Chapter Thirteen #2
“Not so great, indeed,” he agreed, sounding a bit glum.
“But,” she said, thinking back to their conversation in the cellar, “you wanted him to be great.”
Another quick glance at her before looking away, just as quickly.
“I did, rather,” he confirmed. “I knew I only got the job because of my father—likely only got into Cambridge because of my father, truth be told, so that experience was nothing new—but I thought that if I could help this brilliant detective solve tricky cases… well.”
“Did you want to become a detective yourself?” she asked curiously.
“I think—” he began, then broke off abruptly, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
She wondered suddenly how many people took the time to ask him a question like this—not about Fitzgibbons specifically, but anything more serious about his own hopes.
Whether perhaps serving as a secretary to a vain, self-important man and sleeping with half the society women in London was not entirely what he had envisioned for his life.
“It does,” she said, despite the fact that two days earlier she would not have been able to fathom the notion of this man saying anything of value. “It matters to me.”
She didn’t look at him as she said this; it felt peculiarly intimate, especially after that moment in the cellar earlier—the moment she had spent the better part of the afternoon trying her hardest not to think about.
Because, unless she had completely lost her mind, then she and Sebastian Fletcher-Ford had almost kissed.
But if that were true, then she still, clearly, had completely lost her mind.
“I thought that it might be my… I don’t know.
” He blew out a frustrated breath. “I don’t want to say ‘my calling,’ because it’s not as though I were going to save the world or anything, but…
everyone else in my family has always known exactly what they’re meant to be doing.
And then there’s… me. I thought it might be nice, if the job with Fitzgibbons worked out, to come to family dinners and have my own thing to discuss.
” He shook his head. “I should have known that no one would hire me for a job that would actually mean anything.”
And Georgie, in that moment, hated Delacey Fitzgibbons, and his stupid monocle, and his bushy mustache, for making Sebastian feel this way.
But all she said was, “For what it’s worth, I think Fitzgibbons is missing out. Because you’re rather good at this.”
“Do you think so?” There was a vulnerable note to his voice, one that made him sound oddly young.
“You’re good at—I don’t know—you’re good at people, I suppose,” she said, waving a hand.
At some point, they’d slowed their steps, and now they drew to a halt entirely, turning to face each other.
They were standing in the middle of the path that cut through the wildflower meadow that ran alongside the lane leading up to Radcliffe Hall; in the evening sun, he looked even more golden and perfect than usual, the light framing his face, the breadth of his shoulders casting Georgie in his shadow.
“And I’m not,” she added, in a rush now, speaking without entirely considering what she was going to say next. “I’ve lived here my entire life—my family has lived here for hundreds of years—and yet it feels like people trust you more readily than they do me.”
“Does that bother you?” he asked, looking down at her, his expression inscrutable—another adjective that, even twenty-four hours ago, she would never have thought to apply to Sebastian Fletcher-Ford.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, and it made her feel a bit off-balance to admit this, as though it were a shameful confession. She was good at knowing things, at working things out. To admit to not knowing… it made her feel not at all like herself.
She wondered—in a sort of idle, glancing way, without looking at the question head-on—if that might not be a nice thing, every once in a while.
“People are easy,” he said, still watching her very carefully, as though searching for cues. “If you’re friendly, if you like them, they’ll like you in return. I’ve never had any trouble with that part of things.”
“What gives you trouble, then?” she asked, and wondered, in some dim corner of her brain, when she had grown so desperately curious about the man before her—a man about whom, upon meeting, she’d thought she already knew all there was to know.
“The part where I try to say anything that people take seriously.” He scrubbed a rueful hand down the side of his face, the gesture rough, impulsive, and considerably less elegant than most motions she’d seen him make thus far in their acquaintance.
“You don’t make it easy for them,” she pointed out.
“You’d have thought my family, at least, might have given me the benefit of the doubt.” Something close to bitterness crept into his voice then, and Georgie, without thinking, reached out and took his hand.
He glanced down, his expression softening at the sight of their interlinked fingers. Georgie, face heating, made as if to withdraw her hand, but he held on tighter, his skin warm against her palm.
“Georgie,” he murmured, reaching out a hand to trace her cheek. Her skin burned in the wake of his touch.
“Don’t do that,” she said, unable to bring herself to pull away, and instantly his hand stilled, then vanished from her cheek, leaving a kiss of cool air in its wake.
“No,” she said hastily, even as she watched him open his mouth, presumably to apologize.
“I mean—that is—I only meant, don’t… I’m not one of your women in London. ”
A frown creased his ordinarily smooth forehead. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not someone to—to be trifled with!” she burst out.
“Don’t try to pretend that someone like me is who you’d usually flirt with.
I know—I know that Buncombe-upon-Woolly must seem terribly provincial to you, and I expect you’re bored, and I know there aren’t any glamorous, dissatisfied wives here to flirt with, but—”
“But what?” he asked, his tone suddenly brittle.
“But don’t… toy with me,” she finished, humiliation warming her cheeks. “Just because I’m here, and it’s convenient. I know I’m not the sort of woman you’d actually be interested in—”
“Do you,” he said, a sharp edge evident in his voice.
“Don’t flatter me,” she snapped, suddenly weary of everything about this ridiculous day.
Egg—who had been happily sniffing a patch of wildflowers a few feet away—looked at her, emitting an anxious whine from the back of her throat.
“I know you flirt with everything that moves, but if you could leave me out of it, I’d appreciate it.
” The words came out sounding harsher than she’d intended, but she didn’t wish them unsaid.
It was better to state it bluntly, so he’d know where they stood.
So he understood that she wasn’t prepared to be yet another notch in his bedpost.
“Do you know,” he said now, and there was nothing the slightest bit vague or amiable in his voice, “that you are possibly the most irritating woman I’ve ever met?”
“That I would believe,” she said, hands on her hips.
“But you wouldn’t believe that I’m not toying with you?
That just because I’ve a bit of a—well, a history, shall we say—doesn’t mean that I can’t be genuinely interested in you?
” He was still frowning, and he ran a hand through his golden hair, mussing it.
He crossed his arms over his chest and looked a bit exasperated.
He swallowed, as if suppressing something else he wished to say, and Georgie, against her will, found her eyes drawn to the movement of his Adam’s apple.
“I don’t—perhaps it’s best if we just… don’t,” she said, biting her lip.
She found herself suddenly unable to look him in the eyes.
She was not a complete novice when it came to romance—there had been one of the village boys that she’d kissed behind the church when she was seventeen, curious to see what all the fuss was about; and, too, Arthur’s cousin, who had spent an entire summer in the village the year she was twenty, with whom she’d engaged in rather more than kissing—but she could never recall anyone making her feel as annoyed, and embarrassed, and entirely discombobulated as Sebastian was making her feel in this particular moment.
She gave a sharp whistle, and Egg looked up quickly in wounded affront. “Egg, that’s enough. Let’s go home.”
She turned on her heel. Sebastian fell into step beside her but mercifully didn’t attempt to say anything else the entire walk back.
They parted on the kitchen stairs, and Georgie retreated to the safety of her room for the rest of the evening—but found that even after night fell, sleep was a long time in finding her.