43
A gasoline-laced breeze wafted through the open French doors, carrying with it the discordant blare of honking horns, traffic heavy this time of day in the Marais district. From where he stood, Cædmon could watch the building entryway. An excellent vantage point. Even the commando had acknowledged that the St Merry Hotel was a good choice.
‘ “To be of no church is dangerous,” ’ he murmured, letting the drapery fall into place as he stepped into the room. Let us hope this one proves a safe haven.
Shoulders drooping, Kate deposited her rucksack on the Gothic-style desk across from the bed. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of “Get me to the church on time”. Normally, I’d be bowled over by the fact that we’re staying in a restored seventeenth-century presbytery which is next door to an equally old church. But after everything that’s happened today, I just can’t drum up a whole lot of enthusiasm.’ Peering in his direction, she graced him with a weary smile. ‘Although I’m greatly relieved to be here. And for that we have you to thank.’
‘Flying bullets will make any man quick on his feet.’
‘Luckily, you’re quicker than most.’
Clearly fatigued, Kate plopped into a high-backed chair. Like everything else in the room, it was fit for a feudal lord, the room’s stone-block walls enlivened with oak quatrefoils and tracery cutouts, the centrepiece being a massive bed with an intricately carved seven-foot-high headboard. Fit for the feudal lord and his lady love. Despite the fact that Kate had vehemently denied a romantic involvement with McGuire, Cædmon couldn’t help but wonder at their sleeping arrangements.
‘This wood-beamed ceiling reminds me of your room in Oxford,’ Kate remarked, tilting her head to glance upward.
‘The hearty souls were housed in the medieval wing of the college; those able to withstand winter chill, summer heat and leaky pipes. Punishment for crimes yet committed,’ he deadpanned.
‘Faulty plumbing aside, I used to think that there wasn’t anything quite as beautiful as when the setting sun tinted your centuries-old window a rich shade of tangerine.’ As she spoke, Kate girlishly tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Such a lovely memory.’
Cædmon seated himself on the opposite side of the desk. Surprised that Kate harboured warm memories of their time at Oxford, he was at a loss for words. Sixteen years had come and gone since they’d last seen one another. A lifetime. And yet he could easily envision her studiously bent over an open book. Claude Lévi Strauss’s A World on the Wane. Or some other anthropology tome. Committed scholars, they used to spend hours in that medieval room, each engrossed in their separate studies. Each oblivious to the other’s presence. Until one of them would look up and catch the other’s eye. A come-hither smile later, they’d end up under the duvet. Now that was a lovely memory.
‘Do you realize that I wouldn’t know how to ride a bicycle if it wasn’t for you,’ Kate remarked, unaware that his thoughts were running along a more lurid path. ‘Since my parents were both academics, they didn’t consider riding a bike a necessary life skill.’
‘Don’t know if it’s necessary in the larger scheme of things, but certainly essential at Oxford.’ Still stuck under the duvet, he smiled fondly. ‘Indeed, you were so enamoured with your newly acquired skill that you would drag me out of bed at an ungodly hour for early morning rides in the mist.’
‘You can’t deny that there was a surreal beauty to it. As though we were trapped in a medieval dreamscape. Just the two of us peddling through a heavenly realm.’ She closed her eyes; a woman lost in reverie.
‘I also taught you how to drink sherry.’
Hearing that, her eyes popped wide open. ‘Dry, chilled, served in a hand-blown copita glass, and –’ an animated gleam in those greyish-blue eyes, Kate raised an imaginary glass – ‘accompanied by your favourite toast –’
‘Bottoms up and knickers down,’ he chimed in, chortling.
No sooner did the shared chuckle fade into silence than a furrow appeared between Kate’s brows. ‘Were you really that upset by my lettre de rupture?’
Take aback by that unexpected query, he was tempted to play the cavalier. To make light of the whole affair.
‘Utterly destroyed,’ he confessed at the last, hoping the truth would finally set him free. ‘I’d given you my heart.’
‘As I recall, you were quite obsessed with the Knights Templar. I was tired of playing second fiddle to a bunch of dead monks.’
His regret real, Cædmon penitently bowed his head and stared at his hands. ‘Like most men, I didn’t realize what I had until I lost it.’
‘And when we lose that thing that we hold so dear, it never comes back.’
Hearing a husky catch in her voice, he intuited that Kate was referring to her own life. Her own painful loss.
Raising his head, he gazed intently at the sad-faced woman seated across from him. He knew from Kate’s dossier that life had flung her to the cement pavement. And from a very high rooftop. Her only child, a baby boy named Samuel, had died from SIDS. An unfathomable loss.
‘I know about Samuel.’
Eyes welling with emotion, Kate flinched. A terrified animal caught in the headlights. ‘Oh, God,’ she moaned.
He reached across the desk and cupped her cheek in his hand. Gently, he swiped the pad of his thumb under her eye socket, catching a runaway tear. ‘You probably loathe the “I’m so sorry” speech, but I understand, Kate. There’s a gaping hole in your heart. I know … I, too, lost someone,’ he confessed, words and sentiments jumbling together. ‘And when Juliana died, it devastated me.’
‘Oh, Cædmon … I … I’m so very sorry … there, I said it.’ Turning her head, Kate lightly pressed her lips to his palm. She then gazed at him, eyes clouded with concern. ‘If you need someone to talk to … or a shoulder to cry on … I can help you get through this. Maybe that’s why we’ve re-connected after all these years. Because we need each other.’ Clearly empathizing with his pain, she placed her hand over his. ‘Was Juliana your wife?’
He dolefully shook his head. ‘But I had given great thought to asking –’
‘Sorry to interrupt the canoodle fest.’
Hearing that deep-throated voice, Cædmon and Kate quickly and gracelessly pulled apart. McGuire, an old-fashioned skeleton key in one hand and two plastic shopping bags dangling from the other, stood in the doorway. ‘I bought some refreshments. Not that you two lovebirds would care.’ He stomped over to the desk, managing to look more intimidating than usual.
‘We were just reminiscing about old times at Oxford,’ Kate assured her surly companion, cheeks guiltily stained a vivid bright red. ‘Cædmon, do you remember Sidney Hartwell?’
‘Pudgy Classics major prone to drunken stupors,’ he replied, playing along with the game. ‘Liked to wave his trousers in the air while he shouted obscene profanities.’
‘In Latin and in the middle of the night, no less.’ Never good at subterfuge, Kate nervously giggled.
McGuire dragged a chair over to the desk and set it inches from Kate’s Gothic monstrosity. A man staking his claim. He then proceeded to remove a six-pack of beer from one bag and a litre bottle of water from the other. ‘Choose your poison – Kronenbourg or H2O. And just so you know, I cannot abide a country that doesn’t sell cold beer at the grocery store. Here. You look like you could use one of these.’ McGuire pulled a can free from the plastic ring and slid it across the desk in Cædmon’s direction.
‘An Irishman who would refuse a pint of warm Guinness. Well, well, wonders never cease.’
‘You’d turn your nose up, too, if you’d ever seen how my Da downed the black stuff. Surprised I’m able to enjoy a brewski.’ Shaking his head, McGuire rolled his eyes. ‘If only he’d waved his trousers in the air.’