feel that way for someone who had no feelings for him at all?
Now Albert drifts off in the middle of sentences, leaving his students staring at him. He’ll be reading a scene from Waiting for Godot or Antony and Cleopatra, then stop halfway and forget to read on. When he has no students and is supposedly marking essays, he simply stares at the same page for hours. At some point he will look up at the clock and realize the day is long since over and the school is deserted.
Albert knows he has to do something. He can’t go on like this. Last night he walked into a lamppost and cracked his glasses. This morning he overheard his departmental head discussing Albert’s descent into distraction in not altogether sympathetic terms. So he has to do something, or he’ll lose his job. And that would be a tragic event worthy of Godot, Bovary, even Hamlet. Teaching literature is all he wants or knows how to do.
—
Since Carmen left Peggy’s garden she’s been worrying about what she has to do. She doesn’t know if she has the courage to face again what she thought she’d got rid of forever. But right now, as she walks out of The Archer, she refuses to think about it. She has a few days left to decide what to do. And now songs from choir practice still echo joyfully in the air, and as she crosses the street she starts to sing—and then she hears Blake calling her name. Carmen turns back to see him leaning against the door and grinning.
“Where are you off to?”
“Home.” Carmen recognizes his smile, it is the sort that bewitches women into doing foolish things, causing them to fall down rabbit holes into other worlds. But not her. She is safe from this, she won’t fall in love. Tiago killed that possibility off years ago. Her heart is cold now, and numb. And in this, Carmen senses that she and Blake are a perfect match.
“Hey, sugar.” He crosses the street to reach her. “Fancy a drink?”
Carmen laughs. “I think I have enough of drink at work.”
“How about a cuppa, then?” The slang sounds strange on his southern tongue.
Carmen notices that he often asks questions as if they aren’t really questions. He isn’t requesting permission; he already knows that the answer will be yes. But she doesn’t care. A gypsy woman in Bragança once told her that a man leaves his mark on the spirit of every woman he sleeps with. And Carmen is ready to have Blake wipe away Tiago’s. So she shrugs. “Okay.”
Instead of going to a coffee shop, Carmen asks him back to the house. She can’t explain why she does this, but once the invitation has slipped out, she can’t take it back. As Blake follows her across town, always half a step behind, she can feel him watching every curve of her body as she walks.
Thirty minutes later, in the kitchen, Stella, Vita Sackville-West, Dora Carrington and one hundred and fifty-seven other women eye Blake suspiciously. Oblivious to this, he leans back in his chair and slides his feet onto the table. With a pang of guilt and remorse, he thinks of Greer, working until midnight at The Archer. For her sake he regrets what he’s doing. But he still has to do it. He can’t fall in love with Greer and if that means sleeping with Carmen then so be it. In this life, Blake has to protect himself. He must put his own needs first, just as his mother did.
“You want Earl Grey or English Breakfast?” Carmen interrupts Blake’s thoughts and he looks up, then remembers to smile.
“I’ll drink whatever you’re drinkin’.”
“Milk?”
“Black, plenty of sugar.”
Carmen drops the tea bags into cups.
“After two years, I’m finally starting to understand the English obsession with tea,” Blake says. “Down south we love ourselves some iced tea, but it’s so stifling down there most of the time that we don’t go in for the hot stuff. But anyway, you aren’t English.” His gaze lingers on Carmen’s hands, her hair as it falls over her face. Carmen watches the kettle, waiting. Stella watches them both.
“In Portugal,” she says, “we drink tea usually just for fever or flu.” She pours boiling water into their cups. “But here is different, here I like it.”
“I like it too. You got any cookies?”
“I think so.” Carmen opens the cupboards again and rummages around. Blake fixes his eyes on her bottom, the strong curves of