Christmas Coda 66

 

Christmas Coda 65 - Miles and Linley from Stranger in theHouse

 

 

Miles told himself—repeatedly—he did not expect Linley to be waiting to meet him at Montréal–Trudeau International Airport.

Even before that unplanned and prolonged layover in Detroit, Lin had been sounding a little impatient, a little irritated during their increasingly infrequent phone calls. Lin had a very different temperament than Miles. He did not like delays or interruptions or uncertainties. He did not like people “who did not know their own minds.” Lin was…sort of highly strung. But it wasn’t that. Or it wasn’t just that. Miles recognized the signs of “relationship fatigue.” Having had a lot of experience with being dumped, he knew what to look for.

Not that he had been looking for it. Just the opposite. He’d been hoping he was wrong, but he couldn’t pretend it was a complete surprise that Lin seemed increasingly distant when they did manage to connect.

He’d known the last time he had to delay his return to Montreal, it was liable to be the final straw.

Long distance relationships were challenging at the best of times, and, anyway, Miles had never understood what it was Lin saw in him—unless it was simply that Miles was the complete opposite of Giles. He didn’t know much about Giles beyond the fact that he and Linley had been together for five years and that things had not ended well between them. Oliver had once told him he thought Lin was still bitter about the breakup, but Lin had always brushed off the twin topics of Giles and their breakup as not worth discussing.

Anyway, it was not a surprise to find the airport lounge empty when Miles finally staggered off the plane at three in the morning. In fairness, there wasn’t anyone waiting to greet most of the other passengers either.

It was not a surprise, but his heart sank.

When you want something so much, it doesn’t matter how often you warn yourself not to get your hopes up, you just can’t help…hoping.

Even without the emergency landing and the endless layover it had been a difficult flight, feeling, as he did, that he was probably making a huge mistake.

That was one of the most troubling things. Until Lin had become part of Miles’s plans for the future, Miles hadn’t had all these doubts and uncertainties. He’d been excited to begin the adventure of his new life. But once Lin was part of the equation…

Yes, that was it. 

Once he’d started picturing Lin as part of the future, then the idea that Lin might after all not be playing a role in that lovely dream, had dimmed his excitement, doused his enthusiasm. Made him question all of his decisions.

It didn’t help that somewhere between Detroit and Montreal he’d caught a chill.

So maybe it was just as well Lin wasn’t there to witness Miles, red-eyed, red-nosed, and sniffling—he was not crying, but he might as well have been—stumbling around the airport trying to find his luggage.

His luggage that had apparently taken a detour after Detroit.

“Miles!”

Miles was absorbing—trying to absorb—this latest bit of bad news when he heard someone shouting his name.

He turned, blinking in the hard, unforgiving overhead lights, and there was Linley.

Linley. Tall and elegant in jeans and a brown leather bomber jacket. Like the only living thing in the entire airport terminal. His hair was as black as a raven’s wing and his eyes were the rare, surreal blue found only in Tom Thomson’s work paintings. Miles had never seen anything as beautiful.

“Lin,” he croaked, as Linley reached him, giving him that automatic buss on each cheek. Linley’s face was cold and he smelled of Proraso and a winter’s night.

“I had a flat tire on the way over.” Lin sounded like he still couldn’t believe it. His expression changed, his fierce, blue gaze raking Miles’s face. “What’s the matter?”

“They’ve lost my luggage.” Miles realized then that Lin mistook the watery eyes and colorless face for a different kind of distress. “I think I picked up a bug.”

Lin blinked. “Qu'est-ce que tu dis?”

And Miles, who was never much for prevaricating, blurted out the truth. “I was starting to think we missed each other.” He didn’t mean it to come out sounding so wobbly with relief, but he really had figured Lin had cut his losses.

Or maybe he was feverish.

Linley frowned at him, but then decided to take action and try to locate Miles’s luggage.

That was almost amusing, watching his misplaced confidence that he would prevail where all others failed, slowly fade.

In the end, it was Miles who drew Lin, still protesting, away from the kiosk and out into the bitterly cold night.

It was starting to snow as they climbed into Lin’s Jaguar XJ, and the snow made everything—despite lost luggage and feeling a little feverish and overtired—feel magical and special. Like maybe everything would turn out all right after all.

Lin turned the key, flicked on the heat, and Christmas music warbled from dashboard stereo. The carol was in French.

Lin gave a funny laugh. He translated, “For over four thousand years, we were waiting for this happy time.” He leaned over and kissed Miles, so sweetly, so tenderly, not at all like that brisk official buss in the airport. He whispered against Miles’s mouth, “I thought you’d never get here, Miles.”

“Me too.” Miles smiled into that kiss.

Linley reluctantly let him go. He studied Miles, lightly stroked his cheek. “So many delays, so many excuses.” He shook his head.

“They weren’t excuses,” Miles protested. “They were reasons, legitimate reasons, Lin.”

Linley, his face shadowy and stern in the glow of the dashboard lights, murmured, “So many other and greater priorities.”

Which… Miles could see how it could look that way, feel that way.

He said simply, truthfully, “There was nothing I wanted more than this.”

Linley considered, nodded curtly, and put the car in gear.

 

 

They talked on the drive to 13 Place Braeside in Westmount, but their conversation was desultory, trivial: how was your flight, have you eaten, how’s the weather, how pretty the city is at night, how pretty the holiday decorations, how pretty the snow…

Afterwards, Miles remembered none of it, waiting in tense anticipation for the moment he saw the house again. It felt surreal when they passed through the ornate wrought-iron fence and the house swung into view, a red ivy-covered Jacobean stone mansion with a distinctive turquoise-green oxidized copper roof. All the lights were blazing—Christmas lights twinkled in the trees and along the edges of the sharply slanted rooftop.

They passed beneath the stately porte cochère and Linley parked in the grand front exterior courtyard. No need to get the luggage. For that night at least, Miles’s worldly goods consisted of the clothes on his back. They went up the long walkway, snow-covered and dappled with shadowy lamplight, and Linley unlocked the massive custom-made, artisan-carved double-wood doors. The doors swung open onto the elegant foyer with its ten-foot ceiling, marble floor, and a wood-burning fireplace upon whose long marble mantel sat a pair of blue and white ginger jars with a phoenix motif.

Miles turned to Linley. “You got them back. The ginger jars!”

Linley nodded, his expression softening at Miles’s surprised delight. “Yes.”

Miles looked to his right, down the gleaming hallway to the steep, curving Spanish style marble staircase and he could see a small mountain of battered boxes as well as a couple of crates. The things he had packed months earlier.

This was really happening. It had happened.

He sniffed, touched his hand delicately to his nose, and Linley said, “Miles, are you feeling quite all right?”

“I think I might have a little cold,” Miles admitted. “It’s not Covid. I’ve had it and this isn’t that.” Still, he shivered at the memory of the arctic blast of airplane air conditioning that had seemed to hit him from every direction during the endless flight.

Linley immediately took charge, helping Miles out of his coat and boots, putting a supporting—unnecessary, but surprisingly comforting—arm around Miles’s shoulders as he guided him upstairs.

Upstairs to the master suite that had once been Capucine’s and was now…completely, totally, utterly redecorated?

Oh yes, it was the same set of rooms, but it was not the same set of rooms. 

All trace of Capucine—her clothes, her furniture, her art, her…artifacts…everything Miles had not had the nerve to touch, had been removed. The room had been repainted in soothing tones of oyster and pearl and dove gray. The furnishings were luxurious but masculine. All that remained of the rooms he remembered was the luminous green-gold light streaming through tall bay windows—and the glossy hardwood floors.

“I’m delirious, aren’t I?” he asked Linley. “I’m still sitting on that plane with a high fever and a runny nose and…”

Linley wrinkled his own elegant nose. “No. Oliver and I realized how unfair it was to have left you to deal with the flotsam and jetsam of Mother’s life.”

“But where did the furniture come from?”

“Everything here is from Braeside. Except the painting. That’s from my own collection. Call it a housewarming gift.”

Until that moment, Miles had not noticed the painting over the fireplace. In fact, he had not even registered the fireplace. The oil painting was a very large study of the Monterey coastline.

“Is that Louis Hovey Sharp?”

Linley smiled. “I thought you’d like it.”

“It’s beautiful.” Miles wasn’t sure why there was a lump in his throat. That was tiredness and, well, the wind in his ears as he plummeted off the cliff after taking that final leap.

Linley studied him for a moment. “You need a hot drink and an early night. Why don’t you get into bed and I’ll speak to Agathe.”

He turned and Miles said quickly, “Lin, wait.”

Lin waited, his expression inquiring—and maybe a little wary?

“Can we talk for a minute?”

“Of course.”

Miles swallowed hard, put his hand on Linley’s arm. Linley looked down at his hand, then covered it with his own.

He repeated more gently, “Of course, Miles.”

Miles said, “You’re right. I was starting to get cold feet. A little. I thought—was afraid— you’d changed your mind. About us.”

Linley’s brows drew together in a forbidding line. “Why would you think that?”

“It’s hard to tell on the phone, but each time we talked, you sounded more…faraway.”

“I was faraway. I didn’t enjoy it. I wanted you to come back. But you kept inventing reasons for why you couldn’t.”

Miles tried to clarify. “You didn’t just sound faraway, you sounded distant. You sounded cold.”

“No.”

“Yes. To me. Yes.”

Linley continued to scowl, but then he sighed. “It’s not always easy to show what you feel. I didn’t expect…you. And then it happened and then I was losing you. I thought.”

Miles had not intended to do this, certainly not here and now, but suddenly, it was all pouring out in a less than coherent stream of consciousness. “It’s just that I never could quite understand, so it was hard to believe. It all felt like part of the dream of this house and this life. And as much as I wanted to believe that it was real and I could have it all…it seemed, felt more likely that you would change your mind. That you had already changed your mind.”

“No.” Linley repeated firmly, “No. Miles. Look at me.”

Miles gazed into Linley’s blue eyes. Read the intensity, the sincerity.

“I’m not going to change my mind.”

“Do you believe in Fate?”

“No. But I believe in love. I love you.” Linley  rested the back of his hand against Mile’s forehead. He shook his head. “You should really be in bed. You don’t want to miss Christmas.”

Miles ignored that. “What happened between you and Giles?”

Linley looked taken aback. “You want to talk about Giles? Now?”

“You always change the subject. You were together for years. What went wrong?” 

“I’m not sure what to say. I change the subject because it was over so long ago. And it was painful. But if you want to know, Giles and I were perhaps too much the same. Too ambitious, too focused on the idea of us as a power couple on the Montreal art scene. We were so successful, it took time to recognize we didn’t have much else to talk about.” He grimaced. “There was no softness, no tenderness between us. In the end, we were nothing more than business associates with benefits.”

This was not at all what Miles had expected. He said, “I’m sorry.”

Linley’s smile was rueful. “Yes, you are. And that’s one of the things I love about you. With you, it was different from the first. I like you. You’re smart and funny and talented. But you're also kind. And honest. I find myself wanting to protect you, cherish you.” He drew a sudden, sharp breath. “Which is why, when it seemed you had changed your mind, all this made me feel foolish, naïve.” He nodded at the bed, the fireplace, all the beautiful little touches that made this room as much a haven as a place to sleep.

The room was a gift to Miles. A gift and a promise.

“I haven’t changed my mind.” Miles let Linley draw him into his arms. “I’m not going to change my mind. I love you too.”

Linley’s head bent for another kiss, but Miles drew back a little, saying, “You should know, I’m probably contagious.”

Lin’s lean cheek creased in a smile. He said, “Oh, you’re definitely contagious, my love,” and kissed him.

 

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