“It’s not helping you find the missing will.” His gaze heated. “But, yes. It’s working.”
She grinned at him and gave her bosom a little wiggle.
“Have mercy,” he begged. “I am but a poor foot soldier, bearing an offering of sandwiches.”
“Sandwiches! Why didn’t you lead with that?” Elizabeth took a seat in the middle of the carpet, picnic-style, and motioned for Stephen to do the same. She placed the small needlework on the floor beside her.
“Did you find something?” he asked with curiosity as he settled across from her.
“Oh, this?” She held up the tiny embroidery. “It’s my lucky fictional avatar. A security totem I like to carry when I don’t have claymore swords or battle-axes handy.”
“It’s aclue?” He set down the plates of sandwiches and held out his hand. “Let me see it.”
She handed him the scrap of cloth.
“A baby unicorn?” He handed back the embroidery in mystification. “What does it mean?”
“I have no idea.” She tucked the needlework into her bosom for safety.
He watched with interest, then shook his head. “Do you have time for nuncheon?”
Unfortunately, now that she and Stephen wereonthe carpet, Elizabeth wasn’t thinking about sandwiches at all. She was thinking about yesterday, when he had grabbed her and kissed her. He’d seemed as though he had been trying with all his strength to resist temptation, only for overwhelming desire to break down his defenses and unleash the warrior he kept hidden beneath his tinker shell. She wouldn’t mind doing that again.
Many people found Elizabeth to be a little…much, but Stephen took everything in due course, from his cousin’s original deception through to Beth the Berserker. He had never made her feel as though she were Too Much Elizabeth. On the contrary, here he was, seeking out her company for no reason except to enjoy it.
He handed her a sandwich and bit into his own. For a long moment, they chewed in companionable silence.
“Is going around solving cases always this difficult?” he asked at last.
“Maybe when I’m on my own,” Elizabeth said. “I suppose I should get used to it, now that there are more cases than Wynchesters.”
He looked skeptical. “Really? How many of you are there?”
Elizabeth took a bite rather than answer right away.
The number of siblings in her family was a perfectly reasonable question. The precise number was speculated about endlessly in the papers. Tommy alone had played the role of dozens of Wynchesters. Family was also a normal getting-to-know-you topic between new friends.
It was just that… Elizabeth never made new friends, if she could help it. She had her family, and they were enough. Opening herself upto potential rejection when she’d first met them over twenty years ago had been traumatic enough to last a lifetime.
She was a berserker. Berserkers weren’t friendly. Extreme and unapologetic unfriendliness was a berserker’s very essence. No one expected a berserker to sit down with a plate of tea cakes and tell charming stories about their berserker family.
No one except Stephen Lenox, apparently. He was smiling at her encouragingly, as if whatever tale she might impart would be a totally normal response.
There was nothing totally normal about Elizabeth. She doubted she was even fifteen percent normal. She was fine with that. Shenurturedher oddness. But she wasn’t certain she was ready to share her full self with anyone else. Peeling personal details out of her throat felt like trying to remove a suit of armor that had rusted shut.
But she could not sit here forever, poking at her bread crumbs. A berserker did not dither, and neither did a Wynchester.
They faced all challenges head-on, no matter the peril it placed them in.
17
Elizabeth straightened her spine with determination. Sharing personal details with someone outside the family was only slightly more terrifying than teetering on a wet floor covered in marbles.
“How many Wynchesters? Ten and a half.”
Stephen’s eyes widened. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Which one did you chop in half?”
“Two halves would still sum up to eleven,” she pointed out. “The half-Wynchester is my nephew, who is six months old. He won’t count as a whole person until he can hold a sword.”
