Savannah would not take kindly to the idea of someone else being involved in producing the film. Both because she would, rightly, think I owed it to her, given what she had done for me on my first screenplay, and because, unfairly, she still liked to think of me as hers.
Andrea finished the last of his grappa in one short gulp, shook his head and wiped his mouth simultaneously, and then slammed the glass back on the table.
“It’s your funeral. Just try to survive long enough for us to get this thing into pre-production, hmm?”
“I’ll try,” I said. “But I make no promises. She’s little, but she’s fierce.”
The Richardsons'estate was in Brentwood, a particularly posh and old-moneyed neighborhood of Los Angeles, where the homes often looked like transplants from Britain. I found it ironic that Savannah had left England only to end up in a proper-looking English country manor home, with the palm trees shading the winding drive being the only incongruent aspect.
I had texted ahead and been told that Tate was at work, but Savannah was home after a charity brunch event, and I could find her in the back garden for a pot of tea.
Again, the American showed her decade in London had given her more than just a British ex-husband.
The butler, Edgecumbe, led me through the Tudor-style home to the back terrace where myduchessasat at a white marble table surrounded by a perfectly manicured array of boxwood hedges and flower beds. In a wide-brimmed straw hat with a white ribbon tied around the center and a white sheer button-up tucked smartly into wide-legged white trousers cinched with some kind of brown designer belt, Savannah Richardson looked ready for her centerfold inHouse & Gardenmagazine.
I loved that about her, though. She matched herself to every aesthetic perfectly, highlighting her surroundings by allowing them to highlight her sense of style and grace. She was a studied thing of beauty, intelligence in every artifice.
I let myself admire her for a moment before she noticed us, thinking back on a time when she had sat with me in an entirely different garden in London.
“Sebastian Lombardi, ma’am,” Edgecumbe announced me and then deftly excused himself back into the house.
“Sebastian,” Savannah echoed, standing to wait for me to come to her and then opening her arms to brace them on my forearms as I ducked to press a kiss to either of her soft cheeks. She smelled, as always, of freesia and gardenias, an English garden warmed by the hot blood beating beneath her pale skin.
“Savvy,” I said, as I pulled away to smile down at her. “You lookbellissima, as always.”
Faint color tinged her cheeks, but she nodded politely and waited for me to move to the seat opposite her before sitting down again.
“You are too charming for your own good,” she scolded me without heat, reaching for a Spode china teapot and pouring us each a cup of tea without asking how I took it. “I know you prefer coffee, but this garden calls for Earl Grey, I’m afraid.”
I accepted the tiny saucer, worried I would crush it with a single spasm of my thick fingers. Carefully, I put it down in front of me.
“You were not very kind when I last saw you,” she started in right away, looking up at me through her lashes as she sipped her own tea.
I raised a brow at her and realized it was something Adam would have done. “Wasn’t I? You were clearly in the middle of something with Tate and Jace, and I was in the middle of an interview. It was not the time for casual conversation.”
“You were flippant, once again, about working with me,” she noted sharply. “Are you waiting for me to prostrate myself before you? Because that will not happen.”
Anger curdled in my gut. “It is a good thing, then, that I have seen you prostrated for me before.”
“Don’t be crude,” she snapped.
“Don’t be cold,” I countered coolly.
Tension hummed between us.
Not even the birds seemed to sing from their trees.
From somewhere inside, I could catch the faint strains of Bach playing over the speakers.
And suddenly, I was tired. Exhausted, even, with the both of us.
Warily, I rubbed a hand through my hair and rolled back my shoulders to rid myself of their stiffness. “Let’s start again, shall we? How are you,duchessa? I’ve missed you.”
It was miraculous to watch the way the kind words softened her, water blurring the edge of her carefully painted lines.
Her smile, then, was tiny but true.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she admitted. “It makes me irritable.”
