“Think that’ll hold both of us?” Tom said, looking dubiously at the love seat.
Amelia shrugged. “Risk is relative.”
“It’s only around fifty years old, so basically still under warranty.”
“It’s that or hay bales,” she said, indicating the stacks circling the rest of the folly.
“Which always sounds like a good idea until you start itching. Budge up!”
“Excuse me?”
“Shuffle over.”
She moved over, and he sat, their jeans grazing. She pulled her coat out from under his leg—a slightly musty one that had once belonged to his mother, seeing as hers was soaked with Connor’s blood.
“Well,” she said, suddenly unsure. They were alone, sober and not in danger. That hadn’t happened since they toasted their first glass of wine, which seemed like a lifetime ago. There was so much more to Tom now than the guy she’d met. She couldn’t believe she’d suspected him of being a Wickham-like rogue. And sure, no one had suspected Wickham of being a Wickham until he revealed himself to be a Wickham, but you didn’t go through something like she and Tom had without seeing the truth of a person. He was good in a crisis, for starters. She wouldn’t need to wait six years to test that out.
Six years? She hadn’t known him six days!
“What happens now?” she said.
It was Tom’s turn to look uncertain. “I’m not sure. Hang on, you mean with theinvestigation?”
“Yeah.” Though she was also curious about what would happen with the two of them, if that was indeed his meaning. Should she say goodbye and accept that ride to the station?
“Connor has told the police where to find my grandfather’s body—in a deep quarry lake near the moor. The sergeant’s gone there now. She said it’d be better if I didn’t go—it could be quite an exercise to get the body out, and then they’ll need to do a postmortem.”
Amelia squeezed Tom’s hand, where it rested on his thigh. She’d meant it as a fleeting gesture, but he wove his fingers around hers, strong and sure, so she relaxed into it. Far be it from her to deny someone comfort when they needed it. What even were she and Tom to each other now? Much more than the one-night stand they were yesterday morning. But still relative strangers. Strangers who held hands.
“How are you feeling?” she said.
“Not bad. Paramedic reckons I should get an X-ray on my ankle, but it’s probably just bruised. She patched up the cut.” He paused. “You meant emotionally, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. But I did also want to know about the foot.”
He rubbed his thumb against the back of her hand. “I don’t even know what I’m feeling. I was just thinking that I’ll be able to bury my grandfather in the family tomb at the village church, with my father. That would have been important to him, to join his forefathers.” Tom blew out a loud breath. “I’ve been hosting haunted house tours in a house with an actual body buried in the basement.”
Amelia suspected that was the least of the issues he was struggling to get his head around. “No wonder we were confused. It was a perfect storm—a perfect fog. A bunch of people all frantically doing things ahead of the demolition.”
He nodded. “Duncan and Connor moving the body, Xanthe searching for documents, the Pritchards looking for the diamond, you falling down my stairs, the two of us drinking the crazy juice… Not the escape you were looking for, was it? How areyouholding up?”
“Weirdly, I’m not reacting as emotionally as I thought I would, now that it’s over. Maybe because this is what I expect to happen now? I expect bad things to happen, and I’m pleasantly surprised if they don’t. It’ll hit me at some point, but right now I have that feeling of having been under a lot of pressure and then it’s suddenly released, and you feel like you could float away.”
“When it does hit you, I’m here, okay? We’re in this together. That is, I know you’re supposed to be going home soon but…”
Supposedto be? She very much wanted him to finish that sentence, but he didn’t. “I’m glad you got some answers, Tom.”
“It’s a relief—at least, I think it will be, when it sinks in. Not having the answers is awful. Not having that closure. I’m not sure I realized quite how awful until now.”
“It really is.”
He looked down at their hands. “I wish you could get some answers with your own situation.”
She smiled sadly. “Gotta say, I’m getting a little tired of the holding pattern.”
Tom extracted his hand from hers. Her disappointment was immediately relieved when he instead put his arm around her and drew her close. She leaned in, sliding a palm under his overcoat—some old thing he’d found in the antechamber—to rest on his sweater. She felt so secure that for a second she couldn’t breathe. Which, yes, was a strange reaction, but her reactions these days often made no sense. She needed to soak up the physical connection while she could. It might have to last her quite some time.
“You know,” she said, “you’re going to have a shit-ton to process. The calm after the storm.”
