An Unexpected Guest Read Online Free

“request two more official place settings from the embassy.” The de Louriacs had owned the same landed estate in Aquitaine since the fifteenth century. De Louriac senior had been the P.U.S.’s tennis partner during the P.U.S.’s years in Paris. They were what passed for intimates in the diplomatic world. Also, he controlled Ballaut, the titanic French aeronautics concern, which was of vital interest to the British government at this moment. Edward had explained it briefly to her yesterday on their way home from the reception. She had not probed the details. They would be fourteen total now at dinner.
    9:40 a.m. Time to call Barrow again.
    As she reached for the handset, sunshine slashed through the broad windows of the study, impaling her hands against the study desk, translucent in the sharp light, an older woman’s hands. Were they her hands? A touch of freckle sprayed across the top of the right one, the skin so thin the tendons were almost visible. The knuckles rose into a puckered ridge.
    Was it possible that someone had once kissed each of these knuckles, telling her how he dreamt of her hands when they were separated? She’d sat down beside him at the kitchen table and watched him drink his Coke and noticed the curl of hair rolling down the back of his neck. He’d plunked down his bottle and, without asking, slipped his palm under hers.
     
    “You surely have beautiful hands, Clare,” he said.
    His eyes were so blue that they left her feeling as though she’d stared too long up into the sky. She looked away and was unable to see anything.
    She was tall and fair-haired, good-looking without being striking, and plenty of boys had been happy to have her as their date for a movie, on a hike, to a house party. “Why don’t you ask Clare? She’s okay,” she could imagine them saying about her. But she was never part of the golden circle of popular girls, and the boys in the suburbs of Hartford were as vague about their attentions as they were good at playing lacrosse. Not one of them had ever called anything about her beautiful. None of them even seemed to have opinions.
    She began to unfurl her fingers, for him.
     
    Clare drew her hands back from the phone, hid them behind her back, brushed them against the front of her cardigan. And if she hadn’t followed Niall into her aunt’s kitchen all those years ago? If he hadn’t touched her hand and she hadn’t looked into his eyes? Would she still have ended up agreeing to help? Would she now be in this predicament?
    She pressed the rapid-dial button for Barrow on the phone again. She was not going to think about Niall, especially not now. This time she told the main switchboard she would hold; while she waited, she fired off an e-mail to the fishmonger, as well as one to the butcher, ordering the extra portions. She was Clare Moorhouse, wife to the British minister in Paris, cool, collected, the picture of composure. Still on hold, she sent e-mails to the pantry at the ambassador’s residence, requesting the two additional place settings, and to the ambassador’s secretary asking whether either of the two new guests had any dietary requirements. She modified both her guest and her to-do lists.
    The switchboard put her through. “Mrs. Moorhouse. Of course,” the headmaster’s secretary said. Clare thought she could hear her reach for the pearls she always wore around her neck and click them together. “Mr. Hennessey just stepped away. But he will call you and your husband back straightaway. As soon as he sorts out this other…business.”
    “Mrs. Thomas, I have a busy day. I will be out most of the afternoon. And my husband will not be available at all. Perhaps, we could talk now?” Hearing the secretary’s hesitation, Clare continued, careful to be as definite and no-nonsense as possible. This was what worked best with Barrow. “I just spoke with James, and he’s very upset. He really has been trying to make an effort. He may make his mistakes