Thirty Nights (American Beauty #1)(39)

Aiden tilts my face up and kisses me again. “I had a feeling about you,” he says against my lips.

“What feeling?” My words sound more like sighs.

He pulls away, running his thumb over my lower lip. “When I first saw you, you seemed so…defeated. But you had this dignity about you, like someone slapped you and you were turning the other cheek. The words ‘grace’ and ‘aristocratic’ came to mind.”

I laugh. “You’d be the first to apply those words to me, I think.”

“I highly doubt that. And I really dislike your self-deprecation.” His jaw sharpens against his skin.

“I’m British, Aiden. Self-deprecation is our national trait.”

“You’ve managed to Americanize your speech but not your outlook? There has to be more to it than that.”

“Well, quite obviously, I was waiting for a man to buy my naked paintings. Nothing is more beneficial for a woman’s self-esteem than being wanted only for her body,” I say, trying to keep a serious face.

He smiles and presses me close to him again. “What about being wanted for her insufferable know-it-all attitude?”

I laugh. “That’s a genetic trademark.” I shuffle my hand over the tea rose buds, remembering Mum complaining about the same thing in Dad.

“So what happened to Lady Cecilia?” Aiden prompts, no doubt thinking that my know-it-allness comes from my aristocratic line.

“She ran away with the family butler, Franklin Brighton—my grandfather. When the scandal broke, her family disowned her and removed her name from the inheritance. They never reunited. She and Franklin were both gone by the time I was born.” I tap the rosebud one more time and traipse across the grassy circle to the ivory hybrid in the corner.

“Another rose with special meaning?” Aiden asks.

“Not as special as the others. But it’s part of the story. My mum met Dad when she worked at the Ashmolean as an assistant curator. It was love at first sight, they said. And by what I saw, it does exist.

“They married in six months. I was born only a year later, right as my dad got a professorship at Oxford. They moved to a tiny cottage in Burford, a small town close to the university for my dad.

“Mum loved to garden. Her pink English roses slowly took over the cottage’s bricks and even the shingles on the roof. It looked more like a fairy tale than a twenty-first century home.”

“Is this rose your mother’s favorite?” Aiden points at the pale bloom.

“No. This is very similar to the hybrid she cultivated for me.”

A soft, cinnamon gasp leaves his lips. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yes, it is. She worked on it for years. Named it Elisa, of course. This here is called centifolia because it has precisely one hundred petals. The Elisa has fewer but it’s the same color and fragrance.”

Aiden leans in and smells it. “I like this rose best. But with all due respect to your mother, you still smell better.”

“Especially after sweating in these clothes.” I raise my face to his, prepared for his kiss this time. As his lips mold to mine, I realize he is kissing me by each rose. I don’t know if it’s to keep my memories at bay or simply because he can, but whatever the reason, this stroll feels new. More mine, less my parents’.

“Come, one more stop,” I say when I can speak again. He follows me out of the garden, along a corridor of climbing English roses.

“No longer Shakespeare,” he muses, as though he is speaking to himself. I shake my head. Does he know the end is coming?

“Do they have your mother’s roses here?” he asks, never releasing my hand.

“No. Her favorite was pale pink English garden rose. The closest they have is right above us.” I point at the rose canopy over our heads.

We leave the rose tunnel and step into the heart of the garden, at its curvy, tiered fountain. It gurgles cheerfully the same way it has greeted me these last four years. The soft yellow light at the bottom of the pool turns the water a molten gold. Hundreds of copper pennies and silver quarters litter the granite floor. I perch at the edge, dipping my fingers in the water. I expect Aiden to sit next to me, but he picks me up and cradles me on his lap.

“A fountain this time?”

“Yes. My parents didn’t make much money but once a year, they’d pick some place in the world they thought I ought to see before college, and we would go. Dad sometimes left a day or two early to set up a treasure hunt for Mum and me. Usually, for her, he’d hide things that meant something to the two of them alone. On our last vacation together, in Rome, he hid a pair of lacy knickers in the Fontana di Trevi, which completely scandalized her but I thought it was hilarious. She berated him in front of the fountain, except in her fluster, she forgot that she was still carrying the offending unmentionable and was waving it at him. I never saw him laugh that hard again.”

I pause to let the lump in my throat drop to my stomach. Aiden runs his thumb back and forth on my hand but does not move. It looks like he is not breathing.

I risk a look at his face. I see many words in his eyes but he does not interrupt. He takes my hand, which is clenched into a fist, and covers it with his. It’s warm, and it keeps me going.

“They were driving home from Oxford on January 4, 2011. The roads were icy and a truck hit them. Their car saved an SUV with two children and their mum from being crushed.”