At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them. ~Jane Austen
It wasn’t until she pressed the doorbell that Holly remembered: she’d worn the earrings Gertrude always mocked. A pair of lovely gold hoops that, inside Gertrude’s cottage, were referred to as “circles.”
“Why do you insist on wearing ‘circles’ in your ears?” Gertrude would chide. “If you’re going to wear earrings, wear proper earrings—hanging pearl drops. Or diamonds. Something classic.” Then she’d cluck her tongue and mutter, “Your generation…”
Not in the mood for a confrontation, Holly removed her ‘circles’ and tucked them inside her skirt pocket then found the scribbled notes she’d made this morning for the book club in case Fletcher weren’t able to attend and take over as guest speaker.
Her phone buzzed impatiently from the other pocket, so she reached to check it and saw a mysterious text. A number she didn’t recognize.
Turn around.
How bizarre.
Curious, she obeyed. And there stood Fletcher, grinning, phone in hand. Relieved, she watched him shut the gate and amble up the stone path.
“You made it,” she said.
He joined her on the step. “Yeah, the director didn’t need me after all. So, I thought, why not come and meet the infamous Gertrude? How bad can she be?”
Holly faced the door. “You’re about to find out.”
Before she could reach for the bell again, Mildred cracked open the door and invited them in.
As Holly tried to make the introductions in the foyer, a bellowing, “Who is that?!” came from the other room. “Come! Show yourselves.”
“We’ve been summoned,” Holly whispered with wide eyes.
Fletcher followed her into the parlor to find Gertrude at her finest. Wearing a long, brown dress with a lace collar, she clutched at Leopold, a yipping little maniac wriggling out of her grasp at the sight of Fletcher.
“Leopold doesn’t like men,” Gertrude announced, reining him in. She looked Fletcher up and down then locked eyes with him. “You are the young man Holly told me about. The American.” She crinkled her nose, as though something putrid had just wafted through.
“Guilty as charged,” he said, closing the three steps between them. He offered his hand, well out of Leopold’s reach, and added, “Fletcher Hays. Pleasure to meet you.”
Gertrude likely decided propriety wouldn’t allow her to refuse it, so she placed the noncommittal tips of her fingers lightly into his palm then returned them to Leopold, who had assessed by now that this stranger wasn’t a threat.
That was when Gertrude saw the boots.
“A true cowboy,” she exclaimed. “I was informed of your Texas roots.”
Fletcher glanced back at Holly, clearly understanding her odd request of footwear, then told Gertrude, “A cowboy? Well, ma’am, that’s a matter of opinion. In some people’s uninformed minds, cowboys are twangy, uneducated hicks who’ve never read a book in their lives. As that description is the exact opposite of me, I must say that the answer is decidedly, ‘No.’”
Gertrude’s lips parted slightly. Holly caught a snicker under her breath.
Gertrude cleared her throat and narrowed her scowl. “Young man. I would like you to state your exact intentions with Holly.”
“Intentions?”
Holly needed to step in before this all went incredibly wrong. “Gertrude, I told you. We’re just fr—”
“What Holly’s trying to say”—Fletcher reached down to thread his fingers through hers—”is that friendship has blossomed into something else. We are, as you’ve suspected, dating. And my intentions are purely honorable.”
Now Holly’s lips were the ones parted in surprise. Gertrude glanced from Fletcher to Holly, then back again. “Well. Be sure that they are. Or you’ll answer to me.”
Attempting an obvious rescue operation, Mildred chirped from the kitchen, “Come in here, you two, and I’ll make you some tea!”
Holly untangled her fingers from Fletcher’s and nudged him toward the kitchen.
“Hey, that was fun,” he said a minute later, as Mildred handed him a cup.
“Why did you do that?!” Holly attempted the same scowl as Gertrude’s but knew it wasn’t effective. She didn’t have a dark enough soul to match it.
“Umm, probably for the same reason you told me to wear boots?”
“Fair enough.”
“Besides, isn’t that better than her thinking you’re an old maid? You said she calls you ‘spinster’ all the time.” He took a sip. “I thought I was helping, getting her off your back. But, you know, I can go in and tell her the truth, if you want.” He’d set down his tea and was already halfway to the door when Holly yanked back his sleeve.
“No!” She pictured weeks and weeks of pity-free discussions ahead. In fact, was it possible she might even receive a smidgen of respect in place of the pity, for once? “Okay, fine. You’re my pretend-boyfriend. But only around Gertrude.”
Mildred raised her cup, hiding her smile.
“Done. But,” Fletcher added, “there could be trouble up ahead. She might blow a gasket when she realizes your ‘boyfriend’ is abandoning you in four months to go back to the States.”
“But what about Finn?” Holly asked. “I thought you said he was in London. Getting you more work in the U.K. after Emma?”
“Yeah, but I can’t count on that. He’s sort of flaky, God love him. Unless he gets us something solid, I’m probably going back home. I’ve been working on a couple of good leads in Texas.”
A knock at the door broke into Holly’s next question and sent Mildred scurrying back through the house to let the book clubbers in. At the same time, Fletcher’s phone buzzed. Holly watched him peer at the screen in his pocket and clench his jaw.
“Be right back,” he told Holly and slipped into the adjoining dining room. She wasn’t straining to hear but could still catch fragments of the conversation: “Not now… I told you yesterday… It’s too late.”
When he returned, Holly busied herself with lining up the napkins into a perfectly square stack, hoping to seem absorbed in her task. Before she had a chance even to peek at Fletcher’s face and read his expression, Mildred had ushered three women into the kitchen and started the introductions. Holly now had social permission to stare at Fletcher, but all she saw was warmth as he shook the ladies’ hands. No trace of the tension in his conversation with whoever that was.
Minutes later, thirteen members buzzed and circulated around Gertrude’s parlor—Noelle had joined them, and Frank was still a no-show. Holly called the meeting to order and presented their surprise guest.
At first, Fletcher seemed adorably nervous, stumbling a bit, searching for words—just as Holly had, on her first day of the book club. But once the ladies generated questions about the script-writing process, or asked his take on Mr. Elton or the reason Knightley was his favorite character, Fletcher relaxed. He stood and used gestures to explain his viewpoint, making eye contact, asking them questions, too. Instead of a presentation, it became a lively exchange.
At one point, Holly snuck a glance at Gertrude and saw her paying attention. Not fawning over Leopold or grunting and scoffing but actually watching Fletcher, even nodding a couple of times at something he’d said. Could he possibly have won her over so easily?
“You were quite the success,” Holly proclaimed an hour later, accompanying Fletcher outside. “I measured it by the Gertrude Scale. I saw her pretending not to listen at first, but then she couldn’t help herself. From a one to a ten in only an hour’s time. You had her mesmerized.”
“I don’t know about that.” Fletcher opened the gate and let her pass through.
The noonday sun had dimmed behind thin clouds, creating patchwork shadows on the ground. Fletcher was due back at the set, so Holly would walk with him until the fork separated their journey, leading her back to Foxglove House.
“So. You want to talk about it?” Holly said, playing a gentle version of hopscotch with the shadows as they walked.
“What?”
“That call you got in the kitchen, before we started? It seemed a little… intense,” Holly said, then added a quick, “Not that I was listening in.” When he didn’t answer right away, she wished she hadn’t brought it up at all. “Sorry. I have this awful eavesdropping habit. Forget I said anything. Terribly rude.”
“Naw, it’s fine. You’re right. It was intense. The call was a girl I used to know.” He paused and dug his hands into his jeans pockets. “More than that. A girl I used to be engaged to, for about half a second. Eight months ago.” His tone was matter-of-fact, but a darker undertone punctuated his words.
“Fletcher, you really don’t have to talk about this. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Maybe it’ll be good for me.” He resumed a leisurely pace. “Stacy. She was English, worked at the BBC with me. That should’ve been my first clue,” he muttered through the side of his mouth. “Never date a co-worker. Anyway, after a few months, I finally convinced her to go out with me. We were together nearly two years. I thought it was time to make things official, so I proposed.”
“So far so good,” Holly prompted.
“She accepted, but something was ‘off.’ She started acting weird. Distant. Turns out she’d been sleeping with one of the other writers. I found out the same day we got the green light for the Emma gig.”
“Oh, wow. Bugger. I’m so sorry.”
“That was probably the most surreal day of my life. The best news and the worst news all at once. Hard to process either one.”
“So,” Holly prompted, “that was her on the phone earlier? Stacy?”
“Yep. She called last night. First time in months. She and the jerk writer broke up and now she suddenly ‘misses me.’ Wants to get back together.”
“Blimey. What did you say?”
“That it’s too late. That the damage she did was permanent. That I can’t trust her anymore.”
“Good for you. But, I don’t understand. Why did she call again, today?”
“Just being persistent, seeing if I’d changed my mind. And I hadn’t. I hope she believed me this time,” he grumbled, more to himself than to Holly. “You know the worst thing is—” He paused again, this time looking far beyond her to the fields, as he explained. “I’ve always been this really trusting guy. Like, to a fault. And the worst thing is that her cheating… changed me. It turned me into someone I didn’t expect to be.”
“How do you mean?”
He moved his gaze back to Holly. “Well, I hate this stupid cliché, but I’m having trouble trusting people now. Women, especially. I never used to be that guy—suspicious, cautious. Putting up walls. Jaded.”
“I’d say you’re doing pretty well with me,” she offered.
“You’re different, though. In a good way,” he clarified. “Easy to talk to. And you don’t want anything from me. It’s just… I’m protective now. I don’t wanna feel the way I felt with Stacy. Ever again. Sucker-punched.” The frustration pricked his voice.
“You just need time,” Holly said, aware she was offering yet another cliché.
Fletcher kept walking, stepping on his own shadow along the path. “I guess. Taking a break has helped.”
“Break?”
“From dating. I need to get my head together, focus on other things.” Fletcher removed his hands from his pockets and shook them out then folded them across his chest. “See? You’re easy to talk to. Almost too easy. I never talk this much about myself. Okay, your turn.” He peered at her sideways. “What’s your story? Who was the love of your life?”
“Well, that’s a loaded question.” She smiled. “But I guess I owe you a story. Love of my life. That person would have to be Liam. From university, at Kingston.”
“College sweethearts?”
“Yes.” She could see them nearing the fork in the road up ahead but wasn’t ready to part yet. “The short version is that we were madly in love, dated for a year, and I thought he was it. The one. And then… I got the call about my mother. So I came home straightaway. Never returned to university.”
“And Liam?”
“We tried to make it work at first.” She remembered the funeral, how Liam had dutifully comforted her but then went back to school that afternoon for an exam. And stayed there. Then, the hasty and infrequent emails he would send, written between busy university activities—studies, parties, girls? Leaving her to speculate whether the distance was an excuse, whether he was ever really “hers” at all.
“But I knew my place was here in Chilton Crosse,” she continued, “with the girls. The distance was too much, and besides, Liam and I were young. So, I sort of made the decision for us. To let him off the hook. I didn’t want him to sacrifice his university days for me.”
“He didn’t fight you on it? Try to make it work, long-distance?”
“No…” she said, thinking back to that final three-minute phone call four months after the funeral—how devastated she was that he hadn’t tried, hadn’t fought for their relationship. “He said he was hurt but that he understood. We haven’t spoken since.”
“Guess it’s my turn to be sorry,” Fletcher said.
“It’s okay. We weren’t meant to be. Another cliché!” she groaned. They’d reached the fork in the road. “Well, thanks again for helping out. At the book club, I mean.”
“Do you think there’s room for one more member? Is it female-exclusive, this club?”
“Well, there’s supposed to be one male attending, but he hasn’t shown yet. Frank. We’d love to have you there. I’m sure Gertrude would enjoy it.”
“That’s reason enough to join. Plus, we can keep up our ruse that way. Being a pretend couple.”
“Clever thinking.” Holly shaded her eyes from the sun to look up at him. “Would you like to come to dinner sometime? To the house, I mean? You’ve met Abbey already, but the twins would be there, and possibly my father.”
Fletcher pondered it then said, “Yeah. I’d love it, actually. Joe’s pub food is amazing, but I’ve ordered the same thing three times in a row.”
“Tomorrow night? Say, seven-ish?”
“Perfect.” He glanced at his watch and pointed down the road. “I’d better take off. See you tomorrow night?”
“See you then.”
She continued up the hill to Foxglove, loving the idea of having someone over to the house. A guest for dinner. They hadn’t had a guest in… well, years. Her mother used to love to entertain, to invite friends over for supper a couple of times a month, at least. Foxglove House needed this. Needed someone to prepare for, to make a special dinner for. The house needed life again, someone new. It would be good for the girls, meeting Fletcher, forced to be on their best behavior. Good for everyone.