The heat spilling from the restaurant was staggering after the walk in the freezing evening, and so was the music and loud chatter of Lino's guests.
The restaurant was full; the small town with its spa and the Christmas related events happening in the castle attracted loads of tourists.
"Is the hotel full too?" Nora asked as Martin helped her out of her coat and left it along with his on a hanger by the door, before they were escorted by one of Lino's waiters to their table, the same one as the last time.
"It is, fully booked until mid-January," he replied, pulling a chair out for her, then whispered in her ear, making her blush, "You look wonderful tonight."
He sat down opposite of her even as the waiter returned with the unordered bottle of red wine and two menus.
He did, too, look wonderful, dressed in a grey cashmere jumper, the white collar half hidden by his raven hair hinting at a shirt he wore underneath. He always did look wonderful...
She dropped her eyes and picked up her menu quickly to hide another blush, forgetting to put her glasses on, looking at him, perplexed, when he pulled it away, chuckling.
"No way. No more hiding. You always hid behind your books in the past. Let me see you now, please."
"You... you are making me blush! And I'm too old for blushing..."
She didn't get to finish her line before he leaned towards her over the small table and kissed her, scattering her thoughts, making her blush deepen the moment he pulled away.
"There. Now I've given you a reason to blush-- everybody's looking at us."
Nora sighed, a single look cast around the restaurant sufficed to confirm his words. Most of the guests seated at the multitude of tables and waiters gathered at a long bar situated across the room, next to the entrance to the kitchen, looked away quickly when they noticed her eyes on them. Of course, all of Lino's employees would know him, and the hotel guests, who made up most of Lino's clientele, too... She sighed again; getting used to Martin's 'fame' in this little town would take some time, like so many of his other... complications. But she could do this; Martin was worth it.
"Welcome, Nora, Martin," a voice whose owner Nora hadn't noticed approaching their table, startled her.
"Hi, Lino," she said, looking up at Lino to whom she hadn't been officially introduced but who felt like an old friend nonetheless.
He winked at her, and in Nora's mind, the wink was loaded with meaning. Magdalena must have spoken to him, and Martin, and now... he seemed to be happy to see her with his friend.
She felt her cheeks heating up again but held his look bravely, squeezing Martin's fingers tighter in hers-- she hadn't realised they were holding hands again over the table, the gesture having become as natural as breathing.
"I'll have..." Food was the last thing on Nora's mind; she wasn't hungry at all. She was here to spend an evening with Martin and talk to him.
As if he could read her mind, or at least perceive her confusion, Martin squeezed her hand, claiming her attention, while Lino filled their glasses with wine. "Lino makes the best Spaghetti al Nero di Seppia I have ever eaten."
"All right, the Squid Ink Pasta for me, then," Nora smiled at Lino.
"I'll have the same. Thank you, Lino, and thanks for the table," Martin told his friend.
"My pleasure. Have a great evening." Lino smiled at both of them before he rushed towards the next table.
Nora lifted her wine-filled glass once he was gone, pressing its thin, transparent side to Martin's before she drank, trying to school her thoughts into obedience and form questions. They were here to talk.
Martin beat her to the first question, though. "So what have you been up to since you stopped coming here for school holidays?"
Nora frowned, her mind strolling towards the distant past, parts of which she wanted to forget. But he asked, and she felt obliged to reply.
"After my dad had died, Mother always found an excuse for not letting me come here. She had never liked Grandma. And then, I... ran from home on the first occasion. I found an au-pair position in London when I was eighteen, swapping my dream of studying languages at university for freedom. I stayed there for years, working and studying English," Nora shrugged, "only to come back here now, thirty-years-old and feeling under-qualified for most jobs available in this town." Another sigh escaped her; it felt awfully unfair some days, having only one chance at life when we were supposed to learn from our own mistakes, mistakes that could not be erased, false steps that could not be untaken... "What about you?" she added hastily, his look, and the feeling of his fingers laced through hers, making her feel... all sorts of things.
"We kept coming here each holiday long after you. I met Daniel's mother here, we got together and then she left me, and then, suddenly, I was the castle owner's son." He shrugged. "And soon I was with Daniel, and Father introduced me to your grandmother who helped me greatly when I resolved to come to live here and take over the responsibility of the castle."
Nora took another sip of her wine, mulling his words over, even as one of the waiters brought their dinner, forcing them to let go of each other's hand.
They ate in silence; the things they were here to talk about feeling too important to mumble around mouthfuls of food.
The moment Lino appeared to clear their table, humbly accepting their praise of his culinary art while he refilled their glasses and took the wine bottle away along with the empty plates, Nora finally asked the question that kept pushing itself to the forefront of her mind.
"What's going on between you and Victoria?"
"I see that the town gossip reached your ears." He chuckled. "'I wonder why they told you about Victoria, but not about the castle."
Nora smiled. "Well, I gathered that there was something between you two and asked."
He raised an eyebrow at her, and she forced her cheeks to remain pale.
"When I came to live here with the few-months-old Daniel in my care, to live with a father I knew nothing about, feeling obliged to assume responsibilities I did not feel capable of handling, she was here. Just divorced, a mother of a baby as old as Daniel, a veterinarian like me, a woman looking for a new relationship. And I thought that that was what I wanted as well, starting all over again after the fiasco with Daniel's mother. But... I couldn't do it, I couldn't love her the way she wanted me to."
Nora nodded, bringing another glass of wine to her lips, feeling in need of the false courage it was lending to her, when a new bottle appeared along with a dessert menu on their table, and Martin topped up their glasses.
"Tell me about Daniel's mother," she said, forcing her voice to be at least audible if not loud, sensing a sensitive, private subject. "What did you mean by having something in common with Mr Rochester?"
He shook his head as if he couldn't believe that she had caught those hastily pronounced words and remembered them.
"I already told you something about her the last time we dined here. I'll tell you everything else you want to know, but it's your turn now." He smiled over the rim of his glass.
"What? I've already told you about me..."
"You told me nothing about Eric."
Nora groaned, she could not help it.
"You seem to know more than enough about that stage of my life."
"Not from you," Martin insisted.
Nora shook her head in desperation, but she knew that his request was fair. He had been honest with her and willing to tell her more. It was her turn to talk.
"Eric was my first love. Or rather an unrequited crush... I greatly idealised him and never got a chance to know him properly, and he never returned my feelings. We held hands on a couple of occasions and kissed... but that was that, and now I know that I wasn't the only girl he used to entertain this way back then."
She took another sip of her wine, peeling her eyes from the misted window of the restaurant beyond which huge snowflakes were fluttering towards the ground like white butterflies, wonderful, inconsequential, ephemeral.
"As... insignificant as it may look now, the unrequited feeling changed me, and influenced my next relationships," she added, her eyes lost in Martin's. "For a long time, I flat out refused any boy that approached me, simply to be available for a relationship when Eric finally noticed that I was there hidden in his shadow, that I was the one for him..." She laughed at herself. "But then I moved on. I was in two relationships precisely since Eric. They both looked ideal at the beginning, but then... Well, say, I'm not able to keep within a relationship for longer than a year. I suppose I haven't met the right man yet." She shrugged.
Martin leaned over the table and kissed her again before he said, "We are similar in so many ways. Well, Eric will arrive soon, and then you two can talk."
"What? No!" The last thing she wanted was to talk to Eric now, alone, face to face...
"But you said that if you ever met your first love again, you would tell him that you moved on. I think it's important to you. You should do it, I mean it. You may never know what you'll feel once you meet him again after all these years... I know what I'm talking about. You'll never be happy unless you make sure about this, I'm certain. He's coming on the twenty-fourth and stays for a couple of weeks at least. You'll have more than enough time..."
"But... I just can't walk up to him, a man who is a stranger now, and tell him something like that... It's like walking to your teenage crush and asking her to marry you," she giggled, remembering what he had told her before.
"I'll do that," he declared seriously. "I'm not going to let another occasion slip, I'm too old for that."
"But what if she will refuse?" Nora asked, letting her eyes drop to their interlaced fingers. Was he telling her that she... Even though her instincts were telling her that they were talking about... her... her mind struggled to accept the idea.
"I'll think about that when I get there," he announced, smiling, scattering her thoughts.
"All right. I'll find an occasion to talk to Eric, then," she promised on a sigh, admitting that he was right.
She had come back here to start anew, after all. She needed to deal with this skeleton in her closet, a skeleton that everyone seemed to know about, too.