Watching his long legs stride across the tiled floor, I found myself wondering if his legs really were that long, or if he was just so skinny that he looked taller. Perhaps more slender, than skinny… Skinny implied unattractive, which he wasn’t. At all. More…graceful, I supposed.
Strange. He was nothing even close to my type – I went more for darker, more brooding good looks. Like Duncan. And Greg, come to think of it. Edward was all golds and creams, like Isabelle’s decorating scheme. Like sunshine.
And for some reason, I couldn’t help but watch him.
“Now, to business,” Nathaniel said, leaning on the back of Edward’s vacated chair. “If I’m going to eat, I’ll need a place to sit. Now, which chair do I normally sit in, I wonder?”
Curled up on the base of Nathaniel’s seat, Caroline giggled.
He leaned further across the chair back, angling his upper body to stare at Caro. “Well, I’m head of the family, so it makes sense that I’d normally sit…at the head of the table!” He lurched across and grabbed at Caroline’s legs, and she squealed. “But who’s this sitting in my chair?”
“It’s me, it’s me!” Caro squawked, as he started to tickle her. “And I’m not moving!”
“Is that right?” In one deft movement, and surprisingly fast for a man of his age, Nathaniel hefted his youngest granddaughter out of the chair, swung his body round to take the seat, and dumped Caro on his lap. “Hah!” he said, reaching for the unused wine glass above Caroline’s plate. “I am victorious. Servants, bring me wine!”
I couldn’t not laugh, no matter how hard Isabelle was rolling her eyes. Dad was openly grinning, and even Greg was looking amused.
Therese passed the red wine down the table towards me, and I filled up Nathaniel’s glass, just as Edward reappeared and replaced Caroline’s plate with a new, heaped one, before reclaiming his seat.
“How was the journey?” my grandfather asked me, ignoring the food and taking a gulp of wine instead.
I shrugged. “Not so bad. I got here about four.”
“I’m afraid I was shackled to my desk,” he said, with an exaggerated sigh. “Or I would have been here to greet you.”
“Since you were the only one who knew she was coming,” Isabelle said pointedly, “it was really very rude not to offer to meet her at the station.”
“If only she’d received an invitation.” Therese sighed and looked innocently around her. “She could have RSVPed and avoided all this confusion.”
“What story are you writing?” Caro asked, bouncing enough in Nathaniel’s lap to spill a few drops of his wine onto his plate as he lifted his glass. “Is it about people telling lies and secrets and death and stuff? My friend Alicia’s mum says that’s all you ever write.”
Nathaniel muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t quite hear, but could probably guess at. Edward obviously heard, though, as he choked on his mouthful of wine.
“My stories,” Nathaniel said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “are every one different and new and utterly unlike anything I have written before. This one more than ever.”
Across the table from me, Edward put down his wine glass, too hard, and stared at his empty plate, apparently not even noticing as a few drops of wine sloshed onto his hand.
“But what’s it about?” Caro pressed. Nathaniel shook his head. “You’ll all just have to wait to read it. You, longer than most,” he added, patting Caroline’s shoulder, “as not all sections are suitable for such a young lady.”
Except for Edward, I realised. Edward, as my grandfather’s assistant, would know exactly what he was working on, how it was going and whether he really was writing at all, or just avoiding Isabelle.
Is that why he’s looking so nervous? I wondered. If Nathaniel wasn’t writing, it might explain why Edward was so keen to make himself invaluable elsewhere in the household. A writer who didn’t write wouldn’t have much need for an assistant, after all.
“But I want to hear a story,” Caroline said, twisting in Nathaniel’s lap.
“Ah, but that is a different matter entirely,” Nathaniel said. “I may not be able to tell you about the book I’m writing now, but far be it for me to deprive a young girl of a chilling tale of betrayal and murder when she wants to hear one!”
“That’s quite enough, Nathaniel,” Isabelle said, standing abruptly. “Now, who wants to help me clear the table?”
Caroline shook her head. “Not me, Grandma. I’m listening to the story.”
At the end of the table, Ellie got to her feet with her usual grace, before the vein throbbing at Isabelle’s temple burst. “I’ll help,” she said, and began systematically gathering up plates, clanking them together loudly.
Fifty years of marriage had obviously instilled some sense of self-preservation in my grandfather, because he waited until Isabelle had carried the first load of plates out of the room before he began to tell his story. Greg had apparently learned the same in less time – he was already taking the plates from Ellie’s arms and whispering something to her. They left the room together, and I couldn’t help but watch them go.
“Now,” Nathaniel said, his eyes on Isabelle as she disappeared into the kitchen. “This story is a special story.”
“Why’s it special?” Caro asked, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around them.
“Because it’s about this house,” he explained, “and the people who used to live here.” At his words, I knew instantly the tale he would tell. I wasn’t entirely sure it was suitable for a nine-year-old, but maybe Nathaniel would edit it for Caro. A consummate storyteller, he always was a great judge of his audience.
As the others disappeared in search of digestifs, I pulled my chair in closer to better hear the story. Across the table, I realised, Edward was doing the same. I raised my eyebrows at him and he shrugged. “I’m a sucker for a good story,” he said. “How else do you think I got pulled into this gig?”
“If everyone is quite comfortable,” Nathaniel said, feigning considerably more patience than I happened to know he possessed. “Then I’ll begin.
“This house has stood on this land for hundreds of years.” His voice had dropped into a cadence I recognised from childhood – that of a storyteller, rather than a writer. The sound of it, warm and familiar, washed over me and I shivered as I listened to his tale. “There are so many stories in its walls, I could never have time to tell them all. But this is a story of the first family to live here.
“Long ago, a man named John Harrow, a merchant, bought this land and commissioned a fine house to be built. But what is a fine house without gardens? So once the house was finished, Harrow hired a head gardener, a man of impeccable reputation. And that gardener brought with him his apprentice: a boy with incredible talent, a boy who, local people said, could make dead plants bloom.”
“Is that possible?” Caro whispered loudly, leaning back towards Edward.
“Absolutely,” he replied, straight-faced. “But very rare.” I hid my smile.
Nathaniel raised his eyebrows until Caro settled back down, then continued. “Now, Harrow had only one child, a daughter, the apple of his eye. She was young and beautiful and ready for love.”
“Did she fall in love with the apprentice?” Caro asked, bouncing slightly. Nathaniel ignored her.
“The moment she set eyes on the apprentice, one summer’s day in the new Rose Garden, she fell in love. And he, by return, worshipped her from the moment he saw her.”
“I knew it,” Caroline whispered, to me this time.
“The young couple knew that John Harrow wouldn’t approve,” Nathaniel said, raising his voice a little. “So they kept their love a secret, and met only by moonlight, in the Rose Garden where they first fell in love. And as summer turned to winter, the apprentice picked impossible flowers from the dormant rose bushes for his beloved.
“All was wonderful, until the day John Harrow saw roses in his house at a time of year when nothing blooms, and his daughter wat
ching the apprentice from the balcony of what is now the Yellow Room.”
“And you complained about sleeping there,” Edward murmured across the table to me. He raised his eyebrows and I blushed, remembering exactly what he’d seen on that balcony that afternoon.