Saint Kate of the Cupcake: The Dangers of Lust and Baking (3 page)

It was a while before I got back to the party, and I couldn’t see Andrew anywhere. I asked a few people I had met earlier, but no one could tell me where they had last seen him except by the side of the pool where I had seen him last too. I assumed that he’d possibly gone for a shower now, as they were all occupied, and I would see him when he got out. Food was being served at the buffet that had been set up, and I followed the other guests to get dinner. I started chatting and lost track of time for a bit. It was getting dark, and Andrew still hadn’t emerged, so I went to look for him. He wasn’t in the change rooms or the pool. I was about to search the surrounding gardens when I ran into Jack.

“Hi! Have you seen Andrew?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“No, but he was drinking pretty heavily, though, so…I’ll help you look for him.”

“It’s okay. You probably have people you need to talk to. I can have a look for him.” He was hobbling around on crutches, so he wasn’t the most obvious person to enlist in a search party.

“Nonsense! It’s the least I can do, Kate,” he said, his smile charming though slightly smug. Not sure why he had the cat-that-got-the-cream look about him, I shrugged. I didn’t want to waste any time wondering what was going on in his mind. We searched the gardens, calling out Andrew’s name. We stumbled on a few people in the bushes, much to my embarrassment and Jack’s amusement, before finding Andrew passed out in the rose garden.

“Oh dear,” I said, looking him over and wondering how to extract him from the thorny plants. He was out cold and had a few scratches on his face and arms, though not as many as I would have thought, given he was still only wearing his swimming trunks.

“He never could drink whisky.” Jack shook his head and smirked. Then he hobbled over to the pool house to call the main house and returned shortly. After a few minutes, a man came to help. Without any introduction and only the briefest of nods to me, we each took one of Andrew’s legs and pulled. Then he took the heavier end under Andrew’s shoulders while I took his legs, and together we carried him into the house and up the stairs to the first floor.

Concentrating on not falling over while supporting half of Andrew, I didn’t pay attention to where we were going. Jack led the way to a room which I think was halfway down the upper left-hand hallway, and we plonked him on the bed. The silent man nodded again and left. I looked around the reasonably-sized room, which was furnished with gleaming dark-wood furniture and deep blues.

“We should get him out of his wet costume,” I said, but I made no move to do it.

“Surely you’d be the best person to do that?” Jack said, looking at me inquiringly.

“No, not really. This is as close to naked as I’ve ever seen him,” I said bluntly.

“I haven’t seen him naked since we were at school and have no ambition to ever do so again,” Jack said with a laugh.

“Wet swimmers are the least of it. Maybe we should spare him the embarrassment of waking up without them.” His hangover was going to hurt, and he’d probably have some memory loss, so waking up naked was bound to freak him out, even if there turned out to be a completely innocent explanation.

“Good point. It’s not like they’re still wet anyway,” he agreed. With that, I pulled the covers over him and followed Jack out of the room.

“Andrew said there would be a room for me?” I asked hopefully.

“Yes, yours is the one at the end of the hallway.” He indicated the door four down from Andrew’s.

“Well, thank you for having me to stay. I might bring our bags up now. I’m sure Andrew will want his in the morning.”

“Don’t bother yourself with that. I’ll ask Daniels. Come.” I had no idea who that was, but he had already hobbled off, and to prevent getting myself lost, I followed. He moved surprisingly fast on his crutches. We were just coming down the wide main stairs when we passed the butler.

“Daniels!” he called out.

“Yes, sir?” the man asked impassively.

“Could you please arrange to get Miss Winters’ bag from the pool house and take it to the blue room? Get Andrew’s too, if you will. He’s in the first bachelor room. What do they look like?” he asked me. I gave a brief description of our bags.

“Very well, sir, madam.” Daniels bowed slightly and walked off.

“Now, let’s have a drink without everyone bothering us so I can get to know you better.”

“Lovely,” I murmured, wondering when that became my default response. For some reason, Jack didn’t seem that keen to get back to the party. He led us into the library, which was on the ground floor and down another long hallway. It was a large and luxurious room, softly lit by scattered table lamps. Beautiful leather-bound books in gleaming wood bookshelves encased the room on all sides. Paintings of graceful people reclining or looking into the distance adorned the spaces between the books and over the fireplace.

We sunk down into the opposite ends of a deep pillowy couch covered in a red stripy fabric. Jack hefted his injured leg up onto the pouf covered with a different, though tonally similar, floral material. I looked around the room at the tables full of knickknacks and framed photographs, amazed that nothing matched but produced a busy-but-harmonious effect. Nothing like the polished minimalism of my parents’ home in Sydney.

“So, what’s your poison? Wine, whisky, port?” he asked.

“I’ll drink anything. Bit of a lush that way,” I replied, only half-joking.

“Whisky it is.” He raised himself again, clattered off to one of the cupboards, and returned very efficiently with a bottle and two glasses, gripped precariously in the fingers he could spare from the crutches.

“Well done,” I said, indicating his balancing act.

“Glad you’re impressed.” He sat back down and poured us a dram each. “Bottoms up.” He shotted it. I shrugged and did the same.

We talked of inconsequential things and kept drinking. It turned out he was older than I had first thought and had just finished his degree in Physics at Oxford and was interviewing for jobs in merchant banking in London. He had one sibling, a younger brother who was in his final year at Harrow. Before long, the conversation became more philosophical and intimate. He revealed that his choice of degree and subsequent career were solely to keep his parents happy.

“
One must study a discipline, not a vocation!”
he said in a high voice, imitating someone who sounded a bit like the Queen.

“But you were able to choose what you studied?”

“It was that or Geography.”

“That was your only choice? What about universities? Surely you could pick that?”

“No, it was Oxford or nothing,” he said with a shake of his head.

“If you could have done anything, what would you have done?” I asked curiously.

He looked at me, thinking.

“No idea.” He shrugged. “Why think about something that’s not even an option?” Beneath the posh and careless manner, in odd moments, there was a flash of deep sadness which intrigued me, though his flirting was a bit heavy-handed.

“I liked your swimsuit,” he said, raising his eyebrows suggestively, but the evenness of his smile took away some of the leering.

“I didn’t realize you’d even seen me. I wasn’t in for long. It was way too cold!”

“I don’t think there was a man there who missed it. Some of the girls were looking too.”

“They’re just breasts,” I said dryly. “I don’t see what all the fuss is about.”

“It’s not just the breasts; it’s the whole package. Great legs, beautiful face, tall. You could be Elle McPherson’s younger, better-looking sister. You could be a model.”

Hmm…Why was it guys thought all women wanted to be told they could be a model? Clearly I wasn’t, and I wasn’t deluded enough to believe I had simply been overlooked by model scouts all these years. I knew I was tall, but I was nowhere near narrow enough to have been an actual model. Besides, this was the nineties, and the waif look was in. Kate Moss I was not.

“Right, and you’re also forgetting that my date got so drunk, he passed out in the bushes at the start of the night. Apparently, my company was not very riveting,” I said ruefully, deciding to not take issue with the model comment. I simply couldn’t be bothered explaining why it was a stupid thing to say when he obviously thought it was a compliment.

“I don’t know what Andrew’s problem is, but it’s not you.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I’m just glad to have you alone so I don’t have to fight off the admiring hordes to talk to you.”

“That’s very flattering and all, but what about your girlfriend? Won’t she be looking for you?”

“Not my girlfriend, just someone I see sometimes. Nothing serious.”

Nice! He had a fuck-buddy. I wondered if she thought it was as casual as he did. I was betting not. Still, it was none of my business; I wasn’t trying to date him.

“Um, you should probably get back to the party. Your guests will be wondering where you are,” I said, putting my glass down and moving to rise.

“No, stay,” he said softly, his hand on my arm. “Everyone is enjoying themselves, and they don’t need me there for that. I can’t even dance with my leg in the cast. I have to rely on everyone coming to talk to me, or I’d be left there on my own. At least here I’m comfortable, and I’m sure you’re too polite to leave me on my own.” He looked at me pointedly.

I was stuck, unless I wanted to put up a fuss or could think of a plausible excuse. For want of a good reason to leave, I ended up talking to Jack until four in the morning.

Chapter Three

J
ACK
S
TARTED
T
URNING
U
P
in my life while at the same time Andrew completely disappeared from it. After a tense and silent drive back from the party, he no longer came to my desk to chat and averted his eyes if I ran into him at work. I figured he was embarrassed by what happened and seeing me reminded him of it. I tried to talk to him, but he clearly didn’t want to be anywhere near me. It bothered me a bit, but I let it go as I couldn’t force him to talk to me, and Jack was soon taking up all my free time and headspace anyway.

“Come with me, Katie. You’re the only thing that will make it bearable. Otherwise I will be terribly bored,” he complained, playing with my fingers as we sat in the café, waiting for our lunch.

“But I feel like I’m taking advantage of you. You take me to all these great places, and we’re not even together.”

“I
like
spending time with you.”

“Everyone thinks we’re dating.”

“I don’t care what they think. We know we’re friends, and that’s what matters. You’re my best female friend, and I’d rather take you and have fun than someone else who bores me to tears and whose mother is whispering in her ear, trying to marry us off.” His fingers tightened around my hand, and his gaze was just slightly too intense.

“Okay.” I squeezed his hand back. It seemed we were touching a lot, but it didn’t feel weird. I was a tactile person, and he was too.
It didn’t mean anything
, I assured myself and anyone else who would listen.

We went to the Chelsea Flower Show, Wimbledon, Henley Royal Regatta, Glyndebourne, Glorious Goodwood, and Cowes Week. There didn’t seem to be a social event that we didn’t go to. Jack provided an entry that I would never, ever have been accorded on my own. I felt guilty about going, even though he insisted that I was doing him the favor by accompanying him. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Jack; I did, but part of me wasn’t sure what we were doing. We were friends, but closer than that, seeing each other almost every day. He kept asking me to things, not taking no for an answer. He didn’t push things on a physical level, which I was expecting, and that threw me off balance.

Then August came around, and I received a crash course in hunting and shooting. Culturally, England and Australia are not dissimilar, but Jack found it mind-boggling that I had never done these things and that they weren’t organized activities back home. The only time I’d been hunting was on a friend’s farm when we were teenagers, and we literally just grabbed some guns and went walking. I didn’t see any wild boar (thankfully) or shoot anything apart from a large tree. The English system seemed far more involved, though only nine people, usually men, actually shot at things. Everyone else was along for the more casual Friday night and formal Saturday night dinners and a relaxing and fun weekend. Well, that was the theory.

The first time was a lesson in humiliation.

The Friday night dinner was fairly casual and largely unremarkable. The next day was horrific. Only the men were shooting, so everyone else was floating around the house for the day. It was raining, so lunch was served inside. I was one of the first to arrive, so I sat down at one end. After ten minutes, the other women turned up and, seeing me, pointedly sat at the other end of the table. No one even spoke to me, and I felt like
that
kid at school, the one who, for no particular reason, gets treated like a leper.

I had that same tightness in my chest and slightly sick feeling in my stomach that I associated with the excruciating self-awareness of my teenage years, where every social contact was fraught with embarrassment and endless possibilities for recriminations and self-loathing. I took a deep breath, reminding myself that I was no longer an awkward teen who didn’t make new friends easily. I was a lawyer, damn it, which was more than these spoiled princesses had ever managed to achieve. They faffed around, playing at working as PR girls or legal secretaries. They came in late, went for a smoke, and generally believed they were there solely for decoration, biding their time until they married one of the men they knew.