Edward gave me his lopsided smile, one that warmed my middle even in the shady cool of the tree house. “I want to know if you’re officially single yet before I kiss you again.”
Well, in that case. “It’s over. I ended it when I called the other night.”
Every complaint my body had about the chill or the uncomfortableness in the tree house disappeared when Edward’s lips met mine.
Eventually, however, even I had to admit that an outdoor structure with gaps for doors and windows and a large potential for splinters wasn’t the best place for a romantic interlude. I’d stopped things in the attic because the time and place were wrong. The timing might have improved, but the tree house wasn’t much better as a location.
“We should go back to the house,” I murmured against Edward’s neck, as his fingers trailed up my spine then snaked their way underneath my bra and moved around to my front.
“Absolutely,” Edward said, making no effort at all to pull away.
“Really,” I said, after another long kiss. Pulling back I bashed into a wooden box, which must have been tucked away behind one of the stools that we’d displaced with our antics. I frowned as the lid fell open to reveal a small black notebook, some polished gemstones, a few pens, flower petals and another of Nathaniel’s old pipes.
“What’s that?” Edward asked, his lips already at my neck.
“Caro’s treasures, I guess.” I turned back into his arms and kissed him again. “Inside. Really. We are not doing this in a tree house – especially not when Caro could arrive at any moment to retrieve her stuff.”
“Good point.”
We finally made it to the bottom of the ladder, eventually. Not a lot further, since Edward instantly spun me round to pin me against the tree trunk and kiss me again but really, as long as he kept kissing me it could take us until January to reach the house for all I cared.
“We need to…” Edward pulled back and took a breath. “Unless you want your family following us up to your bedroom, we need to…pause.”
With some considerable effort, I took a step backwards. “Your bedroom. Mine’s too yellow.”
“I really don’t care.”
We were lucky, in the end – everyone had made themselves conspicuously absent, although I suspected it wasn’t actually for our benefit. Still, we snuck up the stairs, trying not to giggle in my case, and dashed down the landing, avoiding the squeaky floorboards, and into Edward’s room, letting the door crash behind us.
“Thank God for that,” Edward murmured against my mouth, as he reinstated his campaign to remove as much of my clothing as possible in the minimum possible time.
And this time, I had no intention of stopping him.
It was strange, that night, sitting across the table from Edward, too far away to touch, too self-conscious about what the family would say to even make eye contact with him. Edward, at least, seemed to understand this. He rolled his eyes at me over the starters, then spent the rest of the meal entertaining Caroline with tales from his own childhood, growing up in some tiny seaside town that I began to suspect he might actually have invented.
“Then there was the year that the jellyfish invaded…” I turned my attention aside and tried to make pleasant conversation with Isabelle, instead.
Even that was hard.
“I suppose you’ve found all manner of fascinating things in my husband’s study,” Isabelle said, tapping her perfectly polished nails against her wine glass. “I appreciate, of course, that these items are in your power now. But, nonetheless, I’m sure many of them are my memories too. Perhaps, when you’ve finished pulling them apart…” She trailed off, looking wistful.
“Isabelle, of course you can look through them,” I said, tiredly. “We’re just putting them into order, at the moment, trying to make some sense of what happened when. As soon as we’ve got them sorted.”
Isabelle leant forward across the table. “Are you working forwards or backwards?” she asked, her voice suddenly forceful. “I mean, chronologically. Are you starting from now and working back, or from the beginning?”
“Uh, a bit of both,” I said, wondering why it mattered, “Nathaniel’s files weren’t really all that well organised.”
“Perhaps I can help,” Isabelle offered, brightly. Too brightly. Once again, I found myself wondering what it was Isabelle thought was in those files, and when we were going to find it. Was it Matthew Robertson’s death? Did she already know the truth I was seeking? It would explain a lot. Or worse, was there another, bigger secret that I hadn’t even sensed yet?
“I’m not sure… I mean, eventually we’ll definitely need your help, identifying people in photos, things like that.” I was waffling, and Isabelle was starting to turn pink around the cheeks. “The ones that aren’t newspaper clippings, anyway.”
“Newspapers?” Isabelle’s nervous tone kicked it up a gear. Suddenly, I was certain that this had to do with the death at the party. What else would be newspaper worthy? “Did he keep many clippings?”
“Some,” I said, carefully. “Isabelle, if there’s something specific you want me to look out for…something that happened here at Rosewood, for instance…”
He gaze snapped to connect with mine. “What have you found?” she asked, her words a whisper.
“Nothing, yet.” Not really, anyway. Nothing I could prove. But if the police had been investigating, there must have been something suspicious about the death. Something Nathaniel had known. And the only way he could have known for sure was if he’d been involved in it.
That was the part I was desperately hoping I could disprove, before Edward found out about it.
Isabelle gave a small, sharp nod. “Because there’s nothing to be found. You just let me know when you’re done rifling through my past.” She pushed her plate away and turned to talk to Ellie, on her other side, but I caught her wrist with my fingers and stopped her.
“Isabelle…the night of the Golden Wedding. I was there. Outside Nathaniel’s study. I heard your argument.”
My grandmother’s face turned stone stiff and emotionless. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You asked him not to tell your secrets. What secrets, Isabelle?”
She wrenched her wrist away. “That’s none of your business. And anything learned from eavesdropping should be forgotten, and fast. No good ever comes of it.” This time, when she turned away, I let her go.
I looked up to find Edward watching me, all tales of jellyfish forgotten. But this wasn’t the attention of early in the afternoon, when he couldn’t keep his eyes – or his hands – off my skin, my curves, my everything. Now his gaze was cool, assessing, as if he were studying me for secrets, for truths, instead of Nathaniel’s journals.
I shivered. I hated to think what he’d find.
I didn’t linger downstairs for long aft
er dinner. Edward caught my eye as everyone moved from the dining room through to the drawing room and I thought, for a moment, that he was going to suggest that we retire back to his room – until Ellie slipped a hand through his arm saying, “I haven’t seen you all day. How is the work on the memoirs going?”
I silently thanked my sister for her unintentional help, then slipped away quietly up the stairs while he was distracted answering her. If I was lucky, he’d be kept occupied for long enough for me to complete my task.
With one last wistful glance at Edward’s door as I passed, I hurried on into Nathaniel’s study, curled up in my usual chair, and pulled up the next box file in the stack.
At the beginning, I’d sort of assumed that Isabelle was against the memoirs on principle, rather than because of any specific event or occurrence that she didn’t want publicised. After all, she’d been married to the same man for fifty years, with no whisper of gossip as far as I was aware. But it was there, somewhere – I knew that for certain now. And it couldn’t be Mum’s marriage that had her worried, or she wouldn’t still be asking what we were looking for. Ellie had already told her we knew everything.
Which meant that there was something else, somewhere in these boxes. It had to be Matthew’s death, right? And I was going to have to find out the truth about it before I could make my final decision.
By nine-thirty, I’d given every single one of the boxes at least a cursory going through, and I couldn’t find anything more than a few photos of Nathaniel with his arm around various attractive women who weren’t his wife. Which, given my grandfather’s reputation for being an enormous flirt, wasn’t entirely surprising. There was nothing else – no love letters, no hotel bills, no suspicious presents. Nothing to suggest he’d ever actually been unfaithful. Which, actually, surprised me a little.
“Did you find it yet?” I looked up to see Edward standing in the open doorway, leaning against the frame, his arms folded.
“I just thought I’d get a head start…”
“You thought you’d search for whatever it is that Isabelle doesn’t want us to find on your own.” The edge in his voice told me he had his suspicions about what I’d do with that information afterwards too.