Page 115 of One More Christmas at the Castle
Plum was running on ahead, with his tail waving like a small flag, but stopped and turned, giving us a doggy grin.
Xan slipped his hand through my arm in a companionable way and said, with a regretful sigh, ‘One more quiet evening tonight, when I might manage to slip off to join you and Henry again … and then I suppose Sabine will expect me to entertain the guests.’
‘That makes it sound as if she’s hired you to sing, or do conjuring tricks,’ I told him, and he grinned.
‘I suppose it’s too much to hope for that they’re all struck down with sleeping sickness and go to bed early.’
I laughed. ‘Not unless one of Henry’s special cocktails knocks them out! His Christmas one isfairlymild, but the Rudge Special can make strong men sag at the knees.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ he said, then added ruminatively, ‘You know, I think I’ve enjoyed those evenings with you and Henryso much because it’s been a bit like revisiting my student days. Simon probably feels the same.’
‘It’s always like that at Henry’s place, with his friends dropping in, or showing up with sleeping bags and camping out all over the house. I’m not sure he’s ever going to quite grow up.’
We were silent for a bit, then something he’d said yesterday, which had puzzled me at the time, rose to the surface of my mind.
‘Xan, when you said yesterday afternoon that discovering my relationship with Mrs Powys was just one coincidence too many to swallow, what did you mean? There haven’tbeenany others, have there?’
He stopped and turned to look at me, his lilac-grey eyes amused.
‘Oh, yes, there have! I know you’ve been doing your best to pretend we’ve never met before, but we have – Di!’
I felt my face flood with scarlet as I stared at him, aghast. ‘YouknewI was the dreadful teenager with a crush on you, who made your life a misery that summer?’
‘You weren’t quitethatbad!’ he said, laughing. ‘But of course I knew, though not at first, because you’ve changed quite a lot. That lovely Grecian nose of yours was a bit of a giveaway, though.’
‘I hated it when I was younger, but I think my face sort of grew into it, and I suddenly shot up another few inches later that year, too.’
‘You keptalmostgiving yourself away, you know, and I’m afraid I teased you once or twice,’ he said. ‘It was a bit irresistible, especially at first, when you were obviously trying to keep me at a distance. Ice Princess wasn’t in it.’
‘I was afraid you’d recognize me, and I still feel hideously embarrassed about the way I behaved.’
‘But you were only – what? Fifteen or sixteen?’
‘Sixteen, which should have been old enough to know better.’
‘Although I remember you had a crush on me, I don’t think it particularly bothered me at the time, because I was in the throes of a crush on one of those girls who used to come over to play tennis and swim in the pool – what was her name?’
‘Sophie,’ I said. ‘And you did seem very keen on her – it made me wild with jealousy and probably even more of a pest!’
‘I was a bit cut up after Gerry and I flew out to Greece and I never heard from her again, but I soon got over it. We’d changed our tickets to a day early, because my grandmother was ill, as I recall.’
I felt a fresh pang of guilt about that letter he’d left with me to give Sophie and was tempted to finally reveal the truth …
But did itreallymatter any more, especially since he seemed to have quickly forgotten her?
I smiled at him. ‘It’s a relief that it’s out in the open now,’ I said, and he tucked his hand back into my arm again as we walked on.
‘I thought if you ever found out, you’d avoid me like the plague! Aren’t you afraid I’ll get another crush on you?’ I teased.
He said, very seriously, ‘No, I’m not afraid of that, at all!’
Sabine
Nancy told me last night that she was certain that, had the relationship with Dido not been revealed, my better nature would have asserted itself and I’d have told the girl myself, once I’d come to realize her true nature.
And I have to admit that knowing about our connection has not made the least difference to Dido’s manner towards me.
I haven’t discussed it with Xan. Really, there doesn’t seem to be anything more to be said about it.
