One Magic Moment(30)
Author: Lynn Kurland

 

“And the grubby leavings from fingers of Year Five boys on school outings,” he said with a snort.

 

She smiled. “You’re a cynic.”

 

“Realist.”

 

“Why are you in England?”

 

He blinked. “Because I am an Englishman.”

 

She leaned her head back against the pub bench. “You are full of national pride.”

 

“Do you have none?” he asked.

 

“Oh, I do,” she answered easily. “I’m a Yank, through and through.”

 

“Despite your rather crisp consonants and lovely vowels.”

 

She smiled, one of the truer smiles he’d ever had from her. “Thank you. I’ve tried to mitigate the effects of a brush with a Midwest twang.”

 

He felt himself relaxing—an alarming realization in and of itself—and thought that perhaps he shouldn’t relax too much. There was no way to predict what sorts of perils he would plunge himself into if he did. He looked at his watch. “Shall we go?”

 

“If you like.”

 

He didn’t, but he was a realist. Too much more time sitting companionably with her and he would be letting things slip he didn’t want to.

 

He walked with her out to the car, took his keys from her and saw her inside, then drove her to her mate’s house where she collected her things. He put them in the boot of his car with his own he’d packed earlier from his hotel, then slid in under the wheel and was very grateful he was driving and not looking forward to several days’ worth of travel to get to Sedgwick.

 

He was also happy to do nothing but drive until they were on the motorway. It never ceased to amaze him how easily a car with a bit of horsepower could accelerate to speeds he never would have dreamed of in his youth. More amazing still that he could be the master of that car and those speeds.

 

The Future was an amazing place.

 

And at the moment, it was made all the more pleasant by the addition of a beautiful woman sitting next to him, though that wasn’t what drew him to her. It was simply that she was Tess and there was something about her that he couldn’t look away from. She wasn’t what he’d expected, but he realized she could have been nothing else.

 

He grasped quickly for the last shreds of his common sense. The truth was, it was too soon, he had too many secrets, she was too fragile—

 

Nay, the last wasn’t true. She looked fragile, but he suspected that underneath that exterior that had recently suffered some sort of shock, she was tough as spring beef.

 

He wondered what sort of shock it had been.

 

Still, she looked tired. And she was too thin. He didn’t mean the skeletal emaciation that he saw in films and on the covers of gossip rags. She was too thin for her frame, something he suspected came from whatever shock she’d endured. When he’d said as much the day before, he hadn’t meant to be critical; he’d simply wanted to remedy the situation.

 

Which had driven her out on a non-date with the future Earl of Artane.

 

Lesson learned. He would keep his bloody mouth shut the next time.

 

 

 

 

 

The afternoon was waning by the time he walked Tess to her front door. He wanted to take her hand, or pull her into his arms, or say something meaningful. As it was, he could only stand there and look at her.

 

“Thank you for the day,” she said simply. “It couldn’t have been convenient to spend the night in Cambridge.”

 

“It was nothing,” he said with a shrug. But it wasn’t nothing; it was something and far more of something than he was comfortable with.

 

“The gate’s open.”

 

He blinked. “What?”

 

“You’re halfway toward it as it is. I just thought you might want to know it wasn’t keeping you here.”

 

He blew his hair out of his eyes. “I’m not sure we should see each other very often,” he said bluntly, before he thought better of it. “Just to keep this thing from moving too quickly.”

 

“This thing?”

 

He suppressed the urge to blush. “Perhaps I am venturing where I shouldn’t have. I have presumed that you wanted to see me again, which perhaps you don’t.”

 

“I never said that,” she said mildly. “And those were very nice rhetorical flourishes you just offered—no, don’t glare at me.” She attempted a smile. “It’s been a very long fall and I’m not quite myself.”

 

“Hence my desire to feed you at every turn.”

 

Her smile faded. “Is that all you want to do with me, John de Piaget?”

 

“No,” he said shortly, “it unfortunately isn’t, which is why I think we shouldn’t see each other very often.”

 

“What’s your definition of often?”

 

“Every day.”

 

“That is often.”

 

He didn’t bother to say that by every day, he meant all day, every day. No sense in frightening off the poor wench unnecessarily.

 

“You’re very comfortable dictating the terms of things,” she remarked casually.

 

He clasped his hands behind his back. “Then you dictate.”

 

“No,” she said slowly, “I think I like it better when you do. Very chivalrous.”

 

“And despotic.”

 

“I wasn’t going to say that,” she said with a very small smile, “but yes, that, too. My oldest sister would be appalled by it, but I don’t think I mind. What do you think?”

 

He thought that if he had to talk to her much longer, he would either attempt to kiss her senseless or drop to his knees and beg her to be his—neither of which he could do at present. He backed down a step.

 

“I think we should see each other next week, then.” He said that because it sounded sensible. “On Friday.”

 

“If you like.”

 

He started to nod, then realized that was well over a week away. He frowned. “Thursday, perhaps.”

 

“That’s good, too.”

 

“You could ring me sooner, if you like.”

 

“I don’t call boys,” she said primly.