Chapter 12 #2
He suppressed a laugh. “But that too. I am uncomfortably aware there might be a killer stalking us, but I have a very strong urge to pick you up and carry you to the folly and—”
She stopped and turned. “You have a folly? An actual folly?”
“The whole estate is a folly.” He was a little offended that she was more interested in the structure than what they could do there. “But yes, we have an actual folly. They used it in the TV show.”
“The first proposal scene! I didn’t know that was filmed here!”
“Technically, it happens at Rosings, not Pemberley. We include the folly in the tour in the summer months, though at the moment it’s storage for hay, which I guess means it’s not a folly at all. I’ll show it to you later.”
Later. After what? It was hard to see more than a few steps ahead.
Maybe that was why they wanted to have sex while they still could.
If these were his last hours on earth, it made complete sense to spend them naked with Amelia.
Though it didn’t make a lot of sense for instinct to favor reproduction over flight.
“Eggs,” he whispered longingly as they emerged into the basement.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I could kill for scrambled eggs. I mean, not kill, obviously. But I do have a sudden craving.”
Amelia stopped again, and he had to do some fancy footwork to avoid running into her. “Tom, you don’t think…?” She went quiet. He could just make out that she was nibbling her lower lip.
“Amelia?”
“You don’t think we could have killed someone last night, do you? I mean, we don’t remember anything, and all these weird things happened and… How would we know if we had?”
“Sure, we might have been spaced out enough to, I don’t know, hit someone over the head—God forbid—but to clean up after a crime? Dispose of a body? You saw the state we left the kitchen in!”
“You’re right,” she said, relaxing her posture.
“Besides, we didn’t hallucinate those gunshots.”
“Or did we? I could very well have hallucinated the figure on the road. The seed was already planted by your tour guide. We’re obviously still feeling the more, uh, physical effects of the brandy, so why not the—”
“Eggs!”
“Yeah, you said that already?”
“No, I mean, that’s what we ate last night. Just before we turned out the light. I cooked us—”
“Omelets,” she said, blinking fast. “With feta and chorizo. I remember! They were so good. I would murder some… No, not murder. God.”
“And then I…”
“Swept everything off the table! That’s why there were smashed plates on the floor this morning.”
“And then you…”
“Untied your apron…”
“Yes,” he said, pointing at her to confirm she was correct. “I was wearing an apron?”
“Because you were naked and the chorizo in the frying pan was spitting.”
“I was, wasn’t I? It must have been freezing!”
“We’d cranked up the fire. That’s why we turned off the lights. It wasn’t because of the moon fog, not at first. It was so we could…”
“‘Screw by firelight.’ I believe that was your term?”
“I think my phrase alliterated.”
They stared at each other. By the series of heated expressions cycling through her face, he guessed her memory was coming back as solidly as his was.
“And then afterwards, we noticed the spooky light in the sky, and I got us blankets and we sat there and talked about…” He trailed off. What did they talk about?
“The fire! You told me about some fire in 1876, in the west wing. And about how having children makes you immortal, because your DNA can potentially live forever. Or at least until the human race blows itself up.”
“Or fries itself or whatever we do to screw it all up in the end,” he finished. “You told me how you clean antique carpets, at the museum.”
She gasped. “I did? How tedious.”
“I remember thinking it was fascinating. We talked about curtain fabric, too.”
“I do tend to go on, once you get me started.”
“I’m reasonably certain I delivered a lecture on the evolution of architectural styles of the English country house, so…”
“Yes! You told me in great detail about how they first installed running water, using waterwheels. This is all coming back to me! Pretty sure you drew me illustrations?”
“Good God, you should have stopped me.”
“I could have happily listened all night. You were so passionate about it. I loved the way your eyes lit up. And I remember thinking you were just as much of a history geek as me, so…”
“You were turned on by that! This is good. We’re getting somewhere. If we can keep on this track, we’ll surely get to the rug.” He straightened. “You made some terrible joke about how I could flush out your systems any day.”
“Which you didn’t mind at all! I discovered that you became a major in the Army, just before you left, which made you ‘Major Tom!’”
“We sang the entire song.”
“I love that song.”
“Blimey, we talked a lot of shit. And we went deep too, or at least we thought we did. I bet if we listened to a recording of the evening, we’d be mortified.”
“We agreed it was the single best conversation we’d ever had. I was fizzing! And you joked that I fell in love with you the minute I saw your house.”
“Like Elizabeth seeing Pemberley.”
“And I said no, it wasn’t the house, it was the curtain fabrics.” She smiled, lowering her chin in a cheeky challenge. “Not that you believe in love at first sight.”
“Not at all,” he said automatically, “and neither do you.” But he was starting to realize why he’d felt so strongly connected to her, come morning.
Salamander slime or not, he couldn’t remember ever clicking with someone on that many levels.
It was as though they’d traversed a lifetime in the space of a night, though evidently a lot had remained unsaid.
She continued, still smiling: “I said that, not so long ago, someone like you falling for someone like me would have been…”
“‘A scandal of vast proportions.’” The memories were as clear as watching a video.
And it wasn’t just that he was remembering their words from the previous night.
He was also feeling the memory, like when they were in Duncan’s kitchen: that intoxicating buoyancy of flirting with someone you clicked with. “Yes, keep going. What else?”
“You quoted from Persuasion.”
“‘You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. I have loved none but you.’ And you countered with Emma. What was that quote?”
“‘If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.’ I couldn’t believe my luck that I was lying in front of a blazing fireplace in a country house in England with a beautiful man who could quote Austen.
” Her brow furrowed and she blinked up at him, as if she were coming to after being hypnotized and realizing she’d said more than intended.
“Must have been the brandy,” she whispered, her voice a little shaky.
“Must have been,” he said, just as unconvincingly.
“And then we just sat there, staring outside.”
“For ages.”
“You went to sleep for a while. I think I did too.”
“Or we blacked out. And I woke to a noise outside—a scuffling.”
“Oh yes.” She nodded fiercely, which made his own head dizzy. “And you said, ‘It’s okay, it’s just rats—they come inside for the winter.’ And I said—”
“‘That makes me feel so much better, thank you,’” he said, emulating her sarcastic tone.
“Voices!” She looked over his shoulder as if she could see it playing out in the dark basement in front of her. “I knew I heard voices! Men’s voices! Arguing!” She slapped her palm on her forehead repeatedly. “I still don’t remember what they were saying. Damn.”
“The clock chimed!”
“Yes! It startled me.”
“Three! It chimed three times!”
She grabbed his arm. “And then we saw them, walking past the window. And we ducked down because, well, we were naked, under the blankets.”
“Yes, and…!” He slumped and blew out an exasperated breath. “Damn. Bollocks.”
“Still deep-sea fish?”
“Yeah. God, I thought I had it. I thought my memory was back. You?”
She shook her head, releasing his arm. “Still cyclopses. After that, there’s nothing.”
“Me neither. Bugger.”
“That’s encouraging though, right? Our memories are coming back. We just need to trigger them. All this came about because of you getting a craving for eggs!”
“What we need to do is prioritize getting away from here. I’ll grab a rifle from the gun safe, while we’re down here. And then let’s get up to the study, find that key, and go.”
He didn’t want to lose her. Not to this bastard who was hunting them, not to Mr. Knightley, not to a trans-Atlantic flight.
The thought struck him with utter clarity, unlike many of his thoughts from the last day or so.
Fate had brought him his dream woman, and now fate had tossed him into a life-or-death fight for her.
For so long, his future had looked bleak and gray, but now there was just a glimmer of something brighter, and it was in her eyes.
Half agony, half hope, indeed.