The Aristocrat

by Penelope Ward

  “Take me to the English countryside. Virtually. Take me home with you. Tell me what it’s like. Pretend you’ve just arrived back. Tell me what happens. Describe for me what it all looks like.”

  “All right.” He rested his chin on my head and wrapped me in his arms. “There are rolling green hills everywhere. It’s just finished raining, so I can see a rainbow in the distance as the driver approaches our property.”

  “Tell me about your house.”

  “It’s very…large, a stately home.”

  “Like a castle?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Like Downton Abbey?”

  “Like a version of that, perhaps. Made of brick.”

  “What happens when you go inside?”

  “When I get there, it’s neither my mother nor father who greet me, but rather Camila, our house manager.”

  “What does she do exactly?”

  “Oversees the staff.”

  “How many people work there?”

  “About ten.”

  “Wow.”

  “It’s a bit much, but that’s how it’s always been from generation to generation.”

  “Your parents won’t greet you when you arrive?”

  “If I’ve arrived during the day, Mum is probably off at some meeting with her friends. My father is likely at his office off site…if he’s feeling up to working on that particular day.”

  “Okay, so it’s Camila you see first. What is she like?”

  “She’s tall and can be a bit scary.” He laughed. “She keeps the house in order, though. Older…in her fifties. Blond hair tied back tightly in a bun. Very serious demeanor but manages to break a smile once in a while if I work hard enough at it. I love making her laugh because it’s not something she offers very easily.”

  I smiled. “What’s the first thing you do?”

  “I drop my things and head to the kitchen with Camila. She and I will have a talk about my travels. I’ll give her the abbreviated recap of our trip. I’m probably exhausted, so I’ll go to my room soon thereafter.”

  “What does your room look like?”

  “It’s large. A four-post bed. Dark-wood crown molding. A little depressing and cold, actually.”

  “What’s the first thing you do when you get to your room?”

  “I take a long, hot shower in my bathroom.”

  “And after?”

  “I totally crash, tired from the trip, but completely and utterly depressed to have left you. So, I go to my bed and spend the first of many evenings staring at your photo.”

  Even though what he’d just said hit me deep in my heart, I made light of things by smacking his chest. “Sap.”

  “Maybe.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  Curling farther into his arms, I rested my head on his chest, soothed by the rise and fall of his breathing. Then Leo kissed the top of my head.

  We ended up talking into the wee hours of the morning—until the sound of Sig’s voice woke us the next day.

  * * *

  Leo

  Track 11: “Jealous Guy” by John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band

  “Well, well, well, what’s going on here?”

  My cousin’s voice was grating.

  “What does it look like?” I said, squinting at the sun shining in through the windows in the living room.

  “To me? It looks like someone went from Hello Kitty to Hello Titty last night.”

  Felicity’s eyes fluttered open.

  “It’s none of your business, in any case,” I said, rubbing her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  She looked up groggily and smiled. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  I was relieved she seemed happy to still be here. We’d been talking for so long last night that we’d both shut down.

  “Where are the Marias?” she asked Sig.

  “They’re coming downstairs. I was going to make breakfast. Are you two hungry?”

  I didn’t think she’d want to be around Sigmund’s harem, so it surprised me when she said, “Yeah. Breakfast sounds great.”

  Felicity stood from the couch, looking adorable with her hair all messed up from sleep. While I’d often fantasized about lying next to her at night, I hadn’t anticipated that our first sleepover would be on the sofa. It wasn’t the most comfortable night’s rest, but I’d do it every night if it meant she’d stay again.

  After Sig disappeared into the kitchen, I placed my hand on her cheek. “How did you sleep?”

  “Surprisingly good. When I woke up, it took me a second to realize where I was.” She squinted. “What?”

  “I want to kiss you,” I admitted.

  “Kiss me, then.”

  Just when I’d readied myself to plant one on her, we were interrupted by the sound of Sigmund’s girls skipping down the stairs.

  Now that our moment was ruined, Felicity and I ventured into the kitchen. The coffee had just finished brewing, so I grabbed two mugs. Sigmund stood at the counter mixing eggs for what I assumed were omelets.

  “How do you take your coffee?” I asked.

  “Black, like Sigmund’s soul,” she teased.

  “I think you meant steaming hot like Sigmund,” my cousin fired back.

  Felicity laughed, and Sigmund smiled as he continued cooking. It was nice to see them getting along. I’d worried he might have gotten under her skin, though she’d likely never admit it. But if I didn’t know better, it almost seemed like she enjoyed his company.

  I poured four coffees, serving Felicity first and then the Marias.

  Sigmund’s girlfriends began talking to each other in Portuguese, and I noticed Felicity blinking rapidly as she listened, like she was trying to decipher what they were saying.

  Finally, she blurted, “It’s the way I go down on him.”

  Say what?

  “That got your attention, didn’t it?” she added.

  Both women froze at once.

  “I’m lost,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  Felicity turned to me. “They aren’t sure what you see in me. I told them it must be the way I go down on you.” She looked back over at them. “Kidding, by the way. I haven’t done that to him…yet. It was just the first thing that came to mind.” She placed her hand on my knee. “They’ve been talking shit about us from the moment they came downstairs.”

  I didn’t know what affected me more—the nerve of these girls or the fact that Felicity had implied she planned to go down on me.

  “You speak Portuguese?” Maria One asked, looking dumbfounded.

  “One of the foster moms I had growing up was from Portugal. Her mother, whom I called Vavo—which, as you know, means grandmother—used to teach me Portuguese. So, while I don’t speak it often, I can understand it really well.”

  “Shite,” Sigmund muttered. Even he looked embarrassed at the behavior of his friends.

  But I was proud of the way Felicity had handled it.

  “If you’re gonna talk shit about someone, you should probably make sure they don’t speak the language,” Felicity added. “Not everyone is unilingual.”

  “I’m sorry. We didn’t mean anything by it,” Maria Two said.

  “You mean, you didn’t mean for me to understand. You most certainly meant what you said. It’s pretty sad when women decide to talk smack about other women before they get to know them. You’re lucky I’m smart enough to understand what’s really going on when that happens. You do it to feel better about yourselves. I mean, how insecure do you have to be to simultaneously fawn over the same man, right? You’re so wonderful that he needs two of you? Think about it. It’s pathetic.” Felicity took a long sip of her coffee. “Anyway, we’re even. You said a mean thing. I said a mean thing. Now let’s just forget about it and eat some chorizo and eggs. Life’s too short for this bullshit.”

  She turned to me before looking back at them. “Incidentally, I’m not entirely sure what he sees in me, either. But I’ve been trying to lose the guy since I first
met him and can’t seem to do it.” She winked at me.

  God. I wanted to lift her up and kiss her so hard, but I was speechless at the moment. What did I see in her? That wasn’t a short answer. It was more like I couldn’t see anything else whenever she was around.

  Remarkably, the rest of breakfast went relatively well. After Felicity put the Marias in their place, she spent a good portion of the morning chatting with them. She even asked them to test her Portuguese, so she could prove just how much she remembered.

  By the time Sigmund and I had cleaned up everyone’s plates, you would have thought the three of them were friends from the way they were laughing together. All was apparently forgotten. It takes a special kind of person to befriend people who were trying to kick her down just moments earlier. Felicity undoubtedly had practice proving herself to people who made assumptions about her.

  Later that afternoon, Felicity and I went over to Mrs. Barbosa’s to put the finishing touches on the interior before we’d have to pause to let the electrician come in and do his part.

  To my dismay, her ex, Matt, showed up to help, along with Bailey and Stewart. He said it was his final day before he was set to return to Pennsylvania.

  Things were fairly routine until the end of the afternoon when Matt asked Felicity if he could speak to her privately. She followed him to the backyard, and they sat on the swing where Theo had held me hostage. My blood boiled.

  As I lingered in a spot where I could see what they were doing, I muttered, “What does he want?” I hadn’t realized I’d asked that question aloud until Bailey answered me.

  “He wants her.”

  I turned to her. “Elaborate.”

  She looked over at them as she answered. “He’s convinced that once she moves to Pennsylvania, they’re going to reconcile.”

  I swallowed. “How far is he from where she’ll be living?”

  “About forty-five minutes.”

  Brilliant. Just brilliant. “You know for a fact that he’s trying to get back together with her?”

  “Yeah. He’s told Stewart. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I suppose it’s good for you to know what you’re up against. Not that it matters anyway, right? Since you’re leaving.”

  She had a point. It shouldn’t have mattered, but somehow it did. A lot.

  “Do you think she still has feelings for him?”

  “I don’t really know. She’d tell you she didn’t, if you asked her, but she was completely devastated when he broke up with her. So I can’t imagine that she doesn’t still harbor some feelings. Although right now, she’s really into you. Maybe she won’t realize any feelings she still has for Matt until you’re out of the picture and she’s in Pennsylvania.”

  Adrenaline raced through my veins. It seemed like Bailey was intentionally trying to push my buttons, like she felt a certain animosity about the fact that I was set to hurt her friend. I couldn’t fucking blame her.

  “He does care about her,” she added after a moment. “I know he broke her heart, but he says he’s always regretted it. They were so young. He thought he was doing what was right for both of them at the time. But in retrospect, he said he realizes he’s always loved her.”

  Her words downright gutted me, but I appreciated her candor—until what she said next.

  “I don’t think he’s the only one who still has feelings. Felicity won’t admit to anything because he hurt her. But I wouldn’t be surprised if on some subconscious level, she chose Pennsylvania for law school because she knows he’s there.”

  I felt a bit sick.

  After their conversation, Matt left for the day, and Felicity was quiet for the rest of the afternoon. The change in her mood made me uneasy because it told me he’d had an effect on her. But perhaps my own reaction to the idea of her harboring feelings for him made me the most uneasy.

  During the ride home, she was the first to bring up the subject.

  “I’m sorry for leaving to talk to Matt earlier.”

  I clenched my jaw. “You don’t need to apologize.”

  “It was rude of me.”

  “You don’t owe me an explanation.”

  “You’re probably wondering what it was all about, though.”

  My pulse sped up. Fuck yes, I want to know. “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”

  She glanced out the car window. “Matt seems to think we should reconnect just because I’m moving to Pennsylvania. He claims he made a mistake when he ended things with me, and once this summer is over and I’m done with what he calls ‘my little fling’ with you, he’ll be there waiting for me.”

  I wanted to fucking murder him. Clearing my throat, I said, “Is that what this feels like to you—a little fling?”

  “It feels like more, even if it’s temporary.”

  Reaching for her hand, I brought it to my mouth and kissed it. “It feels like more to me, too. But our situation is what it is, Felicity. You need to do whatever will make you happy after this summer.” Admitting that was hard.

  “I won’t go back to him. I won’t ever have peace being with someone who left me in the past. I can never trust him again.”

  Fuck. My chest hurt. “You can’t trust him for leaving you in the past, just like you can’t trust someone who’s leaving you in the future.”

  She let out a long breath but didn’t respond.

  “I just want you to be happy,” I whispered, meaning that, even if it killed me to think of her with another man.

  “I am happy—spending the summer with you. I don’t want to think about anything beyond August,” she said.

  “We have that in common.”

  This time, she took my hand and kissed it. “Anyway, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable by going to talk to him.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. My unreasonable feelings over it are what I can’t seem to grapple with.”

  “Well, he’s gone now. He won’t be showing up again. So let’s not think about it anymore. Okay?”

  Still struggling with my jealousy, I chewed on my lip. “All right, love.”

  After some silence, I brought up something I’d been waiting to ask. “So…Sigmund told me he and the Marias are planning to spend the upcoming July Fourth weekend in Boston. He wanted to know if we wanted to join them.”

  She rolled her eyes sarcastically. “As much as I love the Marias, that sort of sounds miserable to me.”

  “Me, too.” I let out a relieved breath. “Good. I thought I’d ask, but I’d much rather stay here and have the house to ourselves—that is, if you want to stay with me for the weekend,” I quickly corrected. “You can have my bed. I’ll sleep in Sigmund’s room. I don’t want you to think I’m asking because—”

  “Heck yes! I don’t even have to think about it. There won’t be many more opportunities. We only have so many weekends left, and I’m sure he won’t be away for all of them. Not that I dislike him, but—”

  “But he can be a pain in the arse, and it’s nice to have some privacy, yes?”

  “Exactly,” she agreed.

  Fuck yes. “I’d better stock up on SpaghettiOs.”

  “Or…we could just get takeout.” She winked.

  “Don’t worry. I was only kidding. I’ll spare you.”

  Her eyes glimmered. “You know what the best part is?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t have to work on Friday night. So we can start the weekend Friday afternoon.”

  “Brilliant. I think they’re heading to Boston around the same time.”

  “That couldn’t be more perfect.”

  Feeling ecstatic, I paused. “No, it really couldn’t.”

  Felicity had to work that evening, so I dropped her off and returned to the house. My phone rang as I was rummaging through the refrigerator, hoping for leftovers from whatever Sigmund had made for lunch.

  It was my grandmother. I pressed a button to put her on speakerphone. “Hey, Nan. It’s late there. Is everything okay?�
��

  “Yes. Didn’t mean to alarm you. I’m having trouble sleeping, so I figured I’d check in on you. The last time we talked it was a sad state of affairs.”

  So much had happened since then. “I’m doing quite well, actually.”

  “You managed to get over the girl?”

  I hesitated. “Not exactly. Uh…things took sort of an unexpected turn after we last spoke.”

  She figured it out without me having to even say anything. “Oh my…”

  “Yeah.” Over the next several minutes, I filled my grandmother in on the recent turn of events with Felicity. “Anyway, I know what you’re going to say—that spending more time with her is a terrible idea. But I can’t quit her as long as I’m here.”

  “I’m not going to give you grief, Leo. After we spoke previously, I suspected it might not have been the last of her. As long as you’re prepared for the inevitable outcome, I see no problem with it.”

  “You’re not going to lecture me, then?”

  “What good would that do? Unlike my thick-headed daughter, I realize no amount of scolding is going to change things when it comes to matters of the heart. I don’t even try. There are times in life when we simply choose to jump into the fire, even if we know we’re going to get burned. We’ve all done it. And I’ll have you know, your mother is no stranger to that, either.”

  “What does that mean? Are you holding back on me?”

  “Let’s just say, before she married your father, there was a certain groundskeeper I’d spotted far too many times climbing down from your mother’s bedroom window.”

  My jaw dropped. “Really…”

  “Feel free to do what you will with that information. Although, if you call her out on it, she’ll likely say I’m senile and deny it. But I assure you, it’s true.”

  I laughed. “Thanks for the tip, Nan.”

  She sighed. “It’s a shame you can’t take a lesson from Sigmund. He never gets his heart involved in anything.”

  “I haven’t let that happen until now. This is new for me. And I know it would be much easier to be more like Sigmund right now.”

  She laughed. “The irony, of course, is that your cousin doesn’t have the same expectations placed upon him. He’d be perfect for a life of keeping up appearances.”