Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [29]
‘Now look here, Bella—’ Alan began grimly.
But Bella pretended not to be aware of what he was saying, exclaiming instead, ‘Goodness, look over there at Trixie, queuing to get in. What an awful fright she looks, doesn’t she? Poor girl. I really must give her a few tips about how to make the best of herself. Not that she’s got much to make the best of, mind you. Did you tell your parents that mine want them to come over to supper tomorrow? Daddy is getting awfully father-like about young men who take liberties, and the fact that you haven’t spoken to him yet,’ she told Alan archly, ‘but there’s no need for you to worry. He’s a pussycat really. Wasn’t I clever inviting my cousin along for Seb, so that we could be on our own?’
‘What exactly happened to your leg, or is it something you’d rather not talk about?’ Grace asked Seb with genuine interest, as they walked towards the Tennis Club together.
Although he had made light of it she was pretty sure that Seb had been uncomfortable in the back of the car, which was why she was deliberately walking slowly, letting others overtake them to join what was now a small queue waiting to get into the Club. Charlie, too impatient to wait for them, had gone ahead, and had already disappeared inside the building, following Bella and Alan, who had gone inside before the queue had formed.
‘On the contrary, I’d adore talking about it, especially to pretty girls,’ Seb grinned. ‘Or at least I would if the truth wasn’t so very dull. I broke it on a training exercise,’ he told Grace, bending down to whisper in her ear, ‘but normally I tell people that I was engaged on a highly secret mission that I’m sworn not to talk about.’
Grace giggled. She was enjoying herself more with every minute she spent in Seb’s company. She felt as comfortable with him as though she had known him all her life but at the same time something about the way he looked at her and the sound of his voice gave her a deliciously fizzy sensation inside her stomach that made her feel giddy and heady with excitement and happiness.
‘What kind of break was it? I’m going to be training as a nurse soon, you see,’ she explained when he gave her a quizzical look, ‘so …’
‘So naturally you find my leg utterly fascinating,’ he agreed so straight-faced that it took Grace a handful of seconds to realise he was teasing her again and she burst out laughing.
‘You’re a dreadful tease,’ she chided him, mock severely, ‘and from now on I shan’t take a single word that you say seriously.’
‘Not even if I were to tell you that you are the most enchanting girl I have ever met?’
Grace stared at him, the colour coming and going in her face, her eyes wide with shyness and confusion. She wasn’t used to men like Seb and she certainly wasn’t used to them flirting with her.
Her parents were very careful and watchful, and normally the only boys with whom she had any social contact were those she had known since childhood. Seb wasn’t just a boy, though, was he, she acknowledged. He was all grown up and a man. Her heart gave a flurry of fast beats.
Grace might not be very experienced but she had a good deal of common sense, so once her heart had returned to its normal beat she responded firmly, ‘Especially not if you were to tell me that. Is it the military hospital you have to go to about your leg?’
She wasn’t aware of the rueful look Seb gave her as he looked down at the top of her head.
When he had been informed by Bella that her cousin would be his date for the evening, he had assumed she would be a young woman very much in Bella’s own mould and had resigned himself to an evening of boredom, fending off the unwanted overcoy approaches of the kind of girl he most disliked.
Grace, though, was the complete antithesis of her manipulative little baggage of a cousin, and Seb recognised that she had no idea just how enchanting she was or how very sweet he found her. Which was just as well, and the way it must stay. It would be all too easy to enjoy the sympathy of a girl as sweet as this one,