Romance By The Book

by Jo Victor

  “Wait—you and Rosamund were kissing on the bloody dance floor? Or was that you and Nicola? Christ, maybe you should give out numbers, like a bakery.”

  “Says the woman who practically inhaled my Maid’s Loaf. Fat lot of good that did me. I just said I wasn’t kissing anybody, you idiot. Try listening to somebody else for once—you’ll enjoy the change.”

  “Oh, that’s rich coming from you, that is.”

  “Besides, what do you care who I kiss?”

  “I don’t care! Why the bloody hell should I?”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear it. I don’t care who you kiss either. Anyway, it’s not my fault that Rosamund barely knows Nicola’s alive. If you ask me, Nicola should stop wasting her time mooning over her boss and hit on the vicar instead. Chat her up. Whatever.”

  “Nicola? And the vicar? You can’t be serious.”

  “I know, right? But you should have seen the way the vicar was looking at her—like she’d be happy to have her for lunch. Not that Nicola noticed. I swear, for such a tiny little village, you people have more dyke drama. I can’t wait to get back to the States.”

  “That can’t happen soon enough to suit me.”

  “You, Cam Carter, are not a nice person. And if you don’t mind, I’ll thank you to leave me the hell alone.”

  “With pleasure. You’re no great prize yourself, you know.”

  “Thank you so very much. Permit me to remove my offending presence.”

  Cam watched Alex stomp over to the gate and try to pull it open, unsuccessfully of course. Once. And then twice. Before she could try again, Cam went over and pushed on the gate. It swung open.

  Alex glared at her as she swept through the gap. Cam slammed the gate shut, pausing just long enough to watch Alex get safely indoors before heading for home, swearing under her breath.

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning, much too early, Alex staggered into the bathroom. She squinted at herself in the mirror and shuddered. Patriotic marbles, again. At least it was Saturday, so she had almost two whole days before she had to face Mrs. Tate, or anybody else. After splashing water on her face, she dragged herself downstairs to brew some tea that she sincerely wished were coffee.

  She took a sip and winced when the too-hot liquid burned her tongue. Putting down the cup, she just sat there, wishing her headache would go away. Why the hell did she feel this bad after only two glasses of cider? She knew she was a lightweight, but this was ridiculous. Maybe the local brew was extra strong.

  She took another cautious sip of tea. People always said that drinking too much made you forget things. Unfortunately, she remembered far too much of her conversation with Cam. Not exactly her finest hour. Hell, she’d had more mature exchanges on the elementary school playground.

  Of course, some of it was Cam’s fault, but reminding herself of that didn’t make it any better. At least Cam had done her the courtesy of being honest about her feelings—or rather her lack of them. She supposed it was better than being strung along and then dumped. So her pathetic streak of failed attempts at romance remained unbroken.

  She raised her teacup in a grim toast. “Here’s to women, and my lack of success with them. And Cam Carter, my latest imaginary girlfriend.”

  Just as she lifted the cup to her lips, a door slammed somewhere in the main part of the house. She started, spilling most of the tea, and swore. Putting the cup down untasted, she got a cloth and wiped up the mess. It really wasn’t like her to be so jumpy. Dawson House certainly offered odd noises galore—creaks and moans and rattles at all hours of the day and night—although it could also be eerily silent, no doubt depending on which way the wind was blowing, and of course, whether the Divine Miss Grace was lurking indoors or out.

  Not until she had poured a replacement cup did her thoughts drift back to the previous evening. Just as well that Cam had set her straight—ha-ha—about their non-relationship before she wasted any more time barking up that particular tree. But was that really all there was to it?

  There had been times, more than a few, when she could have sworn there was something going on between her and Cam. Especially during the dancing. She shut her eyes and drew a slow breath in, remembering Cam’s arms around her, holding her close. There really had been something there—something romantic, magical almost, if only for a few moments. Had she been the only one to feel any of it?

  She sighed. No point in wasting time wondering now. Cam had been clear—much too clear—about her lack of interest in Alex. No doubt she’d do them both a favor and keep her distance in the future. Bramfell might be a small place, but she’d seen so little of Cam since she arrived, maybe they could just keep on avoiding each other.

  And then there was Nicola. Not exactly someone she could avoid, given all the ways Nicola had been helping with her work. And even if she thought she could get away with it, she wouldn’t try—it wouldn’t be right. She had hurt Nicola’s feelings, and she owed it to Nicola to face her and let her say whatever she had to say about it. That was definitely not going to be fun, but she’d just have to deal with it.

  Of course, Nicola might refuse to forgive her. Nothing Alex could do about that, except try to make things right between them and hope that they could still be friends.

  And that left Rosamund—which was probably exactly what she should do: leave well enough alone and stay as far away from her as possible. She sighed again, thinking of Rosamund on the dance floor, shimmering like a fairy princess in her emerald gown, glorying in the music. She doubted she’d be able to avoid Rosamund completely, given her position at the Foundation, but so far they’d had very little to do with each other. There shouldn’t be a problem keeping it that way. She hoped.

  Maybe she should eat something, not that she had any appetite. Something plain, toast, maybe. No, she thought, shuddering, not that. After yesterday, she wouldn’t care if she never saw another piece of bread as long as she lived. She got herself some cereal instead.

  Afterward she poured another cup of tea to take with her to the study. Maybe she could force herself to get some work done. As she walked down the hall, she noticed the pile of mail on the table by the front door. In all the upheaval of the previous day, she had forgotten about it completely. She was delighted to discover a letter from Ian—a nice long one. Taking it into the study with her, she sat down and began reading eagerly.

  Ian’s rational, amiable voice came through every line, soothing her ravaged nerves and quieting her mind. Most of what he had to say was family news, along with friendly encouragement for her work. He’d heard from Fiona, who was doing well and sent her best. Alex made a mental note to e-mail her later.

  But then came a sentence that drove everything else from her mind: I’ve had a good rummage through the attic as promised and I’ve located a packet of letters from Oona.

  Alex’s heart started to pound. This was it—the key, the clue, the magic spark she needed for her work. She could feel it.

  Aging eyes and fading ink make for a bad combination, but so far I’ve managed to decipher one item that might be of interest, and I am taking you at your word and sending it along straight away. It is enclosed, transcribed as faithfully as I am able. I have engaged a documents expert at the Foundation to prepare a facsimile and will send that along as soon as I may.

  Alex’s hand started to shake so badly that she had to put the letter down on the desk. Moving aside the top sheet, she looked down at the next one, also covered in Ian’s neat, old-fashioned handwriting.

  As she started reading, she realized that Ian hadn’t just pulled out a few random quotes. He had copied over the entire letter, word for word, so she could see everything in context. Bless the man! She started skimming excitedly but realized she wasn’t comprehending the words, just running her eyes over them.

  Taking a breath, she started again, doing her best to focus. Finally she resorted to reading aloud, and that seemed to help. Under other circumstances, the letter would have been fascinating, a time
capsule giving a glimpse of life in a bygone era as well as insight into Ian himself. But now it was all she could do to make her tedious way through the mild gossip and affectionate advice that lay between her and her quarry like jungle vines obscuring the trail to a lost city.

  The phone rang, jolting her back into the present. She automatically picked it up, mentally kicking herself as she did so. She added silent curses to the kicks when she heard the voice on the other end.

  “Alex, darling! You are such a naughty little thing.”

  “Hello, Rosamund. What can I do for you?”

  “Is that any way to greet me? And after the way you treated me last night.”

  “Sorry.” Her eyes drifted back to the letter.

  “Really, darling, you don’t sound very sorry. And you should be, you know, after abandoning me that way.”

  It took a moment for Alex to realize Rosamund had paused. “I am sorry. Very sorry.” Sorrier than Rosamund could imagine, but not for leaving.

  “One minute you were there, and the next minute you had vanished. No one knew where you had gone.”

  “I…wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t think you’d miss me.” That last was certainly true.

  “Well, I did. Very much. But I’m willing to let you make it up to me.”

  Oona’s letter had moved on from current news to memories of the past. She was getting warmer.

  “I said, you can make it up to me.”

  “Yes, sorry, Rosamund. How can I do that?”

  “Have dinner with me, darling.”

  “Sure, that’d be great. How about next week sometime?”

  “Next week? Darling, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to put me off.”

  “Okay, what about tomorrow night?”

  “Well, I suppose I could try to wait that long, but honestly darling, I know I’ll just die of screaming boredom. It’s Saturday! Can’t we go tonight? Do say yes, darling.”

  “Of course. Tonight will be fine.”

  “Brilliant! Pick me up at eight.”

  “I don’t have a car, Rosamund.”

  “Of course not—how silly of me. I’ll pick you up, then.”

  “Sounds great. See you then.”

  She hung up absently, returning her full attention to the letter. After all the anticipation, the actual information was kind of a letdown.

  Sandwiched in between Oona’s account of a bad storm that had hit the village during the twenties and her mother’s recipe for something called black bun, which sounded delicious, was one short paragraph: As you’ve asked me for more stories about Artemisia, I mind me that Mam used to tell of how our Miss Thompkins (as she always called her) was ever a great walker. By the hour she’d walk the moors, in all weathers, and always alone. Pining for Lady Melissa, folk said, and thought it right touching. More often than not, she’d take a servant along for propriety—Mam said it was the only time she ever did anything the way folk expected. I asked Janet about it once, and she laughed and said it was the exception that proved the rule.

  That was it—Artemisia went for walks. A lot. Alex reread it several times, silently and out loud, hoping to see something in it beyond the obvious. Well, the part about how the villagers were sympathetic about her being in mourning for Lady Melissa might count for something—there wasn’t a lot of contemporary information of any kind about Artemisia from working class sources, and nothing at all about her relationship with Lady Melissa. And the letter did provide her with quotations—albeit indirect—from two people who had actually known Artemisia.

  The more she thought about it, the better she felt. Surely she could make at least a couple of decent bricks from this tiny morsel of straw. And that might be enough, if she was very, very lucky, to build something worthwhile. She headed for the archive room to see what she could find in the files.

  *

  By the time eight o’clock rolled around, she’d been at it for hours and her brain was fried. She had barely managed to throw on some decent clothes and run a brush through her hair when she heard a horn tooting impatiently. She hurried out to the street, only to stop dead at the sight of Rosamund behind the wheel of a yellow Porsche convertible, top down, her glorious hair glowing in the fading light.

  Rosamund laughed, clearly noting, and liking, her stunned reaction. “Do hurry, darling. I’m simply starving!”

  Alex had barely sat down and closed the door when Rosamund peeled out. It took a few minutes of fumbling for Alex to locate and engage her seat belt, but Rosamund seemed not to notice. Unlike some people, Rosamund did not appear to have a safety fetish.

  It didn’t take Alex long to discover just how true this was as they whipped through the narrow village streets with little regard for speed limits or blind curves. Alex realized that she could either hyperventilate all the way to the restaurant—or, as seemed equally likely, the crash site—or she could unclench her fingers from the dashboard and try to enjoy her last moments on earth. She took a deep breath in a vain attempt at relaxation, only to swallow some kind of bug and succumb to a coughing fit.

  Apparently the sight of her choking to death was what it took to finally get through to Rosamund, who actually slowed down, all the way to a stop, right in the middle of the lane. Fortunately, gasping pleas and frantic hand gestures from Alex convinced her to start up again before anyone came along and rear-ended them.

  Mentally cursing herself for not thinking to jump out when she had the chance, Alex considered the bright side: if they survived the journey, they should arrive at their destination, whatever it was, in record time.

  It turned out to be Leeds. Rosamund screeched to a halt under an awning in a brightly lit downtown neighborhood, smiled at the valet who helped her out of the car, and swept into the restaurant, leaving Alex to scramble after her. She didn’t catch the name of the place, but everything from the ostentatiously minimalist décor to the carefully distressed faux-bohemian designer wear sported by the clientele shrieked Chez Trendy. Alex hoped the limit on her credit card would be high enough to cover whatever passed for food in this joint.

  Sadly, her fears were justified. Along with being overpriced, the dishes were exquisitely presented and uniformly inedible. At least the portions were small.

  Rosamund was the only pleasant surprise. She proved to be a charming dinner companion, full of amusing stories and easy chatter. And she was certainly no hardship to look at, her eyes glinting like jewels in the candlelight, her blaze of hair flowing over pale shoulders left bare by a deep blue dress that clung in all the right places. Every so often she would touch Alex’s hand or arm to emphasize a point, and each time, Alex felt a little jolt that zinged right to the pit of her stomach—and lower. Alex was careful to stick to one glass of wine, but even so, but the end of the meal she felt light-headed.

  Unfortunately, the size of the bill was enough to sober her up. The look on her face must have really been something, because Rosamund snatched the check out of her hand and refused to give it back, laughing when Alex tried to protest. “But darling, I chose the restaurant. It’s only fair that I pay.”

  “Then next time, I’ll choose the restaurant.”

  “Of course you will, darling.” Rosamund smiled archly, and Alex realized she had just agreed to a second date before she had even survived the first.

  While they waited for the valet, Rosamund informed her that they couldn’t possibly go back to Bramfell yet, darling, not on a Saturday night, for heaven’s sake. Alex, who would have been just as happy to go straight home, reluctantly agreed to visit a club that was “simply too hot for words.”

  When they got to the club, Rosamund pulled into the dimly lit parking lot, turned off the engine, and then just sat there. After a moment, she gave Alex an expectant look along with a tilt of her head toward the driver’s side door. Alex, recalling Cam’s relentless courtesies, realized that Rosamund expected her to do the honors.

  She got out and walked around to open Rosamund’s door. Rosamund held o
ut a hand, and Alex, feeling foolish, took it and guided her to her feet. As she did so, Rosamund seemed to catch a glimpse of something behind Alex, but before she could turn and see what it was, Rosamund was on her, pushing her back against the car next to theirs and kissing her, full force.

  At first Alex was so shocked she could only stand there woodenly, arms at her sides, feeling the surprising strength of Rosamund’s hands pressing against her shoulders and the even more surprising enthusiasm of Rosamund’s lips on hers. What the heck? Maybe Rosamund was drunk—she’d certainly had more than her share of the wine at dinner.

  Alex lifted her hands to Rosamund’s shoulders, trying to ease her back a little, but to no avail. Rosamund never paused, just varied her technique, nibbling on Alex’s lips and tracing them with her tongue.

  Alex’s mind slammed shut and her body took over. She closed her eyes and began kissing back. Nothing existed but the feeling of Rosamund’s mouth on hers, the trail of heat that raced through her, the ache that had started between her thighs. She parted her legs and eased her hips to one side, trying to center herself on Rosamund’s leg, seeking the pressure she needed.

  But Rosamund surprised her again, easing back a fraction, never breaking off the kiss but spinning them around so that Rosamund ended up with her back against the car and Alex was the one on the outside. During the maneuver, Alex’s eyes came open, purely by reflex, and as the kiss continued she let her eyes roam around, her brain too fogged to fully take in what she was seeing.

  Still, a warning bell chimed somewhere deep in her mind, something about one of the nearby vehicles. And people—other people standing there. Watching them? Something wasn’t right. She pulled away from Rosamund, ending the kiss but still clutching her, her knees so weak she was afraid if she let go she’d fall down.

  “Someone’s…someone’s over there.”

  Rosamund laughed. “But that just makes it better, darling. Don’t tell me you’re shy.” She reached for Alex to pull her into another kiss, but Alex stepped away, letting go of Rosamund and swaying slightly. Maybe she was the one who was drunk. She certainly felt woozy.