Page 20 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
‘Hewitt Kingscote, but I go by Witt. Two T’s. Less pretentious – Hewitt makes me sound like a great-great-grandfather from the 1700s. Or a packet of chewy sweets that were popular in the nineties.’
I had no intention of cracking my face at anything he’s got to say but a laugh bursts out and catches me by surprise. It’s the self-deprecating kind of thing he said last night. The laugh makes him look up at me and I look away quickly.
Witt. I spent a not-small proportion of last night imagining what his name might be, and I can honestly saythatwasn’t one of the options I came up with. But I like it, somehow. He’s the kind of man who should have a name you don’t hear every day.
‘I’m staying at the castle. I work for the estate agency managing the sale. I’m here to do house clearance and oversee the final handover.’
An estate agent. Not a long-lost prince from a far-off land then. For God’s sake, Sadie, of course he’s not. That explainssomuch. How he knew where everything was. How it seemed as though he was remembering but he’d never been there before – he’d obviously studied the blueprints or other estate-agenty paperwork and wasrememberingfrom that. It all makes so much sense now.
Even being a middleman in his job. What is an estate agent if not a middleman between a person and a property? Someone who fades into the background, forgotten once the desired property is purchased.Everythingmakes sense now.
Apart from the fact he’s looking right at me and he doesn’t recognise me. Am I wrong for expecting better than that? Do I really lookthatdifferent without my hair and make-up done?
‘Well, it’s a shoe.’ Scarlett concludes her in-depth examination and puts the shoe down on the counter.
‘Can you remember who bought it? And her dress… She wore a stunning dress. It must’ve come from here too.’ He gestures around to the clothing rails and mannequins displayed throughout the store. ‘It was one of a kind. Totally unique. I thought you might remember the buyer.’
‘Sadie’s the seamstress, talk to her.’
‘It was magnificent.’ He turns to me, his voice slow and stiff, as if he’s choosing every word carefully. ‘Like a mix of day and night. Like the sky had fallen down and settled itself on her dress. A huge skirt, but lightweight and soft. A real princess dress. There can only be one like it in the world.’
‘Maybe it didn’t come from here. People can buy dresses and shoes in different places.’ I sound unintentionally snappy, but I’m struggling to hide my annoyance. My charming prince seemed so different to all other men, but in the cold light of day, he doesn’t even remember me.
‘Sade, weonlysell shoes to clients, you know that.’ Scarlett sounds confused and then turns back to him. ‘Our shoes are all custom orders. We get them made by a shoemaker in the Netherlands to match our dresses.’
The mystery man’s face lights up. ‘So itmusthave come from here then? You must remember it.’
‘I make dresses every day and sell them to hundreds of people.’ All right, bit of an exaggeration there. ‘I can’t remember every single one of them.’
‘It was blue. No, not just blue. It waseveryblue. No one could ever forget it.’
Funny, that. The dress is unforgettable, but the person inside it clearly didn’t make that much of an impact.
He’s wearing dark grey trousers and a white shirt that’s got a stiff collar and looks too smart to wear without a tie. His shirt sleeves are rolled up and buttoned at his elbows, and he fiddles with one of the cuffs. ‘Maybe you have till receipts or order forms?’
‘We don’t keep information like that on file, and even if we did, it would be confidential.’
‘Hold that thought!’ Scarlett rushes out the back, and I know exactly what she’s going to return with.
‘Scarlett!’ I hiss.
He looks at me. Witt. Witt, I tell myself. He has a name now.
‘You think badly of me. You think I did something wrong that made her leave?’ That stuttery uncertainty is back in his voice. He seems to be questioning himself again, and guilt creeps up on me for running away last night. In that moment, I was only thinking about myself, about getting back here before Ebony. I never even considered that it would affect him too. It must’ve made him feel unwanted and left him wondering what he’d done wrong. Maybe he thought it hadn’t mattered as much to me as it had to him. I hadn’t even considered that my actions would leave him in a tailspin too.
‘There was a kiss, but it was mutual,’ he continues. ‘I’m not the kind of person to push myself on someone. But maybe I shouldn’t have kissed her. Maybe that was why she ran away.’
‘Or maybe you shouldn’t be so self-absorbed and realise that not everything’s about you and maybe she had other things to deal with.’ I hate myself, especially when he takes a step back in surprise at my outburst. Why can’t I just be nice to him? Even civil would do at this point. My own guilt over running away is coupled with my annoyance that even face to face, he doesn’t know me, but he doesn’t deserve that. ‘Sorry, I—’
Scarlett comes back clutching our orders folder to her chest. She heaves it onto the counter and opens it. ‘This is where we keep a record of every dress made. Sadie’s sketches, measurements, client information, prices, and occasions. Why don’t you look through it and see if you recognise the dress?’
His long fingers start turning the pages of the huge file with care.
‘You can’t show him that. It’s private.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ Scarlett says. ‘Who’s going to know? We can’t stand in the way of true love.’
‘Love?’ Witt makes a scoffing noise without looking up from the pages he’s looking at. ‘It’s nothing to do with love. She knew things about the castle. Things that I don’t know. I’d like to find her again to hear more about it.’
