Page 9 of The Missing Page
“I do beg your pardon,” Leo said to Martha. “But can I use your telephone to ring up a taxi? I suppose the village has lodgings of some sort. Failing that, I’ll get the taxi to bring me back to Looe.”
Martha looked up, her brow creased with worry. “Goodness. Do stay here for the night. We ought to have an empty room, because not everyone came who Mr. Trevelyan expected.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Lilah. “I wasn’t invited—I’m afraid I crashed the party and took over the empty room.”
“There’s the blue room, then. It has that leak in the ceiling but it isn’t raining, and the window only rattles a little.”
“We won’t put Mr. Page in the dreadful blue room,” Lilah said. “I can bunk in with Mother. After all, it’s my arrival that’s made you short on habitable rooms.”
Well, that would never do. “Mr. Page can sleep on the sofa in my room,” James said, hoping he didn’t sound too eager.
“That’s settled, then,” said Martha, looking relieved.
When Leo approached James at the window, it was with a glass in one hand and the bottle of whiskey in the other.
James held out his glass for Leo to fill and their gaze caught. James wanted to admit that he had been stupid with worry, for the past hour and the past fortnight. He wanted to admit that he didn’t know these people anymore, if he ever had, and that he didn’t want to be with them. But instead he prepared himself to follow through with the rest of their charade in case anyone was listening. “I hope your car isn’t too badly damaged.”
“I haven’t a clue,” said Leo. “Great clouds of black smoke billowed up from the bonnet. Most alarming. The gardener chap said the carburetor is in a devilish poor state but that he’ll give it a look tomorrow.”
James took a drink of his whiskey. “Do you need to ring up Susan and let her know what happened?” He always felt like such a fumbling idiot when attempting to meet Leo lie for lie. He was terrible at it, the tips of his ears heating with every falsehood.
“I already phoned her from the lodge,” Leo said easily.
The clock chimed ten and Sir Anthony got to his feet. He was the sort of man who couldn’t get out of a chair or walk across a room without making his presence known. He wasn’t loud or lumbering; it was just, as much as James hated to acknowledge it, a sort of innate charisma. Good looks too, he noted in irritation. This was probably why the great and good of the land sought him out whenever a member of the family began hearing voices or acting in an alarming way. He just had a presence. Not a soothing presence, and certainly nothing that could be referred to as a pleasant bedside manner. It was more that he seemed like he could frighten off whatever troubles afflicted his patients. Hundreds of years ago, he would have been precisely the sort of priest one would want to perform an exorcism.
“It’s been a long day and I’m for bed,” Sir Anthony announced, with enough force that James nearly headed to the doorway himself. With a perfunctory “good night” aimed at everyone and no one, Sir Anthony left the room, Camilla and Lilah trailing behind him. Martha and Madame Fournier followed a moment later. And finally, finally, James was alone with Leo.
CHAPTER SIX
“Shall we head upstairs as well?” James asked, coming to sit beside Leo on the sofa—not so close that they’d need to spring apart if anyone walked in, but close enough that they hardly needed to speak above a whisper to hear one another. Close enough, too, that he could give Leo’s arm a quick squeeze, which is exactly what he did. “You look knackered.”
“I am, and then some.” Leo stretched an arm along the back of the sofa, his fingers briefly resting on the nape of James’s neck. “But no, I don’t want to go to bed yet. The lawyer left his papers on the writing desk and I mean to read them as soon as I can be sure nobody will interrupt me.”
“Fine by me,” James said, refilling both their glasses and letting his fingers brush along Leo’s wrist as he did so.
Leo closed his eyes and tipped his head against the back of the sofa.
“When was the last time you slept?” James asked.
“I might have dozed on the airplane,” Leo said.
“In a bed, Leo.”
“Wednesday, I think.” Leo didn’t open his eyes.
That actually wasn’t as bad as James had feared. “It’s rather lovely to have you here,” James said, conscious that this was a drastic understatement. It was shocking enough that he got to have Leo at home; the idea that Leo might turn up elsewhere seemed almost too good to be true. In December they had—stumblingly, mortifyingly—agreed that they enjoyed being together in and out of bed and agreed to keep doing that. But surely it couldn’t be that simple. Surely James didn’t get to have someone like Leo in his life and keep him there just because he wanted it. “I was dreading this weekend.”
One of the corners of Leo’s mouth ticked up in a tired smile. “A reading of the will. For God’s sake, James. I half expected to find you all shooting one another. Cabinets of exotic poisons left unlocked. Sharpened daggers mounted above the chimneypiece.”
“Ah. I see. You came for the entertainment potential.”
Leo breathed out a laugh and rolled his head to face James. His tired eyes were still mostly closed and he regarded James through dark eyelashes. “You know why I came.”
James felt his cheeks heat and wondered if he’d ever get used to Leo saying these things. It happened so rarely and never with any warning. A man simply couldn’t build up any kind of natural immunity.
“Do you want to get to the bottom of whatever nonsense your uncle was up to,” Leo asked, “or do you want to let it go?”
James raised his eyebrows. “It’s a funny business,” he said tentatively. He didn’t know whether he wanted to get to the bottom of it, as Leo put it. His instinct was to insist that his uncle must have been mistaken, and that Rose had died exactly the way everyone assumed she did.
