Chapter 16 #2
“Oh, I think we both ended up with more than we signed up for. But I’m glad you told me.
” He’d woken that morning convinced that he’d found his perfect match, but he hadn’t been able to remember why, beyond the obvious attraction-at-first-sight and the feeling that for one day she’d lifted the heaviness he hadn’t realized had settled in his soul.
Now, he was assembling a picture. They’d had fun together, sure, even before the brandy.
And he felt completely comfortable talking to her, which was rare for him.
But maybe that was because of the temporary nature of their connection.
They weren’t on some sort of first date that was loaded with hope.
They’d approached this with no forethought, no preconceptions or expectations, aside from the expectation that there was no future in this.
But what if there was? Somehow.
Amelia found his hands, where they rested on her belly, and covered them with hers. Hers still felt cold. “And your love language would be…?”
He recognized the change of subject for the deliberate detour it was. And he hoped the way her finger was lightly tracing over his knuckles was the come-on he suspected it to be. “I definitely like physical affection best,” he said, nuzzling into her neck.
“I had kinda picked up on that.” She sounded increasingly breathless, which was absolutely the love language he liked to hear. “The way someone shows affection is usually the way they like to receive it.”
“Good tip.” He navigated around her coat and slipped his hands under her jumper, excavating through her many clothing layers. When he found her skin, it goose-pimpled under his touch. “Sorry, are my hands cold?”
“No, no, not … at all.”
He smiled. “Not much physical affection in Austen, I suppose.”
“Wickham does kiss Elizabeth’s hand with ‘affectionate gallantry.’” Amelia shuddered under Tom’s touch, in a good way, and he was reasonably sure it wasn’t Wickham she was reacting to.
“The cad.”
“She was probably wearing gloves, in case of accidental deflowering. And there are rather a lot of ‘blooming complexions,’” she said in a passable attempt at an Eton accent.
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
She pushed herself up, flipped over onto hands and knees and kissed him fully on the mouth, which he was only too happy to reciprocate.
He slid down the floorboards so he could stretch out fully, though he was touching the walls at either end, then pulled her on top of him.
His brain might not remember much of what had happened between them last night, unfortunately, but his body clearly did and was keen for a repeat.
Amelia sat up so she was straddling him. “Charlotte Bronte once complained that what was lacking in Austen was ‘what throbs fast, full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through.’”
“Good lord, did she?”
“She was talking about the heart.”
“Oh. Disappointing.” He rested his hands around Amelia’s hips. “When this salamander potion wears off, how will we even know?”
“Maybe it already has. I do remember feeling very attracted to you well before we opened it.”
“Me, too.”
She nudged his coat off his shoulders. “I think, in the interests of science, we should continue to test the theory.”
“Science, huh?” he said, extracting his arms from the coat.
“Science.”
“You should know, I deeply respect science. Maybe I can earn thirty-one million pounds by synthesizing salamander goo.”
“Seems like that would require … extensive research.”
A loud, husky cough broke the silence of the wood. Amelia flinched, and then froze, her eyes wide. Even Tom’s heart was racing, and he’d heard the noise thousands of times.
“The hell was that?” she whispered. “It was close. Not one of their dogs, unless it’s mutated with an elephant.”
“Just a deer.”
“Deer make that kind of noise? That was spooky.”
They stilled, blinking at each other, being slowly veiled by the night. Spell broken. She climbed off and lay beside him. Her breath audibly slowed.
An image came into his brain, and it took a few seconds to figure out if it was a hallucination or a memory, before he concluded it was neither.
It was wishful thinking: he and Amelia picnicking on the lawn in summer, watching a concert, like in his artist’s impression.
This woman was in his head, even as she lay next to him.
He was unlikely to even see Duncan’s early spring bulbs emerge, let alone make it to June.
“I think we can confirm the salamander is still doing its thing,” Amelia said.
Tom rolled onto his side, propping his head up so he could look at her. “And here’s me thinking it was my pheromones.”
She laughed quietly, her teeth glowing in the moonlight. “It got dark.”
“Yes. We should start walking, if you’re up to it. But at some point, we should definitely explore this touch theory in a lot more depth.” He lightly touched her jaw.
Abruptly, she sat up, turning her face away, but not before he detected a flinch of doubt in it.
Because he’d suggested a future for them?
More likely, they’d get to the village and raise the alarm, and she’d flee the country ASAP, forever regretting her visit.
She’d intended to escape her trauma, and he’d just heaped a whole lot more on her.
The best thing for her would be to leave and never return.
He rolled onto his back, looking into the darkness framed by the windows, which Duncan had salvaged from an old garden shed.
Before the canopy thickened, he and Eddie would gaze up at the stars and talk whatever shit you talked when you were teenagers.
If he brought Eddie up here now, would something stir, deep in his brain?
But he wouldn’t get a chance. This was likely to be the last time any of them came here.
The thought clunked inside him. It was going to be like that, wasn’t it?
It was impossible to comprehend losing the entire estate, but this would be his next week—looking around at the place he’d lived for most of his life, and thinking, “Never again.”
Maybe they should both walk to the village and never return.