Page 44 of And Then There Was the One
“I expect the local police are going to look on Buncombe-upon-Woolly even more fondly after this,” Georgie said. “Which means it’s all the more imperative that we make progress on this investigation before they get wind of it. We need to speak to Miss Halifax.”
“How do you propose to do that?” Lexington asked, polishing off a sandwich. “I hardly think this is an appropriate conversation for the library.”
“No,” Georgie agreed, leaning back in her seat. “I’ll think about it tonight—I’m sure I can come up with a plausible excuse. One that doesnot,” she added, seeing Sebastian opening his mouth to speak, “involve you lying around the library reading a book in a state of undress, waiting for our allegedly licentious librarian to stumble upon you and demonstrate her”—Georgie grimaced—“flexibility.”
“Darling Georgie,” Sebastian said, glancing up from his loving contemplation of baked goods, “I’m flattered. You didn’t even insinuate that I don’t know how to read!”
Dinner at Radcliffe Hall that evening was somewhat subdued. Georgie, still processing the day’s revelations, felt little desire to chat over the meal—Mrs. Fawcett’s excellent pork chops androasted vegetables—but, somewhat more surprisingly, Abigail didn’t seem to be feeling very chatty, either. Papa and Sebastian talked amiably of Cambridge professors whose names were meaningless to Georgie, and did not seem to mind—or possibly even to notice—the relative lack of contributions from the female half of the table.
It was June, and so even after dinner, there were a couple of hours of daylight left. “I’m going to take Egg for a walk,” she said, as Mrs. Fawcett cleared the plates. Papa merely nodded, and Abigail murmured something about reading a book in her room, but Sebastian glanced at her. “Fancy some company?” he asked.
In truth, Georgie wasn’t at all sure that she did; it had been a long, odd, confusing day, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that something about her perception of Sebastian Fletcher-Ford had shifted since that morning. It seemed incredibly churlish to say no, however, so she merely nodded and went to fetch Egg from the kitchen, where she was hovering around Mrs. Fawcett’s ankles, hoping to be slipped a leftover slice of meat.
Georgie shivered slightly as she and Sebastian walked out the front door, glad she’d grabbed her favorite gray cable-knit jumper to slip over her dress. Sebastian had ditched his suit jacket when they’d returned home that afternoon and was now wearing a navy-blue jumper that looked so soft Georgie nearly reached out a hand to stroke it. The air had cooled as the sun sank lower in the sky, and around them the world was alive with the sounds of the countryside: birds warbling their evening songs, sheep bleating, the distant shout of parents in thevillage calling children in for bed. Egg, after a long day spent at home engaged in her profession (napping), walked with a spring in her step, but the fact that she stopped to sniff approximately every five feet meant their progress was slow.
“You did well today,” Georgie said, after a few minutes’ meandering in silence. Sebastian was walking beside her with his hands thrust in his pockets, head down as though deep in thought. At the sound of her voice, he looked sideways at her.
“Andyoudid well to manage to keep from sounding surprised as you said that,” he replied, with the air of a schoolteacher offering a pupil praise.
Georgie didn’t smile, but she wanted to. She wondered if he could tell.
“I meant it,” she said instead. “It was—well, being kidnapped and trapped in a dusty cellar would have been considerably worse if you hadn’t been there.”
“You’d have been just fine,” he said quietly, and she glanced at him, surprised. “You’re the most self-sufficient person I’ve ever met.”
“Surely not more so than the great Delacey Fitzgibbons,” she said, trying to inject a note of levity into a conversation that had somehow almost immediately come to feel a bit heavy, before remembering—too late—his revelations of the morning. She grimaced by way of apology. “Or not so great, I suppose.”
“Not so great, indeed,” he agreed, sounding a bit glum.
“But,” she said, thinking back to their conversation in the cellar, “youwantedhim to be great.”
Another quick glance at her before looking away, just asquickly. “I did, rather,” he confirmed. “I knew I only got the job because of my father—likely only got into Cambridge because of my father, truth be told, so that experience was nothing new—but I thought that if I could help this brilliant detective solve tricky cases… well.”
“Did you want to become a detective yourself?” she asked curiously.
“I think—” he began, then broke off abruptly, shaking his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
She wondered suddenly how many people took the time to ask him a question like this—not about Fitzgibbons specifically, but anything more serious about his own hopes. Whether perhaps serving as a secretary to a vain, self-important man and sleeping with half the society women in London was not entirely what he had envisioned for his life.
“It does,” she said, despite the fact that two days earlier she would not have been able to fathom the notion of this man saying anything of value. “It matters to me.”
She didn’t look at him as she said this; it felt peculiarly intimate, especially after that moment in the cellar earlier—the moment she had spent the better part of the afternoon trying her hardest not to think about. Because, unless she had completely lost her mind, then she and Sebastian Fletcher-Ford had almost kissed. But if thatweretrue, then she still, clearly, had completely lost her mind.
“I thought that it might be my… I don’t know.” He blew out a frustrated breath. “I don’t want to say ‘my calling,’ because it’s not as though I were going to save the world or anything, but… everyone else in my family has always knownexactly what they’re meant to be doing. And then there’s… me. I thought it might be nice, if the job with Fitzgibbons worked out, to come to family dinners and have my own thing to discuss.” He shook his head. “I should have known that no one would hire me for a job that would actually mean anything.”
And Georgie, in that moment,hatedDelacey Fitzgibbons, and his stupid monocle, and his bushy mustache, for making Sebastian feel this way.
But all she said was, “For what it’s worth, I think Fitzgibbons is missing out. Because you’re rather good at this.”
“Do you think so?” There was a vulnerable note to his voice, one that made him sound oddly young.
“You’re good at—I don’t know—you’re good atpeople, I suppose,” she said, waving a hand. At some point, they’d slowed their steps, and now they drew to a halt entirely, turning to face each other. They were standing in the middle of the path that cut through the wildflower meadow that ran alongside the lane leading up to Radcliffe Hall; in the evening sun, he looked even more golden and perfect than usual, the light framing his face, the breadth of his shoulders casting Georgie in his shadow.
“And I’m not,” she added, in a rush now, speaking without entirely considering what she was going to say next. “I’ve lived here my entire life—my family has lived here for hundreds of years—and yet it feels like people trust you more readily than they do me.”
“Does that bother you?” he asked, looking down at her, his expression inscrutable—another adjective that, even twenty-four hours ago, she would never have thought to apply to Sebastian Fletcher-Ford.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, and it made her feel a bit off-balance to admit this, as though it were a shameful confession. She was good at knowing things, at working things out. To admit to not knowing… it made her feel not at all like herself.
