Page 71 of The Moon & His Tides
“Oh? And an American would be an authority on this, how?”
Her grin flattened into sharp edges. “My mother is English, so I have an advantage over you.”
“Touché,” I allowed because she was funny and a welcome respite from my internal suffering. “Fine. Why don’t you come in while I change out of my uniform, and we find you something warmer to wear? While I dress, you can pick our adventure.”
“Really?” The word was too surprised, half gleeful and suspicious at the same time, like no one had let her take the reins on something in much too long. Like no one cared what she wanted to do very much at all.
“Really,” I promised before getting out of the car and making my way to her side.
She frowned a little as I pulled the door open and shrugged off my jacket to drape over her shoulders. Her mouth dropped into a little moue of shock even as she fingered the fabric. “The walk to your guest house is like… four metres.”
I lifted a shoulder. “You look cold.Andiamo.”
She followed me down the path to the carriage house and through the front door, lingering in the small living area to peer at some photos I’d placed frameless on the mantel place. I left her to it and climbed the stairs to strip out of my suit and put on comfortable jeans, a tee, and a cashmere jumper in navy blue that Savannah had bought because it brought out the gold in my eyes.
Everything I owned would dwarf Linnea even though she was tall, so I picked another cashmere jumper in black I’d accidentally shrunk in the wash.
Linnea sat on the edge of the coffee table with the photos from the mantel held delicately in her fingers. There was an expression on her face that was almost wistful, and when I cleared my throat to alert her to my presence, she jumped as if I was an axe murderer.
“You scared the bejesus out of me!” she accused.
I arched a brow. “I wasn’t exactly quiet, but you seem to be lurking my personal affects too much to notice your surroundings.”
Unabashed, she sniffed at me and returned her gaze to one of the photos, which she held at an angle for me to see too. “You have a big family.”
“I do,” I agreed, walking forward to sit on the edge of the coffee table beside her and taking the photograph in my own grip. “This is the lot of us. My mother, Caprice, eldest sister, Elena, my twin, Cosima, and Giselle.”
“And who was that?” she asked, poking at the scratched-out portion of the photo I’d attacked with the side of a coin.
“Seamus,” I admitted. “My father, though he was a shite one.”
She winced, bumping her shoulder into mine. “Sorry, that sucks.”
I laughed a little at her candidness. After weeks of living with the Meyerses, who hid their emotions at the center of twisty-turvy mazes, Linnea was utterly refreshing.
“Yeah, it does.”
“You know, Miranda was like that,” Linnea admitted. “I hadn’t seen her in ten years before she showed up after Christmas.”
I blinked. “And now you’re living with her here in a foreign country?”
Her glare was pointed into the distance at someone I couldn’t see, but I had a feeling it was at Miranda.
“Yeah. I guess she had a guilty conscience, and she told my dad I should see out eleventh and twelfth year here at North London Collegiate getting a ‘proper’ education.” She made a silly face. “Dad thought it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Turns out, Miranda was just playing the role of mom to please her new sugar daddy. His name is Wyndam, can you believe that?”
I snorted. “Yeah, the Brits have some seriously bizarre names. Are they…” I tried to think about how to ask the question without sounding like I was coddling her. “Are they nice to you?”
“Wyndam more than Miranda, honestly,” Linnea said with a little shrug like she didn’t care. “But we have more in common anyway. He’s a banker, but he’s always loved cinema, so we try to catch movies at The Garden Cinema when he has time.”
I’d never understand why people had children when they weren’t ready or willing to actually parent them. There had been brief flares of interest from Seamus throughout my youth, but mostly he only made time for Cosima, whom he clearly liked best. I didn’t begrudge him that because it was an open secret that everyone in the family liked Cosima best, but it did make me extra protective of her. Our father had never been a good man, at least to my knowledge, though Mama said differently. The man she had fallen in love with was not the one we knew as children.
It didn’t matter how he might have started. In the end, he was a horrible father who jeopardized our lives for years, and I was glad to be rid of him.
Honestly, in my darkest moments, alone sleeping in my bed in the carriage house missing home so much I couldn’t breathe right, I hoped he was dead so he could never darken any of our doorways again.
“I’ve never been,” I said, shaking off the introspection. “Should we catch a film there tonight, then?”
Up close, Linnea’s eyes were a startling colour, a blue so rich and bright they seemed almost purple, the colour of the night sky clinging to the last vestiges of sunset. They were absolutely arresting. Almond-shaped and framed in a bounty of fine golden lashes she hadn’t bothered to darken with makeup, they somehow made her look older than her years. Maybe it was the expression in her eyes, a knowingness like she understood where my mind had wandered and sympathized with me over our shared parental neglect.
