Yuck, the pub stank of manufactured floral scent. And was that classical music playing, oh, so softly in the background? What had happened to the cigarette smog and the yeasty smell of spilt beer, the thrum of darts spearing their target, the jukebox stuck in the sounds of the eighties? The jukebox had been ripped out and the dartboard replaced by a garish print of a fox that could have been a pro- or an anti-hunting statement. More disturbing still, the toweling beer mats reeked of fabric softener.
“Bit different since the brewery chain took over, isn’t it?” she said.
Sebastian signaled the barmaid with a discreet nod. “It’s ruined,” he replied, and then ordered two gin and tonics without consulting her.
Tilly nodded at a handful of villagers whose genealogy she could trace by reading gravestones in the cemetery. They had remained loyal to the pub, despite grousing to Rowena about the changes, but they would never accept Sebastian. To them, he would always be a weekender, an outsider. She should warn him that if he intended to rebuild his life, Bramwell Chase might not be the place to start.
Thankfully, Sebastian agreed to sit in the garden. Tilly loved the long hours of English twilight living, when blackbirds trilled and the evening air became heavy with the perfume of nicotiana. In North Carolina summer darkness fell instantaneously at eight-thirty. And noisily, thanks to the tree frogs.
A gaggle of children giggled as they raced between the tables and trestle benches, and Tilly listened for her child. It was an instinct she couldn’t outgrow. And with it came the sad acceptance that she would never have another child. Despite David’s reticence, she had dreamed of a large family. But that dream lay buried along with her husband. And now she was back before any of it existed, in the place where she and Sebastian had pledged their love with more engraved initials. Goodness, they had certainly stamped everything as theirs. Had they been that confident in their future?
“Too bad,” Sebastian said. “The old tables are gone. Would’ve been fun to find one with our initials on.”
They used to do that the whole time—pick up fragments of each other’s thoughts. How did you move on from that closeness, that bond you had believed could never be broken, and yet, somehow, you’d managed to discard like an old report card from middle school?
Tilly sat at the first vacant table, scooting along the bench so Sebastian could sit next to her. He didn’t. He settled opposite, then picked up a cardboard beer mat and dismembered it layer by layer.
“Want to tell me why you look like a kid who smashed a cricket ball through the kitchen window?” Tilly sniffed the posy of sweet peas in the middle of the table.
Sebastian grinned. “I didn’t want to admit this, Tilly, but I’ve missed you.”
“There’s another but coming.”
“Yes, there is. First, though, an apology for being such a git last weekend.” Sebastian tugged on his signet ring. “I don’t handle emotion well.”
That was an understatement. “Does anyone?”
He pushed aside the scraps of beer mat. “I never meant to hurt you after David died, and I certainly don’t intend to hurt you now.” He took a deep breath. “I want to stay in Bramwell Chase, put down roots.” Had Sebastian ever said “I want” before? “I need,” “I’d like,” but “I want”? “I want to buy here. A house that lends itself to children.”
“No,” she whispered. No. That was her line. “Please, anything but that.”
“Tilly, someone has to buy Woodend. Why not me?”
Because I want to buy it, even though I can’t afford to, and my mother doesn’t want me to, and my child will be devastated, and my nursery will go belly-up and…. “Because. Because you might marry again and not let me in the door. Because you might rip out the herbaceous border and put in a swimming pool.” Because I love Woodend, and I always will. Because returning home is my dream, the only one I have left. Don’t steal it from me.
“A pool? That’s not a bad idea.” He offered up his crooked smile as reconciliation: Sebastian at his most irresistible.
“Don’t, Sebastian. This isn’t funny. If you must know, it stinks.” And that was putting it mildly.
“What if I promised you’d always be welcome?” He reached for her hand, but she wrenched it free.
Was perpetual hurt their new cycle? “Yuck. That’s something you say to a vicar—‘Do drop by for tea’—not the women you had sex with in every venue from a historic ruin to the backseat of your mother’s Mini.”
“Shh. Tilly. Not so loud.”
“Don’t shush me. You can’t do this, Sebastian. You can’t take my home.”
“Your mother’s home, which she intends to sell.” He took her hand again but this time flipped it over.
“Nitpicker.” She clung to her fury even as it faded. No way would she give in and make nice, no matter how softly his thumb traced a never-ending circle on her palm.
“Yilly, Yilly, quite contrilly.”
His thumb stopped moving and they stared at each other.
“Christ, I’d forgotten I used to call you that.”
“So had I,” mumbled Tilly.
* * *
Being with Sebastian was like ambling around a friend’s garden and pausing to enjoy the expected. They laughed over Tilly’s screams of pleasure that had fueled the gamekeeper’s insistence of ghostly goings-on at the Dower House, and Sebastian relived the moment of their meeting. He told Tilly that she had been the most beautiful, fragile-looking creature he’d ever seen, and how appalled he had been when she’d started swearing at the gang of boys teasing her. “The mouth on you,” he said, shaking his head.
But then he asked permission to approach her mother about Woodend, and Tilly plummeted back into confusion. She wanted to scream at Sebastian, tell him he couldn’t buy Woodend, but what was the point? He would shoot her down with reality, would force her to think in black-and-white, and she liked every shade in between.
Tilly watched a daddy longlegs hover over the table then whirl away with small, jerky movements. “My father believed houses are emotional tape recorders,” she said, “that they record the past and hit Replay when you trigger a memory. Woodend is my tape recorder. You’ll never shake the ghosts.”
“Woodend was my refuge, too, and it could be one for my children. They’re living in a rented flat, for Christ’s sake, trying to adapt to life in England, the separation, their mother’s pregnancy, a man they hardly know….” He shrugged off his jacket, slung it over the bench next to him and rolled up his shirtsleeves. More linen. How did he have the patience for all that ironing? His metal watch strap clacked against the edge of the table. “Tilly, please. My children need this.”
Even if her heart exploded into a gazillion pieces, how could she argue with that?
“Do you remember what we used to say?” Tilly drew a line through the condensation sliding down her glass. “If Woodend was ours, we’d build an aviary and fill it with budgies?”
“And a pair of lovebirds,” he added.
“I don’t think I can watch you do this.”
“But you won’t have to. You’ll be back in North Carolina.” His voice grew hesitant. “Won’t you?”
“I have two plane tickets that say I leave England on August 7, but I’ve been thinking about my mother growing old alone, about where I belong…. Truth is, part of me has never left Bramwell Chase, and that part has been reeling me back in. And you just complicated everything.” And he didn’t know the half of it.
“You mean you might—stay?” Was the hitch in his voice criticism or shock?
“I swear I don’t know,” she said. And she didn’t. Woodend had always been her anchor. And giving up and walking away? She had never been able to do either.
They sat in silence, surrounded by the conversations of others and the occasional fizz of the fluorescent mosquito lure zapping an insect. The white fairy lights draped through the apple trees clicked on as dusk fled, and a smattering of stars jostled through the blackness. Tilly ruffled her hair, which was long overdue for a chop, and failed to think of anything to say.
“Christ, you look sexy when you do that.” Sebastian rubbed at his mouth.
Tilly stretched across the table and kissed his cheek, her pulse scampering in one direction, her mind in the other. To hurt Sebastian again was unthinkable, and she would never allow anything to develop unless she was confident of the outcome. But for a moment she had wanted him, and she sensed the desire had been mutual.
“That spring, before you met David,” he said, “we came close, didn’t we, to reuniting?”
Tilly was about to answer when she realized it wasn’t a question. Sebastian was drifting on his own memory trip, and she turned away. But as she fought to breathe through the sudden constriction in her chest, she forgot about Woodend, about Sebastian, about everything. Two figures were coming toward them, one waving, one scowling. And she realized that true sexual attraction, the kind that slammed into you when you were cruising along, oblivious, was a great deal more treacherous than facing a rogue wave in a dinky boat. True sexual attraction blacked out the world and then splashed it with the fiery colors of her favorite tropical plants.
She grabbed a flint of ice from her glass. And as the cold bit into her fingers, she prayed that Sebastian wasn’t tuned into her wavelength, sharing the thought that on the eve of another reconciliation, history was set to repeat itself.
* * *
The blush that covered her freckled face and her neck and the chest he dreamed of kissing punched away his jealousy. Her hair, which had become shaggy and unruly since they’d met, was shoved behind her ears to reveal huge, silver hoops that grazed her neck. God Almighty, she was beautiful, sitting with her bare legs entwined around each other, some floaty shawl thing draped through her arms and a floral dress slipping off her shoulders. No red bra strap tonight. In fact—James swallowed—no bra.
“Yoo-hoo!” Rowena called as they walked across the grass.
People raised their hands in greeting to Rowena, and a guy who looked about ninety wobbled up to standing and doffed his cap. Rowena acknowledged him with a wag of her head. And Tilly stared at James.
She was annoyed, wasn’t she? He had tried to talk Rowena out of this, but she was bullish in her focus. What had seemed funny at 2:00 a.m. when they were both smashed, and mildly inappropriate half an hour ago, blew up in his face—a practical joke turned cruel. And James had no tolerance for cruelty. He tried to leave, but Rowena clamped herself to his arm like a pit bull with lockjaw.
“You have a face,” Tilly said. Was that approval or disapproval?
“Indeed.” James smiled at her, which was pointless since Tilly was busy picking at a stain on the table and no longer watching him.
“Isn’t he dishy without that appalling beard?” Rowena said. “Whoever knew he was hiding that sexy cleft in his chin!”
Sebastian drained his glass in one long, noisy gulp.
“Why did you shave it off?” Tilly asked, but didn’t look up.
“I met someone who reminded me to be myself,” James said. True, but wasn’t his timing a childish attempt at one-upmanship, a pathetic desire to distract her from Sebastian?
“We decided a nightcap was just the ticket,” Rowena said. “We’re not interrupting, are we?”
“No,” Tilly and Sebastian replied in unison.
Rowena detached herself from James and he stood alone, exposed, his nerves jangling. Should he go? Should he stay? Fear he was used to, lack of confidence he was not. If only Tilly would give him a sign that she wasn’t angry. She’d never judged him before, but had he overstepped her threshold of tolerance? Why, why had he let Rowena talk him into coming here?
“Budge up, sweetie.” Rowena grabbed Sebastian’s jacket, draped it around her shoulders and squeezed in next to him. He, James, should go; he should definitely go. But if he stayed, he could sit next to Tilly. He might even brush against her naked shoulders. Fuck, he was acting like a fourteen-year-old wrung out with lust. But he had to touch her. Even if it meant he would crash and burn. You’re going to hell, James, straight to hell.
Rowena’s bangles chimed as she sipped her Guinness. “Didn’t see one blessed badger,” she said. “Heard some snuffling but that was about it. Still, my beloved godson is pooped. Fell asleep in the car, poor poppet. James carried him upstairs to bed in quite the Christopher Robin moment. Oh! Nearly forgot. I have a little pressie for you, Sebastian.” She fumbled in her bag while Sebastian balled his right hand into a fist. And who could blame him? What kind of a jackass blundered into another man’s date?
Finally, Tilly raised her head. “Ro, is that your fifth form satchel? It is! I can see the scuff mark where your mother scratched off the ‘Anarchy in the UK’ sticker.” She laughed and James lost track of his thoughts.
He folded his body into the shrinking space beside her and counted to six. Six was a smooth, round number, the perfect number, as perfect as Tilly’s laugh.
“Eureka, found it!” Rowena shook out a crumpled flyer and handed it to Sebastian. “Welcome to village life, where we abuse you something rotten. The vicar needs a volunteer to organize the kiddies’ cricket match at the village fete, and he practically wee’d in his cassock when I told him about you.”
“Thanks.” Sebastian’s hand relaxed. “Archie and I could do this together.”
“Exactly,” Rowena said, and began discussing the village fete with him.
Tilly remained tense and silent.
She hates you, James. She hates you.
James angled his head toward her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, and had to fight the impulse to keep apologizing. I’m not a bad person. I’ve apologized twice and twice is enough. “I tried to talk her out of it.” You have to keep apologizing, if you don’t she’ll hate you forever. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m—”
Tilly pressed against him, her hand on his shoulder. “I thought you were going to work on the whole apology thing,” she said. “One sorry is fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. It was far from fine. An image had ambushed him, an image of broken glass and blood. An image that echoed fact, that stole a memory and perverted it. In his mind, he had picked up Sebastian’s beer glass, smashed it against the table and ground the jagged edge into Sebastian’s face. James let out a sharp breath, overwhelmed by the horror of a violent act he could never commit even though the OCD told him otherwise, told him that he had been a monster once before and would be so again. Showed him that he was a monster.
Tilly’s hand slipped down his back in a steady, firm stroke. She understood. He’d said nothing, and yet she understood. Wasn’t that all anyone ever needed—someone to understand? And why, since he was ten, had he worked so hard to deny anyone that chance? But not anymore, not anymore. For the first time, a person he loved understood. Even if she was David’s widow, even if her childhood sweetheart was the better man, the better father, James would not be noble. He would not
step aside; he would not deny these feelings.
“It’s not real,” she whispered.
“No,” he said, not caring who heard, “but this is.”
Chapter 18
If only sexual attraction were as easy to remove as a parasitic plant. Tilly stared at the sticky Willy she had wrenched, roots and all, from a wild forget-me-not. Its hairs pricked her arm searching for purchase, but she brushed it to the ground. And stomped on it.
How had she arrived at this place—psychological and physical? What exactly was she doing sitting on a wooden stile at the edge of a wheat field? To find James attractive was beyond inconvenient. It threatened something that suddenly felt as necessary as breathing. Watching him force aside fear every day reminded her of the elasticity of the human spirit, of how she had survived after David’s funeral, when she had been stretched so tight that she could have snapped at any moment. But she hadn’t, and neither had Isaac, thanks to the garden.
It had started with the salvia coccinea, a scarlet annual that tossed its seed around like a soused soccer fan celebrating an FA Cup win. After the service, Tilly had embarked on a cleaning frenzy that included her plants. But there were too many salvias to give away, so she and Isaac started selling them at the farmers’ market, a place they came to love for its bright babble. The following year, cheered on by Isaac, she created Piedmont Perennials and began channeling despondency into the life force of gardening. And wasn’t that what she’d been doing up at Bramwell Hall every day, thanks to James and his persistence?
Think of the devil and there he was, stalking toward her as if he had a soul to claim. The flat of his hand smacked a violent rhythm against his thigh, and the flecks of shade in his eyes had spread, turning his irises black. Oh crap.
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