“Oh no!” I yelped, bracing myself as the old Rover sped by.

Dave had pulled into the passing place, leaving plenty of room for the oncoming car to pass on the narrow road. And pass, it did, except the driver misjudged the approach.

Dave’s shout of “Move over, you idiot!” was punctuated by the violent crack of metal on metal followed by a chunk of our car cartwheeling down the lane behind us. Leaping out, he jogged a few yards and stopped to pick up whatever it was from the tarmac.

I heard him muttering under his breath as he stalked back to the car. “Can you believe it? Took off our mirror and just kept going—didn’t even tap the brakes.”

“Is that all? Is the car still drivable?” I asked, heart hammering.

He stepped back and surveyed his new car.  “Not a scratch on it. How ’bout you, Leta? Other than being scared half to death, are you okay?”

Before I could answer, a soft whimper came from the back seat. Twisting around, I reached between the seats and laid a hand on Dickens’s scruff. My handsome white dog was securely strapped into his harness but was trembling, his ears flattened and eyes wide.
Beside him, I saw Christie’s backpack shift just enough for her to poke her sleek black head from the top. Her ears twitched as she blinked at me, uncertain but alert.

Dave leaned in to take a look. “Well, that gave you two a jolt, didn’t it?”

I waited for Christie to screech her complaints. True to form, it took only a moment for her to let us know her feelings in no uncertain terms. “What on earth was that?” The look she gave Dave was priceless. “I thought you knew how to drive!”

Dave grinned. “I guess that answers that. She’s fine. But what did she say?”

“Something about your driving ability.” Dave couldn’t understand our furry friends, and he counted on me to translate. I’d let him in on my secret ability soon after he proposed. Thank goodness, he hadn’t immediately leapt to the conclusion that I was delusional.

He reached back to tickle Dickens’s chin. “How ‘bout you boy?  You ride with me all the time. You’ll stick up for me, right?”

Dickens nudged his feline sister. “Admit it, Christie. You know he got the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road quicker than Leta did.”

“Now wait a minute,” I said. And so it went. Their banter told me they were both fine.

“Dave, did you get the license plate number?” I asked.

“Not all of it,” he said. “It started with an S. On the front plate—white background, black letters. Guy was driving some old tank of a Rover. I thought those things went extinct in the ’90s.”

Tossing the mirror in the back seat, he pulled carefully back onto the road bordered by tall hedgerows. “As heavy as those old Rovers are, I’m thankful we weren’t pushed so far into the hedge that we hit the stone wall buried in there.”

“You’re right.  Losing a mirror is minor, considering.  After this mishap, are you still good to stop at Gilbert’s before checking in?”

“Yes. I told him we’d pop by late morning for a bite. He’s been trying to sort through that house on his own for months, poor guy. He sounded as though he could use a bit of moral support, and I see myself helping him shift a few stacks of books. He says his father is no help.”

I chuckled. “If you spend as much time sorting his books as you did yours, I’m not sure how much help you’ll be.” I was referring to his move from his New York City apartment to my Cotswolds cottage. Deciding what to keep required thumbing through every book, even his college textbooks. “I’m not quite as bad as you are, when it comes to my books, but close.”

One thing we had in common was our addiction to reading, especially mysteries. That and our love of writing, though I saw my occasional columns as merely dabbling while Dave was a career journalist and an author. The good news for both of us was that I had added an entire wall of floor to ceiling bookcases when I first moved to the cottage.

“All true, but he’ll appreciate the effort, regardless. This week is as much as about spending time with him as it is about attending the Fowey festival. It’s been a while since we’ve connected with him, and he feels awful about missing our wedding.” When Gilbert’s elderly uncle took a turn for the worse in early December, he had to alter his plans and travel to Fowey rather than to our festivities in Oxfordshire.

It was typical of Gilbert to think of us despite what was going on in his life, so I wasn’t surprised when he contacted Dave about the literary festival, horrified that Dave wasn’t on the list of presenters. Dave regularly spoke about his book, Barrie & Friends, but with our wedding preparations in full swing last year, he’d let the entry deadline for the festival slip by him.

Given how many pies Gilbert had his fingers in, it seemed apropos that his family—his uncle, his father, and he—were heavily involved with the Daphne du Maurier Fowey Literary Festival. He wouldn’t hear of us missing it regardless of whether Dave was on the schedule, and insisted we attend as his guests. He’d even invited us to stay at his family home, or pile, as he called it. After hearing his complaints about its state of disrepair, I was thankful when Dave booked us into a hotel in Fowey instead.

A few miles on, Dave turned onto a lane that, if possible, was even narrower. We crept along, relieved that there were no oncoming cars, until Dave slowed at a gravel drive flanked by stone columns. “Leta, this is it, Penmarrow Hall.”

As he made the turn, I marveled at the uphill drive disappearing into a veil of low clouds and was glad we were in Dave’s Volvo Estate rather than my refurbished London taxi. I adored that car, but it wasn’t built for steep, winding lanes like this.

We wound higher and higher, the drive stretching on for so long I wondered if we’d taken a wrong turn—until, at last, Penmarrow Hall materialized out of the haze. With its slate roof and grey granite walls, it looked like a black-and-white photograph come to life.

“Gothic romance,” I blurted. “It looks like every eerie mansion in the gothic romances I read as a teenager.”

“Like Manderley in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, right?” Dave quipped. “Do you think Gilbert has a housekeeper named Mrs. Danvers?”

“If he does, we’re in trouble.” My gaze wandered. “At least the plants lend a bit of color. Those Rhododendrons are massive, and the roses off to the side—I think there must once have been a formal garden.”

Dave gave me a playful look. “Listen to you. Someone who didn’t know better might mistake you for a gardener. Can you name the smaller bushes, the ones with the coral blooms?”

“Hey, I may have brown thumbs, but I’m an Atlanta girl, and I know an azalea bush when I see one.” Until Dave had moved in and taken an interest in my overgrown Cotswolds garden, I’d paid very little attention to it. Who would have imagined that a man who’d lived the past twenty years in New York City would enjoy gardening and be good at it, to boot?