Love & Freedom (Choc Lit)

by Moorcroft, Sue

  ‘Trouble?’ He sat up and hooked his arms around his knees, his shoulder brushing hers, warm and firm. Seriously firm. UK dictionaries probably said: toned – see Martyn Mayfair.

  She swished the last drops of the smoothie in the bottom of the bottle and drank it down. ‘The handfasting had no standing in law, of course. I guess that Garvin Lefevre isn’t the type to lose his marbles, even when he falls instantly in love.’ She tilted her baseball cap over her eyes against the climbing morning sun. ‘But, apparently, my mother started to call herself Mrs Lefevre and Grandma said that she didn’t care whether they’d married in the eyes of Mother Earth, they had to be married in the eyes of the State of Connecticut before she could call herself that. They didn’t get along, particularly when my mom kicked up a storm because she wanted a home birth, which, like, nobody did in New England in the seventies. She wanted to go to bars and gigs and my dad was always at school or studying, so I guess it was pretty hard on her and she didn’t much like America. And I guess she didn’t like being my mom either because, three weeks after I was born, she took off. I understand why it would have been hard to take me – I’m American and the FBI takes a dim view of foreigners swiping our citizens, even when the citizen is the foreigner’s kid. But I’d kind of like to know why I wasn’t important enough to make her stay. Or even stay in touch.

  ‘Dad was relieved to see her go, I think, though he was in the middle of exams and probably didn’t know which way was up. Grandma took me over – just like yours – and Dad married a good American girl, Karen, a few years later.

  ‘So, there you have it – I’m a mistake, too.’

  Chapter Six

  ‘It happens,’ he said, quietly. She was looking away, now, watching mothers pushing buggies, toddlers trying to keep up. Now she was no longer sunburn red, tiny freckles kissed her nose. Her ponytail was a toffee-coloured cloud, but when he had found her on the patio this morning her hair had hung loose over her shoulders, not in waves but in ripples. He liked her hair. He liked her pixily determined chin and short, straight nose. But not as much as her pretty mouth. She had a seriously pretty mouth. Her lips were glistening with the last of the smoothie and it begged to be licked away.

  She was no cover girl; her beauty was too quirky, too expressive. Too dependent on the pretty mouth that he couldn’t stop watching as she said, ‘I was five and Dad and me were a unit, when they got married. Karen was a good stepmom but, of course, she couldn’t love me as much as she loved her own kids. Sometimes she’d act as if I’d been a lot of trouble and get Dad to take me off somewhere, like she was saying, “This one’s your child, sort her out.” She carried on with her career until she was pregnant with Jessamine, and Jess was a difficult baby and Zachary followed quite soon, so Grandma carried on caring for me when Daddy wasn’t home until I went to junior high when I was twelve. Old enough to get the school bus and old enough to watch Jessie and Zach.’

  ‘Watch them do what?’ He couldn’t resist teasing her for her American terminology.

  A smile flickered across her eyes. ‘I watched them do just about everything – helping them if it was a good thing, stopping them if it was a bad thing. You say “babysit”, right?

  ‘You know how you get that child in a family, the one who is older and more self-possessed, who runs lots of errands? Well, that was me, because when I was responsible and helpful, Karen didn’t make other arrangements for me. So it was a lot easier on everyone.’ She turned her fine green gaze on him and smiled. ‘You can’t fault her logic – I’m not her kid. Families do you in, don’t they?’

  He commiserated with a touch to her hand. Her nails were manicured and her fingers dainty. ‘Mum would have called you “a fine-boned lady”. That was her greatest compliment because she was like my sisters – short and sturdy, like peasant stock. And I’m a big guy.’

  She laughed. ‘You sure are.’

  His glance flickered contemplatively to her mouth. But he just took her hand and surged to his feet. ‘Ready to go?’

  She winced. ‘Ow! Ooh,’ as she began to use her legs, so he led her back out of the underpass and along the undercliff to Eastingdean at a snail’s pace. He should never have kept running when he knew she was blown; it didn’t seem like such a good joke, now, because she was walking as stiffly as a heron. And it was taking forever to get back to Eastingdean.

  ‘All I can see from here is the top of your cap,’ he observed, when she seemed to be walking more easily.

  ‘Doctor’s orders were that I cover up in the sun for a while.’ She glanced up. ‘I don’t think I ever said thank you for dragging me in from the sun and calling Dr Zoë. You were the good guy, looking after things for your sister, and you got a sick American to take care of. One more thing to hold against Clarissa.’

  The undercliff was busy and he sidestepped a small child on tow behind a large black dog and steered her to a slope up to the road. ‘I’m being kind to her, at the moment, even when she pulls all the sister-mum crap. Her husband did one, a few months ago.’

  Her eyebrows dipped. ‘Did one what?’

  ‘Did a runner. Went off with another woman.’

  They’d reached the clifftop and the traffic and the breeze combined to make it difficult to hear each other so they’d crossed the road to the bungalow before she answered. ‘Poor Clarissa. I didn’t know about her husband.’

  ‘She and Duncan were going to live in the bungalow.’ He nodded up at it. ‘They moved in with Nicola while they did this place up so Clarissa’s still there, because when Duncan took off Clarissa had to take the mortgage on her own. That’s why she’s renting the bungalow out. Nicola’s between relationships – none of my sisters but Clarissa ever bothered getting married – so she’s happy to share living expenses. But I still feel bad for Clarissa.’ He watched Honor’s behind as she walked up the terrace steps. ‘Duncan Wells had always been a problematic bastard but the crunch was when another woman came on the scene. So Clarissa embraced being single again, and went back to calling herself Mayfair.’

  Honor halted at her door. ‘Horrible for her.’

  He tilted the baseball hat gently off her head, sliding it slowly down her ponytail and stretching around her to hang it on the door handle. Now she was in the shade her skin was safe. And the damned hat would only get in the way when he kissed her.

  But she was still frowning over Clarissa’s troubles. ‘You’re obviously on her side when it matters. That’s real important.’

  He propped his hand on the doorframe. ‘She drives me mad, but of course I’m on her side. She was hurt. Also, she gave me hell.’

  ‘Gave you hell?’

  He shuddered at the remembered purgatory. ‘Straight after Duncan left, it came out – in the worst way – that I was in a relationship with a married woman, Rosie. In my defence, the first I knew of it was when Rosie’s husband turned up, threatening to kill me.’

  ‘Wow,’ she breathed. ‘That sucks. How could you not know?’

  ‘Exactly Clarissa’s point. But it seems that the endless lies and deceit that come with having an extra-marital affair can be used to blindside the lover as well as the husband. I honestly didn’t know. I was so pissed off with Rosie. Apart from subjecting me to a horrible scene and making me look an idiot, she involved me in hurting her husband, which I hated. She didn’t wear her wedding ring, she stayed out all night – how the hell was I supposed to know?’

  ‘Maybe she wasn’t all that married? Like – separated, or something?’

  ‘It’s true that they were only “kind of” married, according to her. But that message didn’t seem to have reached her husband … Anyway, I’ve sworn off married women. I don’t need them.’ He dismissed Rosie and her excuses. His primary interest in this conversation was wondering when it would pause long enough for him to get to know that pretty mouth.

  Which was no longer smiling. Instead, Honor sighed. ‘So this would be where I tell you I’m kind of married, too.’

  He took a look
into her eyes. There, too, the smiles were gone. His heart began a slow float downwards, hardening his voice as he straightened up and stepped back. ‘And you don’t wear a wedding ring, either.’

  Her smile was defensive. ‘They’re not compulsory.’

  Anger ripped through him, firing words from his mouth. Not loudly. Quietly. Like a ticking bomb. ‘Maybe they ought to be – to stop poor bastards making dangerous assumptions!’

  And before he could soften, explain it was disappointment that made him snappy and that he was prone to speaking first, thinking later, she unhooked her cap and opened the door. ‘Assumptions are always dangerous. If they weren’t assumptions, they’d be intelligently researched conclusions, wouldn’t they?’

  And the door shut, firmly, in his face.

  Chapter Seven

  From the way that his eyes, heavy with desire, had been fixed to her mouth and, damn, pretty hot, she’d known he wanted to kiss her. His spurt of anger told her just how much.

  A kiss would probably have been a bad idea. For all kinds of reasons.

  Like Stef. Stef. And … Stef.

  She could have told him that she and Stef were living separate lives but right now a man in her life, particularly an angry man with barriers against married women, would complicate her already knotty situation. And she knew little about Martyn Mayfair other than that he kept turning up in shining armour to rescue her from dragons – well, sunburn and thunderstorms – and he had a stalker, which was sad and, as she was pretty freaked by the whole Robina thing, an out-of-left-field complication.

  There was no reason for her to feel affronted that Martyn had thrust her from him like a dog that had rolled in something stinky.

  So she should just stop.

  She sighed. Well, stop then, Honor.

  But, before he’d turned so harsh and unforgiving, she’d been all set to drown in those dark eyes and let his lips make real the connection they were obviously both feeling. And as for that incredibly English way he said ‘bastard’ – barzstard. Not basstard. Cute … She shook herself. Stop! Really, stop. Not going to happen.

  A long soak in a hot bath went some way to easing her stiff muscles. Then, after a quick lunch, she fired up her laptop and resolved to work through her inbox to punish herself for wishfully thinking herself kissed by a specimen of almost perfect male physical beauty. First the mail she’d let build up from friends and recently ex-coworkers demanding to be told exactly what the hell she thought she was doing, pinging back the same breezy paragraph to each: Hi! I’m fine, just enjoying a little time out before deciding where I go from here. Be sure to see you sometime.

  But the concern from loved ones was harder to deal with. She clicked first on Zach:

  Hey Honor, you OK? Dad’s stressing. He rang me, checking whether you were hanging with me down in Texas but I told him no. But if you do want to hang here, I’ll still tell him no, if you want. Zach

  PS I keep hearing that everyone back in Hamilton Drives is so amazed. I knew Stef’s stunt would make it hard for you but you kind of took people by surprise by leaving.

  She moved on to Jessamine:

  Honor, I saw Stef and he’s totally subdued, wishing he was back in the days when his worst crime was blowing up a mailbox.  He says to tell you that he loves you and knows he deserves to be punished but he misses you like crazy and wishes you’d go see him. Love you, sis. Jessie xxx

  Honor smiled, picturing Jessie, the image of blonde, pretty Karen, throwing her arms around Honor and delivering those kisses, heavy on the lipgloss.

  She left the hardest till last. Dad:

  Honor, honey, I’m not going to pretend that I’m in favour of you hiding out from your errant husband but I guess that’s a conversation for another day. Until you’ve got this fit out of your system, can we please continue to check in with one another? Regularly? Karen says Hi.

  I love you.

  She returned, I love you, too. I’m really fine, Dad.

  When she’d conquered her inbox, restless emotions and incipient muscle stiffness sent her to put up her hair and slap on her sun block and walk out to explore Eastingdean while the sunshine lasted.

  Most commercial activity in Eastingdean was centred on The Butts, a broad road, off Marine Drive, of pubs, fascinating stores and places to linger. Honor suppressed a childish snicker at the idea of a street named The Butts. The British didn’t use the word ‘butt’ in quite the same way as Americans but if she were ever to open a shop here it would have to, just have to, sell panties and boxer shorts. She could call it Cover Your Butts. Or Beautiful Butts. The Butts for butts. The Butts Store.

  On the first corner of The Butts was a block of shops called Starboard Walk, studded with enormous pebbles row on row on row. The rest of the stores – no, shops – that lined The Butts were an eclectic mixture of more flint, plain red brick, rendered and painted in white or cream with the occasional pink, or the cross between a house and a zebra that was mock-Tudor.

  The butcher’s shop and the one that sold fruit and vegetables were worthy only of a glance and she noted the fish and chip shop for when she hadn’t just eaten. Across the road from the Eastingdean Teapot, the tearoom that Martyn had said belonged to his stalker, she browsed happily around a leafy, peaty garden shop that sold spotted Wellington boots, neat packs of seed, and baskets of hanging plants swinging gently as they waited to be bought.

  Her favourite, though, she found at the point where the shops were petering out – Pretty Old. The shop front was stained dark, the bevelled glass windows shone, and the air smelled of dust and beeswax as she stepped inside. From somewhere in the recesses she thought she could hear a radio but, although a tinkling bell announced her as she closed the door, nobody emerged to help her.

  It wasn’t exactly an antique store, not like those she’d seen in London’s Chelsea. In Hamilton Drives the sign over the door would have said something about ‘collectibles’.

  But, wow. It was crammed with cool stuff.

  In cabinets crouched old telephones, from froggy-looking examples in two shades of green to brittle black, dials yellowed with age and a funny cord that looked as if it had been covered in cotton.

  Then came the photographs. Faded photographs in tones of grey or shades of sepia; weddings and christenings, parades, family groups and solemn babies in long gowns, all framed in tarnished silver or wood smoothed by age. Even better was an album of postcards that were embroidered in faded silks and sometimes edged with lace.

  She picked it up and breathed in the smell of old.

  Old paper, old ink, old lives. It was exactly the kind of history she loved best: the kind you could touch, just on the edges of living memory. Inside the album’s back cover was written in a childish cursive script: Mary Brownlee, The Rise, Eastingdean, East Sussex. Was Mary Brownlee still around? Probably not, she realised, sadly, if her precious collection had ended up in this hushed, musty shop.

  Each postcard had its own embroidered message: Happy Christmas. Happy Birthday. To My Darling Wife. To My Little Girl. Don’t Forget Me. Honor turned each thick page gently, reverently, Souvenir de France, Right is Might, until she reached the final one, RFA 1917, my heart it wings to thee. The colours were muted by the years but every stitch was beautiful and precise, just as it had been set almost a century before.

  ‘Lovely, aren’t they?’

  The quiet voice came from right beside her and Honor jumped so hard she almost dropped the precious album. A woman in her sixties twinkled at her, eyes almost disappearing in her smile, cheeks as round as red apples. If her ears had been pointed, Honor would have suspected her of being a hobbit. ‘Sorry, did I startle you? You’re looking at First World War silks. They were embroidered for the servicemen. What you’re holding is a collection of cards a staff sergeant in the Royal Field Artillery sent home to his wife and daughter.’

  ‘They’re gorgeous.’ Honor stroked a page. ‘How much would you charge for the book?’

  Hobbit woman crinkled up
her face again. ‘I’m afraid it’s expensive. The collection will soon be a hundred years old, which is rather a magic figure, in antiques. And all together like that in the album, they sort of tell a story, don’t they?’

  Honor waited.

  The screwed-up face screwed up even more. ‘I couldn’t take less than two hundred pounds.’

  ‘Wow. I’d have to think about that.’ Regretfully, Honor closed the album and slid it back on to the shelf by a framed photo of girls in drum majorette uniforms, hems well below their knees.

  The lady nodded, sadly. ‘I know. Expensive.’ Then her face scrunched up again with a pained smile, as if she were gently disappointed in Honor but was too gracious to make it plain. ‘Do enjoy browsing.’

  Honor did. By the time she finally tore herself away from the shelves of beads, bobbins, boxes and brassware, she felt dazed. Holding bits of history in her hands had made her covet so many that, like a child confused by the largesse of a toyshop, she hadn’t bought a thing, just allowed herself a last loving flick through the postcards in their creased old hide binding. Maybe, just maybe, if she could get herself a job, she could justify buying that fabulous collection.