Antonia snorts. “They might do, it wouldn’t surprise—” She looks up and her face alights with that special smile she reserves for Jamie. “My lad! You’re awake. Feeling better?”
He’s loitering in the doorway, looking adorable. Hair still rumpled from his nap, misbuttoned shirt. His voice is throaty when he says, “Yes, cheers. Slept quite soundly, actually.” He crosses over to me and kisses the side of my head. I lean into him, loving the smell of sleepy Jamie. “What can I do?” he asks.
“Fold?” He won’t refuse me.
He nods and scoots out the chair next to me. The easy silence that fills the kitchen gives me a sense of calm that I haven’t felt since I don’t know when; members of a family, working together, preparing a meal. It’s all so . . . right. Except for William. He belongs here and yet his presence would be disruptive. If only these two men could see what I see in them, a boyishness, a tenderness. They’ve lost sight of—
“Jamie, can we have champagne? Now?” I ask. “I’m feeling celebratory.”
“Of course.” He stands, kisses me. “I’ll just run upstairs for a jumper. Bit dank in the cellar.”
He leaves and the kitchen goes silent.
Antonia and Smithy look at each other and, as one, turn to me. Antonia, wide-eyed, whispers, “You clever, clever girl.”
Panic sets in. This wasn’t the plan. The plan was to have a mediated sit-down, a Camp David–worthy summit. “You think? It was totally spontaneous, I didn’t really think it through—”
“It was brilliant.”
“Shall we ready the whiskey and bandages?” Smithy quips, slapping her dough onto the table.
Antonia takes a stuttered breath, her casual bravado gone. “What now?”
“We wait, I guess.”
“All right, we wait.” We all go back to our tasks. Smithy continues to work her dough. Antonia begins chopping anything in front of her.
“What if they need a referee? I mean, you’re so good at that.” My voice has accelerated.
Antonia stops chopping and peers at me. “They should have their time. Some privacy, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Of course.”
“We’ll give it twenty minutes. If they don’t reappear, we’ll take the back stairs down.”
“There are back stairs?” I sound desperate.
Antonia nods once.
I fold. Antonia chops. Fold. Chop. Dough slap. Fold. Chop. Dough slap.
“Twenty minutes is a long time,” comes out of me.
“Ten minutes, then. We’ll give them ten minutes.”
Fold. Chop. Dough slap.
Smithy looks between us, her eyes moving like a metronome.
Fold. Chop. Dough slap.
Antonia and I stop. We look at each other.
Without another word, we both leave the kitchen.
Chapter 26
And we were in that seldom mood
When soul with soul agrees,
Mingling, like flood with equal flood,
In agitated ease.
Coventry Patmore, “The Rosy Bosom’d Hours,” 1876
The “back stairs” are encased in one of the turrets. Timeworn stone spirals downward into what might once have been a dungeon. I’m definitely coming back later to explore. If we’re still here, that is. Or if I’m not being questioned by police.
Antonia precedes me, and at the last stair, just before we step through an archway, she stops. I hear footsteps coming toward us, echoing in a tunnel. We tuck back into the staircase, hidden from view by the curve of its rough wall. There’s a small cough, which I immediately recognize as Jamie’s. The footsteps turn before they reach us, and stop. “Oh! Sorry.”
“Not at all,” I hear William say, and realize that the cellar must be on the other side of the wall we’re leaning against. “Can I help you?” William’s voice sounds even more ominous in the cellar’s echoes.
“Ella asked me to fetch champagne.” Jamie pauses. “Though I’m beginning to think . . .”
Antonia and I grimace guiltily at each other.
“Right,” William mutters. “Well, since you’ve come, you might as well—”
“I’m sure you have it well in hand.” Jamie’s shoes click, as if he’s turning to leave.
“Jamie.” William’s voice is tight. “Might we have a word?”
I hold my breath. Antonia and I stare at each other, on tenterhooks. Jamie sighs. “Must we?”
Antonia’s eyes close, looking as disappointed as I feel. Dammit, Jamie.
“Of course not,” William huffs. “I thought you might have an opinion on the wine, but I’m perfectly capable—”
“I believe it was champagne she . . .” But even talking about wine seems too overwhelming. “Never mind.” Jamie’s footsteps fill the ancient stone tunnel and then diminish.
Antonia and I look at each other. Should we leave? Should we stay? On the other side of the wall, we hear William root through wine bottles. The sound of glass knocking against wood, of bottles yanked from a rack and pushed back in. Then, an unnatural stillness.
Then, an explosion of shattering glass.
Antonia and I both jump. It’s not the sound of something being dropped; it’s the sound of something being dashed. William’s breathing grows so loud we can hear it from around the corner, guttural and choked. The bull has entered the china shop.
Then he’s sobbing. Feral, bestial sobs. A pained little groan slips from Antonia’s lips and she turns to go to him. I grab her hand. She looks at me, bewildered. I point toward the hallway and then to my ears.
Jamie’s returning footsteps.
William must hear them, too, because he swallows his sobs. Jamie’s clacking heels turn the corner into the cellar and, once again, stop dead. “Not one of the Château Lafites, I hope.” Then, “I thought I heard something as I topped the stairs.” William doesn’t reply. Jamie doesn’t move. “Everything all right?” Jamie ventures.
“Smashing,” William chokes out.
“Rather.”
“It slipped. Nothing to fuss about.”
“I’ll get the broom.” Jamie’s voice deadens as he moves deeper into the cellar.
“Leave it, I’ll have Colin or one of the—”
But I hear the creak of an old hinge and Jamie says, “I’ve got it.”
“Don’t. Let it be. The last thing I need is you cutting yourself.” The sound of glass scraping against the floor. “Damn it all, I said leave it!” William explodes. “Might I be allowed to run my own ruddy house?”
“For Christ’s sake, I’m only—” A heavier set of footsteps strides toward the tunnel hallway. “Right, of course! Walk away. God, I hate . . .” Jamie falters. I imagine him clenching his jaw, his fists, every part of him in one tight coil ready to spring.
“Go on,” William dares. “You hate . . . ? You obviously have something to say, so say it, you ungrateful—”
“Stop!” Silence. Then, “Oliver’s last word, remember?”
“What are you dredging up now?”
Antonia’s hand finds mine.
After a moment, Jamie continues. “We were standing on opposite sides of his bed, arguing over him, and he said, ‘Stop.’ You pretended not to hear it. ‘Stop,’ and then he passed out. Never regained consciousness. Four hours later he needed the ventilator and I had to make the decision. And you hated me for it. ‘Stop.’ His word, not mine.”
Antonia squeezes my hand and I watch her eyes fill and overflow, tears trickling down like a roadside waterfall.
“I wasn’t aware,” William blusters. “I couldn’t hear—”
“‘Stop.’”
After a moment, the sound of tinkling glass resumes. “Hand me the bin.” Jamie sighs. A metal pail scrapes across the floor, followed by the tinny ring of glass dropping into it.
“You routed me,” William says more strongly.
“And you gutted me,” Jamie fires back.
“How so?” William shouts. “Maybe, had you consulted me, instead of behaving like some petulant child—”
The bin crashes to the floor. Oh God, are they going to come to blows?
“You said,” Jamie yells, “his body still warm before us, you said, ‘Why Oliver? Why did it have to be Oliver?’”
My eyes pop open. As do Antonia’s. She doesn’t know this either?
Even William sounds appalled. “I never said such a thing!”
“You did.”
“I would never!”
“First you blamed me for killing him and then you salted the wound by wishing it were me in his place.”
“No! Untrue! A father doesn’t favor—”
“Oh, come off it, you would have gladly exchanged—”
“I was talking about myself!” William roars. “I wanted it to be me lying there! Me! Not you! God forbid, not you.” Rasping breath and then, “I said what I said, Jamie. I did. I blamed you, yes.” William’s voice is as tight as an overwound clock. “But wish you dead? I love you! It was just . . . the pain had nowhere to go, you see, nowhere to—”
A sob rips through the cellar, echoing off the stone. I look to Antonia, but her eyes are closed. Jamie struggles for breath, for control. “Apologies,” he chokes out. “What you said. Was just . . . unexpected.”
When he speaks again, William sounds mystified. “What have I done, honestly, Jamie, what have I done to make you think I would ever wish—”
“Not that.” Jamie clears his throat. “I mean, yes, that. But no, it was the word ‘love’ what surprised me.”
“Oh, please,” William scoffs. “Don’t act as if you don’t know that.”
Eventually, the tinkling sound resumes, breaking the silence. Again. Jamie, voice more controlled now, speaks. “I’ve heard every other bloody thing. Your disappointment. Your anger. But love? No. That stays bottled up inside you like all these wines, just sitting here, waiting to be shared, enjoyed, but too valuable to open. You’re so afraid that once they’re drunk, there will be no more, it will all be gone. Well, one day, it’ll be gone anyway whether you drink it or not.”