Page 8 of The Last Casterglass
“Oliver?”
He didn’t recognise the hesitant, wavering voice at first, and then he blinked in surprise when he saw it was actually Seph herself standing in the doorway. She was wearing what he suspected, although he’d only known her for two days, was her usual sort of outfit—a very worn, unbuttoned plaid shirt over paint-splattered dungarees and a pair of badly scuffed work boots. Her pink dreadlocks were standing out in all directions, but the uncertain expression on her face wasn’t one he’d ever seen before. It was the first time, he realised, that he’d seen her when she wasn’t scowling or shouting or worse, and he realised with a jolt that went right through him:she’s beautiful.
Some part of him had known that already, but now he felt it right down to his bones. And other places.
Her skin was glowing and clear, her face heart shaped, her eyes aquamarine, her lips full and lush. And her body, beneath the baggy clothes, looked slender yet curvy in all the right places. Yes, he was definitely noticing. He yanked his gaze upwards.
“Um, Seph. Hey.” He straightened, wincing at the ache in his lower back from, admittedly, less than an hour of stooping over a filing cabinet. How many hours would it take to finish? Althea was a sadist, or at least had some sadistic tendencies she probably needed to curb. “How are you?”
“Um, okay.” She looked down at the floor, scuffing her boot along the slate surface, her shoulder hunching a little. “I just wanted to say, ah, thanks for the brownie. And, um, the apology in your note. I know I freaked out on you, and so I, ah, am sorry, too. For that. I shouldn’t have overreacted the way I did. I just…am kind of a private person.” This came out in a stilted, staccato confession that he suspected she’d rehearsed, and somehow that endeared her to him all the more. Heaven knew why he liked this prickly woman, but he did.
“That’s okay,” he said, and she looked up at him quickly, her eyes glinting under her messy fringe, her expression both searching and anxious. “I was pretty presumptuous. You had every right to freak out. Not,” he added quickly, “that I think you were freaking out, per se. React, I suppose. Be annoyed. At me. Understandably.” He was officially babbling. As usual.
“Well, whatever I did.” She gave him a shy smile then, like the sun peeking out from behind a cloud. It made Oliver’s heart feel like a balloon in his chest, swelling, floating. He realised he was grinning back.
“So,” he blurted before he lost his nerve, “what about that coffee?”
The look on Seph’s face would have been comical if it didn’t sting quite so much. She looked horrified, trapped as if he’d just backed her into a corner, and maybe he had. Oliver tried to school his own expression into something more casual than what he was feeling. “I mean, just as a thank you,” he continued, trying for an offhand manner, like it didn’t matter to him either way, which really, itshouldn’t. “I don’t actually know anyone in this part of the world, and you’re about my age…” He tried not to wince at how, well,desperatehe sounded. Jeez. Why couldn’t he ever quit while he was ahead?
“I’m twenty-three,” Seph said, like a question.
“And I’m twenty-five.”
“Rose is twenty-four. Have you met her yet?” He shook his head and Seph continued, “Well, I guess that’s not surprising. She’s just had twins. She’s my brother Sam’s…well, significant other, I guess, although I’m sure they’ll get married pretty soon.”
“Okay.” He wasn’t all that interested in Rose right now, frankly, and they definitely didn’t need to go through everyone else’s ages or the number of their offspring. “Well?” he asked, and now he sounded cringingly hearty. “What about the coffee?”
*
Seph stared atthe hopeful look on Oliver’s face and wondered why he was trying so hard. Did he feel sorry for her, misfit that she so obviously was, even in her own family? Unlike him, with his tailored clothes and cut-glass vowels, his easy manner, his breezy confidence. Every time he spoke, she was reminded of how posh he was. Althea, Olivia, and Sam all had that upper-class accent, from years at boarding school, but it had missed her out because she’d never gone away to school. She had a Cumbrian twang more than anything else, and while it had never out-and-out embarrassed her before, she noticed it now.
She was different. She’d always been different.
“I know you’re busy,” he said after a moment, and she realised she’d just been staring.
“Sorry…I…I was thinking,” she half-mumbled, flushing in embarrassment. He must think her absolutely batty.
“About having a coffee with me?” The smile he gave her was wry, whimsical, a quirk of his lip that revealed a dimple in his right cheek. His green eyes glinted from behind his glasses, and he stuck his hands in the pockets of his chinos, rocking back on his heels.
Could she have a coffee with this man? She’d been turning the question over since he’d asked it in his note, although she’d done her best to ignore him without seeming as if she was last night, because she wasn’t ready to give him an answer. Coming here to offer an apology had felt like the most she could do, and, in all honesty, more than she normally would, and she’d half-convinced herself that he wouldn’t repeat the invitation to go out for a coffee, because…well, he just wouldn’t.
But now he had, and he needed an answer, an answer she should be able to give right off, because it was only coffee, after all. Why was she tying herself in knots about it? All right, it would, almost undoubtedly, be terribly awkward. Social chitchat was definitely not something she could do with any kind of skill or ease. But Seph felt she was completely out of excuses and the truth was, she realised, she sort ofwantedto go out with him somewhere. Show him as well as herself that she could do these normal things and not have it be a big deal.
There wasn’t any other reason she’d be agreeing, was there?
“Sure,” she said, a bit too expansively, shrugging like she went out for coffee all the time. “Why not?”
Oliver blinked, and then smiled. “Great. How about this afternoon? As long as this filing doesn’t take me the rest of the day, or really, my entire internship. I don’t think your sister has filed a single paper, ever.”
“She’s too busy to do the boring stuff, I guess,” Seph replied, and realised belatedly there had been a slight edge to her voice. She and Althea had had it out—a bit—when her older sister had come swanning back to Casterglass, ready to save the day even though Seph had been here all along, quietly working and keeping the place going, along with her parents. That hadn’t seemed to count for much with Althea, but she had apologised—more or less—for being MIA for basically Seph’s entire life. And Seph had—more or less—accepted that apology.
But some things still rankled. Downright hurt, if she was honest, although she tried not to feel it.
“It’s good for the soul, I suppose,” Oliver said after a pause, with a quick, light smile. “Humbling, anyway. So. Coffee. Where can you get the best cuppa?”
“The Village Bakery in Broughton is pretty good,” Seph said, and Oliver beamed.
“That’s where I got your brownie.”