It felt all kinds of wrong, following a woman, but Konstantin just wanted them to be alone, that was all.
He wondered where she lived and what it was like, but he didn’t have to wait long. Up the second of the high cobbled streets in the village, behind the main street and the docks, Isla, with her friends carrying on, stopped at a tiny pretty cottage painted bright pink, with light glowing in the windows.
It was a small house, but cute as a button, and Konstantin smiled when he saw it; it suited her. Small and adorable, like a little mouse’s house.
He meant to stop her before she got home, and he could see her glancing around, presumably for him, but just as he was trying to work out a way to do that without startling her, the door flung open, revealing a tiny, furious-looking woman.
“What time do you call this?”
“Mum,” said Isla patiently, in that pretty voice he liked. “It was the MacKenzies’ nativity party! You were invited! You should have come!”
“Waste of bloody time, parties.”
“Well, anyway, I was working.”
“Yup. As usual treating you like a bloody servant. You’re meant for better than this, darling.”
“Mum . . . can we talk about it later . . . ?”
She sounded conciliatory, soothing. Tired. He could see what her loss had done to her, to them. He thought of how his father had tried to do the right thing, had tried to be kind and how he had let him down. He found he had a lump in his throat.
“Did you bring me anything to eat?” Isla’s mother sounded demanding.
“No, but I can make you an omelet if you like? We’ve got eggs.”
“Go on then. If you’re not tired?”
“No,” said Isla, sounding exhausted.
And the door closed shut, and Konstantin turned away, sad for all the little things.
The next morning, despite the threat of Mure civil war over the statue, and Christmas being two days away, Konstantin felt better. He was up early, playing with Bjårk out frolicking in the snow.
He contrived to be out throwing a ball on the side lawn near the entrance Isla always came in, despite the fact that it was both pitch black and minus 1 degree, which, though Konstantin could handle, Bjårk was very much not a fan of. Still, he had a plan that involved hot chocolate and some Norwegian ginger boller he’d baked before he went outside. He was ridiculously proud of himself: the idea that he could just go in and look up a recipe and then make it would have been, just a couple of months ago, as alien to him as flying in the air would have been. It was amazing, he thought, as he had left them to rise, that of all the things he would like doing in his life, working in a kitchen would be one of them.
But it was more than that. After a life entirely devoted to pleasure and fun, with as few difficult or intrusive things to do as he could bear, having to actually stick to things, to get up early, to work on dull, repetitive tasks until he got good at them—this was all very new to him. There was a physical satisfaction in it that he had simply never known before, and he was genuinely astonished.
He was therefore in a happy frame of mind when Isla slipped through the side gate and got quite the fright when Bjårk bounded up to her, barking in a way that suggested, Get me out of this freezing nonsense immediately. She smiled tentatively at first—there was a bit of her, once she’d had the dressing-down from her mother, that had wondered if she’d possibly dreamed the entire thing, or at the very least built it up in her head.
But now, seeing his blond head tilting toward her, she couldn’t help but smile. “What are you doing out here? You’re nuts!”
He shrugged. “Oh, this is nothing to Norwegians.”
“I don’t believe you!”
She bounced up to him, smiling, her eyes streaming with the cold. He reached out his gloved hand and took hers, then glanced around in case anyone could see them, something she couldn’t help noticing. For once she put her insecure thoughts about other people—in this case, very much Candace—to rest and tried to let herself enjoy it. He was here now. Wasn’t that enough?
“Venez venez!” a voice hollered at them from the kitchen door. “Pas de flirting in my kitchen, please,” and they giggled at each other and slipped into the luxuriant warmth.
It occurred suddenly to Isla that Konstantin, of course, actually lived in the hotel and had his bed upstairs. They were . . . well, more or less in his house. She blushed at the thought of it. Of course not. It was impossible. They were at work.
Konstantin glanced at her, wondering what she was thinking. He needed to get away from the hotel; it was ludicrous, given that his bed was upstairs. That was definitely a problem in somewhere so small; he could hardly take her to the Seaside Kitchen on a date.
Which left the Harbour’s Rest, he supposed. Well, maybe if they found a dark corner the sticky glasses wouldn’t be quite so noticeable. Yes. They could do that later. It was a great shame, he reflected, that they couldn’t go to one of the official rooms in the hotel, because he couldn’t think of a more romantic place to take a girl, with the big picture windows framing the snow swirling around the little dock, with the toasty central heating and the immense blazing fire . . . A little of Gaspard’s hidden stash of Bordeaux and everything would just be so nice.
Well. Alas. That absolutely wasn’t going to happen. So he was pretty short of options. A picnic wasn’t really on the agenda either.
“Uhm,” he said as they were standing side by side again, both of them giggling at nothing and concentrating very hard on listening to the radio. “Uhm, so.”
This was ridiculous. The confident Konstantin of a couple of months ago had entirely disappeared. He wondered, for an instant, if it was possible that the old Konstantin had been . . . a bit irritating and full of himself?
Isla couldn’t keep her voice calm. “Yeah?”
Please, she thought. Please let you not be about to suggest that we go upstairs. Please don’t have plans for something absolutely sordid and not . . . She was building it up, she knew. She had feelings for the pot boy. But at the end of the day he was still just a boy, a normal boy who . . . well. She held her breath.
“Uhm, would you like to go for a drink at that strange place on the harbor later?”
Isla could have burst with joy and relief. She knew she was supposed to play it cool and act like she wasn’t bothered . . . but she was so happy, she couldn’t keep a thing from her face.
“Uhm, yeah, all right,” she said finally, trying to tamp down her smile, which was immediately matched next to her.