It was easy to think of last night while she was alone in her—their—bedroom, getting ready for the day. In addition to the Haunted Mansion Nightgown, Lady Meredith had sent up a whole heap of outfits, everything from dungarees to evening gowns, and Tamsyn selected a festive red sweater and a pair of tight black trousers before throwing a tweed blazer over the whole thing and, since she was in the Welsh countryside, a pair of dark green wellies.
With the little bit of makeup Lady Meredith had also provided, Tamsyn felt nearly human again as she strode down the stairs of Tywyll House, pausing to give a little salute to the more terrifying-looking Meredith ancestors before moving down the hall to where she remembered the dining room being.
That room was empty, though, the shutters still closed, but Tamsyn could hear sounds farther down the hall, so she followed them until she came to a smaller, brighter room.
There were a few couches scattered about and a wall of windows looked out onto the misty garden. A smaller table had been laid as well as a long buffet against the back wall, and Tamsyn’s stomach growled at the scent of food wafting off it. It had been hours—well, decades, literally—since she’d eaten, and she was just about to get a plate when a movement caught her eye, and everything she’d thought about last night—her boxes, her coping mechanisms, her If a girl can’t get herself off next to her crush after breaking the space-time continuum, then honestly, when can she? justifications—practically exploded in front of her face as she took in Bowen standing by the farthest window, a delicate cup of coffee in one hand, his eyes drinking Tamsyn in like the sun itself had just walked into the room.
She’d told herself she was immune to how handsome he was after all this time, that it was just a fact of him, like how his eyes were brown and he liked talking about elves too much, but like her, he’d attempted to blend in a little today, and the fitted green sweater he was wearing paired with dark gray corduroys made him look less Fearsome Mountain Sorcerer, more the Most Fuckable History Professor Tamsyn had ever seen, and the knowledge that this man could be both had Tamsyn suddenly hungrier for much more than the eggs and bacon that had seemed so tempting before.
He took a step closer to her, and Tamsyn realized they were the only ones in the room, only the judgmental eyes of long-dead Merediths watching them now. Outside, she couldn’t even make out the lawns or the maze anymore because the mist outside had gotten so thick, drifting over the glass, eddying over the grass outside as though the entire house were encased in a cloud.
He took another step closer, the cup rattling on its saucer, and Tamsyn wasn’t sure what she would have done had Elspeth—Bowen’s grandmother, she reminded herself—not swanned into the room with a “Oh, wonderful, another gray day.”
It was very hard to remember that this woman would one day birth Bowen’s dad, a man she’d heard only ever described as terrifying, because Tamsyn wasn’t sure she’d ever seen anyone as beautiful and glamorous as Elspeth Carew. Today, she was wearing a figure-hugging white dress with a cowl collar and fitted sleeves and a pair of low deep green heels, her auburn hair swept back from her face with a pair of tortoiseshell combs.
As she took in the two of them, her red lips curled into a knowing smile. “Am I interrupting something? I certainly hope so. Someone might as well be trysting this weekend now that I’m not going to be a married woman by Yule.”
“The only thing you’re interrupting is me getting to those sausages,” Tamsyn told her, nodding at the buffet. “And that is not a euphemism.”
Probably a little risqué for 1957, but Elspeth only laughed, the sound like chiming bells. “Oh, I like you, Mrs. Penhallow,” she said.
Tamsyn hated the way that being called that made everything inside her light up, but there it was. In a weird way, nothing that had happened last night had changed anything between her and Bowen, and at the same time, it had changed everything.
Because now she knew. All those times she was lying awake, thinking about him, fantasizing about him, he was thinking about her, too.
Did he have the same fantasies?
Doubtful. Bowen was a smart and creative man, but not the type to gin up Visiting Wizard Must Take Village Maiden as Bride, although if she ever had the chance, she was absolutely going to share that one with him.
But now, she smiled at Elspeth and said, “I like you, too, Miss Carew. A shame we won’t be family after all.”
Elspeth’s expression darkened. “Well,” she sniffed, making her way to the sideboard with a flourish of her skirts, “you should talk to Harri about that.”
“About what?”
Oh, fabulous, now Harri Penhallow had entered the room, his dark hair messy, his glasses slightly askew, and while he was as handsome as his eventual descendant Rhys Penhallow, he could not have looked more miserable.
“About how your absolute pigheadedness has brought an end to our engagement,” Elspeth replied, and Harri’s jaw tightened as he stalked to the buffet, filling his plate with roasted tomatoes and sausages robotically.
“There is exactly one person to blame for the dissolution of this engagement, Ellie, and it is you.”
“Don’t call me ‘Ellie’ anymore, I don’t like it.”
“You used to love it,” Harri fired back, and then he lowered his voice. “Especially in certain circumstances.”
Elspeth straightened up and turned to face him, her chin raised, her expression haughty, but her cheeks rosy pink. “How dare you,” she said. “I’ve taken you for a fool and a . . . a fortune hunter, Henry Penhallow, but never a cad.”
“And I took you for a woman worthy of bearing the Penhallow name, but it seems we were both mistaken.”
Sidling up to Bowen, Tamsyn picked his coffee cup off his saucer and took a sip before whispering, “I still think your grandparents are hot.”
“And I still think you never, ever need to say words like that again,” he replied.
Smiling, Tamsyn replaced the cup on the saucer even as she tried very hard not to meet his eyes, because if she did, she couldn’t guarantee memories of last night wouldn’t have her bursting into flame.
“It’s them, though,” she went on, nodding at Elspeth and Harri, who were now filling their plates in silence. “They’re the reason we’re here, I’m sure of it. Something has gone wrong, and now they’re not getting married, which means your dad never gets born.”
Bowen grunted. “Not sure that’s a huge fucking tragedy.”
Turning to him, Tamsyn reached up without thinking, taking his face in both her hands. “It is to me if it means you never get born,” she said, and oh shit, it was too late now. She was looking in his eyes, and he was looking in hers, and everything that had happened last night in the warm, velvet darkness of that bed—their bed—seemed to fill the space between them.
Tamsyn had slept with her fair share of guys, was no stranger to sex in all its permutations, but nothing had ever been as intimate as those moments with Bowen in the dark, their hands touching their own bodies but not each other’s, and yet she’d felt every stroke he’d made, heard every gasp, and she knew he’d felt and heard her, too.
It was too much, too overwhelming, and she looked away, her hands dropping to her sides.
Harri and Elspeth were both sitting at the table now, five chairs between them, but both of them were ignoring their food. Instead, they were watching Bowen and Tamsyn, and they were wearing nearly identical expressions.
Longing.
Envy.
Regret.
Whatever it was that had gone wrong with Harri and Elspeth, it wasn’t that they didn’t love each other.
Or didn’t want each other.
And, Tamsyn reasoned, anything that wasn’t that could be fixed.
