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CHAPTER 16

S ebastian had never paid three hundred pounds for tea before, but then again, he’d never had someone worth buying three-hundred-pound tea for. The small tin of rare first-flush Darjeeling from Harrods felt almost weightless in his briefcase as he approached The Red Lion on Monday afternoon, but it represented something considerably heavier—his first real attempt at caring for someone beyond the transactional boundaries of business relationships.

The promise he’d made Friday night still echoed in his mind: I want to check on you, I want to make sure you’re healing properly, I want to bring you terrible tea. Well, this tea was definitely not terrible. Whether Tessa would appreciate the gesture or find it overwhelming remained to be seen.

As he pushed through the familiar front door, Sebastian immediately noticed the difference in atmosphere. The Red Lion felt...settled. Peaceful, even. Gone was the electric tension that had crackled through the air during Will’s recent tantrums. The ancient building creaked and sighed with its usual centuries-old complaints, but there was nothing supernatural about the sounds now. Even the temperature felt normal, no sudden arctic pockets or unexplained cold spots.

The Saturday lunch crowd had settled into a comfortable rhythm—the clink of cutlery against plates, murmured conversations over pints, the occasional burst of laughter from a corner table. Normal pub sounds that felt reassuring after Friday night’s supernatural chaos.

His confrontation with Will on Friday night had worked. The realization filled Sebastian with an unexpected surge of protective satisfaction. He’d defended Tessa, and the ghost had actually backed down.

Tessa looked up from behind the bar as he entered, and Sebastian felt his chest tighten at the sight of her. A young woman with short auburn hair was working beside her, efficiently pulling pints and taking orders while Tessa managed the till one-handed. The exhaustion he’d seen at the hospital had been replaced by something softer, warmer. When their eyes met, her face lit up with genuine pleasure rather than the wary politeness she’d shown him for weeks.

“Sebastian,” she said, and his name sounded different in her voice now—like something precious rather than merely professional. “You came back.” She gestured to her colleague. “This is Jules—she’s helping me out today since I’m still a bit clumsy with this hand.”

Jules offered a friendly nod before turning back to serve a customer, clearly comfortable with the pub’s rhythm.

“Of course I came back,” he replied, setting his briefcase down and moving toward her with purpose. “I promised I would check on you. How’s the hand?”

She flexed her bandaged fingers experimentally, and he noticed she did it without wincing this time. “Much better, actually. The stitches are holding well, and the pain has mostly faded to just an annoying ache.”

“Good.” Sebastian opened his briefcase and withdrew the elegant tin with its gold-embossed label. “I brought something to go with your recovery.”

Tessa’s eyebrows rose as she read the ornate script. “Castleton Estate First Flush? Sebastian, this costs more than most people spend on groceries in a month.”

“You deserved terrible tea, according to my promise,” he said with a slight smile. “I decided to go in completely the opposite direction.”

The laugh that escaped her was pure delight, and Sebastian felt something warm unfurl in his chest. This was what he’d wanted—to see her face light up, to do something that brought her genuine joy rather than corporate frustration.

“Thank you,” she said softly, cradling the tin with her good hand. “This is incredibly thoughtful. And probably the most expensive tea that’s ever crossed this bar.”

“Let me make it for you,” Sebastian offered, already moving toward the kitchen area. “You shouldn’t be wrestling with kettles and heavy teapots one-handed.”

She followed him, protesting lightly. “I can manage perfectly well?—“

“I know you can,” he interrupted gently, pausing at the kitchen doorway where a stocky man in a stained apron was efficiently plating fish and chips. “Let me help anyway.”

“Briggs, this is Sebastian,” Tessa said briefly. “We’ll just be making tea—won’t get in your way.”

Briggs barely looked up from his work. “Stay out of my way and you’re welcome to make tea back here,” he grunted, sliding another plate across the pass.

Sebastian found himself working near the kettle with Tessa close beside him in the spacious kitchen, both of them navigating around Briggs’s efficient movements.

Sebastian found himself studying her as he prepared the tea, drinking in details he was now intimately familiar with but never tired of observing. The way she unconsciously tucked her hair behind her ear when concentrating—he’d noticed it Friday night at the hospital and found it endearing then, but now it felt like a secret he was privileged to know. The small scar on her wrist that looked old and faded. The graceful efficiency of her movements, even limited by her bandaged hand and needing to work around Briggs’s bustling presence in the spacious kitchen.

She was beautiful, obviously, but it was more than that. There was something about her quiet competence, her stubborn dignity, her fierce loyalty to this old building that drew him in ways he couldn’t entirely explain. Would she be as fiercely loyal to him if he was hers? He knew the answer was yes, and that thought brought him deep satisfaction.

After years of relationships built on convenience or professional networking, the depth of his attraction to Tessa felt almost overwhelming. The way she looked at him now—with acceptance, attraction, open flirtation—was like a drug he was finally admitting he couldn’t live without. He loved her smart mouth, her quick wit, the way she challenged him at every turn.

He knew he was probably looking at her like one of those cartoon characters with stars in his eyes. He’d never felt like this about anyone—this combination of complete comfort and intense craving, the way he wanted to be near her constantly. He was probably looking at her exactly the way Harry looked at Daphne, exactly the way Oliver looked at Alice, with that unmistakable expression of a man completely gone over a woman. And he found he was perfectly okay with that.

The front door chimed, and Sebastian heard familiar voices calling out greetings. Speak of the devils, Harry and Daphne Crighton had arrived, accompanied by the unmistakable chaos of four-year-old twins and what sounded like additional adult conversation.

“That’ll be Alice and Oliver too,” Tessa said, moving to greet their visitors. “Alice wanted to discuss Will’s recent house calls, and Oliver insisted on driving her since she’s been so tired lately.”

Sebastian followed her back to the main room, where he was immediately struck by the warm family dynamics unfolding before him. Harry had both twins perched on his shoulders while Daphne looked on with fond exasperation. Oliver was helping a visibly pregnant Alice settle into the most comfortable chair, his attention entirely focused on her wellbeing.

For the first time, Sebastian found himself observing these interactions without his usual competitive analysis. Instead of noting Oliver’s domestic distractions or calculating business advantages, he was simply...watching. Learning. Trying to understand what made these relationships work so effortlessly.

“Sebastian!” One of the twins—Malcolm, he thought—had spotted him immediately and was struggling to climb down from Harry’s shoulders. “You came back! The sad soldier said you would.”

“Did he now?” Sebastian crouched to the boy’s level, genuinely curious. “What else did the sad soldier say?”

Malcolm’s twin brother, Ewan, had now joined them, both boys studying Sebastian with the sort of intense focus that made adults distinctly uncomfortable. Children always seemed to see more than they should.

“He’s not sad anymore,” Ewan announced matter-of-factly. “He said thank you for making him remember his manners.”

A chill ran down Sebastian’s spine. Will had actually acknowledged the scolding? “He said that?”

“He did.” Malcolm nodded solemnly. “And he said something else too. Something important.”

Sebastian found himself holding his breath, aware that everyone in the room had gone quiet to listen. Even Alice had leaned forward from her chair, one hand resting protectively on her rounded belly.

“He said you already saw the lady in the picture,” Malcolm continued with the casual certainty of childhood. “You just didn’t know it was her.”

The words hit Sebastian like a physical blow. Every conversation, every document, every photograph he’d examined over the past weeks suddenly demanded reexamination. Something he’d seen—something he’d dismissed or overlooked or failed to recognize as significant.

“What picture?” he asked, though his mind was already racing through possibilities. “When did I see it?”

Both twins shrugged in perfect unison, the gesture so synchronized it would have been comical under different circumstances.

“He doesn’t know exactly,” Ewan said. “Just that you have already seen her face. Her real face, not just her name.”

Sebastian’s methodical mind began working through the evidence systematically. Employee records—no photographs there. Newspaper clippings—he’d found several mentions of Rebecca Ainsley, but no images. The wartime archives Oliver had shared—mostly official documents and administrative paperwork.

But somewhere, in some forgotten corner of his research, Rebecca’s face was waiting to be recognized.

“Sebastian?” Tessa’s voice cut through his internal cataloguing, her tone gently teasing. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost—which, considering our current situation, wouldn’t be entirely surprising.”

“Maybe I have,” he murmured, still trying to process the implications. “Maybe I’ve been looking at her all along without realizing it.”

Alice spoke up from her chair, her voice carrying that peculiar certainty that seemed to accompany genuine psychic sensitivity. “Will is being patient now because he knows the answer is close. He can feel that we’re almost there.”

“Patient is definitely an improvement over homicidal,” Harry observed dryly, earning a sharp look from Daphne.

“Don’t joke about that,” she scolded. “Not after what happened to Tessa’s hand.”

Sebastian’s protective instincts flared immediately. “That won’t happen again,” he said with quiet certainty. “Will understands now that violence toward women is unacceptable, regardless of his frustration level.”

Oliver looked surprised by the vehemence in Sebastian’s tone. “You actually confronted a ghost?”

“Someone had to,” Sebastian replied, not taking his eyes off Tessa. “He hurt her. That was unacceptable.”

The room fell silent for a moment, the weight of his protectiveness settling over the group like a blanket. Sebastian realized he’d revealed more about his feelings than he’d intended, but he found he didn’t care. Let them all know that Tessa mattered to him. Let them understand that he wasn’t just here for historical curiosity or business interests.

“Well,” Alice said eventually, breaking the tension with a gentle smile, “it seems Will has learned to respect boundaries. That’s progress.”

The afternoon continued with renewed energy, but Sebastian found his attention constantly divided. Half of his focus remained on the immediate conversations about Will’s supernatural visits and the children’s increasingly detailed descriptions of ghostly encounters. The other half churned relentlessly through every document, every photograph, every scrap of historical evidence he’d encountered.

When Alice mentioned that little Elspeth had started leaving out cookies and drawings for the “sad soldier,” Sebastian filed the information away while simultaneously trying to remember every wartime photograph he’d seen. When Harry complained about cold spots following him through his house, Sebastian nodded sympathetically while mentally reviewing the contents of his grandfather’s library.

Somewhere in his memory, Rebecca Ainsley’s face was waiting to be remembered.

The afternoon wore on with Sebastian’s mind churning relentlessly through possibilities. He’d hired professional researchers to dig through employment records, newspaper clippings, wartime archives, official documents—somewhere in all that research, Rebecca’s face had been staring back at him without his recognition.

But where? The frustration gnawed at him as the conversation continued around him.

“I need to go back through everything,” Sebastian said suddenly, interrupting Oliver’s explanation of why Alice wanted to move to the countryside. “Malcolm said I’d already seen her picture, but I can’t place it. I need to review all my research.”

Tessa’s eyes met his across the room, understanding passing between them without words. “Maybe we should bring some of your files here,” she suggested. “See if Will reacts to anything specific.”

“That’s actually brilliant.” Sebastian was already reaching for his coat, energized by the idea. “If he can somehow communicate which document or photograph contains Rebecca’s image, it would save us countless hours of searching.”

“I’m coming with you,” Tessa announced, already moving toward her own jacket.

“Your hand?—“

“Is healing fine, and this is too important for me to sit here wondering what you’ve found.” Her tone brooked no argument, and Sebastian realized he didn’t want to argue anyway. The thought of sharing this potential discovery with her, of having her beside him when he potentially saw Rebecca’s face for the first time, felt absolutely right.

“We’ll call you the moment we find anything,” Sebastian promised the room at large, though his attention was already focused entirely on Tessa.

As they left The Red Lion together, Sebastian caught sight of their reflection in the pub’s front window—two people moving in perfect synchronization, united by purpose and something deeper that he was finally ready to acknowledge.

For the first time in years, Sebastian Westfield was pursuing something that had nothing to do with corporate conquest or competitive advantage. He was chasing history, chasing truth, chasing the chance to give a long-dead soldier the peace he deserved.

And he was doing it alongside a woman who had somehow become the most important person in his carefully ordered world.

The realization should have terrified him. Instead, as Tessa settled into the passenger seat of his car and smiled at him with complete trust, Sebastian felt nothing but anticipation for whatever they might discover together.