Love & Freedom (25 page)

‘Fantastic! How?’ In an instant, Robina was as shiny-eyed as a kid who had just discovered Santa Claus.

Honor put up a restraining hand. ‘Whoa! There’s a deal involved. So don’t go agreeing to anything until you’ve heard it. OK,’ she began. ‘Like any other teenager, Ru doesn’t just need a job – he needs to be paid for doing it.’

Robina shrugged. ‘But he’s family.’

‘So what? It’s not written in stone that you have to be mean to your family.’

They stared at each other. Robina’s eyes glittered. ‘What has little Ru got to do with a deal? And why are you making me one?’

Honor ignored the last question. ‘The deal is this: I’m prepared to work whatever hours it takes to run the Teapot this weekend while you and Sophie swan off to your music festival if you’ll leave Ru behind to work with me – and you pay him the same hourly rate as you pay Aletta, not only for this weekend but for every hour he works for you from now on. This weekend is just about doable if we don’t open the back dining room and I think I can make Aletta work a little harder than she has been doing.

‘
And
you and Sophie have to get downstairs now and make enough scones and cakes to see us through whilst you’re away.’

‘That’ll take all night,’ Robina objected.

‘But we could do it!’ stuck in Sophie. ‘Let’s, Robbie! I want to go.’

Robina considered. All attention was on her. Her eyes moved from Honor to Ru, to Kirsty. ‘Maybe if you, Ru and Kirsty pitched in tonight–’

‘No.’

‘Ru isn’t as old as Aletta so I can’t pay him the same–’

‘You can. He works twice as hard as her. It’s the only deal on the table, Robina. And if I find out that you’ve dragged Ru or Kirsty down there tonight, the deal is off. You ought to be downright ashamed of yourself even thinking of making poor Kirsty work, anyway.’

Angry roses bloomed in Robina’s cheeks.

But Sophie clapped her on the shoulder. ‘Come on, Robbie, we can do it! Then we’ll get straight in the van and head off to Stratford and grab a few hours once we’ve got the tent up.’

‘OK then,’ said Robina, with bad grace. ‘It’s better than missing it.’

Honor waited, but she obviously wasn’t going to get a thank you. Neither was anybody going to ask whether she really felt that she could run a tearoom after working there as a waitress for less than two weeks. Maybe they simply shared her confidence that she’d had enough experience of making things work out to know that she could avoid complete disaster.

And at least gratitude was shining from Ru’s eyes.

She struggled up from the depths of the beanbag. ‘Leave the keys with Ru and I’ll be here at eight in the morning. You, too, Ru, OK? If you’re on the payroll, you have to be punctual.’

‘All right.’ Ru walked her down to the front door, tucked away up the walkway from the street. ‘You were wicked,’ he said, simply, before he shut the door behind her.

Chapter Twenty

Martyn had been waiting in the dark for thirty minutes but he wasn’t tired or sleepy. When he saw the slight figure emerge from beside the Eastingdean Teapot he let her totter on her huge heels down The Butts, then started the engine, flicked on the lights and wheeled slowly out of the car park.

At the side of the road, Honor paused, and he eased the big vehicle up beside her, rolling down the window. ‘Everything arranged to your satisfaction?’

She grinned. ‘Just about.’ Her hair lifted from around her face in the breeze.

‘Hop in,’ he suggested, opening the door and putting out a hand to help her up the tall step. He didn’t trust himself to get out to do it, getting behind her in that short skirt
 
…

With a laugh and a whoop she made the jump, her eyes gleaming in the light from the street lamps. ‘Did you hang around just to save me a five-minute walk home? You’re a regular knight in shining armour.’

He shook his head, letting the X5 roll down the street past the silent shops. ‘I hate the idea that you may judge Brighton by Ali Spangles. Brighton’s a fabulous place. I thought you might like to see somewhere a bit nicer.’ He turned right, on to Marine Drive.

‘OK,’ she said, cautiously. ‘But I’ve sold my soul to the devil and agreed to look after the Teapot until Monday so I can’t be real late.’

‘OK. Just an hour or so to enjoy yourself before the hard graft begins.’

He drove back towards Brighton. The coast road at night always did something for him; the sea black and oily below, glittering with yellow lights, the pier’s skeleton exposed by a million bulbs. Turning right into the Old Steine, following the traffic system up through Marlborough Place, he eventually turned off into a quiet nook above the North Laines and parked behind wrought iron railings.

One of the fabulous Regency houses with a curved front and several storeys, it could have been almost anything behind the big black door with
4 Fox Square
painted in white. He keyed in his pass number, swiped his card and the door buzzed him in.

‘What’s this place?’ Honor gazed around at the high moulded plaster ceiling and glossy tiled floor.

‘Somewhere quiet.’

A steward in black materialised. ‘Dining, sir?’

‘Just a drink in the lounge.’

The dark figure nodded and faded away, leaving Martyn to lead Honor up carpeted stairs, past the bar on the first floor, loud with talking and laughter, glasses clinking. Past the second floor where diners clustered around tables with snowy cloths, the whisper of cutlery a grace note to the murmur of voices. On to the top floor and a small lounge, empty but for sofas and chairs upholstered in shades of gold and low wooden tables where newspapers had been dropped as if half-read. Martyn chose a curved sofa in an alcove beside a tall white fireplace with plants instead of a fire basket.

A waitress materialised and he ordered beer and once Honor discovered that they served both Budweiser and Schlitz she said, ‘Beer for me, too.’

And whilst they waited for the drinks she gazed around at the room with its worn wooden floor, chair arms burnished to a gentle shine. ‘So, here we are,’ she said, when the waitress had left the drinks. ‘Should I be worried?’

The low lighting painted starbursts in her eyes. He was intrigued. ‘Why?’

She lifted the Bud, served in a condensation-coated stemmed beer glass. ‘This place. It’s kind of secluded, isn’t it?’

He let his lips curve. ‘It’s just a club. There are private members clubs all over England. Fox Place is mainly for people in the media and the arts – kind of an East Sussex Groucho Club. A lot about Brighton is centred on tourists. I like to know a couple of places that aren’t. And it’s somewhere I can count on never finding Robina.’

A group of four women and a man surged into the lounge, splintering the hush, choosing facing sofas in another corner and ordering champagne. One of the women was pink under her smart silver hairstyle and kept protesting, ‘Oh, this is silly! A proper engagement, at our age.’ But she didn’t seem to be able to stop admiring her ring finger.

‘I think I’ve heard of the Groucho,’ Honor admitted, relaxing against the back of the sofa after watching the new arrivals. ‘So why are we here?’

‘To chat over a beer. I think you thought I’d brought you to some den of vice? To introduce you to all my deviant practices?’

‘Of course not.’ But a quirk in her smile told him that maaay-bee such a suspicion had crossed her mind.

It wasn’t what he’d planned to talk to her about but his heart stepped up its beat at the thought. ‘Any particular deviances you have me down for?’

She tilted her head. ‘I haven’t really thought about it.’ But she smiled.

He was tempted to pursue this interesting avenue but, as the champagne arrived for the group in the corner, he dragged his focus back to the conversation he meant to have.

When he’d pulled the X5 into her drive this evening and her bare legs had danced down the steps, right in his line of vision, that dress clinging to all her neat little curves, he’d been reduced to foolish silence. And when she’d taken four goes at hopping up into the passenger seat, her bobbing breasts apparently tied in place by that multicoloured little cardigan thing, he’d nearly had a heart attack.

It would be way too easy to submit her to the clumsiest lunge in the history of man
 
…

Instead, he took another drink. ‘So,’ he began. ‘Done any more about finding your mother?’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘The internet tells me I have a bunch of alternatives. Lots of people willing to help – some charities, some businesses. But it seems there’s no need for either. I can go to Brighton Town Hall and read the Electoral Register, and if she’s around, she’ll be on there.’

‘But you haven’t done that?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve been kind of busy, with the Teapot and with just hanging out in England.’

‘But you’re going to give it a try?’

She shifted to face him across the curve of the sofa. ‘What if I don’t like her?’

‘Isn’t there only one way to find out? Go see her and say, “Hi, I’m Freedom, remember me?”’

She laughed, but looked pained. ‘Come on, I asked you to forget that Freedom stuff. Freedom Lefevre didn’t exist for more than a few weeks and I’ve only ever known myself as Honor Lefevre or Honor Sontag. And introducing myself is not the kind of action that I can easily undo if it goes bad on me. I might just leave things as they are.’

‘Does that mean that you’re going home?’

She looked surprised. ‘I rented your sister’s place for four months so I guess that’s how long I’m here.’

‘I just thought that if your mission was to find your mother
 
…’

She looked away. Watched the group in the corner, drinking their champagne, on to the second bottle now, getting louder, clinking glasses and drinking to the future of the happy couple. ‘I don’t think I ever said it was my primary purpose, did I? Mainly, I needed space.’

He waited. Watching her, sitting there, looking as if her dress had been vacuum packed on. ‘So you’re not rushing back to Mr Sontag?’ he prompted.

Her eyes swivelled to his. She finished her beer and sank back against the sofa, twisting her hair, thoughtfully. Her smile had been replaced by a wary notch between her brows. ‘I guess not.’

It was the opening he’d been probing for. ‘I was rude when you tried to tell me about your marriage, before. How about you tell me now?’

Chapter Twenty-One

She didn’t look away.

He gazed steadily back. Waiting her out. Watching a debate taking place behind her eyes.

She made a face. ‘I’ll need another beer. I hadn’t scheduled a Q and A.’

He got her two, so as not to invite a further interruption, and, conscious of the car keys in his pocket, chose water for himself.

She took a deep draught and licked her lips. ‘My husband’s name’s Stef. Stefan Sontag. His dad, Will Sontag, and my dad are partners in the same law firm in Hamilton Drives, which is where I’m from, a small town up on Route 7 in west Connecticut. When we were children, our dads joked that one day we’d get married because we were inseparable. But something happened to Stef at puberty – he turned into a hellraiser.

‘And a hellraiser can be an embarrassing member of the family for someone in the legal profession. His relationship with Will deteriorated, and my dad began to warn me off him. But, thing was, Stef was still my best friend.’ She smiled, her eyes warm with memories.

‘Define hellraiser.’

She lifted her brows. ‘For a long time, he didn’t do anything that was so bad. Well, OK, it
was
bad, like putting fireworks in mailboxes and dying someone’s white cat pink – I felt bad about the cat because it was in the paper and a lot of people wrote to say what a cruel trick it was – but his pranks were kid’s stuff. And all the other kids in town loved Stef because he was so funny and he always stuck up for underdogs. I never had any trouble in high school because he always watched over me, you know, and nobody messed with Stef. And on weekends he’d teach me how to ride a dirt bike or get everyone to the lakeside for a cook out. We played up, on those cook outs, but nothing other teenagers didn’t do; just strip poker or outrageous dares. Getting drunk, making out. Stef was always trying out new haircuts or getting a tattoo. Stef was fun.

‘And then he decided not to go to college. Just flat out refused. He didn’t really give any reason, just no. He had good brains but Dad used to say that they’d been wired wrong. I went off to college and he did a variety of jobs – car shops, delivery, making pizzas. My dad wrote that Stef was in more trouble, because he’d added joyriding to his repertoire. But when I came home, he seemed just the same old Stef. We dated. He was still my best friend as well as a date but we dated other people. After a while, I began not to like that and when I came home the summer I finished school, I told him. We’d been out to the lake and
 
… Anyway, he said that if I wanted “exclusive” then we’d better get engaged. I wasn’t quite ready – but I did want to be exclusive. So we got engaged. Dad didn’t know what to think because he knew Stef could be off the wall but he did like him, and at least it made me plan to stay in Hamilton Drives. And, who knew, maybe Stef would settle down and put his wild years behind him. So Dad put in a word for me at VPV Finance and, over time, I took my exams to be a financial advisor – which meant years of night school. It took a while for us to get the money together to get married but that was OK. We were young.’