Page 38 of The Last Casterglass

“You need to change too,” Oliver pointed out, and she shrugged.

“I can survive for a few minutes. I’ll bring it upstairs, to the sitting room.”

Oliver looked as if he wanted to object, probably out of chivalry, but then he shivered and nodded. “All right. Thank you.”

After he’d left, Will gave Seph a curious, considering look. “You two seem to have hit it off.”

“We have,” Seph replied firmly, surprising not just Will but herself. In the past she would have backtracked—or bitten his head off. She really was changing.

“That’s great, Seph,” Will said as he poured milk into his tea. “I’m glad.”

“I am too,” she replied simply, and Will hefted his mug in a toast before he ambled off to the garden. Seph made two cups of hot chocolate, complete with lashings of whipped cream and heaped with marshmallows, and then she brought them upstairs. Oliver was still changing, and so she left the mugs on a table and hurried to change herself, humming all the while. It felt strange to be this happy, and yet she was.

By the time she returned to the sitting room, dressed in a warm fleece and jeans, Oliver had just kindled a cheering blaze in the fireplace.

“Ah, perfect!” he exclaimed, his face lighting up when he saw her. “A fire, hot chocolate, dry clothes…what more can a person ask for?”

He handed her one of the mugs and then hefted his own, proffering it for a clinking toast before they both took sips of the rich, warming drink.

“I didn’t expect to like wild swimming so much,” Seph confessed as she curled up in an armchair on one side of the fireplace, and Oliver sat in the other. “I really did think you were a bit mad to suggest it.”

“I thought I was a bit mad myself,” Oliver replied cheerfully. “Especially after we’d made it into the water. I have to confess I think Wim Hof is a deluded fool, six-pack aside.”

She laughed, the sound bubbling up inside her. “So I guess you won’t be accompanying me again?”

“You intend to go again?” He raised his eyebrows. “Have I started something?”

“Maybe,” she replied nonchalantly, wondering if they were flirting. She had so little experience with this sort of thing that she really didn’t know.

“Well, I might be convinced,” Oliver replied slowly. The look he gave her was…loaded. Or at least, itfeltloaded. She felt…something. Seph buried her nose in her mug, because she had no idea what the expression on her face was. Her whole body was tingling, and this time it was definitely not from the cold.

“Maybe when you come back after Christmas,” she said, and Oliver’s momentary pause forced her to look up from the depths of her drink. “What?” she asked uncertainly.

“Nothing,” he answered quickly. “I mean, yes. After Christmas.”

She eyed him narrowly, noting the sudden downturn of his mouth, the shadow in his eyes. “You’re going back to Pembury Farm for Christmas, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Er, well. I suppose.” He let out an uncertain, little laugh. “My uncle and cousin are going fly-fishing in Scotland for the holidays. So if I go back to Pembury, it will be by myself, which actually would be okay, but my uncle can be a bit funny about having people there without him.”

“But it’s your home,” Seph said in surprise. Even though Oliver had said something of his tricky relationship with his uncle before, she’d assumed he was always welcome at the house he loved so much.

“Well, yes. Sort of. I mean, I certainly feel it is.” He sighed and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

But she had the sense that it really did. “You could stay here for Christmas,” she said slowly, and Oliver raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“I don’t think I should intrude on a family celebration—”

Seph let out a hollow laugh. “Haven’t you heard the plans? There isn’t going to be one.”

“What do you mean?”

He must have missed that conversation, she realised, being so busy with the orchard and all the other things, now that Althea was consumed with planning her wedding. “No one will be here for Christmas,” she explained. “No one but me, that is. My parents are going on an over-sixties cruise, and Rose and Sam are visiting her mother. Will and Olivia are spending Christmas with his parents, and Althea and John are, of course, going on honeymoon.” She shrugged, like it didn’t matter, when, just like with him, she knew it did. “Everybody’s got plans.”

“So you’ll be on your own?”

“Yes, but I’m used to it.” She tried to say it matter-of-factly, without bitterness. It was true, even if she had started to wish it wasn’t.

“For Christmas?” Oliver shook his head slowly. “Didn’t anyone think about what you would do?”

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