Page 43 of Oz
The barely concealed glee makes me laugh. “That’syour date?” He looks nervously at me and I stop and grin. “This isepic.Have you got my diary?”
“Of course,” he says solemnly and, following the signs, he parks where a man in a reflective jacket signals him to. He switches the engine off and we both look at the man who is officiously pointing at a family in a Ford Focus.
“Do we need one of those people?” he asks dubiously.
I look at the man waving his arms around. “I don’t think we need a human windmill, exactly.” He snorts and I smile at him. “But we will need someone to direct cars. And a shed,” I say as an afterthought. “And a portable radiator for when it’s cold.”
“My father would have expected him to burn his own belongings to keep warm.”
I laugh. “I don’t think your father would have got on with the European Court of Human Rights.”
“He’d have been horrified that they recognised anybody below the aristocracy as human, let alone having rights.”
I grab his hand and squeeze it. “Well, luckily I’m here with you today. I don’t think your father and I would have got on.”
“I’d have paid money to see it though,” he says, lifting our hands up and dropping a casual kiss on mine. “One can understand people seeing gladiators if it had been you and my father in the Colosseum.”
I stare at him, lost in the casual intimacy he shows, and in the fact that I just willingly picked his hand up. I never do that. Being cautious, I always wait for the other man to make overtures of affection. Which is why it’s completely alien to me when it actually happens.
“You okay?” he asks and I smile.
“Absolutely. Let’s go and steal secrets. It’ll be likeMission Impossible.”
“Weren’t a large number of them massacred in that film?”
I laugh. “Yes.But that’s not what’s happening today.”
Following the many signs, we walk to the visitor centre. “It’s like he got these signs on special offer,” I whisper to Silas. “Doyou think he’s got a man in the shed whose job is solely to make them?”
“Knowing Alexander, he’s making him do it in his dinner hour.”
I grin and move close to him, feeling warm inside when he maintains his hold on my hand and completely ignores the scandalized look on the woman’s face at the ticket office as if she isn’t there.
“Will that be for the two of you?” she asks in a frigid tone.
“It certainly will.” Silas’s voice is normally a rich warm drawl that combines a tinge of Cornish in it along with the upper-class tones of his upbringing. Now, however, you could cut glass with it and the woman responds like one of Pavlov’s dogs, instantly straightening and smiling ingratiatingly.
“And would you like a guidebook?”
“I don’t know. Darling, do you want a guidebook?”
There’s a brief moment of silence before I realise that he’s talking to me. “Oh. Oh, yes, that would be lovely.”
Her nose wrinkles in consternation when she hears my accent but she scurries to get one and practically bows us out of the door. We find ourselves on a gravelled path and he stops and turns to me. “You okay?”
I look at him in consternation. “I’m fine. Why?”
“That old woman’s attitude. It was horrible.”
I laugh. “I’ve had worse and I’m sure you have.”
He shrugs. “Not much.”
I smile. “Well, of course you wouldn’t. You’re the son of an earl and you’re very masculine. I, however, am small and not, so believe me, I’ve heard worse.” His brow furrows with concern and I shake my head. “Let’s move on … darling.”
He laughs and moves closer. “I saw your face when I said that.”
“I didn’t realise you were talking to me.”
