Page 79 of Ever After

I check my watch. “Shall we have lunch and then we can have a walk through the museum?”

He brightens at the thought of food, and my mouth twitches as I climb out of the car. The wind hits me immediately. It’s cold, bracing, and dusted with rain. Swollen clouds hover low over the moors, and I can see the rain falling in the distance.

We make our way into the inn. The warmth hits us immediately, along with the smell of something cooking. Blue’s nose immediately wrinkles like a bloodhound and I steer him quickly through to the door that says Bar. His back is taut with muscle, and I can feel the heat of his skin through his thin jumper. Lust unfurls lazily in me, but I push it down. Now is definitely not the time.

The bar is quintessentially olde-worlde with low beams, small windows, dark furniture, and walls stained yellow with smoke from the fire in the huge stone hearth. The area around the bar has flagstones which have been worn smooth by the passage of time and punters.

We find a table and sit down. The bar is full of people—largely American—and the air is filled with the sound of excited chatter and the scent of fresh coffee. I grab a menu and hand it to Blue. “What do you fancy?”

I watch him peruse the menu intently, hiding my smile behind my own menu. I love to see him enthused by food. It’s as if he’s got back a bit of the simple joy that his childhood leached out of him so long ago.

“Cottage pie,” he says decisively, handing the menu back.

“I knew you’d go for that.” He has a love for the dish which is slightly incomprehensible in its fierceness.

“Then why give me a menu?”

“You might have changed your mind.”

“Yeah, I’m not given to that.”

“Tom says you’re like a stubborn billy goat.”

“Well, he’s more like a feral llama in a flat cap, but I’m not rude enough to point that out.”

“Yes, you are.”

I take the menus and head to the bar to order the food. When I turn back, it’s to find Blue examining a corner of the room with a very familiar set expression. Even as I make my way towards him, a glass falls over on a nearby table, spilling the contents into the lap of a lady.

“What are you seeing?” I ask under cover of the lady’s shrieks.

He shrugs, reaching for his drink. “Some dead sailor called Jack. He’s not too keen on the tourists. No,” he adds sharply to something just behind me. “Bugger off.”

A sudden icy breeze ruffles my hair and a second later, some glasses smash behind the bar.

“I take it that was him and he’s not happy with you?”

“He’ll have to take a number. The queue is long.”

“Both in life and in death,” I murmur, and he snorts and elbows me in the ribs. “Did he want some help?”

“Levi, in what universe did I become the spectral branch of the Samaritans?”

I lift my glass in a toast. “Hopefully that will never happen.”

A waitress arrives with our food, and after organising cutlery and napkins, Blue digs in. His orgasmic noise makes the table next to us fall silent for a minute.

I gesture towards the bar. “I paid for tickets to the museum at the bar. The door’s to the left. Once we finish the food, we can go and do some research.”

“Smashing. Just what a chap wants to hear on his honeymoon.”

I sit back in my chair. “I don’t know about that. Research always has a very positive effect on my libido.”

He snorts. “Cheque, please.”

Despite the jokes, we take our time over the food, talking and laughing together, and it’s a good couple of hours before we make our way through the door labelled Smuggler Museum.

The first room was obviously a stable at one time because the floor is painted cobbles. It’s filled with rows of wooden benches facing a TV screen on which a documentary about Jamaica Inn is playing.