Page 27 of A Midnight Kiss on Ever After Street
I look up at him, but he remains poker faced. ‘No one can over-romanticisethiscastle. My parents actually met there, many moons ago.’
He pulls back to look at me in surprise. ‘Really?’
‘It’s why I love the castle so much. My mum was a dressmaker to the viscountess and my dad was an accountant to the viscount. He was leaving after a meeting and she was just arriving, and they ran headfirst into each other at the gate. She had her arms full of dresses, they both fell over, his briefcase split open and his papers flew everywhere. He trod on a hem in the tangle and tore the bottom of a dress she was taking to the viscountess, who luckily saw the funny side. Instead of leaving, my dad sat on the wall and waited until Mum came back out so he could apologise properly, and then he asked her out to dinner.’
Witt’s looking down at me in awe by the time I’ve finished. ‘I didn’t realise you had a personal connection to the castle.’
‘It meant a lot to my family. I’ve never known a world where it wasn’t watching over me from the hillside. I can’t imagine this place without it.’ I can’t help myself once I get started on talking about the castle, but I’m inadvertently doing exactly what he wanted. He wanted to hear more about it, and here I am, sharing a personal part of my family history with this stranger whose job is to make sure the castle sells.
‘Being here feels like being in a different world.’ He reaches out to trace a carving in the trunk of a tree, and then takes a couple of breaths, as though he’s building himself up to saying something. ‘Sadie, can I tell you something about me?’
I nod and my hand tightens on his arm automatically because tension has shot through him that makes it feel important.
‘I don’t usually tell people, but something about you makes me want to be open.’ He goes to carry on but can’t get the words out.
I hold his arm tighter. I’m way too close to this man. I feeltooat ease with him. Hemustknow I’m the girl from the other night or he’s going to think I’m the most overly familiar stranger he’s ever encountered.
‘I have a speech impediment. I stammer.’
‘Really?’ This clearly isn’t something he’s said very often and my heart is melting at how insecure he looks.
‘I’m fairly sure you can tell.’ He gives me a soft smile. ‘Generally I can control it if I speak slowly and focus on each word, but sometimes it gets the better of me, particularly if I’m nervous. I wanted to explain if I came across badly yesterday when I brought the shoe in. I was embarrassed and flustered and fighting to get words out and maybe I came on too strong or unnerved you in some way. It’s why I come across as harsh sometimes. Abrupt. Monosyllabic. I choose the shortest sentences possible and the words in my head are rarely the same ones that come out of my mouth.’
So much makes sense now. Even at the ball, the way he seemed to struggle to find the right words or abandoned sentences that didn’t seem like they were going to go the right way. I’ve noticed his stilted way of speaking and how he sometimes gives up on words and says something else instead.Words are my problem toois what he said at the ball the other night, but I never knew it hid something like this.
My fingers fiddle with the cuff of his shirt sleeve where it’s turned up around his elbow. ‘Thank you for telling me.’
‘I wanted you to know in case you wonder why I’m a bit weird sometimes.’
‘I don’t think you’re weird.’
He smiles an involuntary smile. ‘I don’t think you’re weird either.’
It makes me laugh out loud. ‘Oh, Witt, the compliment every girl dreams of. I don’t think anyone’s ever said anything so nice to me before.’
He laughs at my sarcasm, but a feeling of loveliness settles over me as we walk.Everythingfeels so lovely with him. The whole world is nicer than it was before, and I’m enjoying his company so much. I can’t think of any better way to spend an evening.
‘Bringing the shoe into the shop got out of hand yesterday. I’m not used to dealing with people. The stutter makes me avoid them as much as possible. I spend my life hiding away in old buildings because it’s easier than trying to speak to fellow humans. I was caught up in trying not to make a fool of myself, and you and your sister’s enthusiasm took me by surprise. I didn’t mean for this campaign to find Cinderella to take on such a life of its own.’
‘She’s actually my cousin.’ I didn’t correct him last time, but now it feels wrong not to. ‘My parents died when I was ten and my aunt took me in. I went to live with her and Scarlett.’
He’s listening so intently that he accidentally walks into a tree trunk and stops to look at me in surprise. ‘I lost my parents when I was ten too. Well, my father. My mother had passed a few years before that.’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘What a weird thing to have in common.’
I never expected that kind of connection with him. Losing both parents at an early age is a grief that not many people understand, and I can’t quite believe that this man who felt so special the other night would know the impact that it has too.
I manoeuvre us around the tree and we carry on walking. ‘Did you have to move in with family?’
‘Bundled up to Scotland to live with a grandma who I didn’t know existed until that point.’
‘That must’ve been tough.’ There I go squeezing his arm again. I’m trying to tell myself to untangle our arms and walk side by side, keep a bit of distance between us, but I can’t do it, not when he’s talking about something so personal.
‘My grandma was elderly and crotchety and didn’t want a kid around. She hadn’t had contact with my family for over thirty years and made it crystal clear that I was only there because there was no one else. Every day I’d get in from school and she’d be asleep in her chair and I’d have to poke her to make sure she was still alive. She lived in this tiny little crofter’s cottage with doorways that are about four foot high.’ His hand comes up to mid-chest to indicate how far he had to duck. ‘She acted like it was still the 1900s. She’d get me new shoes and couldn’t comprehend that within a few months, I’d have grown out of them. Same with clothes. I mean, you can see how tall I am, I grewfastat that age.’ He moves his hands apart to indicate going upwards. ‘Every item of clothing fitted me for a very short window of time before it was too short or too tight. You can imagine how well that helped me fit in.’
‘It was bad?’
‘In the middle of a Scottish school, I was a tall English kid with a posh English accent, bad clothes, and a new and uncontrollable stammer. I stood out like a bullfinch in the snow. My grandma would mend things time and time again rather than buy new,longafter the lifetime of which anything could reasonably be mended. She didn’t have a TV so I could never join in with those conversations, no music or any kind of player, we were lucky to have electricity, and even that was considered a “new fandangled thing not to be trusted”.’ He puts on an elderly voice that makes me laugh. ‘It’s not that I wasn’t grateful, because I don’t know where I’d have ended up without her, but it was like going back in time.’
‘It sounds grim.’
