Page 40 of Love At First Fright

R osemary didn’t want to leave the cosy oasis of the cottage, but moviemaking called, and on Monday morning Ellis drove them back to set.

The following week was one of the best of her life.

Each dawn, Ellis would rap on Rosemary’s door, and they’d take Fig for a walk, Rosemary pointing out to Ellis all the birds she spotted.

The walks helped clear her head, and she often found herself typing down ideas for her next book on her phone while waiting for a scene to start shooting on set.

Several times she’d wanted to tell him about Hank—now that Rosemary had noticed, she couldn’t unsee how he was beginning to fade more at the edges, even as he continued to trot dutifully by Ellis’s side.

Rosemary had carried the hagstone around in her pocket, but after chatting more with Dina, she realised she needed to wait for the full moon, otherwise there was no way he’d be able to see Hank.

Telling Ellis she could see ghosts was one thing, but she wasn’t about to do it without a way to prove herself.

In the days since they’d returned from the cottage, they’d snuck moments of privacy, but the shooting schedule had been gruelling and long.

They weren’t hiding their relationship, but at the same time they weren’t advertising it.

Ellis had told her that while the crew could generally be trusted to not go blabbing to the press, he didn’t want to take the chance.

If the news got out before they were ready for it to, Rosemary would be painted as a home-wrecker, the reason that Ellis and Jenna had “broken up.”

They only needed to hold on until Jenna secured the role she was up for, and then Ellis and Jenna would go public about their amicable breakup.

Rosemary couldn’t deny that the idea of going public scared her as much as it excited her.

How would her day-to-day life change if the world suddenly knew her as someone dating a celebrity?

Would it affect her career? Still, for now she was enjoying the thrill of secrecy.

In between scenes, on the Thursday after they’d returned from the cottage, Ellis pulled her into a private room in the manor and kissed her senseless.

Afterwards, her lips still swollen and her cheeks flushed, she’d watched from the monitors a scene where Ellis was investigating the old servants’ quarters, ghosts hiding in the corners.

Lyn sidled up to Rosemary just as Vincent shouted, “Cut.”

“You’re looking all loved up.” They smirked, handing her a cup of tea.

“I could say the same to you. How’s Jenna doing?”

Lyn spluttered. “Who? The actress? I—I barely know her.”

“That was very convincing,” Rosemary said drily. “Do you want to try that again?”

Lyn grinned. “I guess I’m not good at being subtle. We spent the weekend together, Rosemary, it was so romantic. Give me one more date and I think I’ll fall in love.”

“That’s quick.”

“Oh, I’m sure you of all people know what that’s like.”

Now it was Rosemary’s turn to splutter and flush red. “No I don’t.”

“Sure, sure.” Lyn winked. “Jenna told me about the whole situation, you know. Ellis has himself in a real pickle.”

Rosemary thought back to the phone conversation she’d overheard Ellis having with his agent back in the cottage, and the way Ellis had been so quiet and down afterwards. She knew there was something he wasn’t telling her, something that made him ashamed enough to agree to the scheme, but what?

“Did she say anything about why he does it?” Rosemary asked Lyn carefully, under her breath.

“No, she doesn’t know. But she did say that Brody, their agent, is a real asshole.”

Ellis walked past them, smiling at Rosemary in the way that had his eyes crinkling at the corners, leaving her insides all mushy, and sat down in his makeup chair nearby for a touch-up.

“Will you stay on set once we head to London?” Lyn asked, pulling out their tablet to look at Rosemary’s calendar. “I see you have a few events at bookshops, so I wasn’t sure. But I’ll be around on set anyway doing general PA stuff if you need me.”

“I might pop in now and again, but I’m more here as a spectator.

Now that I…well…now that I know the acting and filming are in safe hands, I’m sort of excited just to let it all happen, you know?

That way, there’s still an element of mystery for me so I can get excited about seeing the film all edited together. ”

“Hmm, I get that,” Lyn said. “What about when the filming is done, what will you do then?”

Rosemary noticed that from his makeup chair, Ellis had stopped chatting to Tania, his makeup artist, mid-sentence. His body had gone still, as if he were waiting to hear what she said.

What would she do then? Rosemary could pretend like she hadn’t given it much thought, but the truth was it had been playing on her mind since they’d returned from the cottage.

This thing between her and Ellis was certainly a whirlwind, but that didn’t make it any less real.

When she thought about returning to New York, unpacking her boxes from storage into another squeeze of an apartment, going back to her same rounds of the park, looking out at the hustle and bustle that no longer enticed her, it was all grey and uninviting.

She supposed she could stay in Blossom Ridge, but the town would feel too small for her soon enough and she’d spend half her time hiding on the farm so that she didn’t run into people from high school. To them, she’d always be the girl who lost her mom and moved away.

But London? Even the word filled her with a glowing warmth.

The city wasn’t new to her, and the idea of living there felt more like a return home than a fresh start.

Ellis had asked her to come and stay with him until the end of the shoot.

As if they were testing the waters for something serious.

The idea of waking up every morning with Ellis, being in the same city as her closest friends, the libraries and bookstores and museums that she loved—it all shimmered in her mind.

Almost too good to be true, a dream that might smash if she didn’t handle it gently.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I’ll be going back to Georgia to see my dad over the holidays, so I’ll see what happens after that.

” She reckoned she sounded absurdly vague, but if Ellis was listening, she didn’t want to spook him by saying she was thinking about moving to London, especially since she hadn’t fully decided.

She had to focus on getting her draft written, too; that needed to be her focus right now.

—

The following morning, Rosemary was awake just before dawn, pulling on a warm sweater in advance of another morning bird-watching dog walk with Ellis. She opened her door, choking on a scream as Juliet stood outside her door, hands on her hips.

“A line of salt? Really, that is so rude.”

“I nearly ran right through you!” Rosemary gasped.

“Well, that would have been unpleasant for you, wouldn’t it?

But not nearly as annoying as it has been for me, having to wait out here for you to wake up.

” Juliet grumbled until Rosemary relented and scuffed a break in the salt line, allowing Juliet to step into her room.

She was extra glad now that she’d thought to make the salt line, as having Juliet burst into her room in the middle of the night would have scared the living daylights out of her.

Come to think of it, so would walking through her, even by accident. Only once, as a teenager, had Rosemary accidentally walked through a ghost. The shocking cold of it had seized her muscles in a vise and had left her trembling and sucking in air as if she’d just been plunged into an icy lake.

“You left books in my chapel,” Juliet said, as if she were accusing Rosemary of a heinous crime.

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought they might help. Because, although you refuse to believe otherwise, I do want to help you.”

Juliet crossed her arms.

“Did you read any of them?” Rosemary asked.

Juliet wouldn’t meet her eyes, but she hadn’t fled the room through either of the windows, a wall, or the door, so Rosemary supposed this was the ghost at least attempting to speak about this.

She could understand how hard coming out would be for Juliet, who carried the burden of a whole life and hundreds of years in the afterlife on her shoulders.

“My favourite is the one about the duchess and the naval captain’s widow who fall in love after they discover their husbands had been carrying out an affair before their untimely deaths, did you read that one?”

Juliet scowled. “It wasn’t very historically accurate.”

“It was written by an American woman in the nineties, so that’s not very surprising.”

“It didn’t make sense,” Juliet added.

“In what way?”

“If the captain and the duke had been friends, or lovers, then it’s not feasible their wives wouldn’t have already been acquainted.”

Rosemary had been about to chime in when Juliet launched into another argument.

“And even if they hadn’t met until after their husbands died, how could they be sure they didn’t…

fall in love with each other, just because they were the closest person around.

How could either of them know, truly know, that the other picked them out of real desire and love, and not just proximity? ”

It was abundantly clear to Rosemary that they were no longer talking about the naval captain’s widow and the duchess.

“I think,” she began, sitting down on the edge of her bed as Juliet paced silently back and forth, “that lots of people work and live in close proximity every day, and they don’t fall in love with one another.

Proximity is incidental, people can fall in love with someone on the other side of the world, who they’ve only spoken to through letters.

Or, someone could fall in love with the person they know the best, their closest friend.

You can love someone platonically, but you don’t fall in love with everyone. ”