I stared down at him, perched on the second step, his long legs folded up so that his knees almost reached his chest. “I just wanted to apologise for earlier. And, well, everything.”
“Haven’t we had this conversation before? Quite recently?” He sounded surprisingly sober for a stag night attendee. Much soberer than me, I realised. Soberer. Was that even a word?
“I just… I need to…” I scrubbed a hand across my forehead. “I need to tell her that I’m sorry. That she wins. She gets Greg and Rosewood and the family and you. I’ll leave if she asks me to. She can have whatever she wants…”
“As long as she forgives you.” Edward reached up and pulled me down to sit next to him.
I rested my head against his shoulder. “Don’t you have your own family to drive you crazy?”
Edward huffed a laugh, and I felt it in his chest. “I think I’m the one who drives them crazy.”
“I can’t see how.” Edward was, quite possibly, the steadiest, most sensible person I’d ever met.
“Right now, they think I’m having an early mid-life crisis,” he said, with a small laugh. “Jacking in everything to come and live here at Rosewood, as an assistant to an ageing Great British Writer.”
It hadn’t really occurred to me that Edward must have had another life, before he came here. Rosewood was always in its own little reality bubble. The outside world ceased to exist once you were inside it.
“What did you do before?” I asked. “And what made you come here, anyway?” Had he left another job? Did he have a wife and kids secreted away somewhere else? He could be anybody, I realised. All I knew about him was that he could withstand Nathaniel’s whims and tempers, and that he disapproved of me. Not a lot to go on.
“Nothing half as interesting.” He shrugged. “As for why I came… Maybe I’ll tell you the whole long, boring story. Another day.”
“Nowhere else is ever as interesting as Rosewood. It always was my favourite place in the world.”
“I can see why,” Edward said. “I mean, obviously. I haven’t left yet, have I?”
“You’re lucky that way.” I sighed. “I just want things to go back to the way they were when we were little.”
“We’ve already talked about that. You know it can’t happen.” Edward slung an arm around my shoulders, a show of camaraderie, which suggested he had at least sampled the brandy. Or maybe his disapproval really was starting to fade. It was probably the towel incident that did it. “Time only ever moves forward.”
“I know.” Sober, I suspected I’d be hideously embarrassed that it was Edward I was opening up to, the only person in the house not actually related to me. But even drunk I was a little grateful he had kept me from making things worse with Ellie. Again.
We sat in silence for a long moment, and I focused on the thrum of Edward’s pulse where my cheek lay against his throat to keep the world from spinning.
“You know,” Edward said, thoughtfully, “I think I saw some really excellent whisky in Nathaniel’s drinks cabinet. Want to see if there’s any left?”
I nodded, and he hauled me to my feet, tugging me back towards the drawing room. I’d just have to try and make it up to Ellie tomorrow.
Getting up the next morning was not easy.
Downstairs, there was coffee brewing in the kitchen, and a prominent list laid out on the table in Ellie’s neat handwriting, detailing responsibilities and delegations. Pouring myself a cup of strong, black Colombian, I sat down to read through the list.
Edward and Greg were charged with supervising the set-up of the tables and chairs, and the catering tents. Dad was looking after the caterers; Mum was making sure the cake was delivered and set up correctly, and looking after the musicians when they arrived.
“Are those our orders for the day?” Nathaniel asked, shuffling into the room and towards the coffee machine. “What am I down for?”
“Staying out of the way and making sure your bow tie is tied straight,” I told him, reading from Ellie’s list. “Possibly also greeting guests and stuff.”
He groaned. “Well, I’m all right with the first part. Especially since it means I can go back to bed for a while.” Taking his mug with him, he shuffled back out again.
I turned back to the list. In Isabelle’s absence, Therese was in charge of all the last-minute straightening and tidying the house required, even though it had been cleaned from top to bottom by professionals the day before, and despite the fact it was a beautiful day and the entire party was planned to take place outside. Ellie was looking after the florist, and all the other decorative bits.
I wasn’t on the list.
Putting the list back for the next lazy slacker with a hangover to find, once they dragged themselves out of bed, I picked up my coffee and headed outside to see how I could make myself useful.
Greg and Edward obviously had stronger heads than I’d thought, or were even more afraid of upsetting Ellie than everyone else because, despite the considerable amount of Nathaniel’s best whisky I’d watched them consume the night before, they were both up and lugging tables and chairs across the grass. Not actually feeling up to manual labour myself, I decided to seek out Ellie instead.
She wasn’t hard to find. The florist’s van was parked outside the side door, and Ellie was watching as obscenely large arrangements of yellow and white flowers were offloaded and dragged down to the party area.
She still didn’t look happy.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, sidling close before she could realise I was there and manufacture some excuse to disappear.
Ellie jumped at the sound of my voice, then sighed, the same tired, world-weary sigh she’d been using all week. “There was a mix-up with the order. They forgot the table decorations.”
“Oh.”
“Isabelle’s going to be furious.” Which was a bit of an understatement, I felt.
“Well perhaps they can…” I tried, but Ellie cut me off, and I heard a hint of the temper she was back to keeping under wraps.
“They can’t do anything,” she snapped. “Apparently they’ve got an actual wedding this afternoon, and the bride and her mother are a lot scarier than me.”
“Then we’ll fix it ourselves,” I said, wracking my brain to think of a way to do that.
“How?” Ellie asked, impatiently. “Do you happen to have a flair for flower arranging I don’t know about? And some, oh, I don’t know, flowers?”
I grinned. “No to the first, but absolutely to the second.” And, grabbing her arm, I dragged her towards the Rose Garden.
“Isabelle was planning on only using the Rose Garden flowers in the house,” Ellie said as together we surveyed the few remaining yellow roses.
“Isabelle’s not here.” I handed her one set of the gloves and secateurs I’d liberated from the gardener’s shed, and pulled my own gloves on. “Besides, no one’s going to be going inside. It’s gorgeous out here.”
Ellie kept staring at the flowers. To encourage her a little, I started snipping off flower heads.
“Wait,” she shrieked, grabbing my wrist as the first flower fell. “What are we going to put them in?”
“Water?” I said helpfully. Ellie raised an eyebrow at me and dropped my arm. “Okay, well, glasses then. Or bowls. You’ve hired in crockery and glassware for outside, after all. How many tables are there? Ten?” Ellie nodded. “Perfect, then. We use the glass dessert bowls we had the mango sorbet in last night, fill them with water and float rose heads in them. That way, we won’t even need that many.” Which was just as well, as Isabelle had decapitated most of them already, for the many vases that now littered the inside of Rosewood.
Ellie considered it for a moment, then smiled for the first time that week, that I’d seen. “Okay, then.”
It was strange, cutting flowers with Ellie, for all the world as if it were ten years ago, and Isabelle had sent us out for roses for the dinner table before a party. In fact… “Do you remember how we used to do this as kids??
?? I asked, softly, hoping Ellie was in the same nostalgic place I was. Ever since we were tiny, I’d followed Ellie around those gardens, picking flowers and chasing butterflies. I’d have followed her anywhere, I knew. I’d thought she hung the moon and lit it.
Maybe I still did.