Page 35 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
Almostpositive.
And I might hate the taste, but it certainly warmed us up on our Quest for the Questionable.
‘I doubt you’ll ever track most of this down,’ I said finally. ‘Fifty small items of Tunbridge Ware? A collection of porcelain cockatoos?’
‘It’s all under the insurance so I don’t careif they don’t find any of it, except the family miniatures. I’d really like those back,’ he said, removing the list from my grasp and ticking off yet another missing memento.
When we’d finished the survey (and a lot of brandy) and given up on the ghosts, it was nearly morning, so we retired back to Dante’s bedroom, the only warm place in the house, to wait for old rosy-fingered Dawn.
I wokeup stiff, tired and headachy, curled up in a four-poster bed next to a stranger.
The unfamiliar room was fuzzy with grey early-morning light, and it took me a few heart-thumping minutes to remember where I was, and even then I couldn’t for the life of me recall how – or why – I was back in Dante’s bedroom.
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
Under the old eiderdown that coveredus his naked arm lay warmly and heavily across me, but his face was half-turned away and masked by long, dishevelled dark hair.
As I stared at him, some confused memories began to bubble disturbingly to the surface.
At least, Ithinkthey were memories.
Hadn’t I been woken at some point from the pounding terror of my cupboard nightmare, and taken into a warm, comforting embrace? And surelyI knew – remembered – how the muscles of his broad back moved under my hands …andhow his lips felt on mine.
Or maybe it was the feel of mine on his? For I began to have an awful feeling it was me doing most of the kissing, and desperately wanting him, even urging him, to—
Oh God: it was all coming back to me!
Shivering (but not from cold, for the world’s most efficient hottie was right inthere with me), I took a quickhorrified peek under the eiderdown … and then a second, more admiring one.
I must have beenpossessed– and I didn’t think brandy agreed with me, so clearly I did not take after Pa in that respect either, which is something, I suppose.
Dante was still breathing deeply, so with infinite caution I slid out from under his arm and off the bed, nearly falling when myfoot landed on an empty bottle.
He moved restlessly and murmured something, then turned over and settled back to that regular breathing. Reassured, I tiptoed round the bed, collecting clothes as I went, and took a good look at him.
He seemed a lot younger than I’d thought with the grim lines smoothed out by sleep, and a lot of dark stubble softening his square chin. Nothing would make that hawknose anything other than aggressive, though, and I wasn’t convinced a mouth so hard and straight could ever break into a grin, although itcouldfeel soft and …
No. Let’s not go down that road. He looked relaxed, anyway.
It’s wonderful what physical exercise can do for a man.
Some deeply primal instinct was urging me to go downstairs and make him a huge cooked breakfast, but I was ruthlesswith it. It wasn’t my fault he looked like he needed feeding up.
One hank of springy raven hair still lay across his cheek, and on a sudden impulse I leaned over and gently pushed it away, before drawing back quickly, afraid he would wake up.
My mind slid safely away into the alternative reality of Keturah:
…Keturah took the pillow, meaning to extinguish his life and so never have to facethe full enormity of what she had done.
Then she put it down again, slowly: he might move and act like a man, but he was not mortal. He could not love … or die.
He could only possess.
Keturah, you’re in big trouble. What the hell got into you? Or maybe that should be: whatfromhell got into you?
It certainly wasn’t Sylvanus.
With a new plot twist uncoiling in my mind, I left the kitchenkey on the bedside table, picked up Guido, and went out into weak early sunshine, where I didn’t burn, crumble into dust, or turn into a pillar of stone, all distinct possibilities and no more than I deserved.
Crumpled, creaking, unwashed, unloved, unfaithful and unchaste, I hurried towards the haven of home as the first birds and little Birdie croaked into action.
It felt like a decade sinceI’d set out.
Cassandra Leigh, I know what you did last night.
What I don’t know iswhy.
A writer can take research too far.
