Page 68 of Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
The group talked about the wedding, a little about politics—which they quickly had to abandon—and their various jobs. Dev got into a discussion about global warming with Charles, suggesting that someone with as much sway in the financial world as Charles was perfectly positioned to encourage investors to clean up their acts in terms of their carbon footprints. Guy butted in drunkenly to accuse Dev of having a higher carbon footprint than any of them because his modeling work took him all over the world on gas-guzzling airplanes.
In the end, the party disbanded early, some to their rooms, others to the snug, and Charles and Guy to the billiards room,where they ordered a bottle of whiskey and settled in for the night.
Truth be told, Nory was pleased to have her evening suddenly free. She left it a respectable amount of time before changing into jeans and a jumper and disappearing off to Isaac’s cottage.
“Hello, I didn’t expect to see you this evening.” Isaac was smiling, looking at her with one eyebrow raised. He was dressed in the tartan fleece leisure trousers he’d worn to Snowball Croquet and a navy-blue sweatshirt. His hair was wet from the shower—slicked back—and Nory could still smell the fresh scent of soap on his skin.
She felt suddenly nervous. Was it such a good idea to just turn up? What if Isaac had someone with him? What if he didn’t have company because he wanted to be by himself, without weird booksellers rocking up unannounced at his door?
“Is this a bad time?”
“No! No, not at all, you just took me by surprise. Come in.”
He stepped aside, and Nory walked in past him and through the open door into the sitting room.
“Can I get you a drink?”
“Something hot, please, it’s freezing out there.”
“What about a glass of mulled wine? I had a hankering for some earlier, but it seemed excessive to make some up just for me.” He looked at her and smiled. “But now you’re here.”
“Mulled wine would be wonderful. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“None at all. Come out to the kitchen, we can talk while I concoct.”
Nory wanted to tell Isaac that she’d confronted her brother, but a part of her was holding back. She didn’t want him to feel obliged to get with her simply because she’d cleared the path.
Lettuce had looked up lazily from her spot on the rug by the fire when Nory had come in, and then promptly let her head flop down again. Now she raised one ear inquisitively but decided she was too comfortable to move.
Isaac’s kitchen was a generous size, covering the whole back of the house, with a battered farmhouse table at the far end, opposite a set of French doors that led out to the back garden.
“Take a seat.” He gestured toward a tatty wingback chair tucked in beside a woodburning stove, and Nory sat down. The springs in the upholstery had well and truly sprung, but a small mountain of cushions made up for it.
“That was Dad’s favorite chair,” Isaac said. “I haven’t got the heart to get rid of it.”
“I know someone who could get it re-sprung, they’ve done a lot of work for me in the past. I brought in a load of old furniture when I opened the shop. I’d wondered why the chairs were so cheap when I bought them online and then discovered there wasn’t a working spring among them when they arrived.”
“Ah, the perils of the late-night eBay purchase.”
“Ha, yes.”
Isaac was busy at the worktop. He’d already glugged a bottle of red into a saucepan and was now busily slicing clementines, snapping cinnamon sticks, and throwing spices into the warming alcohol. Soon the kitchen was heady with the scents of orange and star anise. Nory let her eyes roam lazily around the space, feeling far too at home here with Isaac and far too relaxed to overthink it. Her gaze landed on an easel on one side of the table. She heaved herself out of the chair and wandered over.
“Did you paint this?” she asked.
It was a watercolor of the hellebore cultivar from the WinterGarden. The confident brushstrokes of color over the curves of the petals and the movement in the leaves felt familiar. The flower head and its leaves were separated, as was its stem, so that this was not so much a still life as a botanical study.
“Oh, um. Yes, I did. I wanted to document the plant as I went along. I’ve done the same with every hybrid.”
“Ever heard of a camera?”
Isaac laughed. “I guess it’s kind of a hobby too. Art, painting...” Shades of embarrassment colored his voice, as though he needed to explain his work away. “My mum was a talented artist. She taught me how to look past what your brain is telling you you can see, and witness what’s really there instead. You’d be surprised how much our brains try to fill in the gaps for us.”
“You’ve clearly inherited your mum’s gift.”
Isaac handed her a glass mug of steaming wine and she thanked him.
“Do you have more?” she asked.
