"Wait."
She whispered, touching her fingers against his arm to hold him still as he made to move away from her.
"The offer of dinner...does it still stand?"
She asked quietly, glancing only briefly to meet his gaze. He smiled slowly.
"It is. Tonight?"
He pushed a stray hair back from her face, his fingertips lingering as they fell from her jaw.
She nodded and bit her bottom lip against a smile.
"Just one problem."
He added, causing her smile to falter.
"Sarah isn't working tonight so she will be home. I don't particularly want her there when I'm trying to woo you..."
"Woo me?"
She raised an eyebrow in amusement.
"Yes. Don't you laugh at me, Beauchamp."
He nudged her gently on the arm.
"Mrs..."
She breathed.
"Mmm. Yes, we'll see what we can do about that."
He whispered, squeezing her hands, warming them with his own before letting them fall.
"Anyway, I could cook dinner for you at yours...?"
He tilted his head, gauging her reaction, which, as ever, was masked beautifully.
"What about Ned?"
She asked, for he had been the one to invite her. He inhaled so that his chest puffed out against his shirt and she had the overwhelming urge to press her hands against him, to touch him and feel how warm and solid he was.
He drew up his shoulders.
"I could bring him? If it's not too much of an imposition?"
He asked. The thought bubbled at the back of her mind, the idea of Grace and Ned meeting at such an early stage in their relationship, or whatever this was between them made her feel slightly uncomfortable. Never the less she gave a brief nod of her head.
"Meet me here at six."
She said, refusing to let her mind wander into any more of these unwelcome thoughts.
"Six it is."
He murmured as he backed away to the door.
"I'll see you then."
He breathed, letting himself out of the small room.
She exhaled a breath that she seemed to have been holding for what felt like days. Her life over the past few weeks had felt like a series of opening doors, people coming and going almost constantly so that she barely had a chance to realise where she was or what she was about to do.
Perhaps it was that that had kept her from thinking so much about the looming test results. She felt the thought begin to bloom within her mind and quickly quashed it, killing it dead before it had a chance to set in roots.
She placed her hands together, interlinking her fingers as she glanced about the room. So much had happened in such a little room in such a short space of time. And then she felt the sadness, the lurch of it at the back of life which some people do not attempt to mitigate. Entirely aware of their own standing in the shadow, and yet alive to every tremor and gleam of existence, there they endure. Somehow she felt it more today, perhaps it was guilt at not spending more time with Grace, or the worry of suddenly having two men to choose between.
She smiled at the arrogance of that thought and moved toward the window.
The darkening autumn sky, even thought it was cold and melancholy, never failed to shoot through her limbs as with arrows of sparkling piercing ice. She pulled the thick curtains closer so that only a strip of darkening sky showed between the grey curtains, her eyes searched for the first glow in the sky which showed that stars were breaking through. And with her cheek leant upon the window pane she closed her eyes to the chill of it, feeling as though she were pressing upon the massy wall of time, which seemed to be for ever lifting and pulling and letting fresh spaces, or indeed as it was in this case, faces, of life in. She exhaled, her breath sending a fleeting mist against the pane of glass with gradually dispersed as her train of thought wandered. She thought suddenly of what her Grandfather used to tell her whilst he sat in the wing back arm chair of her grandparents living room, smoking a pipe whilst her Grandmother shelled peas... "Let us, then, who have the gift of the present, use it and enjoy it..."
More very soon. And just out of interest (I was curious after reading various messages and reviews) would you like prefer to see Connie and Max together or Connie and Tristan ? I have the story planned out to the end, but curiosity insisted I ask ;) xxx
