Her smile was shaky—but it, too, was almost identical to Jessica’s.
“Thank you,” she said, very simply.
Even Pet was very quiet on the trip back to London. When they were about twenty minutes from St. Giles Palace, Sylvie heard a muffled sniff from the back seat and stretched her arm back.
Pet’s hand clasped hers. Her fingers were damp. “I wish I could go back in time and tell him,” she said in a fierce, unsteady whisper. “It’s so— It’s awful. That he never knew she’d chosen him. That she was going to fight for them.”
Sylvie looked at Dominic. His profile was grim and handsome and so very . . . dear. “Maybe he knows now,” she said softly. “I hope he knows now.”
He turned his head and their eyes met for a long moment.
It wasn’t raining in the city, but the cold air was a sharp bite. Dominic found a parking space a couple of blocks from the palace, and Sylvie huddled inside her coat as they walked the distance to the west grounds. Although it was still a bit mad that she had the private cell number for a senior member of the royal family, she’d contacted Rosie before they’d left Oxfordshire. The princess was on her way to a royal engagement in the Cotswolds, but she’d granted them permission to enter the private part of the park.
Sounding preoccupied, a definitely tight note underlying her greeting, Rosie had given her concise directions to the location of Patrick’s “thinking spot.”
“I’ll let security know you’re coming. You might bump into Johnny,” she’d said before hanging up. “He’s needed quite a bit of breathing room in the garden this week.”
That two-minute call had done nothing to alleviate Sylvie’s growing concerns about this wedding.
A guard let them through a locked gate, and they followed a winding path through rain-soaked trees. It was lovely—she’d had no idea the gardens were so extensive; it was bizarre that a hop and a skip away were some of the busiest metropolitan roads in Britain. They crossed over a little bridge, Pet peering over the side at a large pond.
“No fish,” she murmured with obvious disappointment.
Sylvie knew when they’d found the right place, even without consulting Rosie’s instructions. Under the enveloping branches of an enormous mulberry tree was a small wooden bench, carved from a tree trunk, the legs a whimsical profusion of whittled leaves and flowers. On closer inspection, she saw a small carved mouse peeking around the left side. There were rosebushes everywhere, but arranged far more haphazardly than the precise landscaping elsewhere. In the warmer months, the ground would likely be a carpet of wildflowers.
There were artworks right throughout the grounds, but Sylvie found the sculpture in a small clearing beyond the tree.
Jessica’s gift to Patrick was a cast bronze of two kneeling figures, a man and a woman. There were no facial features, merely smooth planes and deliberate mystery. They sat facing one another, knees and foreheads touching. Their hands were extended, the man’s cupped beneath his lover’s. On her upturned palms was an intricate trinity knot.
The edges of the knot were wrought from delicate ribbons of bronze, and Jessica had filled in the interior with stained glass. Even on an overcast day, when the sky was dull and heavy with rain clouds, the weak light sparkled in the glass, shimmering in a multitude of colors.
Dominic came to stand at her side, and for long minutes they remained there in silence. Pet had sat down on the bench at the mulberry tree, obviously giving them privacy.
At last, he said, “I can see why it gave him comfort to come here.”
She pressed her cheek against his bicep, his wool coat scratchy against her skin.
He lowered his head to rest against hers.
They were leaving the peaceful copse with Pet, Sylvie flicking through the photos she’d taken of the sculpture, when she heard the low murmur of voices.
Frowning, she looked around, but saw no one. There were guards patrolling the park, but she hadn’t seen them for some time.
“Who . . .” Pet began as they turned the corner, and then Sylvie saw them outside a small stone building.
Johnny stood in the doorway with a tall blonde woman. Spiral curls were poking out under her woolen hat, and her gloved hands waved for emphasis as she spoke. She was doing most of the talking, Johnny inserting a word here and there, shaking his head.
The body language on both sides was intense.
As the sky overhead gave an ominous rumble and the first raindrops began to fall again, the woman moved forward and suddenly they were clutching each other’s arms.
Johnny fell back a few steps.
And as they disappeared back into the outbuilding, their mouths slammed together in a fierce kiss.
Chapter Sixteen
Sugar Fair
The bell gave a homey little tinkle as Dominic held open the door to Sugar Fair, and Sylvie slipped past him, looking grim. Pet—also in an unusually subdued incarnation—had headed straight across the street to De Vere’s.
Inside, he absently noted the number of customers milling around and was satisfied for Sylvie’s sake. Less thrilled about the people trying to take photos of them, and failing in any semblance of subtlety or manners.
He stared directly at a few of them. Cheeks immediately flushed, phones were flung into bags, and one person hid behind the sugar ice castle.
Sylvie’s assistant—“You can call me Mabel”; subtext: You total dickhead—was sitting at her central table, humming classic rock against the background splash of the chocolate waterfall. The diamantés on her skull bracelet glittered under the overhead lights. She looked up briefly from the amezaiku flamingo she was painting a vivid fuchsia pink, surveyed Dominic with cold dislike from head to foot, and ignored them both.
If it wouldn’t result in Sylvie castrating him with a pastry cutter, he’d offer Mabel a signing incentive to join his staff on the spot.
“I’ll just be in the office for a while,” Sylvie said, and Mabel grunted.
As she opened the bookcase of chocolate boxes, which he would vote as hands down the best part of her entire aesthetic here, the other woman spoke without looking away from her rapidly flickering brush. “Don’t do it on the desk. The front left leg is wobbling again. Should the entire thing collapse, I will make sure your headstone says DEAD GIVING HEAD, SHOULD HAVE USED A BED.”
Sylvie closed the door behind them with a thud. For the first time in hours, humor was a momentary flicker in her eyes. “If you still want her, I may be prepared to negotiate.”
In the cramped office space, which was really too small for one desk, let alone two, she put her bag down. The room was overheated, and he shrugged off his coat, draping it over the back of a chair.
Sylvie was still holding her phone, on which were several photos of Johnny and his mystery companion, attached at the lips in every frame.
While they’d been standing there, Pet had whipped out her own phone and taken some rapid-fire shots. His baby sister would make a frighteningly efficient private investigator. And if he’d vocalized that opinion, she would already be heading out to the shops in search of a trilby and trench coat.
She’d AirDropped them to Sylvie, leaving it to them to decide what to do.
“The sculpture was beautiful.” Sylvie’s voice was very flat. Dominic could see exactly what Kathleen had meant about the light dimming in a very bright person, and the sight of her unhappiness was like steel wool on his nerve endings. “I can finish my cake proposal,” she went on in those low tones. “I know the right design now.” She looked at him. “You?”