Page 28 of The Last Casterglass
“No, but I know how to watch a YouTube video.” He grinned at her. “I can become an expert in about four minutes.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “See, this is why you seem so confident to me.”
“It’s all an act, trust me. Can you help me with this?”
Together they hefted the cider press from under the marquee, getting even dustier in the process, and brought it out into the light. It looked even worse for wear in the sunlight, but Oliver’s enthusiasm seemed indefatigable.
“There’s a spare storeroom in the stables,” she told him. “Next to Ellie’s pottery place. You could set it up in there, maybe. I don’t think Althea had earmarked it for anything.”
“Perfect.”
Together they carried it back to the stables, and into the spare storeroom, which needed a good sweeping out but was in otherwise good condition, empty and ready to be used.
“Looks good,” Seph said, straightening up, her hands resting on the small of her back.
“It does, doesn’t it? Thanks for helping, Seph.” He smiled at her, and then, to her shock, he reached forward and brushed her cheeks, his fingers like a whisper against her skin. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out and he smiled wryly as he showed her his dust-streaked fingers. “You had a smear of something on your cheek.”
“Oh. Right.” Her mouth snapped shut and somehow she managed a smile, even though she felt weak at the knees. What had she thought he’d been doing? She had so little experience with men, with friendship, and most definitely with romance, that the danger of hugely embarrassing herself was alarmingly high. Really, she told herself, she needed to get a grip. She was glad she and Oliver had had a reboot, but they were still very much just friends.
She glanced at him, now inspecting the cider press, his hair ruffled, his shirt straining across his shoulders, and felt her stomach flip. They were just friends…weren’t they?
Chapter Eleven
“This feels likesomething out ofDownton Abbey,” Oliver muttered to Seph as they stood in a row with everyone else on the driveway, waiting for Sam and Rose to bring their twin daughters, Michaela and Bea, back to Casterglass. It was a grey, drizzly sort of day, and Seph shivered in the autumnal breeze. It was almost December, the darkest part of the year, and although Althea was already getting into festive mode, in preparation for her wedding the week before Christmas, Seph was feeling rather unChristmassy.
Last night she’d learned, while sitting around the kitchen table with everyone after supper, that Althea and John were going on honeymoon for Christmas to somewhere tropical, and bringing Alice, Poppy, Ben and Toby. Olivia and Will were spending Christmas with his parents, who were flying over from Spain to meet her—and of course Will’s children Jake and Lally would be going with them—and Rose and Sam were taking the twins to London for the holidays, to meet Rose’s mother, which apparently was a big deal because Rose hadn’t seen her mother in years. Then, to top it all off, her parents announced they would be closing the castle for Christmas and going on a cruise.
“You’re welcome to come with us, of course, darling,” Violet had told her over supper, “but it’s for the over-sixties and you’re not keen on travel, are you?”
How would her mother know if she was keen on travel, as she’d never done any? It seemed clear that her parents wanted to go on the cruise alone, and so Seph had assured them she’d be fine staying at Casterglass alone—and really, it wasn’t such a big deal, she told herself. It wasn’t as if they’d had big family Christmases every year. Admittedly, they’d had one last year, when Althea had come home, but before that Christmases had been pretty hit or miss, and mostly miss at that. Sometimes her parents had remembered about things like presents or a tree, but mostly they’d all just done their own things, as usual. Which was what she would do this year, she supposed. She told herself there was no reason to feel out of sorts about it, and yet she did, perhaps because she’d had expectations, without fully acknowledging them to herself, that now that everyone was back at Casterglass, things would be different.
Shewas trying to be different, but maybe some things would always stay the same.
Seph did her best to push the melancholy thoughts out of her mind as Sam’s car came slowly up the drive, and she plastered a welcoming smile onto her face.
“Hell-o!”
“Welcome, welcome!”
Everyone clustered around Sam and Rose as they took two car seats out of the car, to a chorus of cooing. Seph stepped closer to take a look at one of the babies, shock jolting through her at the sight of the tiny, wizened creature asleep in her seat.
“Gosh, they’resmall,” she said, her tone awed and a little alarmed, and Oliver let out a commiserating whistle.
“Teeny tiny. I have zero experience with infants, I’m afraid. They terrify me slightly, if I’m perfectly honest.”
“Me too.” Give her a solid hunk of wood any day. Those babies looked as if they could break.
Everyone was heading into the kitchen for celebratory cups of tea, and so Seph and Oliver fell into step behind them. They’d been doing this a lot lately, in the last few days. Gravitating towards each other without actually saying anything or making a big deal of it. Whenever Althea or Olivia started to notice, Seph found herself edging away slightly, hoping Oliver wouldn’t notice, not ready for the inevitable speculation and teasing.
She stood to the side in the kitchen as Althea made cups of tea and Rose sat down at the table, a baby in her arms, looking exhausted. Seph had instinctively liked Rose when she’d showed up unexpectedly at the castle in July, pregnant with Sam’s child—children, as it turned out—and determined to make a go of it on her own. She was feisty and independent and she’d fallen in love, and that seemed like a good combination to Seph, not that she knew what the third one felt like.
She found herself glancing herself at Oliver, who was studying the babies as if they were scientific specimens, and then she looked away again quickly, before he—or anyone else—noticed.
All right yes, maybe she had a crush. She could be honest enough to admit that. The first kind, cute man who’d walked into her life, and she was smitten. Well, so what? She didn’t have to let Oliver know, and she could still enjoy his friendship. Or so she kept telling herself.
“Who wants a cuddle?” Althea asked. She’d been holding one of the babies—Seph could not remotely tell them apart—in a decidedly broody way, although now she was looking beadily around the room, for a waiting pair of empty arms. “Olivia? Will?”
“Oh, ah…” Olivia was blushing, but also gazing at the baby in Althea’s arms with an unabashed yearning. Seph fully expected Will to propose soon, perhaps after Althea’s wedding, and she supposed he and Olivia would get down to baby making pretty quickly. Her sister was thirty-six, after all, and she desperately wanted a baby.