Page 55 of The Last Casterglass
It wouldn’t be fair of me.
Whatever.
“Seph,” Oliver called. “I’m sorry…”
She didn’t bother to reply, just kept walking.
*
She spent thenext few hours in her room, crying into her pillow and hiding from Oliver. Not exactly the way she’d thought this weekend would turn out, but then it had been full of surprises. Oliver was getting Pembury after all, and it had made him realise he didn’t need her. Two things she’d never expected. She thought of all his flowery words, when he’d invited her on this weekend in the first place—how he wanted her to see it, how important she was to him. How he’d showed her every inch, spun a fairy tale of dreams of what he’d do with the place, and she’d imagined herself there with him, had even, cringingly, almost said it was the perfect place to start a family. Thank goodness she’d kept herself from that, because it had clearly all been bollocks, and it was enough to stem her tears and make her feel angry, which was a lot better than feeling heartbroken. Well, not alotbetter, but at least a little, except of course she was still heartbroken. Heart withered.
Still, after a few hours she felt strong enough, or at least almost, to venture downstairs, her eyes dry and her expression almost personable. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say to Oliver but she felt she needed to face him. He, however, looked abject.
“Seph,” he began in a low voice as she came to the kitchen table where Simon had laid out all sorts of lovely things from Booths—quiches and cocktail sausages, cold meats and artisan cheeses, along with a crusty baguette. He’d already apologised for not being much of a cook, but in any case, Seph had absolutely no appetite.
She shook at Oliver to forestall him from explaining yet again howfairhe was being, and they spent the meal in stilted conversation with Simon, who seemed determine to pick Oliver’s brain about how he would set the farm up as a commercial enterprise. Seph listened in silence as he talked about the orchard, and cider making, a campsite and turning the big stone barn into a wedding venue, just as he’s told her earlier.
They were all ideas he’d learned at Casterglass, and she was glad he would be able to implement them here, or she would have been, if he hadn’t chosen to cut her out of his life as ruthlessly as if he’d been wielding a pair of scissors. Now that he had Pembury, he didn’t need her. It really did seem as simple as that.
Simon retired early after what felt like an interminable supper, and while Seph just wanted to run away back upstairs, she knew Oliver wouldn’t let her. They would have to have some sort of final conversation, which she was dreading.
“Seph, please,” he said, as she got up to clear the plates from the table. “I don’t think we’ve talked properly about this.”
She shrugged, her back to him as she started to stack the dishwasher. “It sounded as if you’d said all you wanted to say.” She turned back to face him, leaning against the counter, her arms folded.
He regarded her unhappily. “It sounds as if you’ve made up your mind.”
“I’vemade up my mind?” Seph repeated in disbelief. “You’re the one who decided for me.” She whirled around to stomp upstairs—exiting stage left was her specialty, after all—but Oliver grabbed her arm.
“Wait,” he said, gently turning her around to face him. “Wait.What is really going on here?”
“You’ve decided now that you have your precious farmhouse, you don’t need me,” Seph fired back, too hurt and angry to keep it all in any longer. “Without giving me so much as a say-so! Well,fine. Pembury isn’t a patch on Casterglass, anyway.” It was a stupid insult, spoken out of her hurt, but she regretted it instantly.
Oliver shook his head, a look of impatience flitting across his face. “But you don’t even want to stay at Casterglass. You told me you didn’t want to be tied to a place. You want to try new things, move somewhere, maybe even go to university.”
All pie-in-the-sky dreams that felt as far away as ever, not impossible but not as wanted. “So?” Seph demanded.
“So, I wasn’t trying to decide for you, Seph. I was trying to…set you free.”
*
Oliver felt asif he were going crazy. It was as if he’d been privy to only half a conversation, and Seph had filled in the other half without him. Or, he realised, maybe it was the other way round. In any case, he feared—and hoped, too, strangely enough—that they’d both seriously got the wrong end of the stick. This was all a misunderstanding, wilfully born out of their own hurt and confusion, and Sephhadn’tbeen breaking up with him this afternoon.
“Set mefree?” she sneered, her lip curling, her eyes flashing hurt as she yanked her arm from his grasp and folded her arms. “Wow, thanks. Thanks so much.”
Oliver stared at her, looking as prickly as she ever had. They’d both, he was starting to realise, stayed true to lamentable form. As soon as the stakes had risen, the first hurdle they’d come to, they’d fallen back into their old, safe, and unhelpful ways.
He’d tripped over himself, far too eager to please and handing her an excuse to walk away on a plate—hadn’t he done that too many times in his life already?—and Seph had retreated to her usual self-defence, a surly sullenness, a faked indifference. All because they’d both been afraid to take a risk with their hearts.
Or, he wondered, was he completely misreading the situation and he was about to get his poor, trembling heart ruthlessly stomped on? Well, better to love and lose than never love at all, he decided recklessly. These things were clichéd for a reason, he supposed; they held some truth, at least, even if it wasn’t the most palatable at the moment.
“Seph,” he said to her, his voice as firm as he could make it even though his offered heart was beating wildly, “I want nothing more than for you to throw your lot in with me and Pembury Farm. Working this place together, like I was talking about yesterday—that would be my dream. But what I was trying to say, in a very clumsy way, this afternoon, is that I recognise it might not be your dream. And it wouldn’t be fair of me to ask you to make it so, just because we’re together. I didn’t want you to feel beholden, and I suppose I was giving you a get-out clause, in case you needed one.” His own form of self-protection.
She stared at him for a few seconds, her gaze wide, her mouth opening soundlessly. “I thought you were breaking up with me,” she said finally.
Oliver shook his head. “I thoughtyouwere breaking up withme.”
“I think I was, sort of,” Seph admitted in a low voice. “Before you delivered the death blow.”