AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘So bonjour, comment allez-vous?’ I said brightly as Jeremy put on his blinker and pulled away from the kerb. Might as well show off my conversational French skills.
‘Ah, très bien, merci,’ he replied, checking his side mirror. ‘I didn’t know you spoke French?’
‘Un peu,’ I said, feeling glad I’d made the effort and done that YouTube course. Now I was setting myself apart from those random women he dated.
But then Jeremy rattled off an incomprehensible sentence that ended with a question mark and glanced at me expectantly.
I gulped. That was a bit beyond beginner’s level.
‘Er, oui, bien sûr,’ I replied, not knowing what else to say.
But it seemed to be the right answer because he smiled widely. ‘Parfait! Nous pouvons faire ça.’
Oh great. What had I just agreed to? Hopefully, it was something pleasant, like going to Paris with him.
We arrived at the restaurant—a rather austere, but chic space with sconce lighting, wooden floorboards, and modern seating. I was expecting French-type artwork or photos on the wall to set the atmosphere, but there were none. Jeremy had assured me, however, that the food was good. He seemed to come here regularly. While I headed to the ladies’ to sort out my hair and face, Jeremy said he’d order our starters.
When I returned, feeling marginally less bedraggled, I found a small white plate on my side of the table with a pair of round tongs and a two-pronged fork resting beside it. There was also an opened bottle of red wine and two glasses poured. Jeremy was currently swigging from one. As I sat down, a waiter appeared and served us both silver dishes filled with half a dozen gently steaming brown shells.
I looked at the dish in alarm. Snails! Urgh!
Jeremy set his wine down and picked up his tongs. ‘I couldn’t believe it when you said “oui” in the car as no one I ever bring here wants me to order them snails.’
Oh god. This was obviously something he really enjoyed. Snails were a French delicacy after all, and this was my chance to impress him.
I forced a smile and inclined my head towards the dish. A waft of garlic and a faint earthy smell hit my nostrils, and my stomach churned. Following his lead, I grasped a snail in my tongs and used the fork to dig out a fleshy grey slug.
‘Bon appétit!’ Jeremy said enthusiastically and popped it in his mouth. There was nothing for it but to put the slug in my own mouth and chew. It tasted like tyre rubber basted with garlic and had a lingering aftertaste of soil. I quickly washed it down with a large gulp of wine.
Worried he was going to order us frog legs next, I grabbed the leather-bound menu and said, ‘I’ll check out the mains.’
‘I’m paying for this, by the way. So don’t hold back. Get the filet mignon if you like. I am.’ Jeremy popped another snail in his mouth and patted his glistening lips delicately with a napkin. I stared, feeling slightly lustful. Trust Jeremy to make ingesting snails look sexy.
After I’d forced down another couple of snails and several more large gulps of wine, I was beginning to feel pleasantly tipsy, if a little nauseous from eating slugs. But I was relieved the date was going well. Jeremy talked mostly about his book, which he’d started writing. But that was OK; it was inherently interesting to me. This was why I loved him—what other man would get so excited about smallpox outbreaks?
He wiped his hands on a napkin. ‘Have you finished that memoir yet? I was thinking I’d quite like to read it after all.’
My gut hopped. I wondered what Jeremy would make of Jasper bonking Arabella while Mercy cowered in bed having to listen to it. Then there was the latest encounter in his room involving her hasty escape before he pounded the wall with his fist. The guy was a first-class bully. Couldn’t she see how horrible he was? I wanted to reach into the past and shake some sense into her. Plus I didn’t want Jeremy reading anything about unrequited love at this point in time. He might start seeing similarities.
‘Honestly, it’s a bit rambly and all over the place. I can send you through my notes when I’m finished to save you the effort,’ I countered. ‘The majority of it is her coping with life after smallpox. The scarring made things a struggle.’
Jeremy tutted. ‘That is unfortunate. Any mention of vision loss?’
‘No.’ However, maybe there was if Mercy had seen herself reflected in the cloche as scar-free and perfect. Poor thing.
Jeremy started talking about a lecture he was giving next week, and I nodded along but felt a little impatient. When was he going to ask me anything personal? Didn’t he want to know about my hobbies or my friends? I’d thought we’d get to know each other.
I started to feel uneasy—was this a working dinner and not a date after all?
When I’d met Thomas, he’d defined our encounter straightaway as a date, and I’d liked that. It gave me a solid brick wall to lean against. I knew what was going on. This dinner with Jeremy felt flimsy, like tissue paper.
That is, until we both reached for the salt to sprinkle on our filet mignons and knocked over the entire pot. There was much laughter and scooping up of salt from the table. In the confusion, Jeremy took the chance to deliberately entwine his salty fingers with mine. I nearly spontaneously combusted.
OK, so it wasn’t a working dinner?
I looked down at our meshed fingers and back up at him, hardly able to believe he was touching me—finally. The corner of his mouth quirked. ‘Now we have to throw it over our left shoulders,’ he said, rubbing his thumb lazily against mine. ‘Or it’s bad luck.’
‘Ah, right. That is the superstition, isn’t it?’ I said, his touch feeling like the sun on a winter’s day.
