Quentin & Daphne -- 2
From: DSRules

It was raining, but Quentin didn't notice in his haste to show up early for his final lunch date with Daphne. He knocked on the door, which was answered by Daphne's butler, Avery.

"Mr. Quentin!" He exclaimed as he let him into the entryway. "We weren't expecting you for another two hours!"

Quentin took off his dripping coat and hat and handed them to the butler "I know, but this is the last time I'll be coming here for lunch, so I wanted to get an early start. If that's all right with Mrs. Collins."

Avery smirked, as if he were privy to a secret. "I think it will. . . "

"It will be just fine with Mrs. Collins," Daphne interrupted.

"Grandmother!" Quentin strode to Daphne and hugged her. It felt wonderful to hold her in his arms, and he was unwilling to let her go, fearful that she'd disappear if he did, but he reassured himself that she wasn't going anywhere. {And, God willing, neither am I.}

Unless Quentin was sorely deluded, Daphne seemed unwilling to let go of him, either. Once they let go of one another, Daphne noticed the basket at Quentin's feet. "What do you have there?"

"Oh! I thought that since you've been so generous to me these few years, the least I could do is feed you, for once." He tried to still the butterflies in his stomach, at the audacity of his plan. He wasn't a virgin by any stretch of the imagination, but all of his previous experience had been with prostitutes, and the only seduction they needed was the kind that's green and that you can fold up and put in your pocket. Daphne deserved a more subtle form of seduction -- like undying devotion.

They walked into the sitting room, where Daphne said, indicating the downpour outside, "It looks like you're ready for a picnic, but it's hardly picnicking weather out there."

"Ah!" He replied. "I've already thought of that."

He placed the basket on the floor and opened it up, removing a rather damp picnic blanket from it. With a deft twist of his wrists, he spread it out on the floor of the sitting room.

"Madame," he said, taking her hand and helping her sit on the dry area of the blanket.

He reached into the basket again, this time pulling out two wine glasses. "I hope my choice in wine is to your taste." He pulled out the bottle, praying to whatever higher powers existed that he'd be able to open it without making a fool of himself. The cork popped out without incident, and he poured just a little for each of them.

Daphne took a sip of the wine, and nodded approvingly. "An excellent choice, Quentin."

"Thank you." He returned to the basket, pulling out a whole chicken that his landlady had graciously cut into pieces for him and packed in one of her own serving dishes.

He served them each from the dish, and put it to one side. He and Daphne sat, eating their chicken and sipping their wine, their quiet conversation punctuated by thunderclaps from outside.

They were about halfway done, when Quentin noticed that Avery had disappeared. "Where's that dour old butler of yours, Grandmother? He always seems to be lurking around here, but I haven't seen him since I came in."

"Oh! I gave him the rest of the day off. I wanted to spend our last lunch date together alone with you."

This gave Quentin his first hope that she felt the same way about him that he felt about her. He decided to move to the next step of his plan. Reaching, once again, into the basket, he pulled out two tomatoes and handed one to her.

"What do you expect me to do with this?" She asked as she eyed the red fruit dubiously.

"Bite into it," he replied, demonstrating with his own tomato.

She watched him for a moment, then shrugged. "All right." She bit into it, making what, to Quentin's ears, was a delightful slurping sound in the process. She giggled. "It's really good!"

"You know, lots of legends have arisen around the tomato. Some people used to think that the tomato was poisonous." He pretended that he was making idle conversation with her. "Others thought that they were an aphrodisiac."

"Oh, really?" The sparkle in Daphne's eyes gave Quentin hope that she was intrigued by the possibility.

"Really." He nodded. "And some people thought that the tomato was the fruit that Eve tempted Adam with . . ." His voice faded as he leaned forward to kiss her.

As hungry for his kisses as she had been for the meal they had shared, she returned his kiss with all of the passion she had within her. She'd been wanting this since the first day they met. It was right. They belonged together.

His hands went up to her hair, and he began slowly pulling the hairpins from it – an act that felt as intimate as if he were undressing her. When her hair fell down her back in pewter waves, he moved his mouth down to her neck.

Fully placing her trust in him, she relaxed as he lay her back onto the blanket. "Daphne!" He whispered hoarsely when her hands went up to his first shirt button.

Hearing his voice brought reality crashing down around her. Here she was, in her sitting room, about to make love with a man who looked exactly like her late husband. Was she crazy?

She rudely pushed him off of her and staggered to her feet. She went to the window and looked out of it, tears streaming from her eyes.

Concerned, he walked over to her and placed his arms around her. The combination of wine and passion made him daring, so he tried saying aloud to her the words that he only ever said in his head before, "I love you."

"I love you, too," she replied in the best approximation of a grandmotherly tone that she could manage under the circumstances.

He recognized what she was trying to do. "I don't mean it that way. I mean that I love you the way a man loves a woman."

"I can't, Quentin." He could see how conflicted she was. Torn between the way she had come to feel about him throughout the previous four years, and the way she should feel about him as her grandson, and uncertain if she loved him or her late husband. "I just can't. You see, I'll never know whether it's you that I love or . . ."

"My grandfather," he finished the thought for her trying to suppress the pain in his heart.

She nodded, regretting the pain she was causing him. "I'm so sorry."

He looked at her, pleading in his eyes. "Daphne. Just do one thing for me. Look me in the eyes and tell me that if I didn't look so much like my grandfather, that you'd feel any differently about me. If you can do that, I'll go away and never mention it again."

This she could do, though not in the way he meant it. "Yes, Quentin. If you didn't look so much like my late husband, I would feel differently about you." {If you didn't look so much like him, I might actually feel free to love you.}

"That's all I needed to hear. I'll be leaving now. Just remember one thing. Remember that if you ever need me for anything at all, that you'll just ask. That's all you'll need to do," he vowed.

He picked up his coat and hat and stepped out into the rain.