Chapter Twenty-One
Before Tess could begin her trauma dump, Ella sent the knight packing, then made Gabe blow out the hundreds and hundreds of tiny tea lights.
‘Honestly, have you taken complete leave of your senses?’ she demanded. ‘Talk about a fire hazard! Or was this part of a cunning plan to burn the library down to the ground and claim on the insurance?’
‘Of course it wasn’t.’ Gabe wheezed. Dealing with all the candles had taken away most of his puff. ‘I was setting a mood. Creating the right kind of atmosphere.’
‘It was vibes,’ Tess admitted. ‘And he did lay on some picky bits.’
That made Ella explode all over again. ‘Food in the library? Tess, you’re an honoured guest, but I hope you haven’t put your cheesy, sticky fingers anywhere near the books?’
‘Only the book Gabe threw on the floor,’ Tess said. Later, she’d be appalled at being such a tattletale. Snitches really did deserve stitches, but right then she needed to share all the atrocities and indignities that had befallen her over the last, very long two hours of her life.
‘I accidentally dropped the book,’ Gabe argued. ‘To protect Tess.’
He sighed as he realised what he’d revealed at the same moment that the baby woke up and began to cry.
‘Now, look what you’ve done!’ Ella rounded on him.
‘You were the one who was shouting,’ Gabe said smugly in the way of siblings arguing since time immemorial. ‘I was talking in a modulated tone.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Ella snapped as Gabe paused to cough because he still didn’t have enough breath left to say anything smugly or otherwise. She unclipped her sling and took her gargantuan baby in her arms. ‘There, there, my precious. Did your horrible, shouty uncle wake you up?’
The baby buried its face in Ella’s neck and grizzled as Ella rubbed soothing circles on his back. Then, when he’d quietened down and Gabe had finished blowing out the candles, she held the child out to him. ‘Take your nephew while Tess tells me exactly what’s been happening.’
‘I will happily tell you,’ Tess said, because a knight in a suit of armour – she wasn’t getting over that anytime soon – really had been the last straw. ‘Do you want a glass of wine?’
‘I’d love one.’ Ella sat down in the chair opposite Tess and even though food and drink was forbidden in the library, she looked very pleased to have a large Sauvignon Blanc in one hand and a little pile of salted almonds in the other. ‘Now, tell me what he’s done and don’t skip bits.’
And so Tess filled Ella in on all that had happened in that little reading room. From Gabe trying to hook her up with an underage Elizabethan teen, being groped by a gamekeeper, having to counsel a Jazz Age counterfeit booze racketeer and a …
‘Winnie-the-Pooh?’ Ella exclaimed, swivelling round to pin Gabe with a look that Tess wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of. ‘Have you lost your mind?’
‘She loved Winnie-the-Pooh,’ Gabe said with an imploring glance at Tess.
Who was forced to agree. ‘I did love him. So cute, so cuddly. Very Zen.’ Tess’s gaze came to rest on Gabe, who was standing by the door, swaying gently, his arms full of his butterball of a nephew.
He kissed the top of the baby’s head and tried to prise free the chubby fingers, which had a death grip in his hair.
‘Now, now, little fat baby, nobody likes a hair-puller,’ he murmured. ‘This is just a futile protest against the inevitable. Because you are very sleepy and if I were you, I’d shut those eyes and head back to dreamland.’
If Tess had thought that Gabe fighting another man to defend her honour was hot, then seeing him rock a baby to sleep while whispering sweet nothings was doing things to certain parts of her anatomy.
Namely her ovaries, who usually kept things pretty lowkey. They did grumble a bit when she was ovulating, but currently they were sending urgent messages via her fallopian tubes to her uterus to announce that Tess might have a use for it after all.
She and Gabe would have the most splendid babies …
Where did that thought come from? It was a thought that had never been thunk before.
‘So what happened after Pooh?’
‘Huh! You what?’ Tess blinked and realised that Ella was looking at her looking at Gabe, her expression unreadable.
‘Oh, after Pooh there was Jo March. That was just a friend date. I think she was from quite early on in the book. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that at the end Louisa May Alcott bowed to publisher pressure and married her off. ’
‘Oh, she wouldn’t have liked that,’ Ella said.
‘Then Mellors from Lady Chatterley’s Lover, who we’ve already covered …’
‘Again, I’m so sorry about that. Please, please don’t sue us …’
‘It’s fine. Well, not fine but I twisted his balls and Gabe punched him,’ Tess said.
It was hard to believe that version of Gabe existed when the current version of Gabe had baby-whispered little Avi back to sleep.
‘Then he told me to think outside the box and produced a medieval knight and here we are.’
‘The audacity,’ Ella muttered. ‘Honestly, I can’t believe that you’re still trying to sabotage The Love Library like this.’
Wait!
What?
Sabotage?
Of course!
That was what this had all been about. It was so obvious, now that Ella had pointed out.
Gabe had really had Tess fooled. The whole walking and talking and drilling down on what her type was. Like finding Tess the right literary match was as important to him as it was to her.
Reeling her in with lots of highfalutin talk about the Stoics this and the Spartans that and how he was too focused on his career to have a relationship.
Yes, some of that had been about making sure that Tess wasn’t getting any notions.
But she had got notions. Notions that Gabe was a man of honour.
Tess had thought that he was confiding in her; revealing something of himself so she wouldn’t be the only one baring her soul.
Well, the only thing that had been revealed was that he was an absolute rotter. A villain! A man of dishonour who’d humiliated a poor innocent woman as part of his dastardly scheme to sabotage The Love Library.
Tess’s ovaries instantly quietened down. ‘Wow, you really played me,’ she said dully, too hurt to even rouse to anger.
‘I didn’t play you,’ Gabe said softly, frowning as if he had no idea what she meant. ‘That’s not what this was about.’
‘Then what was it about?’ Tess demanded, but very quietly, as none of them wanted to wake up Avi.
‘Apart from Winnie-the-Pooh and Jo March, yet again I’ve put myself out there only to be rejected, treated like I’m only good for one thing, and provided emotional support for a man in love with someone else.
God, we’ve run the gamut of all my dating experiences in one evening. ’
‘Tess, I am so sorry,’ Ella said, her large brown eyes looking alarmingly liquid, like she was about to start crying on Tess’s behalf. ‘How can I make things up to you?’
‘Look, I’m not going to write about this for The Sunday Sentinel, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ Tess managed a short bark of laughter that was completely devoid of humour. ‘Like anyone would believe that any of this had really happened.’
‘You can date Darcy. Your next date will be Darcy,’ Ella said quickly, her eyes darting to Gabe, who reared back like someone had landed another punch on him.
‘But there’s a waiting list,’ he reminded them.
‘Sod the waiting list!’ Ella rolled her eyes extravagantly. ‘After what you’ve put this poor woman through.’
This was one of those moments when Tess needed to not let life just happen to her. She had to make it happen. While establishing clear-cut boundaries and not giving anyone the benefit of the doubt, because that never worked in her favour.
What would Elizabeth Bennet do? Elizabeth Bennet would absolutely lock down a date with Darcy. No question about it.
‘If me and Darcy hit it off, then I’m also taking him to my university reunion thing, even though it’s an overnight.’ She didn’t even phrase it as a question with her voice rising perilously high when she got to where a question mark could possibly be lurking. It was a statement of intent.
‘Absolutely not,’ Gabe insisted very quietly as he rocked Avi from side to side. ‘You can’t have library property off the premises for so long. It’s simply unprecedented and completely forb––’
‘Of course you can,’ Ella said, her eyes shooting a thousand daggers at her brother but then softening on impact as she looked at her son slumbering in his arms.
Tess decided that she might as well go for broke.
‘I want him to look more like a young Colin Firth than a young Matthew Macfadyen wearing a really bad wig. Although I’m not averse to him doing the hand flex from the 2005 film, can we also have the wet shirt scene from the 1995 BBC series?
We could have the date near a lake or pond so he can dive into the water.
’ She nodded happily. ‘Yes, that would work.’
Both Ella and Gabe were staring at her like she was leaking ectoplasm from every orifice. ‘No. No. And, again, no,’ Gabe stated in dark, ominous tones. ‘Just how much wine have you had to drink?’
‘Ha! I don’t know how you have the nerve to ask me that when you thought it would be a great idea to set me up on a date with some medieval fool in a suit of armour,’ Tess reminded him.
Just like she planned on reminding him every time they saw each other.
‘My hopes and dreams were just collateral in your evil, sabotage-y plans.’
‘I must protest most vehemently,’ Gabe began, but before Tess could clap her hands over her ears because she couldn’t bear to listen to another treacherous word from him, it was left to Ella to be the voice of reason.
‘Look, Tess, I’m sorry about what my idiot brother has subjected you to and yes to Darcy and yes to Darcy at your university reunion but we have no control over what he looks like,’ she said very firmly, like she was no stranger to setting very clear boundaries herself.
‘That’s down to Jane Austen. If Darcy felt moved to flex his hand, great, but he didn’t actually dive into a lake then emerge dripping wet and scorchingly hot in the source text.
They just added that in for the benefit of the TV audience.
Our Darcy, the real Mr Darcy, won’t be doing that. ’
‘I suppose.’ Tess subsided back into the chair. ‘Could we set this up quite soon?’
There was no way that Sarah would refuse an article where Tess went on a date with actual Mr Darcy. It wouldn’t be at all demeaning to write about their forthcoming date because Darcy was her soulmate.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ Gabe said, but both Ella and Tess shook their heads.
‘No, you won’t. You’ve done enough damage both to The Love Library and poor Tess,’ Ella said. ‘From now on, I’ll be dealing with The Love Library. I’m not having you anywhere near it.’
This was a good thing. Gabe had never believed in The Love Library.
That was why tonight’s exercise had been a masterclass in misdirection.
Tess now realised that she probably wouldn’t see Gabe again and there wouldn’t be another opportunity to berate him for all the terrible dates he’d just put her through.
Maybe that was why she felt a sudden deep and dark gloom settle around her.
It certainly couldn’t be for any other reason.