Chapter Fourteen #2
“You brought me a sandwich.” Unable to help herself, she took a bite, suddenly ravenous; the cold beef, sharp cheddar, and horseradish sauce tasted as nice to her as anything she’d eaten in recent memory.
“Mrs. Fawcett mentioned that you’d not come in for lunch, so I offered to bring you something. She said that you forget to eat when you’re in the garden—not something I can personally relate to, obviously, and it sounded extremely alarming.” He smiled easily at her.
Georgie lowered her sandwich, frowning. “Why are you being nice?”
“Georgie.” He placed a hand on his breast. “I am always nice. How have you not noticed that yet?”
“But we quarreled last night!” she burst out, finding everything about this conversation thus far utterly mystifying.
“I don’t know if I’d say ‘quarrel,’ ” he objected. “I think we were… seeing things from differing perspectives.”
“I was… unkind,” she pressed.
“Well, actually, I’ve been thinking about that.” He paused, looking at her. “Do you not like your sandwich?”
Georgie glanced down at the sandwich still in her hand. “What? No. It’s delicious.”
“Good.” He waited expectantly, and Georgie sighed, taking another bite.
“You were thinking,” she prompted, once she’d swallowed that mouthful.
“About what you said last night,” he agreed.
Georgie inhaled deeply, reaching for her patience. “And?”
“And,” he continued, “I don’t think you were really trying to be unkind to me. I think you were trying to protect yourself, instead.”
Georgie gaped. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He was silent, and she quickly took another bite of sandwich. “It means,” he said promptly, “that I don’t think you believe I mean it when I flirt with you.”
“Of course I don’t.”
“Well,” Sebastian said, “perhaps you ought to try.”
“Try what?” She felt the way she had when she was eight and had to learn long division. Nothing anyone had said had made the faintest bit of sense.
“Try believing it,” he said. He looked at her very steadily, and Georgie was acutely conscious of the fact that she was halfway through eating a sandwich, and quite possibly had horseradish sauce on her face.
When he looked her in the eyes like that—when he wasn’t trying to be seductive or flirtatious, or asking inane questions, or doing anything other than speaking to her in a quiet voice while looking her straight in the eyes…
Well, it made it difficult to think about anything else.
“Why did you go to the village this morning?” she asked, grasping desperately at the change of subject in the hopes that it would make her feel on steadier ground once again.
“I wanted to take a look around,” he said with a shrug.
“I’ve not explored it yet without you, and I thought it might be interesting.
Forgot it was Sunday, though—not many people about at nine on a Sunday morning.
Though,” he added, a rapturous expression crossing his face, “the bakery was open, and Georgie, I swear, those Chelsea buns are life-changing.”
“Your feelings have been noted.”
“Not adequately,” he said mournfully. “Not until I’ve erected the equivalent of Michelangelo’s David will my sentiments be appropriately memorialized.
And we wouldn’t even need to worry about offending anyone’s virtue!
Baked goods don’t have genitalia,” he explained, apparently mistaking Georgie’s expression for one of confusion, rather than reflecting a desperate attempt to both eat a sandwich and refrain from hysterical laughter at the same time.
“Anyway,” he continued, “once I emerged from my Chelsea-bun-induced stupor, I noticed there were suddenly an awful lot of people about, so I—an intrepid sleuth—naturally followed them, and that’s how I found myself in that fascinating little church of yours.
I particularly enjoyed the stained-glass window featuring three sheep. ”
“You went to church?” Georgie asked, trying and failing to not sound astonished by this development.
He widened his eyes innocently. “I like to remind God of my existence from time to time.”
“I doubt that’s necessary. I’m certain you pop up in various people’s confessions often enough that you’re never far from the front of his mind.”
“You do know how to flatter a man, Georgie.”
“That wasn’t flattery.”
“The fact that you think so is part of what makes you so delightful,” he said, looking more pleased than could possibly be healthy. Men like Sebastian, Georgie had decided, were far too accustomed to things going their way, which was why she liked to be as much of a pebble in his shoe as possible.
“I wasn’t going to stay—I really just wanted to see who would show up, and if they did anything interesting—but then I realized that food was going to be provided, so I had to stay.”
Georgie blinked. “The… coffee hour, afterward?” she ventured.
He shook his head. “No, the bit where you get wine and a biscuit. Best part of the entire experience—I was famished by that point. It had been at least an hour since that Chelsea bun.”
“Oh my God.” She burst out laughing. “You’re a heathen.”
“Guilty,” he said cheerfully, gazing fondly at her as she continued to laugh helplessly. “My parents are dreadful atheists, I’m afraid, so I was raised without any religion at all—I couldn’t even tell you what the Trinity is.”
“The fact that you are aware of its existence is encouraging, at least.”
“Women are fond of getting rather popish in moments of great passion. Start shouting about all sorts of things.”
“I am fairly certain that this conversation is sufficient alone to see you sent to hell, without even considering all your other sins.” She shook her head, finally able to get her laughter under control, and realized that something in his gaze had shifted as he watched her suppress her giggles.
“What?” she asked, brushing awkwardly at the knees of her dungarees in a futile attempt to dislodge some of the clumps of dirt that were rapidly settling into the fabric.
“Nothing,” he said, with a shake of his head and a look of faint confusion, evident in the slight wrinkling of his brow. “Anyway, what was I saying?”
“Something blasphemous about the body of Christ.”
“Ah, right, the snacks. Well, once the service was over, I noticed Miss de Vere and Miss Singh, which I found surprising—wouldn’t have taken them for churchgoers. Anyway, I went to have a little chat with them—never leave a pretty woman unacknowledged, that’s my motto—”
“Believe me, I am aware.”
“And they were yammering away about that book club at the library—you know, the one they had to go fetch the book for, yesterday afternoon? And it suddenly gave me an idea.”
“So help me God, if your idea involved seducing someone in the church graveyard—”
“I am shocked, darling Georgie, at the places your mind goes. And while taking the Lord’s name in vain, no less!
” He tutted, shaking his head, but was unable to prevent the curve of his mouth that Georgie found herself matching against her will.
For a moment, they crouched there under the bright June sun in the quiet kitchen garden, Egg snoozing in a patch of shade, smiling helplessly at each other, and Georgie felt a rush of such fierce, uncomplicated joy that it nearly set her off-balance.
“Your idea,” she prompted.
“Right. Well, we need to speak to Miss Halifax, don’t we?”
“Yes,” she said slowly.
“And we don’t want to leap in with the accusations, do we? We want her to trust us?”
“We do,” she said, summoning her patience.
“And we know that her favorite thing on earth is books—”
“Well,” Georgie said, out of some sense of fairness, “I don’t know that we can assume that, just because she’s a librarian. She might have other interests.”
“Cats and cardigans, yes. And, apparently, illicit love affairs with local government figures.”
“Sebastian, what is your point?”
“Ah, yes.” He brightened. “I am going to pose as a Murder Tourist, eager to join her book club.”
“You what?”
“Think about it, Georgie! We’ll pop round her cottage—apologize for calling unexpectedly—flatter her a bit, talk about some detective novels, profess to be desperate to join this week’s meeting—and, along the way, we’ll see what information we can weasel out of her.”
“I don’t know why you think she’s suddenly going to spill her secrets and confess an illicit affair, just because you pretend to want to join the—whatever it is they call themselves.”
“The Book Clue Crew,” he said promptly, and Georgie shuddered.
“And to answer your question,” he added, “people… tell me things.” He spread his hands in a gesture to imply that he didn’t understand it, either.
“I noticed it first when I was at university, but when I started working for Fitzgibbons, I realized it could be an advantage. Once, Fitzgibbons was late for an appointment with a client—a wife who suspected her husband was unfaithful—and I had to keep her entertained. By the time Fitzgibbons arrived I’d given her a cup of tea and she’d told me every dark secret about her marriage.
Things that she didn’t think were important, even, that I told Fitzgibbons later, that helped him track down the husband and catch him in the act.
And ever since then, I’ve realized that…
well, a lot of people are just… lonely. And if someone lends them a sympathetic ear, they’re willing to tell that person just about anything. ”
Georgie watched him as he spoke, his eyes drifting away from hers to land on Egg’s supine form.
Belatedly, she became aware of the fact that her knees were beginning to protest this treatment, and she clambered gracelessly to her feet, trying not to resent the fact that Sebastian followed suit in a vastly more elegant fashion.
Despite how bumbling and idiotic she’d—incorrectly—thought him when she first met him, she’d never failed to appreciate the sheer physical grace of him.
He was a man who looked to have been built for motion—tall and fit, with the sort of lean muscle she associated with tennis players.
He never moved without looking certain of where he was going; even the simple act of rising from a crouch seemed graceful, like a choreographed dance.
He gazed down at her, so handsome and golden in the sunshine that it made her catch her breath.
Just as she’d never been terribly bothered about her own appearance, so, too, had she always viewed handsome men with some suspicion.
They were all flash, little substance—not to be trusted.
Had she not believed more or less precisely that of Sebastian?
And yet now, when she let herself move past the fact of his handsomeness, and instead merely appreciated it…
Looking at him made something in her chest tighten.
“Don’t look at me that way,” he murmured, his eyes crinkling a bit at the corners as he continued to gaze down at her.
“What way?” she managed, hating that the words came out the slightest bit breathless.
“Like you want me to kiss you,” he said, not breaking eye contact, and if she’d thought her chest felt tight a moment before, she properly struggled for breath now.
“I would think,” she managed after a moment, “that you, of all people, would not be one to complain about that.”
“I don’t know,” he said, leaning toward her, close enough that, with his height advantage, she had to tilt her head back slightly to meet his eyes.
He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were. “I hate to mention it, but I have rather got the impression that my, ahem, romantic history is a bit distasteful to you, Georgie.”
His tone was teasing, but Georgie realized that he was serious—he was asking her a question.
And with only a single moment’s hesitation, she said, “I might change my opinion on that matter, if all that practice proves to have been worth it.”
And, taking that for the invitation it was, he leaned down and kissed her.
Georgie had kissed people before—first out of scientific curiosity, to see what all the fuss was about, but then, too, because she wanted to kiss the person in question.
And the kissing had been nice. Enjoyable.
Not worth throwing one’s life away for, as the heroines had done in some of the romances Abigail tore through at a frightening pace (and which Georgie occasionally snuck off the shelf to read in the privacy of her turret), but still a pleasant enough experience.
This, though, was not pleasant.
This—the feeling of his mouth on hers and his hand coming to cup her cheek, the press of his thumb against her jaw, tilting her face to precisely the angle he wanted; the feeling of his arm curving around her waist, pulling her toward him—
Well, “pleasant” was certainly not strong enough a word.
She stepped closer to him, fisting her hands in the fabric of that ridiculous, soft jumper, feeling the heat of his skin, the muscles of his abdomen tightening when she pressed her palm flat against him, and his arm snaked around her waist, pinning her to him.
His tongue was at her lips, and then stealing inside her mouth, and a pulse beat low and heavy in her stomach.
No, this wasn’t pleasant. Or polite. It was… consuming.
When he pulled away from her at last, she stared up at him, her heart pounding in her chest, her lips still tingling, and for a moment, she did not know what to say.
“What’s the verdict, then?” he asked, sounding a bit smug. “Was the practice worth it?”
“I’m not answering that,” she said, with whatever shred of dignity remained to her, and he tipped his head back and laughed—a loose, happy, uncontrolled sound, one that made her want to laugh helplessly in reply.
In the bright June sunshine, the long column of his throat shone golden before her.
She wanted to bite it. Her thoughts must have shown on her face, because he opened his eyes and caught her gaze, and something in his darkened, and he tugged her toward him once more, giving her another kiss—quick and fierce this time.
When they broke apart, their breathing was a bit unsteady, and he winked at her.
And Georgie didn’t even bother to attempt a frown.