Page 47 of The Last Casterglass

“Will we? Who do I have, anyway?”

“Bea. She always has a purple bow in her hair, and Michaela has pink.”

Seph smiled, draping the baby over her shoulder and rubbing her back with an ease Oliver admired—and envied. “How did you get to be such an expert, all of a sudden?”

She laughed. “Fake it till you make it, I suppose. I’ve watched the twins a little in the last month, when Rose has needed a sleep.”

“I had no idea.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“So have you.”

She shrugged, and he felt a rush of—what? Dare he call it love? Something warm and wonderful, anyway, a deep affection for this woman whose depths he was still getting to know.

“So how do I make her stop screaming?”

“Deep knee bends help. And they get you fit at the same time.”

He laughed, and then tried it, going into a deep squat with the baby in his arms. After ten, she started to quiet. After fifty, his thighs were burning.

“How long do I have to do this?”

“Until she falls asleep, or burps, or both.”

“Yikes.”

They were both doing the deep knee bends, babies on their shoulders, as they shared a conspiratorial grin. Oliver felt he would be happy doing anything, as long as it was with Seph.

After about twenty minutes, the babies both finally fell asleep. Neither he nor Seph were brave enough to risk putting them in their Moses baskets, so they crept upstairs and very carefully, very gently, sat together on the sofa, the babies snuggled on their chests.

Before today, Oliver had had something of a phobia of infants, or at least a heathy fear of them. Having got these two to sleep, though, and seeing how Seph cuddled Michaela, he felt something besides fear, something like possibility. He wasn’t ready to become a father, no way, but he could see himself becoming one eventually, which was more than he’d ever thought about before.

Cuddling his own child, teaching a son or daughter to walk, to ride a bike, to love Pembury Farm just like he did. He’d never thought about any of those things before, but now he was, especially when he looked at Seph.

She smiled back at him sleepily, her chin resting lightly on Michaela’s head. As carefully as he could, so as not to disturb Bea, Oliver reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers.

“This wasn’t how I saw this day going,” he admitted ruefully, “but it has its pluses.”

“They are sweet, really.”

“Especially when they’re asleep.”

“True.”

They smiled at each other, and Oliver gently squeezed her fingers. Yes, he was actually pretty perfectly content right now, in a surprising way. Then, just as he was about to relax into the sofa, the baby a warm, heavy weight on his chest, Bea stirred, lifted her tiny head, and started screaming afresh. Oliver shot Seph a look of pure panic as she rubbed Michaela’s back.

“Start up with those knee bends again,” she advised him, and with a groan, Oliver struggled up from the sofa.

Okay, so he was not perfectly content, but he realised he was still smiling, even as he did deep squats for the sake of the baby…and all because he was with Seph. She, he was coming to realise, was the most important thing in his life right now. Not Casterglass, not Pembury, not the past or the future or anything like that. Just Seph.

Chapter Eighteen

“So how isthe loved-up life?”

Seph rolled her eyes as Althea ventured into her workshop with a canary-eating grin on her face. “It’s fine,” she replied, managing to sound only alittlebit terse. She really was changing.

“Seriously, I want to know,” her sister persisted. “How did you and Oliver get together, anyway? What made him finally declare himself?”

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