Page 89 of Milo
I smile. “This run business is not your thing.”
“You know very well it isn’t,” he says, catching Cora neatly as she attempts to follow the runners. Slinging her up and onto his hip, he starts to walk slowly and I fall into stride next to him. “Sunday is the one day that we get a lie in and my mother is staying this week. Do you know what that means, Milo?”
I blink. “You’re having a nice time?”
“I’d be having a nicer time lying in with my husband while my mother looks after Cora.”
“Oh,” I say and start to laugh. He throws me a dark look.
“It’s okay for you, Milo. In your big old house with just the two of you and no one to hear you scream. Last time I shouted during sex, I had my daughter banging on the door demanding to know if I’d fallen over, accompanied by Chewwy howling.” He shudders. “It quite put us off our stride.”
I start to laugh helplessly and he joins in, his expression wry.
We walk along for a bit, keeping to the side of the course while Cora jumps and skips alongside while admiring her new flowery wellies.
“What have you got on this week?” he asks.
I narrow my eyes, thinking. “I’ve got the two portraits from last week to finish. Then they’ve got to be packed up and shipped off. I’ve got a few days then before I’ve got to go to Gloucestershire.”
He smiles as if liking that. “How long will you be away?”
“A week at the most. Or at least I hope so.”
“I hope so too,” he says tartly. “Because Niall will be like a bear with a sore head the longer you’re away.”
I sigh. “I’ll be the same.” I shoot him a look. “I know it sounds silly, but I hate being away from him.”
“Not silly at all,” he says placidly. “You’re in love. That’s a natural side effect, or it should be.”
“I wish he could come with me, but Lord Reid is rather eccentric. He doesn’t like his staff to have guests.”
“He doesn’t want you having a gentleman caller? How veryUpstairs Downstairs!”
I laugh. “I think that term might be a bit libellous if applied to Niall. A gentleman he isn’t.”
He laughs, and we lapse into an easy silence while I watch the runners and search for a familiar head and shoulders. I was telling the truth. I will miss him. Far more than anyone could guess.
This tall and effervescent man is my whole heart. I love him fiercely and to the depths of me. He’s everything to me. My best friend, my lover, and my biggest supporter. My career has grown in leaps and bounds the last couple of years, now that I’m so much more confident in putting myself forward for jobs. I’ll also leave the estate more and it’s totally down to Niall. It’s as if him loving me both tethers me at his side and sets me gloriously free. I feel happy to show me now because a wonderful man loves that person with all his faults and foibles, and if that person stutters then so fucking what? That little practice that Niall set up in an unused room inChi an Morfor me has now spread to three rooms and I employ an apprentice as well.
I’m totally myself with him and hold nothing back, and we fight and talk and fuck and love and it’s wonderful and liberating.
We finally find ourselves by the water jump and I smile.
“What?” Oz asks.
“This is where we were when Niall first kissed me.”
“How romantic and muddy,” he shudders, but the smile on his lips gives him away.
“Hey, it was romantic, especially the seven-month-old baby in between us and Brunhild the Happy Homophobe to one side.”
“Oh my God, is she here?” He ducks around me to look both ways.
“Probably. She’s always at these things,” I say gloomily. “It’s as if when they banned fox hunting she had to pick a lesser blood sport.”
“The foxes are probably laughing themselves silly now, having a lie down with a cup of tea.” He looks down at Cora. “I remember that,” he says. “You had Cora in that sling.”
“She wouldn’t fit now,” I say, eyeing the merry little girl who is jumping around us. She’s let her fear of ruining her new wellies be overtaken by the strong desire to jump in muddy puddles, and as such she’s speckled with the stuff.
