Lady Copland opened her mouth to speak, then closed it firmly. She looked at Miss Hellier, who lifted an elegant eyebrow and shrugged a little. Laurence, fascinated by that byplay, wasn’t ready for Miss Hellier to ask, “And when was this, Captain? It is hardly far from the cottage to the station. The weather must have been quite inclement.”
“Snow, for example,” Lady Copland said, leaning forward to glare at him.
Laurence’s heart beat a little faster. They knew something. “Does it matter when I was there? The date surely makes no difference to the state of the place?”
They exchanged glances again. Then Miss Hellier said, “The cottage has been under the protection of the Copland family for a very long time, Captain. Althea would hate to betray that trust.”
“And yet it stands in ruins,” Laurence said.
“Too ruinous, surely, to offer much shelter from a storm.” Miss Hellier slid a steaming cup of tea toward him. “Unless….”
Lady Copland, obviously impatient with this, broke in. “And why would a navy man be in Privett anyway, unless he had some connection to the area?”
Miss Hellier shot her a quelling glance. “Or unless he had been on a train that was stopped by the snow on Christmas Eve. There was a gentleman we sent a search party out for this year, one whom we weren’t entirely sure had made it back onto the London train.”
“That was uncommonly good of you,” Laurence said. “I appreciate it, and I apologize for putting you out when I had found shelter. It didn’t occur to me that I would be missed.”
Lady Copland leaned forward, planting her elbows on the table, and glared at him. “And? Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“The story, man. My brothers and I spent every childhood Christmas daring each other to ride over to the sorcerer’s cottage. Never made it, though Bill and I got close enough to see the lights one year before he got the willies and bolted. Is old Avery there?”
Laurence looked between them, unsure what to say. Then he looked at them again, at the way their bodies mirrored each other in their seats, and thought of that silent exchange of looks. Could it be…?
“Yes,” he said. “And not yet old.”
Lady Copland clenched her fist, slamming it against the table. “I knew it.”
Miss Hellier looked as thrilled, in a quieter way. “And was there… was he magic?”
Laurence nodded.
They exchanged another of those silent volleys of looks and grimaces. Then Miss Hellier said, “And what was he like? There are so many stories.”
“A perfect host. Kind. Lonely.” Laurence cleared his throat. “I hoped I could offer a friendly face next year.”
“I think it’s time that curse was broken,” Lady Copland said firmly. “And you know what else? I’m not selling to you.”
Laurence sat up in dismay. He’d been starting to hope—
“But I will rent. Peppercorn rent, if you’re willing to pay for repairs yourself. Might even make it an actual peppercorn. Or how about a wreath of holly every Christmas? That’ll do the job.”
“That’s very generous,” Laurence said.
“I’m not done. You’re a doctor, right? Decent one?”
“No.”
She looked disconcerted. “Oh. That’s not what your CO said.”
“I’m waiting for them to strike me off. Scrambled my brains, and now I can’t add up. I’m not safe to prescribe.”
“But you know how to diagnose, eh? Know what to prescribe? Can’t you just look the rest up?”
“There are calculations involved.”
She snorted. “Ways round that. Here’s the thing. Our village doctor is looking to retire once nationalization comes in. Says he’s too old for change. It’s a small surgery—babies, bumps, and old dears mostly—and we’re not having much luck finding a new chap willing to move out to the sticks—”
“I really can’t—”
“We’ll get you an assistant.” She swung to Miss Hellier. “The vicar’s Jeannie—did something hush-hush and mathematical in the war, didn’t she? A few sums shouldn’t be beyond her.”
“Jeannie’s got a job at the bank in Alton now, but young Elspeth is about to finish school, and her father is set against her taking Oxford Entrance. She would appreciate some time outside of the vicarage, I believe.”
“There you go,” Lady Copland announced to Laurence. “Cheap rent, a job, and the vicar’s Elspeth. What more could you want?”
“And does Miss Elspeth get a say in this?” Laurence wondered.
“Not if she knows what’s good for her,” Lady Copland barked, and that, despite Laurence’s ongoing protests, was that.
Chapter Six
THEN, TO Laurence’s intense frustration, the weather interfered. The temperatures had been plummeting day after day, and now the snow came too, snow on snow on snow. Laurence had thought Christmas Eve was bad, but it was nothing to this. By mid-February the whole country was buried. The electricity failed more often than it worked, coal shortages left everyone shivering, the railways were snowed under, and whole parts of the country, including Privett, were effectively cut off. Laurence, along with Lady Copland and the unflappable Miss Hellier, was stuck in London.
He fretted against it almost as much as Lady Copland did. His dreams were as snow filled as the skies, and he was caught every night in endless mazes of looming holly, chasing after a distant figure who never turned back to wait for him.
He occupied himself with practicing his coordination and pathfinding, doing everything in his power to force new routines into his damaged mind. Over the course of those long snowy weeks, it did improve, but the numbers, to his frustration, remained elusive.
“I’m a man of science,” he said bitterly to Miss Hellier, who had proven an excellent listener. “What am I supposed to do without numbers?”
She looked up from her single-sheet newspaper with a faint frown and said calmly, “Doctor, I’m a crack shot, and I can fly a Spitfire, amongst other planes. Nonetheless, they never let me take one farther than France, and that was after the D-Day landings—and now I am grounded. Sometimes we must make do with the hand we are dealt.”
Laurence blinked at her.
Lady Copland said, “Tell him about the time the bottom fell off the Typhoon, Millie.”
“It really wasn’t that exciting,” Miss Hellier demurred.
“She landed the damn thing anyway,” Lady Copland told Laurence. “Bloody brilliant.”
Miss Hellier blushed delicately.
Laurence took care not to complain to her again.
Conditions worsened throughout February, and the mood in London turned sullen and dangerous. Even the Savoy was reduced to candlelight, radio broadcasts were reduced, and the papers reported grimly on coal frozen to the ground outside pits and stranded on snowed-in railway wagons. The power stations went cold, and factories closed everywhere. Rations were cut again as farmers took pneumatic drills to the frozen ground to extract winter vegetables. Someone threatened to blow up the Minister of Fuel and Power. Laurence was deeply relieved when the thaw finally started.
But then, inevitably, came the floods, sweeping across miles of still half-frozen farmland and pouring into low-lying houses across the country. Laurence volunteered his help treating those suffering from the ill effects of being flooded out along the upper reaches of the Thames in Reading, Windsor, and Maidenhead, and though he directed his patients to colleagues to double-check any medications they needed, his confidence grew with each chilblain or wet cough he treated.
He was considerably less satisfied when he diagnosed six cases of whooping cough in the early stages. With so many people crammed into temporary housing, it spread like wildfire, and he was kept so busy that it was no surprise when he caught it himself. It was weeks before he was well enough to leave his sickbed.
All in all, it was the end of May before he finally made it back to Privett. He was met at the station by Althea and Millie—they had bee
n on first-name terms since the thaw—and whisked away to the village inn. Old Dr. Nash was a curmudgeonly sort, but he seemed glad to have help, and the vicar’s Elspeth turned out to be a godsend—a befreckled slip of a girl who could make numbers dance in her head. She took over the day-to-day running of the surgery with the ruthless efficiency of a drill sergeant, and slowly Laurence began to relax into the role.
Mistle Cottage was far from habitable, but there were men eager for work, and it did him no harm in the village to be known as a generous employer. He still doubted his judgment, but he considered that a wise everyday precaution. Getting lost was a hazard, but nobody in the village seemed to mind overmuch giving him a lift back to the surgery or sending a child to walk him home when he appeared on their doorstep unintentionally. He wasn’t sure whether to be charmed or abashed when the hedgerows started sprouting very precise signage, but it did help.
“Well, if we wait for the council to put the signs back, we’ll still be waiting come the new millennium,” Althea said briskly.
It was midsummer before he first slept in the cottage. Work was still going on in the kitchen and to improve the plumbing, and connecting to the National Grid was still a faraway dream. All the same, lying there as the warm midsummer breeze crept through the window, he smiled as he fell asleep.
And he dreamed of Avery.
HIS MIDSUMMER’S night dream was still full of snow, but this time Avery did not flee him. Instead he was sitting on a tree stump in the cottage’s garden, looking down at a sprig of holly in his hand.
It was the first time Laurence had seen him clearly since Twelfth Night, and his first feeling was pure relief. Then it struck him again how good-looking Avery was. Even in his dream, he felt the blush on his cheeks as he cleared his throat and said, “It ought to be summer now.”
Avery’s head jerked up, his eyes wide. “Laurence!”
“Hullo,” Laurence said, feeling a little abashed.
“You’re here!”
“Sleeping in your bedroom. The men are still working on the spare room.”
“You’re in the cottage?” Avery looked utterly gobsmacked. “You came back?”
“I did.” Laurence offered his hand.
Avery took it, letting Laurence pull him to his feet, and stepped forward tentatively. “Why?”
Laurence shrugged. “Unfinished business.”
“That’s….” Avery looked confused.
Laurence sighed. There was no point to lying in his dreams. “I missed you.”
Avery’s eyes went wide again. “Laurence.”
“Tell me,” Laurence said, keeping hold of Avery’s hand. “Is this real? Is this you? Or am I just dreaming?”
“I dream away the in-between times. I don’t remember much of them in the waking days.”
“Remember this,” Laurence said, his heart clenching, and pulled him in for a kiss.
It didn’t quite feel real, but it was close enough that he felt Avery’s gasp against his mouth and the warm, desperate grasp of Avery’s arms closing around him.
HE WOKE smiling to the sound of a thrush singing its heart out in the garden below.
Everything was easier then, through the slow, lazy days of summer and into the first bite of autumn. He took on more and more work at the surgery, learned the names of more and more of the villagers, and dreamed of Avery more and more—Avery in the snow, framed by holly, lonely but hopeful. Laurence told him all the minutiae of his days—the peculiar patients, the misadventures in pathfinding, the conversations with Althea and Millie and Elspeth and Dr. Nash, and day by day that initial, easy rush of mutual liking and attraction deepened into something more.
Tonight he sat in the snow that never stung him, Avery’s head in his lap as he recounted the terrible conversation he had had with the vicar, who had suddenly woken up enough to wonder if Laurence might be courting Elspeth. It had not gone well.
“And that’s why the vicar is now under the impression I had my balls blown off somewhere in the North Atlantic,” Laurence concluded as Avery hiccupped with laughter against his thigh.
“Have you informed good maid Elspeth of this unfortunate event?”
“All Elspeth cares about is getting to Oxford. She eventually wants to stand for Parliament, she tells me.”
“Such a world you live in,” Avery murmured. “My sister could never have dreamed such dreams.”
“We’re a long way from fairness yet,” Laurence said, thinking of Millie and her Spitfires and the drawn-out battle Elspeth was fighting against her father’s expectations of an obedient daughter. He had spent some time trying to speak to the vicar on her behalf, which was how the entire unfortunate conversation had started.
“Still no place for men like us?” Avery asked sadly.
“Still illegal,” Laurence said, smoothing back the hair from Avery’s brow, “but they won’t hang us for it now.”
“Maybe we will live, you and I, to see that too change.”
“Such an optimist,” Laurence murmured as Avery sat up, leaning in to claim his mouth in the ghostly kiss that was all dreams offered.
IN SEPTEMBER, Elspeth won her fight and spent half her time at the surgery frantically cramming. Laurence couldn’t help much with the maths, but he gladly tutored her in the rest.
“I will repay you,” she said fiercely.
He thought nothing of it until he was roused from his meticulous and difficult record keeping by the blare of a familiar car horn. He made his way outside to see Althea parked across the road outside, her car overflowing with excited women—Millie, Elspeth, and Elspeth’s sister Jeannie, whom Laurence found slightly terrifying. Jeannie’s bike was tied precariously to the roof of the car, and Jeannie herself struggled out with an enormous case in her arms.
“Found them on the way up from the station,” Althea informed him. “Trying to bring you that on the back of the bike. Only right to offer a lift.”
“Tell him what it is!” Elspeth shrieked, diving out of the back seat to dance around her sister. “Tell him what we got him!”
Dr. Nash had been drawn out of his afternoon nap now, and the neighbors’ curtains were twitching.
Jeannie grinned and proffered the case in his direction. “Bank was chucking them out, and I remembered Elf saying you could do with one. Better off with you than down the dump.”
“Open it! Open it!” Elspeth cried.
Laurence, very aware of his audience, sat down on the step to undo the clasps of the case. Inside was a machine, slightly bigger than a typewriter but with purely numerical keys. “What is it?”
“It’s a calculator!” Elspeth informed him.
“You’re a calculator,” Laurence pointed out.
She rolled her eyes. “This one won’t snaffle your shortbread.”
Laurence glared up at her. “That was you?”
She shrugged, throwing her hands out. “You didn’t need it. Look at the machine—once you know how to use it, you won’t need me, and then I don’t need to worry about leaving!”
“Bit of an old-fashioned thing, really,” Jeannie said, eyeing it disapprovingly. “Be obsolete in ten years. I’ve seen better. There was a chap I knew in the war….” She trailed off meaningfully.
Elspeth rolled her eyes at her sister and snatched up the calculator. “Come on—I’ll teach you how to use it!”
Laurence let her lead the way inside and listened bemusedly to them both chatter about programmable computers and vacuum tubes and the impact of electronic power on computational devices. It all sounded like much ado about nothing to him, but he enjoyed listening to their delight in the ideas.
THAT NIGHT, Avery said to him, “You’ve made a home here.”
Laurence shrugged. He’d never really had a place where he belonged before. “Maybe.”
“It’s a good place. I always loved it.”
“Would you stay here, if your curse broke?”
Avery shrugged. “Maybe. I’d like to see those parts of the world
that are more than twelve days travel away, but I’d come back here. ’Tis still my home.”
“I’d take you to India,” Laurence said. “Show you where I grew up. It still—nowhere in this country smells right, you see. I miss the smell of India. And then we’d come back here. Come home.”
Avery’s smile was so full of hope it hurt to see.
OCTOBER WAS mild, and Laurence watched the autumn roll by with growing anticipation. As Bonfire Night filled the sky with smoke and light, he found his mind drifting back to the legend about Avery. That night, wandering through the eternal snow with his hand in Avery’s, he asked, “Did you really reject the fairy queen?”
“I flirted with her,” Avery said lightly, but he would not meet Laurence’s gaze.
“And she cursed you for it?”
“No. That’s not why I’m here.”
“That’s what the legend says.”
“Legends,” Avery said, laughing a little, but it sounded thin and brittle.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“It shouldn’t be forgotten.”
Laurence squeezed his hand.
“I was a fool who thought I was clever, a mortal fool playing in a fairy court after the mortal world threatened to name me a heretic. And yes, I flirted with their queen and with their king, but that was not what brought this fate upon me. I flirted with them all. I like to flirt.”
“I’ve noticed,” Laurence said.
Avery let out a miserable hiccup of laughter and leaned forward, pressing his forehead to Laurence’s shoulder. “There was a boy, a lovely Indian boy—no, more than a boy, but barely more. I flirted with him too, but I did not mean it. He was too young for me. I never meant to break his heart.”
Laurence tangled his fingers in Avery’s hair but said nothing. It was enough to listen.
The Holly Groweth Green Page 5