Chapter 5
Tom
Sometimes you didn’t know you were cold until you stepped into a warm room. You didn’t notice noise until you felt the relief of silence. You didn’t realize you’d become a miserable git until an American textiles expert with brown eyes that glittered in firelight fell down your stairs.
“Alcohol gets a bad name,” Amelia announced, as Tom finished stoking the fire and replaced the screen. “But there’s a reason it has the following it does. All things in moderation, as they say.”
“But,” she said, holding up a finger, “if I’m sober ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time and I get roaring drunk the other zero-point-one percent…
Wait, did I get that math right? Either way…
” She raised her goblet for perhaps the thirtieth toast of the day.
“This is the Jane Austen tour I didn’t know I needed. ”
“To things you didn’t know you needed,” he said, toasting.
In truth, he wasn’t even drunk, and she didn’t seem to have dropped a single syllable in wit or wisdom.
It had become more of a wine-tasting experience than the booze fest he’d imagined.
Most of the bottles were undrinkable, and they kept getting so caught up in conversation that they forgot to drink.
“You must really rate Jane Austen, to come all this way.”
“I do.”
“What’s with that? An Emily Dickinson tour would have been cheaper.”
“Escapism, of course. I’ve been going through some … stuff recently, and I went back and reread Austen’s books. They took me into another world when I was pretty disillusioned with this one. Do you not like Austen?”
It wasn’t the first time she’d obliquely referred to something dark in her recent past, or that she’d immediately lobbed the attention back to him. Conversational tennis. As per their agreement, they were escaping.
“I can see why she’s a big deal,” he said.
“I read most of her stories while they were filming here. I rate the comedy. And the dysfunctional relationships are brilliant, which is most of them. But falling in ‘love’ with someone you barely know? Back then they conspired to prevent people from truly knowing their spouse until after they were married.”
“You know, you’re in agreement with Jane Austen there. Several of her storylines serve as cautionary tales against love at first sight—that first impressions can’t be trusted. Sense over sensibility.”
“We’re lucky that we get more time to figure it out.
” Unless, he added to himself, she was about to fly halfway across the world.
Unless you only had one day. “Back then, if you and I had danced more than three times at one ball, we’d be proclaiming our engagement.
Now, most of us have a few starter relationships that teach us what love is, or in my case, isn’t.
I don’t like the idea of taking my chances with marrying a woman just because she has ‘fine eyes.’” He couldn’t help looking into Amelia’s objectively fine eyes as he said it.
She was, in fact, objectively fine from head to foot.
Effortlessly stylish and fresh against the aged backdrop, which made her seem right at home.
Straight out of the Town & Country magazines his mother had once measured her life against.
Amelia raised her eyebrows. “So you don’t believe in love at first sight?” It sounded very close to a challenge.
“Does anyone, really? Attraction, sure, but that’s a low bar.” Again, he couldn’t help eyeballing her. “Do you?”
She chewed her bottom lip in that adorable habit she had when she was thinking. She was in ideal kissing distance. He leaned in a little, then caught himself. Bad form to ply a woman with wine and take advantage. And he was having far too good a time to ruin it by scaring her off.
He hadn’t lied when he said he was done trying to save the house. But somehow, this, right now, seeing how well Amelia fit the picture… It was one of those moments when he felt the defeat like an ache in his bones.
Thank God—or Miss Havisham or whatever apparition had tossed Amelia down his stairs—that she was here.
He’d invited Connor to stay for a drink that morning, seeing as the estate had been his childhood home too, but Connor had been eager to clear off.
Who could blame him, given his sorry history with the place?
So, Tom had resolved to make it a one-man pity party, seeing as Duncan wasn’t the type for a quiet daytime tipple, and that wasn’t the sort of relationship they shared.
And Tom was fine with drinking alone—the concept of it, anyway.
He’d never understood the saying “misery loves company.” Misery was far more satisfying when you were alone, with no one to coerce you out of it.
But he hadn’t counted on his mood deflating quite as quickly as it had when Connor had thrown up his hands that morning and declared they were officially done.
Tom wouldn’t have invited just anyone to share a drink.
Certainly, Amelia was gorgeous in a mesmerizing way that was uniquely hers.
That was clear even as she’d sat ensnared in cobwebs at the foot of the servants’ stairs.
But he’d swiftly concluded that she was also funny and smart and endearingly geeky.
A modern-day American Jane Austen, even.
And just wild enough to bunk off an uninformed tour of a country house two centuries past its prime, but not so shameless as to immediately admit to it.
Not to mention that she was a textiles conservator, which couldn’t be more compatible with a heritage architect.
Yeah, if they were planning to go into business together.
“I believe insta-love is the only way to experience that kind of love, if you can even call it ‘love,’” Amelia said, staring at her drink again, as if the answer to a mystery lay at the bottom of the goblet—a psychic reading wine dregs instead of tea leaves.
“Once you truly know a person, you inevitably become so disillusioned that you can’t possibly be in love in that magical way you were when you met.
The quirks you once thought charming become annoying.
The positive traits you imagined you could coax out of him in time simply aren’t there.
The negative traits become impossible to ignore.
You realize he’s never gonna step up and give you what you need, and as time goes by, you’re compromising more and more, until you’re getting nothing back.
So, if you’re going to fall in love, get those giddy, swoony feels…
” At that, she looked right into his eyes, consciously or subconsciously—he didn’t know which.
“It has to be at the start, and you have to enjoy it while it lasts, while the thought of the person is still way beyond anything they can possibly live up to. And just hope that whatever stage of the relationship comes next is enough, even if it’ll never be as good. ”
“So cynical, Miss Bennett with two Ts.” He stretched out on the rug and stared at the chandelier, which was one hundred percent a maneuver designed to unlock their gazes before he took advantage and kissed her.
Maybe it was the Sauternes, but he had decidedly “giddy, swoony feels” for her.
He could swear she’d leaned towards him a few minutes ago with a glimmer of intent in her eyes, but like the twit he was, by the time he’d realized, he was halfway to his feet to restock the fire.
“Do I detect an element of personal experience?”
“I recently broke up with a guy I thought was ‘The One’ the moment I laid eyes on you. I mean, him. The moment I laid eyes on him.”
It took a lot of effort on Tom’s part not to smile. “I’m sorry for your break-up,” he said, with a heroic attempt at sincerity. “Were you together long?”
“Six years. It took me six years to realize how flawed my initial judgment was. Falling in love is fun and all, but it’s not a good way to pick a life partner. I can’t imagine trusting that feeling again.”
“Six years is a decent innings. Didn’t get to six months with my last girlfriend.
” He realized he’d said that as if Amelia was his next girlfriend.
That last girlfriend had thought it a great novelty to date a viscount, but it swiftly wore off when she discovered how dilapidated his “stately” home was, and how close he was to being as penniless as the next guy.
At least Tom could be sure any future girlfriends wouldn’t be interested in him for his connections or landholdings.
“You haven’t dated since your break-up?”
“I’ve been on a total of two dates in the last year, both after heavy coercion from friends, but all I can think about is how my future self will look back after the relationship inevitably fails and see how impossibly na?ve and optimistic I was, right from the start.
That all the signs were there and I stupidly—or intentionally—missed them.
I spent both these dates actively looking for the signs of fraying—the way he holds his fork or clicks his tongue or interrupts me or whatever, and thinking, ‘Is that the thing I’ll come to loathe? ’”
“Let me get this straight.” Tom linked his hands behind his head. “You’re scared to start a relationship because you’re worried about how it’ll end. It’s not just that you don’t believe in love at first sight. You don’t believe in love at all.”
“Oh God, I think you’re right,” she said, physically deflating. “I don’t believe in love anymore. Not for me. For Elizabeth and Emma and Anne, sure. But not … damn!”
“And yet, you’ve crossed an ocean on a pilgrimage of devotion to one of the world’s most celebrated romance writers. So perhaps you still want to believe.” And perhaps, he thought, swirling his glass and watching the syrupy liquid cling to the sides, perhaps he also wanted to believe.