The Art of Inheriting Secrets(51)
Abruptly, he straightened. “You’re serious.”
My heart raced, squeezed, and I wanted him desperately, but just now . . . could I bear it? “It feels a little overwhelming.”
He looked out the window. Placed his hands precisely on the steering wheel again. “My apologies. I misjudged . . . things.”
“No.” I touched my chest, which was still burning. “It’s not that.”
“Just forget it, Olivia. I made a mistake.”
For a moment, I sat there in the cocoon of the car, wanting to climb over to him and sit in his lap and press my body into his. But at what cost? To me, to him? I just wasn’t sure I was ready for any more emotion, and my gut told me it could be a lot of emotion in regard to Samir.
Still, for a moment, I hesitated, a little dizzy with the line of his profile, the shape of his hands. My heart thudded in fear, in longing, in—
“Good night,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Yep.”
I opened the door and dashed into the rain, feeling my skin sizzle as the rain hit it.
Summer
Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
—Henry James
Chapter Twelve
Almost overnight, full spring exploded across the countryside. Crops grew like Jack’s beanstalk in the fields, and bluebells carpeted the forests. The weeks whirled by in a rush of meetings and meals and phone calls with America. Jocasta sent a parade of experts just popping in to check things out, each accompanied by the cameraman, Ian. We filmed the segments that would air at the start and end of each program, and I felt a little nervous, imagining what it would be like to be on television.
The positives outweighed any nerves or negatives, however. Two contractors examined the house from roof (bad) to foundation (good, mostly) and gave me staggeringly enormous bids. I took them into London to an architect I’d hired and asked her to go over them. She was an expert in listed properties, and within a week, she pronounced both bids sound. I hired her to draw up the initial plans, with the understanding that Hortense and her planning committee would have to approve them. “No worries,” she said. “A Hortense serves on every local council. She will give you trouble, but I’ll do my best to keep it to a minimum.”
I hired the second contractor just because I liked his demeanor and the fact that he didn’t talk down to me. He gave me a plan for the stages of the work—working south to north, first the roof, then the ground floor, to include the kitchen, dining room, parlors, and servant areas. While the work on the roof was being addressed, they would restore the flat in the carriage house.
The deposit for the work came from the rents, much to my surprise. Haver had given me a check for the past six months, nearly ￡100,000, which would be gobbled up quickly by such mammoth tasks, but I only needed it to tide me over until the monies from my mother’s Menlo Park house came through.
Walking away from his office, however, I realized that I needed an accountant. Someone not Haver, who was a lawyer anyway. I’d ask the earl to recommend someone.
First up, of course, were the plans we had to submit to the house commissioner, or rather Hortense. While the architect drew up plans for me to look over, I rented a flat over one of the shops on the high street in the village. It wasn’t much more than a bedroom/living room and kitchen, but the windows overlooked the hills and a tumble of back gardens, and I was finally able to start cooking for myself, which instantly made me feel more grounded.
The flat also gave me a base of operations. On a gigantic dry-erase board I bought at the stationer’s shop, I was able to create a command center to try to keep my life in some kind of order. I divided the board into sections—the articles and columns I was working on, Rosemere tasks (house/garden), Mom mystery, Violet timeline, and last but not least, picnic. When I ran the magazine, we’d used this method to plan each magazine, and I was attached to the visuals.
Life at last began to take on a little bit of a rhythm. Mornings, I rose early and walked the right-of-ways, following a map Dr. Mooney had given me when Samir had introduced us at Helen’s bakery. Some days I happened to run into the ragtag little group of right-of-way caretakers on their wanderings, but more often, I had the paths to myself. They gave me the chance to learn the landscape, the relationships of forest to river to field, the divisions of old and new. In one spring-green field, a white horse grazed beneath a single tree, while just beyond the hedge rose a housing estate, all modern brick and conservatory rooms off the back. Upscale and attractive but dull in comparison. I could walk across fields for literally miles, then walk through a copse of trees and find myself in a supermarket parking lot.
I saw the people too. The uneasy mix of villager and suburban dweller; a tangle of teenagers, skinny and ragged, from the local school, smoking cigarettes and snorting over a load of posh kids getting off the bus in their green-and-white uniforms. The diversity wasn’t as broad as I was used to—mainly white, with a large helping of South Asians, some clearly from the city in their suits and high heels, some locals who’d come, as Pavi told me, with the enormous wave of immigrants from India to rebuild England after World War II. A handful of refugees from the Middle East kept mostly to themselves, though their numbers were growing, and I’d walked into a nearby village to see a shop selling Middle Eastern groceries on the main square. Last, my flat was one building over from the Chinese fish-and-chips shop, where lines ran down the street on Friday nights, and the lane grew clogged with cars of commuters stopping on their way home from a busy week. The woman who ran the place, a slip of white blouse and black trousers, ran a tai chi studio above her shop. I saw the participants trailing in and out on Saturday afternoons and Monday evenings.