by Livia Day
The Blackmail Blend
by Livia Day
The Blackmail Blend
by Livia Day
The Blackmail Blend
It's practically inhumane not to stop for tea.
Gail Carriger
I heard him coming and didn’t bother to look up. His soft shoes moved around my kitchen, and I heard the click of the hot water jug, the slight rattle of teacups.
Helping himself. I might have objected to the presumption, but I heard the sound of two cups being laid out, and I’ll forgive many things of a bloke who makes me a cup of tea.
If he could bake, I’d probably have married him by now, but a girl’s got to have her standards.
It was Sunday, and Café La Femme was closed. I lay full length across the top of the café counter, reading my third Regency romance of the day while a presumptuous Scotsman took advantage of my kitchen, and I let him.
Meanwhile, Arabella danced with a devilish duke.
‘I remember ye dinnae care fer Earl Grey,’ said Stewart as he bumped his way through the swinging door from the kitchen with one mug and one teacup with a proper saucer. ‘This was in the canister marked ‘Tabitha Breakfast’, which seemed like a clue.’
We hadn’t seen each other in a week, but we didn’t bother with extraneous words—hello, how’ve you been. We cut straight to the banter and the exchange of comforting hot drinks.
I stretched my hand out for the teacup, which rattled only slightly on its saucer as I set it down beside me, not taking my eyes off the page. ‘Last chapter.’
‘Spoiler warnin’: they lived happily e’er after.’
‘You’re hilarious.’ I gave up on the book, though, letting it fall closed as I sat up, cross-legged on the counter, and inhaled from the cup. My favourite blend: green and black tea together with fruits and chrysanthemum. The fragrance makes me feel at home no matter where I am.
‘Smells a’right,’ said Stewart, peering at his own mug. He sat at a table some distance from me, under the mural of Wonder Woman, various Bond girls, and other vital icons of feminine glamour. I watched him swig the tea slowly and thoughtfully, like he was testing a glass of wine. ‘Mango?’ he said finally.
‘And peach.’
‘No’ bad. Wha’s it called?’
I smiled behind my mug. ‘Tabitha.’
‘Ye hae yer own tea?’
‘All great brands have to start somewhere. Was Earl Grey named after a real earl?’
‘I ’spect so.’
‘You don’t know?’ I returned to my book. ‘And here I thought you were an expert on earls. And dukes … the occasional marquess, but they’re not as popular as dukes, are they?’
Stewart’s brows drew together just a bit. He never liked me talking about his books. It was almost as if he expected me to constantly make fun of him for making a living writing romance novels. Well okay, I did occasionally, but only when I ran out of other things to make fun of him about. ‘Reading my books again, Tabitha?’
‘Hardly at all. I can’t rely on you for Regency. Your alter ego Diana Glass has only written a couple. You’re letting the side down.’
He shrugged. ‘Couldnae get my head around the historicals, tae be honest. The clothes are complicated.’
‘Nothing wrong with a corset. If a fellow can find his way under one of those, then you know he’s really interested.’ I gave him a sly look. ‘I quite enjoyed His Highland Fling.’
Stewart winced. ‘Please dinnae read tha’ one.’
‘Too late,’ I sang.
‘I wrote tha’ before I knew fer certain Highland romances are the worst of all cultural crimes against my people. Also, I hadnae got the technique doown.’
‘Oh, your cross-dressing Scottish countess had all kinds of techniques. It didn’t help me with my quest, though.’
‘So yer no’ just pawin’g through Diana Glass’s backlist to torment me?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, offended that he thought I’d go to so much trouble over him.
After all, I was in love with someone else. Completely and utterly headlong over someone who was not Stewart McTavish.
He looked uncomfortable for a moment, steeling himself for what he was going to say next. ‘So—’
‘So what?’ I was curious. He was usually so laidback he practically hovered off the ground. Anything that made him this awkward had to be interesting.
‘Well, ye know.’
‘I really don’t.’
Was I pregnant, dying, about to embark on my own career of writing bodice rippers? What on earth was he trying to say?
‘Yer no’ sleuthing again, are ye?’ Stewart blurted out.
I tried to hold back my physical reaction by staying very still. My effort was noticeable, to Stewart at least. ‘Sorry!’ he said.
‘No, I’m—’
‘I shouldnae—’
‘I’m fine.’ I snapped it out harder than I should have. I needed to be over this. I couldn’t be melting down when a friend so much as mentioned…
Here’s the thing. A month ago, I almost died. It happened because I thought that solving murder mysteries was a super fun game, when in fact the whole thing had been set up by a creepy stalker who knew—well, far too much about creepiness and stalkering, among other nasty talents.
This girl detective was very nearly girl in a body bag.
So no, I was not sleuthing again. And it would be really, really helpful if everyone in my life believed that.
I took a deep breath and started over. ‘It’s for a tea,’ I told Stewart. ‘High tea. I’m hosting a Regency-themed high tea for a fancy book launch next week, and I was looking for ideas. That’s all. And your books are completely useless for Regency baked goods, by the way. They’re all carriage chases and petticoats and some really quite amazing oral sex.’
Stewart’s ears went red. Why yes, I did embarrass him in order to make him forget about the other thing. That’s how I roll.
My name is Tabitha Darling and I am a riot at dinner parties.
‘Really,’ I went on. ‘The level of sexy detail was very impressive. I didn’t know they even knew about the clitoris in the late 1890s.’
‘I can recommend some authors,’ he said firmly, refusing to blush any harder. He swallowed his tea, one gulp at a time. ‘Ye might be better off with some o’ the classics. Georgette Heyer or Austen…’
‘I’m on to Beatrice Wilde now,’ I said, cutting him off. ‘Her lovers aren’t nearly as good in bed as yours, but their table manners are impeccable and I’ve written down at least twelve different kinds of cake.’ I waved Devastated By The Duke at him. ‘If you let me get to the end of the last chapter I might find out some more about authentic period sandwich fillings.’
Stewart squashed his face up into a thoroughly unpleasant expression. ‘I wouldnae bother about her books. She’s a right cow.’
I was startled at his vehemence. Stewart was as much of a gossip as me—one of the reasons we’d become friends so fast. But I rarely heard him say anything genuinely mean. ‘What on earth did she do to you?’ I said in surprise.
Stewart had an implacable look on his face now, and was completely ignoring his mug of tea. Apparently it couldn’t compete with his deep and devoted love affair with coffee. He peered at the stack of books I had piled up around me on the café counter. ‘Ye’ve a lot o’ her titles here, Tabitha.’
‘I didn’t realise it was such a faux pas. Are all you romance authors like this? Terribly jealous of each other? Do you duel at dawn with laptops? Is this a gang war?’
‘Fourteen,’ he said, counting the titles. ‘Why d’ye hae fourteen Beatrice Wilde books, Tabitha? They look brand new: overboard fer one high tea, even by yer standards.’
�
�They were free,’ I said defensively. ‘Why do you care?’
Stewart turned towards me then, and I saw how genuinely furious he was. He was practically vibrating.
Maybe it was the Regency romances I had been uploading into my brain all morning, but I had the urge to say something like ‘la, sir,’ and hit him with my fan. If I had a fan.
Hitting him with Devastated By the Duke probably would not have the same effect.
‘Tabitha,’ he said ominously. ‘Whose book launch are ye hosting wi’ this Regency high tea?’
He had figured it out already, and I had figured out that he had figured it out, and he was standing very, very close to me. I really shouldn’t be so turned on right now.
Damn my problematic attraction to cranky men.
‘You don’t have to be invited if you don’t want to,’ I said, trying desperately not to think about the time he kissed me, right here, over the café counter. We never, ever talked about the kiss.
‘Och,’ Stewart said, biting out the words like I had wounded him. ‘If Beatrice Wilde is gonnae be here, ye can bet I will be, too.’
He marched straight out the front door, leaving the bell jangling in his wake.
I shouldn’t think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
Bishop was bored. I could tell he was bored, because he was leaning slightly in his chair, and he’d eaten his steak in half the time I’d taken to barely nibble my scallop fettuccine.
Okay, maybe the food discrepancy was because I was doing all the talking, but the leaning part definitely meant that he was bored.
I broke off from my expansive explanation about the creative uses of food in historical romance novels, and how many tiers a tea tray really should have. ‘Okay. What did you do all day?’
‘I arrested people,’ he said with only a hint of sarcasm.
‘All day? You must be exhausted.’
‘Most of it was paperwork.’
‘I’m talking too much, aren’t I?’ I leaned in, giving him my serious ‘confess or you die’ expression. Apparently he finds it cute, and I am not above using this against him. ‘Am I talking too much? I would let you talk more, but when I stop talking everything goes quiet, and I’m used to filling up the quiet parts of the conversation. With more talking.’
Bishop smiled slowly, and his face creased in ways that made my stomach flip over in reassuring ways. ‘I like watching you talk.’
‘That’s all right, then.’ I ate some pasta, to give him a chance to fill the silence. He watched me with that lazy, sexy smile of his and said nothing. I broke first. Of course I did. ‘When you said watching me talk—’
‘Yes.’
‘And how much you like it.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s really not the same thing as listening, is it?’
Detective Senior Sgt Leo Bishop gave me a helpless shrug that involved both of his very broad shoulders, and a guilty expression. ‘I admit it. When it comes to eighteenth century pastries I’m going to tune out.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s not that they’re not fascinating…’
I stabbed a piece of pasta with my fork, wondering how he was going to unravel himself out of this one. ‘Yes?’
‘…it’s just that I keep thinking about kissing you instead.’
‘Hmm.’
The scallops were good. At least they kept the roes on. I’ve never been to a mainland restaurant that isn’t somehow embarrassed about the scallop roe, casting aside the best bit of meat in order to make perfect, boring little white discs on a plate. Sometimes they even slice them, which I consider heresy.
Here in Tasmania, unless a restaurant is very very pretentious, we honour the scallop properly, in its natural state.
I would have used more butter, and left off the grill marks, but that’s the curse of a chef on a date. If you’re not planning to cook for your bloke one hundred percent of the time, you have to resign yourself to food that isn’t quite what you would have prepared.
The fettuccine, at least, was properly springy.
‘Tabitha…’ said Bishop. I still couldn’t get used to calling him Leo, even though I had been his girlfriend for several weeks now. It was too formal. Too casual. Not nearly sarcastic enough.
Girlfriend. Yep, there was that word again. It had been following me around like it expected more of me with its big puppy eyes and its habit of buying me actual flowers and taking me on actual formal dates, and maybe I was no longer technically talking about the word ‘girlfriend’.
I ate another scallop. ‘Sorry, I was thinking about seafood.’
‘Of course you were.’
‘I’m going to serve potted shrimp in little jars. With clarified butter. Elegant and delicious. You have to scoop them out with tiny cake forks.’
Bishop’s forehead creased up again. ‘Sounds fiddly.’
‘Fiddly food is the whole point of at a high tea.’ He was staring at my mouth. Watching me talk, then, not listening. I could live with that. I let my mouth curve into a smile. ‘Are you still thinking about kissing me?’
‘Always.’
‘Want to go make out in the car?’
Bishop’s face crinkled in a different, much more appealing way. That expression. I liked it when he made that expression at me. It was very new, and my new mission in life was inspiring it to happen as often as humanly possible.
There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
I have been hot for Leo Bishop for nearly half my life, and while he is devastatingly handsome (could definitely give those Regency dukes a run for their money—why are there never ugly dukes in those books? They’re all tall, dark and handsome except for the occasional rugged redhead Scottish laird) he really does have some stupid ideas sometimes.
Such as, for instance, his idea that I deserved some kind of official courting period, despite the fact that this is the twenty-first century and I had already waited over a decade for our first kiss.
Courting period. That was the actual phrase he had used. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who had been reading Regency romances, though frankly the young ladies in those books get up to all kinds of premarital hanky panky these days. In carriages, up against walls … sometimes even in the first quarter of the book!
But no, here I was in my mid-twenties, reduced to snogging in the back seat of a car despite the fact that I had a perfectly reasonable bed in my perfectly grown up house.
He wasn’t even copping a feel. It was beyond frustrating how far he was prepared to go to make me feel appreciated.
‘Leo,’ I murmured as he mapped his way down the side of my neck with his extremely pleasant mouth.
‘Mmm?’ he said, kissing just along the neckline of my lacy top.
‘Have you ever thought about breeches?’
‘Of the peace?’
‘No!’ At this point, the hot kisses were kind of annoying if they weren’t going to lead anywhere. I tugged his face up to meet mine. ‘Of the trouser variety. With, you know, waistcoats and foofy shirts. The full Mr Darcy.’
Bishop gave me a look. I knew that look. Like my favourite tea blend, it had my name all over it. Stamped and Approved: Tabitha inspires the essence of impatience, a scattering of suspicion and the scent of chrysanthemum. ‘What are you up to, Tish?’ he asked.
‘I might be trying to talk you into sex costumes,’ I said with a pout because, come on, why did his first assumption always have to be shenanigans?
‘I am not dressing like Mr Darcy under any circumstances,’ he said firmly. ‘Even in the bedroom. But that’s not what you’re asking, is it? I’m getting better at separating the outrageous lies from the outrageous truths.’
I sighed. ‘There’s this book launch…’
‘No.’
‘I prom
ised I’d get people in costume.’
‘You have friends who love that sort of thing. Surely that’s the whole point of your friends.’
‘Yes, but they all want to wear the frocks.’
‘What about your tame Scotsman?’ He did his best not to grimace when he mentioned Stewart. It was a valiant effort. He’d never liked him, and this was without him knowing that Stewart had kissed me on the same day that Bishop and I had finally got together.
‘He has some kind of artistic blood feud with the author,’ I sighed. ‘And you’d look so good in all that rig…’ Bishop would be every inch a devastating duke, with his slightly-curling dark hair and deep brown eyes.
‘How many times do I have to say no, Tabitha?’
I stuck out my lower lip shamelessly.
Bishop rolled his eyes at me. ‘Really, that’s what you’re going with? A lower lip? Is this third or fourth wave feminism? You’ll be pretending to cry at me next.’
Well, that did it. ‘But…’ I said, heaving fake sobs. ‘It would—mean so much to me—and—it’s the only way you can prove—your eternal love—and DEVOTION.’ I dissolved into noisy weeping, and collapsed on top of him.
I would have got away with it too, if it wasn’t for his crafty application of a hand sliding under my top. Excellent distraction technique, that bloke.
‘Why, Mr Darcy, I thought you were a gentleman!’
The cup of tea on arrival at a country house is a thing which, as a rule, I particularly enjoy. I like the crackling logs, the shaded lights, the scent of buttered toast, the general atmosphere of leisured coziness.
P.G. Wodehouse
‘Three missed calls from Miss Austen Regrets,’ said my flatmate Xanthippe, when I returned home from Date Night, rumpled and frustrated but most thoroughly kissed. Better than nothing. ‘I gave her your mobile number, but she prefers to perform her scorn via landline.’
‘Sorry, did she interrupt your precious ninja training?’
‘No, she interrupted me catching up on a month’s worth of White Trash Wives in Washington. I had to keep pausing the laptop.’