aren’t we, Olivia?”

I laughed. “Fine.”

Pavi hugged me. “I’m so happy to see you again. Tonight, I’m experimenting. You’ll have to tell me what you think.”

Instead of going into the restaurant, she led the way up a narrow, ancient stairway to the second floor, then the third. “We live on the third and fourth floors,” she said. “The second has been overtaken by supplies and whatnot.”

“Better to use the ground level for table space,” I said, understanding instantly. The square footage of the restaurant was not huge, and the kitchens were squeezed into the rest.

“Yes.” She entered an open door at the top of the stairs and called out, “Dad? We have a guest.”

He set aside his newspaper. “Lady Shaw.” He stood and half bowed in a formal way. “So nice to see you again.”

“You don’t have to be formal with me,” I said, helplessly. “Really. Will you please call me Olivia?”

“I will try.”

“Over here. Samir, fetch the rice.”

Samir said, “The Restoration Diva came to see Rosemere today.”

“Jocasta Edwards?” Harshad said. “I love her show! She’s very famous.”

“So is Olivia, Dad,” Pavi said.

“Not at all,” I protested. “But she was wonderful. She grew up nearby, I gather. She attended some of the events at Rosemere. You might have met her, Harshad.”

“I doubt it.”

“Anyway, what did she say, Olivia?” Samir prompted.

“Well, she looked at the house and the gardens and said it’s going to cost a fortune to fix all of it.”

“No surprise,” Pavi said.

I ran down the list of things she’d said about the gardens and the house. “She asked me to think about what might be done to bring in money once the house is restored, and I’m a little flummoxed.”

“You could have a safari park, like Longleat,” Harshad said.

Samir laughed. “With elephants and giraffes?”

“Why not?”

“A lot of upkeep,” Pavi said. “Imagine how much it costs to feed them.”

“True,” Harshad conceded.

“What about something to do with food?” Pavi asked. “That’s your passion—maybe a cooking school or something like that?”

“Definitely a possibility.” I tore a tiny bit of naan from my plate. “What other kinds of things do people do? I mean, tours, of course, but I’m not sure Rosemere would bring in that many people.”

“You could have a literary festival,” Pavi said, and I didn’t imagine the sideways glance she shot her brother.

He glared at her. “Or a food festival.”

“You should have picnics again. I miss those picnics,” Harshad said sadly. “Not that they will bring in money, I suppose.”

“How often did they have them?”

“Every fourth Saturday, from May to September.”

I thought of the wide green lawn spread between the house and the garden and wondered what it would take to bring the main kitchen into some kind of order. Would the stove work and the sink? That might be enough. In the meantime, maybe food trucks or something like an open-air kitchen.

“Now that might be something to think about. I wonder if local chefs”—I wrapped my palm around Pavi’s arm—“could be convinced to come and cook?”

“I like it,” Samir said.