All the other tables were occupied by a large pre-wedding-party. Grace surreptitiously stared at them from behind her menu and tried to work out if it was the future groom who was looking as if his whole world had turned to broken biscuit. The bride-to-be was book-ended by two older women, who had to be mother and mother-in-law-to-be, and appeared close to tears. Grace gave the couple two years at best, but before she could start pontificating on the topic of marriage, which usually left her in a foul mood, Vaughn appeared through the French doors.
He looked around slowly, but didn’t smile as he caught sight of Grace. He still wasn’t smiling as he wove his way through the tables to get to her, and Grace’s heart sank. She’d screwed up. He’d been expecting some decadent buffet of oysters and lobster laid out in their room so they could get straight down to the shagging . . .
‘You look very Daisy Miller sitting there,’ Vaughn said as he reached her, and leaned down to brush his lips across her cheek.
Grace took a moment to get the reference. ‘That’s probably one of my favourite books,’ she lied. It wasn’t, but she’d contemplated having her hair cut into a Mia Farrow crop when she’d seen the film.
‘Are you enjoying this?’ Vaughn asked, picking up her ragged copy of
Kavalier & Clay
as he sat down.
‘It’s all right. Long though,’ Grace admitted. ‘I always get intimidated by big books before I’ve even started them. Is this all right?’ She gestured at the candlelit terrace. ‘Eating out here, I mean. It’s so hot and they said they could hold the table if you were late.’
Vaughn nodded. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt - untucked, Grace was pleased to note - but his casual clothes didn’t make him seem friendlier. Instead they highlighted how stiff he was, his face pinched in the soft light.
‘Are you OK?’ Grace asked, before she could stop herself.
He nodded again. ‘Long day,’ he elaborated. ‘And then we were last in a queue to take off. I don’t like helicopters. They’re too flimsy.’
Grace had been thinking exactly the same thing. ‘You should have a drink,’ she decided firmly, because it was her answer for everything. She picked up the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from the ice bucket and reached for his glass. It was a very mistressly thing to do - maybe that’s why Vaughn smiled approvingly as she carefully tilted the condensation-slicked bottle.
‘It’s nice to get out of London,’ Grace ventured once he’d taken a small sip of wine. ‘It’s really pretty here.’
‘Let’s order.’ Vaughn summoned a hovering waiter with a flick of his hand. Grace wasn’t in any rush to go upstairs, and she could have stretched out the meal to all three courses and suggested that they linger over coffee, but wary of Vaughn’s hard gaze, she ordered a mozzarella salad.
‘As my main course and with a side order of chips.’ Anything more solid would never have got round the lump that had suddenly materialised in her throat and she needed the carbs to soak up the alcohol, because, once again, she wasn’t exactly sober.
None of Grace’s carefully prepared conversational forays worked. ‘Don’t ask,’ Vaughn sighed painfully when she enquired how the global art market was faring. And her thoughts on the new exhibition at the Tate Modern, that she’d prepped on the train, met with a dismissive, ‘It’s just for the tourists. All that gimmicky rubbish goes down well in the cheap seats.’
Forty-six hours, Grace thought to herself. It’s forty-six hours out of your entire life. You can get through this. But then she could imagine another forty-six hours next weekend, plus a couple of evenings during the week; that would be eight more hours. Her whole life for the foreseeable future would be made up of blocks of time when she didn’t know what to say or how to act, or how to do anything that might possibly please him.
Vaughn was picking at his Dover sole, brows knitted together. Grace put down her knife and fork and pushed away her salad. Across the terrace, the blushing bride was gulping down a cocktail with a haunted look on her face as she was harangued by the Mamas. For a second, Grace thought about whipping out her phone and taking a picture to send to Lily with the caption
Behold your future!
‘What are you smirking about?’ Vaughn asked, startling Grace from her evil plans.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ Grace mumbled hastily. Vaughn didn’t sound like he minded the smirking, but she was terrible at reading his moods. ‘Really. Just this silly idea I had.’
For the first time that evening, she finally had Vaughn’s full attention, though Grace wasn’t sure that was a good thing. He was looking at her as if she might actually have hidden depths, so he was doomed to be disappointed. ‘Do share,’ he drawled, with just enough challenge that Grace couldn’t back down.
‘It’s so dumb.’ If she started with the disclaimer then Vaughn wasn’t allowed to hold anything Grace said against her. Well, he could, but he’d been warned. She gestured discreetly at the other tables. ‘That’s a wedding-party over there. The bride’s getting aggro from what can only be her mother and her soon-to-be mother-in-law and that bloke who’s wearing the blue shirt - I think he’s the groom - he looks like he wants to call the whole thing off.’
‘Their obvious distress gives you pleasure?’
Grace thought about sticking her tongue out, but that could be misconstrued. ‘No! It’s just my best friend Lily’s getting married and I thought it would be funny to take a picture on my phone and send it to her so she could see what she was getting herself into.’
Vaughn was smiling now. Not one of his chilly smiles but something warmer that opened the shutters a little. ‘She’s having cold feet?’
‘As if!’ Grace snorted inelegantly. ‘She’s been banging on about centrepieces and trying to bully me into a buttercup-yellow bridesmaid’s dress. I swear, she’s going to put me on a diet so I don’t ruin the wedding pictures.’
Vaughn gave her a lazy appraisal. ‘You know you don’t need to lose weight,’ he said mildly. Which was sweet of him, but the empire line of Grace’s Ossie Clark dress was very forgiving and he was making major inroads into Grace’s chips for someone who claimed she didn’t need to cut the carbs. ‘So the future doesn’t look good for our fellow guests?’ he added, inclining his head in the direction of the other tables.
‘I give them a year,’ Grace stated firmly. ‘Two years if she gets knocked up on the honeymoon.’
And making Vaughn laugh like that, really laugh so he shook silently and pinked up, was going to be added to the list of Grace’s ongoing projects, which currently included finding the perfect LBD and learning to make lace. It took at least ten years off him.
‘Why the gloomy forecast?’ he asked, after the laughter had ebbed away so the only reminder left was a softening of his voice.
Grace swept her eyes along the table. ‘The bride has the potential to grow into a real harpie - just look at her mum.’ She grinned. ‘And I think the groom’s gay for his best man. Jesus! Don’t stare! They’ll know we’re talking about them.’
‘You’re quite right,’ Vaughn agreed, standing up so he could pick up his chair and sit down next to Grace. ‘And I couldn’t really see properly anyway. Which one’s the groom again?’
Halfway through Grace’s character assassination of a woman they’d decided had slept with the groom’s father after a Masonic dinner dance in 1987, Vaughn draped his arm around Grace’s shoulder, fingers ghosting across her clavicle, and the rush of sensation was as unexpected as Vaughn’s laughter. When he tugged on a stray tendril of hair escaping from her topknot, Grace almost turned her head to kiss him. Instead she picked up her glass with a not-quite steady hand and said, ‘I’m pretty sure the woman in the nasty red dress is a Russian mail-order bride.’
Vaughn shook his head. ‘Actually I think she’s from the Ukraine.’ He gestured for a waiter. ‘You should order pudding.’
‘Not for me, I’m stuffed,’ Grace protested.
‘You must, Grace. They do a wonderful sticky toffee pudding,’ Vaughn urged her. ‘You really didn’t eat much dinner.’
Grace looked at him incredulously. Sticky toffee pudding in this heat? Maybe Vaughn was a feeder and his endgame was locking her in a basement, tying her up and pouring liquid lard down her throat. She’d seen a documentary about it on Channel 4. ‘Two spoons, please,’ she yelped at the waiter once Vaughn had ordered the pudding and two glasses of brandy.
The waiter left and Grace wondered if she should carry on describing the wedding-party from hell before they lapsed into another uncomfortable silence, but the other diners were starting to head indoors. The groom’s Uncle Bertie (a secret cross-dresser, they’d decided) ambled past their table and Vaughn suddenly raised his glass.
‘Are you here for a wedding?’ he enquired.
‘My god-daughter,’ the man replied, slurring his words because Grace had already identified him as a heavy drinker from his bulbous red nose and crumpled white suit. ‘Can’t say I like the fella she’s marrying though.’
‘Well, I hope they’ll be very happy together,’ Vaughn murmured. ‘We were just remarking on what a beautiful couple they are.’
Grace smiled weakly, which was hard when she was biting her lip at the same time. The moment that the man unsteadily tottered off, she picked up her napkin and swiped Vaughn with it. ‘Give me a warning next time,’ she spluttered through her giggles.
‘He wasn’t anyone’s uncle. You were wrong. You’ll have to pay a forfeit later,’ Vaughn said, his fingers rubbing circles on the back of her neck, and Grace swayed a little closer as the waiter presented her pudding with what she thought was a very unnecessary flourish.
She looked at the bowl without much enthusiasm. Then she quickly swallowed a mouthful of ice cream to cool her down. It didn’t work. ‘No, it’s too much.’
Vaughn was already pulling the bowl closer. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked perfunctorily, and Grace didn’t even have time to nod before he brought the spoon to his mouth.
Every time he swallowed, Vaughn would close his eyes and purse his lips, like he was having these tiny moments of rapture. It was the cutest thing Grace thought she’d ever seen, though Vaughn wasn’t at all cute. He was, like, the Anti-Cute.
Still, when he’d scraped up the last sticky pools of melted ice cream, she vowed that, when he was being his most intimidating and infuriating, she’d remember him like this - with a smear of ice cream clinging to his bottom lip.
And, quickly, before she could wimp out, Grace leaned in and kissed him clean, snaking out her tongue to lick away a stray crumb. She felt Vaughn tense - and just when he gave in and opened his mouth . . . she pulled away and smiled at him. She could
so
do this.
‘Shall we have the brandy in our room?’ she suggested.
Vaughn didn’t touch Grace during the climb upstairs. With one hand cradling her glass of brandy and the other holding up the hem of her dress so she didn’t trip, it made coordination tricky. Especially as Grace could feel Vaughn’s eyes etching a pattern right between her shoulderblades.
She stumbled through the door and took a second to catch her breath, before she turned to face him.
Vaughn shut the door with a decisive thud and leaned back against it. ‘This will do,’ he said, so blandly that Grace wasn’t sure if he was talking about the room or her. ‘Have you been smoking in here?’
Grace sniffed the air. She’d had the window open the entire time and she couldn’t smell any lingering traces of Marlboro Lights. ‘I had one,’ she said defensively, hoping he wasn’t going to give her a lecture on the perils of smoking because that would damp down the little spark that was still smouldering.
But Vaughn just smiled. ‘You shouldn’t. You’ll get wrinkles on that pretty face,’ he purred, taking her hand so he could pull her towards the bed.
It was going to be like that. No stilted conversation and tentative kisses - and anyway, Grace had had enough of those to last several lifetimes. Vaughn sat on the edge of the bed and tugged her between his legs so she could feel the heat coming off him and felt sure it was mirrored in her own rosy cheeks.
She took a gulp of the brandy and felt the burn sizzle its way down to her belly. Before she could gulp the rest of it down, Vaughn was taking the glass from her and leaning over to place it on the nightstand.
‘I’d very much like to see you undress,’ he remarked conversationally, the picture of poise apart from that familiar tic pulsing away.