Four

It was my last day working at the house before school started. A Friday.

It was a day as warm as all the others that had come before it. The next day, we were due to go to town to buy my new laptop and I was fantasising about it. About the stories I could write and the games I could download. It was for school, but the memory on it would mean I could use it for way more than the old model of Beth’s I’d been fighting with for the last two years.

I was still in the arboretum in the afternoon when the sun was highest. I had been five days in there while Luke, Harry, and Ged punched and rolled over soil. I’d worked hard though, and the place was almost clear; the dead stuff was gone; the old tools and pots had been thrown in the skip, and I was weeding carefully around a circular bed in the furthest corner.

Something was alive here, and I didn’t want to kill it. Luke always said that killing plants was like killing animals and you should avoid it unless you couldn’t. They had feelings, apparently. It had sounded like a stupid notion to me at first, but at some point, I’d taken it on as my own.

I was singing quietly to myself when I sensed a presence in the arboretum with me.

I turned to see Caspien standing at the opposite end of the large space, a few feet inside it. He’d voluntarily entered the room I was in, and the notion made my hands tremble. He was staring at me hard – or so I thought. Actually, he was looking behind me, an odd, far-off look on his face. So far, none of our interactions had gone well, and so I expected no different from this one.

Just being in the same room as him made me feel tense, nervous, and faintly sick.

I decided that the best thing to do would be not to engage. So I turned back to the plant and scraped about at its base, trying to dig out the weeds surrounding the roots so I could lay some fresh soil on top.

The glasshouse was already airless and hot, but with him inside, it felt like a vacuum. Sweat pooled at the back of my neck and trickled down my spine, spider-soft.

“My uncle said this was my mother’s favourite room of the whole house,” he said.

I was so shocked that he’d spoken and that it wasn’t an insult, I was momentarily stunned.

Caspien continued, “He said she was obsessed with flowers and plants. Like Luke, I suppose.”

Was this...a conversation? It sounded like one, but the idea of it was so alien that I really wasn’t sure. My brain scrambled for something to say. Anything. Intelligent or otherwise.

Momentarily, I considered being as cruel to him as he had been to me. I should tell him I didn’t give a shit about his dead mother, that she could be nothing like Luke if she had given birth to the literal spawn of Satan. But I couldn’t do it. His voice was soft. Softer than I’d ever heard it, small and soft as a child’s.

I hated how it made me feel, hated that it made me feel anything at all. Because I hated him.

But then, without conscious thought to the words, I was talking.

“Well, maybe when we’re done, you can plant something she’d have liked,” I said. My voice sounded dry and scratchy. It was from the heat.

Caspien blinked as though coming slowly out of a trance. He’d been lingering just inside the threshold of the glasshouse like he was afraid to come inside, but now he walked towards me in that strange way he did. Determined and precise. A predator, I thought suddenly, a predator stalking forward to me, the prey. That was how he walked.

His hair was down about his face, one side tucked behind an ear. Ears that looked small and kind of girlish. I’d have to look at some more ears to decide if they were girly or not, but they looked delicate with their soft pink lobes. His nose was still the weirdest one I’d ever seen. A little flattened dip in its point that drew your eye.

Derailing my thoughts about ears and noses, he stopped, closer than he’d ever been to me by choice. I was still kneeling by the circular bed, so I glanced at his feet first. Golden pink toes peeking out of those slippers. They were fine-boned and dusted with faint golden hair. I stood, and the scent of something floral fluttered in the space between us. Something sweet and hot that wasn’t coming from the flowers but from him. That scent and his proximity caused my stomach to cartwheel wildly.

He stared at me for what must have been a whole minute; my eyes and then my mouth, the base of my throat and then back up to my eyes again. I felt peeled raw and exposed.

“Our uncles think that now that you will be living here on the estate, we should be friends.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What do you think about that?”

I thought about it for a moment. Or rather, how to reply to it. I already knew what I thought about it.

But he hadn’t said anything awful to me in about three minutes and I felt a little exhilarated from it. Hopeful and stupid.

“I’m pretty sure to be friends, we’d have to like each other.”

Some light went off in his eyes and his mouth tilted up very slightly.

He said, “Do you not like me, Judey?”

I considered telling him that no, I fucking hated him. But we were going to be living in his garden, working in his house, and if he was the reason his uncle had offered Luke and Beth the cottage, then perhaps he had the power to have the offer withdrawn too. And it would be my fault if he did.

“Don’t call me that.”

“What should I call you then?”

“My name,” I said, and he gave me an expectant look. “Jude.”

He gave a half shrug. “Fine. Answer my question, Jude. Do you not like me?”

“Why do you even care? You hate me too.”

He smiled at that. A cold, half-formed thing.

“I never said I cared. I asked if you did.”

This made something hot flare up inside me. Through clenched teeth, I said. “I think it’s pretty obvious we’re not going to be friends. We hate each other.”

“I didn’t know your name until ten seconds ago. How can I hate you?” He shook his head like it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.

“Whatever.” I dropped to my knees again and returned to the plant, reaching out to pull at a particularly stubborn stem that had tangled itself around one of the window frames. “I think we should just stay out of each other’s way.”

Without warning, Caspien’s hand wrapped tightly around my wrist. With a strength that surprised me, he yanked my arm back away from the stem.

I turned to glare at him.

“You are an idiot,” he hissed.

“Yeah, well, you’re a horrible, stuck-up little prick. So...” I tried to pull my hand out of his grip, but it was surprisingly strong.

“Oleander,” he hissed, like it explained why he was about to snap my bloody wrist.

I blinked at him, confused.

“It is a plant toxic to humans. Though I wonder if that would even apply to you.” He gave me a disdainful look. “Didn’t your uncle teach you anything?”

I looked at the raggedy stem and stepped back from it.

“I...didn’t know.”

“Did you touch it before I got here?”

“I...don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I didn’t. I was...” I looked at it. Then at the pile of weeds I’d pulled up. They weren’t the same. “I didn’t touch it.”

“Did you eat it?”

I looked at him. “Of course, I didn’t eat it.”

He looked unconvinced like I might just be that fucking stupid.

“Then you probably aren’t going to die,” Caspien said.

“Probably?” My heart was beating too fast in my chest. I felt faint and a little dizzy. Was I dying? Had I touched it?

“Come with me,” he said, pulling me by my wrist up and out of the arboretum.

He led me through the house to the kitchen and the huge sink, where he turned on the taps. He left me standing there as he disappeared into the storage cupboard and returned with bleach, a bar of pink soap, and a dishtowel. He poured some bleach onto the towel and scrubbed my hands, front and back and between the fingers. Then he lathered up the pink soap – it smelled awful as the suds started to form – and washed my hands for me.

He never spoke. Just diligently scrubbed the potential poison from my hands, rinsed, and then repeated. He did it three times, then told me to wash them myself with the antibacterial handwash that sat on the sink tray.

I did as instructed while he returned the bleach and threw away the soap. When he came back with a glass of water, he ordered me to drink it all.

When I had done it, he asked how I felt.

I still felt a little dizzy, my head a little big, and my body a little tight and breathless, but I was certain it was not because I had toxic plant poisoning.

“Fine,” I said.

“I’m going to get Luke,” Caspien said. “It’s his call whether you should go to the hospital or not.” He moved to go.

“Uh, thanks for that,” I said.

Caspien stopped, looking uncomfortable. I expected him to say something predictably dick-ish.

“It would have been inconvenient if you’d died in my uncle’s arboretum,” he said before disappearing out of the backdoor and into the sunshine.

Luke was livid. With himself. He said he should have inspected the greenhouse before sending me in there. These plants were native to the Mediterranean and he hadn’t even considered that they might be in there, but he should have checked.

Caspien told him in a very responsible and calm voice what he’d done: he’d checked that I hadn’t eaten it, that he’d washed my hands with bleach first and then carbolic soap, and that there were no signs of a rash or irritation.

Luke asked me again how I felt, and it was then that Gideon had arrived.

“I am so desperately sorry, Luke. I had no idea. Seraphina had all sorts of seedlings imported – I never considered it could have been anything poisonous.”

“It’s not your fault, Lord Deveraux. It’s mine,” Luke said.

Caspien looked at me. His eyes said it wasn’t Luke’s fault either; it was mine.

“How are you, young Jude? You look well?” Deveraux asked me.

“I’m fine. I feel fine.”

“He didn’t eat it,” Caspien said.

Gideon nodded.

“Caspien’s looked after him,” Luke said, shooting a grateful look at my saviour before inspecting my hands again. My forearms and my face. “I think we had a lucky escape. You’ll tell me if you start feeling sick? Any pain in your stomach?”

“I didn’t eat it,” I said again.

Luke ruffled my hair and swore with relief.

“I’ve got a contractor I deal with for toxic plants. I’ve called him. He can be here tomorrow to remove it.”

Gideon told him to add whatever it cost to his invoice. I was told to sit and read my book for the rest of the afternoon, where Luke could see me in case I went into cardiac arrest. It all felt very dramatic, but I wasn’t too annoyed at not having to do any more work that day.

I sat there looking as though I was reading, as though I was taking in a single word on the page, but I wasn’t. I was instead thinking about what Caspien had done. How quickly he’d rushed to help me. How carefully and thoroughly he’d washed my hands, and how he’d almost looked concerned about whether I might die.

It would have been very inconvenient if you’d died in my uncle’s arboretum.

Inconvenient.

Well, I’d thanked him, and that was that. I didn’t owe him anything else. But it annoyed me that I was sitting there thinking about him and whether it meant I had to be nice to him now. I wanted to go right back to loathing the posh twat.

I was lost in those thoughts when the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard began to flutter out of Deveraux House. It was faint, as though being carried to me by the breeze that had travelled in with the lowering of the sun. It was coming from the other side of the house.

It was a piano; of that much I was certain. It didn’t surprise me that there was a piano in there; it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a whole orchestra in there. I rose, closing my book and wandering in the direction of the noise. Around the side of the house was a covered stone patio that ran the length of this side, and about halfway down were a set of glass-panelled doors that opened outward. The music poured out from inside.

As I approached the open doors, the melody changed, turning into something mournful. Beautiful still, but with a sad undercurrent that pulled me closer to it. I crept quietly, feeling like a trespasser, a thief and a peeping tom all at once.

Inside, Caspien sat with his back to the open doors, his fingers flying over the keys of a large black piano. His head was lowered and focused. The song was urgent now but then slowed again. It meandered, flowing from delicate to chaotic, joyous and then heart-breaking. Looping over and back on itself in a spellbinding cadence. I’d never seen anyone play a piano in real life before, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. That something so beautiful and delicate and emotional could come from him.

This cruel, horrible menace of a person had done two things today to change the way I looked at him.

I moved toward him without thought, desperate to be closer to the noise and to him, and it was only when he lifted his head that I stopped and held my breath.

The music reached a pinnacle of some kind; a repetitive disconsolate section that made goosebumps rise up on the back of my neck and arms. His head dropped again, and he shook it, his right foot moving furiously but with purpose.

After the crescendo, it slowed again, a light tinkering before it faded to a deafening empty silence.

Caspien wasn’t moving.

“You have played it better,” said a voice said from my right.

My head snapped around to find Gideon sitting by another open door a little further down. His legs were crossed at the knee and he had a newspaper on it. He was watching me very closely. I stopped breathing.

“Then perhaps you should try playing it instead?” Caspien said, standing. He didn’t sound insulted, just mildly bored. “Am I dismissed now?”

“Of course, make sure you take Falstaff for his ride before it gets too dark.”

Caspien nodded and slid out from behind the piano, and strode from the room.

Then I was alone with Gideon Deveraux and his calculating stare.

“I’m sorry,” I offered when I was certain Caspien was out of earshot.

“Oh, you’ve nothing to apologise for, Jude.” He waved a hand before glancing in the direction Caspien had gone. “He’s rather remarkable, isn’t he?”

It wasn’t the first word that came to mind when I thought about Caspien.

“He’s talented.”

“Yes. He’s exceptional at most things he does. La Troyeux say he could be an equestrian, a professional tennis player, an artist, or a pianist. Achingly beautiful too, which seems extremely unfair. He’ll break a thousand hearts, I’m sure of it.”

He looked me dead in the eye as he said this. I didn’t know what to say. It felt strange to hear his uncle call him beautiful.

I didn’t think it was something Luke would ever say about me, though maybe that was because I wasn’t beautiful. I wasn’t ugly; I knew that. I knew girls liked what they saw when they looked at me. But I also knew I wasn’t what anyone would call beautiful.

Caspien was, I supposed, beautiful. If a boy could be beautiful, then yes, he was. Objectively. He had slightly girlish features and soft skin. He smelled sweet and clean. His hands were shapely and pretty with long, elegant fingers. Fingers that could command horses, play piano, and wash poison from my skin.

Gideon was waiting for me to say something. I hoped it wasn’t that Caspien was beautiful because that wasn’t something I’d ever say out loud.

“I am so happy you’re going to be living here, truly, Jude.”

“We are, too.” It was half a lie. Luke was happy. Beth, too. I was mainly concerned about my soon-to-be-normal proximity to his beautiful, talented, exceptional nephew.

“I think you could be very good for him, you know,” Gideon said.

My stomach quivered with dread as I glanced in the direction he’d gone. “Um, I don’t know if we really...”

“I told you, he’s prickly but soft underneath.” Gideon cut me off gently, closing his newspaper and setting it on the table by the chair.

“Like a hedgehog then?” I said.

Gideon laughed. “Yes, exactly. And he doesn’t have many friends, you see.”

I wanted to say: Yeah, and I know why.

“And I think a good, dependable boy like you is just what he needs.” Gideon came towards me, a look on his face like he was sizing me up for a task he had complete confidence in me for. I stood taller. “Your uncle says you like to read.” He glanced at the book in my hand.

“Yes, sir.”

“That you want to write books one day?”

My cheeks warmed. Luke had told him that. Christ, did Caspien know? I felt sick. I wasn’t embarrassed about it, but I knew that it sounded frivolous and childlike. Not like wanting to be a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer. I was sure wanting to be a writer was something Caspien would make fun of.

“I’d like to try, yes.” I smiled.

Gideon nodded. “Well, trying is the first part of doing. He gave me an encouraging smile. “Look, we have rather an impressive library here, the biggest on the island the last time I checked.” He crossed the room in a different direction from the one Caspien had gone and pushed open a door that was built almost into the wall.

I followed, confused but excited. I loved libraries. There was a small one in town and an even smaller one in school. Stacks of books comforted me – their smell, their weight, their possibility. On a Saturday afternoon, I’d hide in the aisles of Brown’s in town and lose myself for hours while Luke and Beth did the grocery shop.

Gideon led the way down a dank-smelling corridor with no natural light before shoving open another door. He pushed it wide and stepped aside to let me in behind him.

My mouth fell open.

It was a library straight from a picture book about what libraries should look like. Rows of books from floor to ceiling, a second mezzanine wrapped around the room’s upper part, and which appeared to be accessed via an iron spiral staircase. Behind the staircase to the mezzanine was a little reading nook. A pair of leather couches faced each other in the centre of the room, with a table covered with more books. Two large arched windows on one side of the room provided light, both with comfortable-looking window seats at their bases.

I had an image of Caspien curled up in one, his slippers kicked off and his hair pulled up, and I got a rush of something hot in my chest. Jealousy, I told myself.

“This is...crazy.”

“You like it?”

“It’s awesome, Lord Deveraux.”

“If you’re going to be living here, Jude, I really must insist you call me Gideon. All this lord nonsense makes me feel like my father.”

“Okay...Gideon.” It felt strange, but I would get used to it.

“Much better.” Gideon beamed, moving into the library. He swept his hand out. “Now, these are all very old books; some have been in our family for years, but this section here is more modern, though Seraphina was more interested in romance and ghost stories. I’m not sure you’ll find anything to your liking here either.” This was the second mention of Seraphina today and I realised with a shock that this had to be Caspien’s mother.

He gestured toward a few low shelves of books beneath one of the windows. “These were her favourites.” He turned to me. “How about you make a list of books and authors you like, and I can order some in and update these shelves a little? I would ask Caspien what is popular amongst teenagers, but he reads Russian and French Literature almost exclusively, and there’s plenty of that here already.”

Russian and French literature. Of course, he bloody did.

“I suppose it’s all Harry Potter?” Gideon checked.

I lifted my book to show him what I was reading. “I don’t like Harry Potter much,” I said.

“George Orwell, huh? Well, there might be some of his here somewhere. In any case, I’m more than happy for you to come up here and use this place whenever you want once you’re all in the cottage. It doesn’t see nearly enough use these days, like most of the rooms in this house, sadly.”

It was a generous offer. This was the biggest library I’d ever seen. I could lose hours in here quite happily. But there was one issue: one blonde, Russian and French literature-reading issue. And I expected it would be enough to keep me away.

“Does Caspien use it?” I asked. I didn’t look at Gideon; instead, I cast my eyes along a row of books. I recognised none of the titles.

“When he’s home, sometimes. But mostly, he reads in his room.”

Caspien’s room. I tried to imagine it. I bet it didn’t have dirty socks and underwear lying around it. I bet it didn’t have sweet wrappers and a row of dirty glasses on the windowsill. He’d likely have a double bed too.

Almost immediately, I averted my thoughts in a completely different direction because I didn’t know why I was thinking about his bedroom or his bed.

“I can speak with Luke if you think he’ll have an issue with you spending time here without him,” Gideon said gently.

I turned to him. His eyes were kind and filled with understanding.

I think I knew what he was implying, but I couldn’t be certain. As it was, Luke liked Gideon and was one of the few folk on the island who didn’t think Gideon was a pervert.

I smiled. “He won’t.”

“I should speak with him anyway. Just to make sure. If you think you’ll use it, that is.”

I looked around the library again. Took a deep breath. The smell of leather, wood, and books was intoxicating. I imagined it in winter, with the fire lit in the large fireplace and the snow falling outside. It’s how I imagined the Bodleian library at Oxford to look.

How could I say no to it?

“I’ll definitely use it,” I said. “I’ll wait until school starts though, as I wouldn’t want to get in Caspien’s way. So when he’s gone back to school, I’ll definitely be here, a lot.”

“Oh, Caspien won’t be returning to Le Troyeux this term,” Gideon said.

My heart shuddered loudly. “What?”

“He’ll be studying here, at Deveraux, with a private tutor.” Gideon’s hand landed on my shoulder.

My mouth dried up. Caspien wasn’t going to Switzerland when school started? I tried to keep my face expressionless, but I’m not sure I was very successful when the smallest of smiles pushed at the corner of Gideon’s mouth.

“Which is why your company will be absolutely critical for him, I rather think. Gosh, everything is working out quite wonderfully, isn’t it?”

I felt sick, but I nodded anyway.