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At Last

Coreen’s Confessions

No. 8—I don’t sing very often, and certainly not in public.

ADAM and I were seated apart at dinner. Maybe that was just as well. I had said I was going to help Izzi make this weekend a success, and random thoughts about Adam—how he’d looked at me upstairs in the bedroom, how he’d held my hand all the way down the stairs—were interrupting my clue solving. It would have been even worse if we’d been sitting next to each other. It was as if there was a new Adam here, a different one from the boy I’d watched grow into a man. And, while I knew the old Adam pretty well, I had absolutely no idea what this one was going to do next.

By the time the main courses had been served we’d hijacked the dinner table and made it our centre of investigations. It was amusing to see secret love letters, betting slips, a plastic revolver and a copy of Lord Southerby’s last will and testament strewn amongst the bone china, crystal glasses and silver candlesticks.

I did a fairly good job of paying attention as questions and accusations were shot across the dinner table and deflected back with equal speed and vehemence, but every time I looked down the other end of the table I caught Adam looking at me. To the untrained observer he probably looked quite serious, but down in the depths of those warm brown eyes was a smile. A just-for-Coreen smile. And I didn’t know what to do about it. Didn’t know if I wanted to see it there or not. Didn’t know if I was brave enough to ask myself what it meant.

I tried to ignore even the possibility of those questions by throwing myself into the investigation. We hadn’t pieced it together yet, but one thing was certain—the late Lord Southerby had been a very, very naughty boy during his lifetime.

It seemed his sons had good reason to worry about their inheritance, in danger as it was from money-grabbing illegitimate offspring and a gold-digging fiancée. Not only that, but Giles’s rather unfortunate string of bad luck on the gee-gees had led to him dipping into the family fortune and then trying to cover his tracks.

Each and every one of us had a motive for wanting the lord of the manor dead, and those motives ranged from jealousy to greed, from revenge to the protection of loved ones. It was all quite thrilling, actually. We were still arguing about competing theories when we retired to the drawing room after desert. One camp thought Rupert had murdered his father, keen to inherit the lion’s share of the family money before his father changed his will, and another group were sure it was poor little Ruby the parlour maid, who’d been fending off the old goat’s unwanted advances for months now and had acted out of desperation to preserve her virtue and her income.

I looked across at Izzi, sitting once again in her high-backed winged armchair. She was smiling, watching a heated exchange between Marcus, of all people, and Jos, as they discussed the real reason for the discovery of Lord Southerby’s bow tie in the maid’s quarters. When Jos threatened to sue Marcus for defamation of character—and I think she half meant it—Izzi stepped in.

‘How about some music, Jules? We could do with some light entertainment to help us let off steam.’ She nodded towards the grand piano in the corner. ‘I’m sure you know a tune or two from the right era.’

Julian actually smiled. He jumped up and headed over to the piano. ‘I’ve rather been hoping you’d ask,’ he said, pulling the stool out, flapping the tails of his jacket back and settling himself on it. ‘I’ve practised a few specially.’

Izzi rapped with her cane on the floor. ‘And there’s no reason why you youngsters can’t foxtrot later, or do whatever new-fangled dances you do nowadays. We can move the settees and clear a space near the bay window.’ She fixed the rest of the men with her beady little eyes and rapped the cane once more. ‘Well, hop to it, boys!’

Marcus paused, and I suspected he was going to pull the ‘shoulder’ excuse out of the bag again, but he took one look at Izzi and thought better of it.

Julian flexed his fingers and set to work, impressing us with a selection of tunes by the likes of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. Mum had done a whole set of this type of songs once. Half of me didn’t want to hear them. I hadn’t been able to listen to her favourites for a long time after she’d died, and a familiar churning-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach feeling crept up on me.

But after the first pang of fear and grief I relaxed, welcomed those notes and melodies. Maybe it was because enough time had passed, or maybe it was because being Constance gave me some distance, but hearing the songs again now felt like meeting old friends. I could remember Mum singing them with appreciation and joy instead of fear and dread. Before long I was humming along and tapping on the arm of the sofa.

Marcus, who had been self-medicating his shoulder pain all evening with the contents of Inglewood Manor’s wine cellar, drowned me out. I tried not to mind, but when he started to murder ‘At Last’, Mum’s absolute favourite, getting all the lyrics wrong, I couldn’t look at him. I turned away, still humming.

‘You said your mother was a singer, didn’t you?’ Izzi said to me from her high-backed chair. ‘Why don’t you get up and sing it properly for us? It would save us from Marcus’s warthog impression and I’d be forever grateful.’

Marcus had been lolling on one of the sofas while he’d been singing. He raised his head in inch. ‘I’m doing a perfectly fine job, thank you very much.’ He swigged back another mouthful of red wine and glared at me. ‘But if madam here can do better, I’d like to see it.’

I shook my head. ‘It wouldn’t be becoming for a vicar’s sister and would-be missionary to sing in public like that,’ I said sweetly, hoping to put him off. Humming along was one thing; making a complete spectacle of myself was something else entirely.

He looked me up and down, his wandering gaze letting me know just how much unlike a vicar’s sister he thought me. ‘Pretend it’s a hymn,’ he said with a sneer.

I was tempted to get up and give him what for—that was what Coreen would have done—but Constance might have other ideas on the matter, and I didn’t want to spoil Izzi’s evening when things had been going so well. As much as it hurt, I was just about to meekly admit defeat when a tug inside stopped me.

Constance Michaels might be a gauche twenty-something who’d led a sheltered life, but she was also prepared to trek halfway around the world on her own to live in a strange land where she didn’t know anyone or even speak the language. She wasn’t afraid to look poverty and deprivation in the eye and not turn away. She even had the guts to do something about it. I reckon Constance Michaels had a bit more gumption than I’d given her credit for.

Besides, it was only Marcus, Julian, Izzi and I who’d benefit from my performance. The other four had wandered out onto the terrace with their drinks after Robert had opened the French doors.

‘You’re on,’ I said, then stood up and walked over to the piano. Julian started the song again and, before I even had a chance to get stage fright, the introduction was over and I was singing.

I closed my eyes.

While I might not have had my mother’s training, I had inherited her voice. I’d always shied away from being like her, copying her in any way, but now I was singing words that I had heard her sing so many times, and I felt as if it brought me closer to her. And not in a scary seeing-her-in-the-mirror kind of way. My mind was flooded with happy memories. Mum smiling and laughing and singing. And loving.

I remembered how happy she had been before my father had left, how her eyes had lit up and fixed on him when he was in the room. Even though it was only a memory I felt the warmth of her love. For the first time I understood her a little better, understood how intoxicating that feeling must have been, and how she’d have done just about anything to hang onto it.

My courage grew as I started the second verse and I opened my eyes. Bad idea. I’d discovered my audience had grown. Adam, Jos, Louisa and Nicholas were standing just inside the French doors, watching me with open curiosity. I thought I might choke, or trip over the words, but somehow I just kept on singing.

When I got to the bit about looking at someone for the first time and realising that you’d finally found that someone, that soul mate, I plucked up the courage to look over in their direction.

The expression in Nicholas’s eyes was everything I had fantasised about seeing there, and I meant to hold his gaze and lock it down, but somehow I slid right past him and kept going, until I felt as if I’d run full pelt into a brick wall. Or was that just a pair of warm brown eyes?

My breathing went to pot and I missed a note. But then I had another one of those weird out-of-body experiences. Singing Coreen recovered nicely and kept going, her voice rich and smooth, but the other part of me was hardly aware of her, caught in a strange bubble where only two things weren’t fuzzy and out of focus—

Adam.

And me.

I sang about smiling, and he smiled at me. I sang about magic, and he wove it around me just by holding my gaze. I sang about finding love, and something inside me warmed and melted. I couldn’t tear my eyes away until the last note had been sung and the piano had fallen silent.

The song was over. The feeling had gone. I was back inside myself, standing with my back pressing against the piano, the applause of my fellow house guests ringing in my ears.

Izzi stood up from her armchair. ‘I don’t think we can top that,’ she said. ‘So why don’t we stick some vinyl on the old gramophone and trip the light fantastic instead?’ She nodded to Robert, who made it so.

Julian prised himself from the piano stool and, very bravely for him, kissed me on the cheek. When he stepped away I saw Nicholas walking towards me. He came right up to me and offered his hand. ‘Would you do me the honour…?’

I nodded mutely and slid my hand into his. He led me to the space the men had cleared for dancing and drew me gently into his arms. Finally I was up-close-and-personal with Nicholas Chatterton-Jones. Exactly where I wanted to be.

I did.

Didn’t I?

Everything about dancing with Nicholas was perfect. His hand was warm and sure on my back as he guided me round the impromptu dance floor. He talked easily to me, all the while looking effortlessly drool-worthy and smiling into my eyes.

It was perfect. It was.

Only…

I was reminded of those cakes in the coffee-shop display case that I always yearned for but which never seemed to fit the bill. Finally I’d found one that matched what my tastebuds craved. It had all the right ingredients, looked divine, but now I’d taken a bite I’d discovered that it tasted all…wrong.

Dancing with Nicholas wasn’t a dream come true, it was an effort. What surprised me most was that I wasn’t bitterly disappointed. Instead I had that horrible, warm scratchy feeling you get when you know there’s somewhere else you need to be, something else you need to be doing. I was almost grateful to Louisa when the track on the gramophone changed and she nabbed the opportunity to cut in.

When I stepped out of Nicholas’s hold I knew Adam was standing behind me, waiting for me to turn around and glide into his arms. And I couldn’t stop myself.

‘I didn’t know you could sing like that,’ he whispered into my ear, and a whole series of teeny-tiny fireworks detonated up the back of my neck.

I controlled the resulting quiver well enough to answer him. ‘You’re not the only one to have secrets, Conrad.’

But I couldn’t keep the banter up. The air around us seemed too heavy for our usual frivolity.

Adam didn’t smile at me as we danced. He didn’t even talk. If he had, I might not have heard him. All I was aware of was his strong, capable fingers holding mine, of his broad palm at the small of my back. I couldn’t hold his gaze. It was too intense, too full of things I was scared to label, so when the needle on the gramophone scratched its way onto a slower song I rested my temple against his cheek and closed my eyes.

I have no idea how long we swayed and turned like that. Eventually, though, I noticed the air on my bare arms had become cooler, that the light behind my closed eyelids had dimmed to almost nothing. I flickered my lashes apart and opened my eyes.

We were on the terrace. In the moonlight. The warm yellow glow of the drawing room was only feet away, but it felt as if we were in a different world. The sheer curtains over the doors fluttered and curled in the light breeze, beckoning us back. Silently, by mutual agreement and the meeting of eyes, we ignored their call.

Had we stopped dancing? I wasn’t sure.

The way Adam looked at me…it brought tears to the backs of my eyes. Such gentleness. Such openness. Such acceptance. I couldn’t breathe with the intensity of it. Something deep down inside me turned over. It felt like a door being opened.

Adam brought his hand up to the side of my face and his fingertips traced the line of my cheekbone, then threaded up past my temple into the soft waves of my hair. I knew what was coming, and yet I didn’t know. Couldn’t quite get myself to believe it was true, that it was Adam and me standing here in the moonlight like this. I stayed completely still.

He dipped his head forward and our lips touched, just for a moment, and then he pulled back slightly, so he was only millimetres away. I closed my eyes and let the weight of my head rest in his hand, and then I waited, a well of longing rising up within me. I didn’t tease or taunt or dare. I surrendered. Maybe for the first time in my life.

And, as a reward, I got what I’d truly been longing for, because Adam really knew how to kiss. His lips brushed over mine slowly, teasing me, and then he deepened the kiss so swiftly I hardly knew what to do with myself. I felt as if I was falling and being caught all at the same time.

I lost myself. Along with all sense of time and gravity and reason.

And that’s why I had to put an end to it.

That’s why I had to push him away gently, my palms flattened on his chest.

Even so, it was my lips that clung as he drew away, my hands that bunched his shirt up into wrinkles before the cotton slipped through my fingers.

I blinked and looked at him. ‘What was that for?’

Eyes of warm espresso with caramel running through them. I didn’t have to look at his mouth to know he was smiling ever so faintly.

‘You know why.’

My heart hiccupped. Did I? Did I know why? Certainly not in my conscious brain. That part was freaking out. But somewhere else, somewhere instinctual and primal, I knew that I knew. I also knew I had to make sure those two parts of my brain never touched. Because if they did…well, I sensed there’d be trouble. And a whole heap of hurt.

Adam was watching me. I’ve been told that my emotions are easily readable in my face. From the way he was looking at me, I’d guess I was putting on a pretty good show.

‘Okay,’ he said quietly. ‘Have it your way for now.’ He didn’t say more, but the words later and soon hung in the air around us.

My gaze floated off in the direction of the beckoning curtains. I could see Nicholas in the middle of the drawing room, no longer dancing with Louisa. He kept glancing into the darkness as he talked to Julian, but I had no idea if he could see us. ‘You thought he was watching?’

The voice in my ear wasn’t Adam’s. Or at least it was a harder, steelier version of his. I snapped my head back round to face him. No caramel in those eyes now. Just gunsmoke.

‘I…I…’

I didn’t deny Adam’s accusation. Partly because my tongue wasn’t functioning well, still reeling from the best kiss I’d had in years, and partly because on some gut level I knew it might be safer to have an exit route. An exit route from what, and to where, I wasn’t sure, but the events of the last ten minutes had been so bamboozling I was operating purely on survival instinct.

He stepped towards me. Adam had never made me feel even the slightest bit nervous before, but this time I took half a step back even as my heart began to thump in anticipation.

‘I thought you were past playing games, Coreen, but if that’s the way you want it…’ His eyes glittered and my heart-rate accelerated, race-car-style. ‘Let’s make sure he gets a real eyeful.’

There was no tender touching of my face this time, no gentle breath on my cheek. While the last kiss had been soft and soul-churning this one was angry and potent and—oh, my goodness—hot!

I didn’t even have time to react as Adam yanked me back into his arms. For a few seconds my arms hung limp by my sides, my brain too overloaded with the information coming from my lips to bother to send signals to something as mundane as my arms and hands. But when the initial onslaught of sensation was over I decided those hands and arms could come in pretty useful. I grabbed Adam either side of his neck, let one hand slide up into his hair, pressed myself against him and gave as good as I was getting.

He made a ragged groaning sound and it tipped me over the edge. I had no idea who was in control, and normally that would have bothered me, but if I’d been at a disadvantage at the beginning of this kiss, I now had a hunch we were both as lost as each other.

Eventually, though, the mist cleared. Right about the time I sensed a change in Adam. Right about the time he stiffened and wrenched himself out of my grasp.

I’d never seen him like this before. Where was my smiling, twinkling, comfortable and safe Adam? I didn’t know if I wanted to swap him for one who could set my toes on fire with his kisses and yet look at me with such disgust. This one didn’t seem safe at all.

He ran a hand through his slicked-down hair, returning it to its more familiar messiness, and shook his head. ‘I’m such an idiot! Even after all these years…’ He took a few steps backwards, his expression hardening further. ‘That was quite a performance, Miss Fraser. You must really be desperate for this guy.’ And then he pivoted round and strode away from me, along the terrace and round the corner of the house.

I ran after him. ‘Adam? Adam!’

He stopped as I almost caught up with him and stood with his back to me, just breathing. No discreet floodlights here. Just Adam and me in the dark. I could only just see his outline against the blackness of the country night.

Slowly, he turned and faced me. ‘What?’ he asked, his voice low and weary.

My heart was thumping hard as I stepped towards him. I didn’t have a plan, and I always had a plan when it came to men. It’s impossible to train or manipulate or manage them without one. I was going on instinct again—something I wasn’t entirely comfortable with when it came to the opposite sex—but my instincts seemed to be primed and ready, as I didn’t even have to think before I lifted my hand to his face, mirroring his earlier gesture.

This was all new and I needed to explore him, to discover him.

I couldn’t see his face, but I think he closed his eyes, and he made a noise as if he might be in pain. A few moments later his hand shot up and stilled my roving fingers. ‘Coreen? Please…don’t.’

I shushed him and turned his face fully towards mine, using my hand against his cheek as leverage. Then I pinned him up against the rough brick wall and kissed him back. There was no one else to impress. There never had been.

I lay in the dark in my peach silk pyjamas trimmed with lace. Yes, they weren’t very Constance, but I’d reasoned if I couldn’t be my glamorous self during the day I might as well make up for it in the privacy of my room at night.

I was alone, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to be. Now, that was a scary thought.

Adam and me? Taking our relationship to that level? The thought made me shiver—in a good way and in a bad way.

He was my best friend. My Best Bud. Could that translate into something else? And what if it couldn’t? Would we lose everything we’d built up over the years? If Adam’s reaction when he thought I’d kissed him for Nicholas’s benefit was anything to go by, I’d guess we just might. I wasn’t sure I was prepared to take that risk.

But after this evening I also wasn’t sure I could bear not to.

If I’d known Adam could kiss like that I might have done something about it years ago.

I rolled over and punched my pillow—more because my thoughts weren’t letting me keep still rather than because the bed was uncomfortable. Far from it.

But you did know….

A memory hit me hard. Sharon Everidge’s eighteenth birthday party. Her parents had hired a hall. I’d set my sights on Tom Morrison, the coolest boy in school, but he’d pretended not to notice me. I’d made him pay for that later, of course. But at the time I’d grabbed the one prop I had to hand—Adam. I’d kissed him. Kissed him the way I’d been wanting to kiss Tom, hoping it would show the other boy just what he was missing out on. But before long I’d forgotten all about Tom, and Sharon, and every other hormone-laced teenager at the party, because I’d been too busy kissing Adam.

It had worked. Tom had sidled up and asked me to dance with him not long after Adam had stormed out. I blushed with shame as I remembered that I’d gone, telling myself Adam would understand, that he was my friend and would want me to be happy. And, after all…it was only a kiss.

I’d been such a coward.

I had known.

I had known that Adam could make my ears tingle just by looking at me, that our friendship had the potential to blossom into much, much more. But I’d ignored that fact. Put my little polka-dot blinkers on and pretended nothing had changed, that nothing ever would or could change. And I’d been so convincing I’d even believed it myself. How stupid could a girl get?

That moment when I’d sashayed away with spotty old Tom Morrison had been a defining point in my relationship with Adam. I could see that now. Whatever might have been…or should have been…I’d put the brakes on it—too cowardly to admit what had been right under my nose all along.

In some subconscious area of my brain I’d thought walking that path would be far too dangerous, so I’d clouded all of those warm feelings with friendship, insulated them, kept them safely at bay, and then I’d walked away from that idea. Heaven help me, I’d walked away.

And Adam had let me.