Someone to Love Read online

  Now she was seeing what she’d been told for what it was: revenge served cold. In the sixth grade, she’d seen Lewis taunting a first grader and Nigh had hit him in the nose so hard he had to be taken home. Like the bullies they were, neither of the boys ever again bothered Nigh or anyone else when she was around.

  So they got her back at last. It had taken years, but they did it.

  When she got to Lewis’s house, she slowed down, meaning to turn into his driveway, but she didn’t. To bawl him out would give him no end of pleasure.

  Instead, she found herself on the road to Aylesbury. Every piece of clothing she owned was worn out and stained. And her shoes weren’t much better. And she needed a new tube of mascara, and maybe a lipstick or two. Maybe she’d take a little time off and do some shopping.

  Nigh arrived at Priory House at ten minutes to seven. Jace hadn’t given her a time for dinner, but she knew that Americans ate early. She pulled into the courtyard and tried to still the butterflies in her stomach. This was, of course, preposterous. Twice in her life she’d been in places where bombs were going off, so why was something like having dinner with this American making her nervous?

  She looked down at her dress. It was a deep blue silk, cut on the bias, and fit like a second skin. It was made by some designer Nigh had never heard of, but who the clerk assured her was “famous.” And her heels had to be at least four inches high. Her ankle twisted on the gravel as she headed toward the front door, but she quickly righted herself.

  As Nigh walked under the archway, she hesitated. Which door should she use? She was an invited guest, so she should use the front door. On the other hand, she was a resident of the village and she’d been there as a child, which made the kitchen entrance more likely.

  For a moment she gritted her teeth. Was she insane? She had twice eaten dinner at Buckingham Palace, yet here she was…okay, she thought, admit it, Nigh, you’re scared of Mrs. Browne.

  “I’m not going to be,” she said aloud, then started for the front door. Before she reached it, Mrs. Browne appeared out of nowhere.

  “Use the front door now, do we?” Mrs. Browne asked. “And all tarted up too, I see. The American strike your fancy? Going after him now, are you?”

  “I have been invited to dinner,” Nigh said, her nails cutting into her palms. “Mr. Montgomery invited me and—”

  “He didn’t tell me he was invitin’ anybody, but it’s not my place to ask. If he’d’ve told me he’d asked you, I’d’ve told him a thing or two. What a nasty bit you wrote about him in the paper. It’s a wonder he didn’t use an American gun on you. That’s what they do in America, you know. Shoot you. But it’s nothin’ to me what he does on his own time. Or who he does it with.”

  “Where is he?” Nigh asked, her teeth clenched, torn between wanting to use her fists on the horrid little woman and running to hide in her mother’s skirts.

  “Out in the stone round, he is. You do remember where that is, don’t you? You used to snoop around here well enough when you were a child, so you should remember. This place was a trainin’ school to you, weren’t it? I hear you snoop all over the world now.”

  This is ridiculous! Nigh thought and took the slump out of her shoulders. “That I do. I snoop everywhere, so maybe I’ll just tell Mr. Montgomery what happened to the brandy that was supposed to come with this house. You and your old girlfriends still filling the empty bottles with cold tea?”

  Mrs. Browne put her nose in the air and stalked away.

  “Great, Nightingale,” Nigh muttered. “That’s two enemies you’ve made in one day. You should have stopped at Lewis’s house, bawled him out, and made it three.”

  High heels were not made for walking across soft English lawns. After the third time she sunk down to her heels, she took the shoes off and carried them. The “stone round” that Mrs. Browne referred to was the local name for a beautiful eighteenth-century stone gazebo. It had a round floor, columns, and a beautiful domed top. At least it had once been beautiful. The last time she saw it, Hatch was using it to store plastic bags full of greensand.

  As she walked through the trees, down the little-used path toward the gazebo, she had a lovely idea. What if Montgomery had set up dinner in the gazebo? Candlelight, a damask-covered table. Would he serve oysters? What delectable thing from Jamie Oliver had Mrs. Browne prepared for tonight? As hateful as the woman was, she was a renowned cook.

  Smiling, Nigh contemplated the evening ahead. In spite of the bad that had gone on between her and Jace Montgomery, she’d felt the physical attraction. He was a very good-looking man and she was, well…she wasn’t bad to look at either. So maybe he had forgiven her about the newspaper, and maybe he was ready for something a little more personal to begin…

  When Nigh stepped through the trees and saw the gazebo, it wasn’t what she’d hoped for. Jace Montgomery was there with what looked like a machete and he was clearing away years of vines and weeds. He was drenched in sweat and what skin was showing from under his dirty shirt was grimy.

  When he saw Nigh, he looked startled, as though he’d forgotten their dinner date, but then a slow smile spread over his face. Forgotten or not, obviously, she had misinterpreted his invitation. He’d meant sandwiches and a bottle of beer, while she had taken him to mean a tuxedo in the moonlight. Nigh felt over-dressed, foolish, and extremely embarrassed. She wanted to say that she was going to a party afterward and that’s why she was dressed up, but she didn’t. She did hide her high heels behind her back.

  “You brought the retraction,” Jace said. “You can put it over there. Sorry if I don’t stop, but…” He trailed off as he shrugged in the general direction of the mess surrounding the gazebo.

  “No, sure,” she mumbled, wishing she could sink into the ground and disappear. She should, of course, leave, but she’d have to go past Mrs. Browne’s windows. To be seen that she, Nigh, had thought she’d been invited to a real, sit-down dinner but wasn’t would be too humiliating. To be fair to herself, usually, when men asked her out they made an effort.

  She watched him slash at some vines and pull them off the stone work. “Ann’s grandfather built that.”

  “Did he? Nice man?” he asked.

  “No. None of Ann’s male ancestors were nice.” Jace was tugging on a vine, but she could see that it was caught on a pillar. She thought it was possible that the vines were stronger than the marble. Pull too hard and the whole thing could collapse—on them.

  She dropped her shoes into the grass and removed a pair of garden shears from the nearby wheelbarrow. “Wait,” she said, then stepped onto the floor in her bare feet and began to cut the vines that clung to the column. Unfortunately, some of them were beginning to take root, so she had to use her nails to disengage them. So much for that afternoon’s manicure.

  Jace held the vines and pulled as she loosened them. “So what was the grandfather like?”

  Nigh thought for a moment. “I think his death tells everything. He drowned when he was just twenty-eight years old. He made a bet with another young man that he could swim across the lake underwater. They all waited for him to come up, but he didn’t. Seems he got his foot caught in a pile of old bricks that were buried at the bottom of the lake. His father had thrown the bricks in there so the lake would require less water to fill it. He left everything to his only child, Ann’s father, who was only four years old. Not a penny was left to his young wife, yet the will required her to live in Priory House. He didn’t want to leave a rich widow behind. Mother and child ended up living in just a few rooms and had only two people to help them take care of this whole place.”

  “Ah, the English love of primogeniture,” Jace said, pulling on the vines as Nigh cut them away from the column.

  “Don’t knock it. It’s kept the big estates intact. Ow!” She sucked at her finger where a vine had lashed back and cut it.

  “You’re going to ruin your dress if you do that,” Jace said. “Why don’t you just leave what you wrote, I’ll read it lat