Since the afternoon he’d found her on Crystal Cove and had told her about Miles, she hadn’t seen him. He had, she had a feeling, been avoiding her, and it was probably all for the best that he had been. Seth had spoken to him on the phone a few times, but Emma hadn’t liked to ask what they’d been speaking about.
But now here he was. His face solemn, his eyes slightly downcast, not quite meeting hers. He was gnawing on a corner of his bottom lip as though he was searching for what to say, and if he did find it would have difficulty getting it out of his mouth. He pushed the hair from his forehead in a gesture Emma knew indicated a slight hesitancy, nervousness even. Matthew Caunter nervous? Of her?
Wordlessly, Emma opened the door wider to let him in. It was as if she’d been waiting for him. She expected her heart to race with something – fear for what might happen now, or desire – but she felt nothing. Except, perhaps an inevitability – it was as though she’d known he would come. And just as wordlessly, Matthew stepped into the hall. With one hand, he silently closed the door behind him.
Emma took a step back, away from him.
‘You were watching,’ Emma said. Her voice echoed in the now almost-empty hallway and the sound of it was like ice on her soul. ‘Waiting for Seth to go. That was underhand.’
‘I was. I’m being paid to watch you at the moment.’
‘You are?’
‘Not going a little deaf, Emma?’ Matthew teased. He’d said the same thing often when she’d questioned him, what seemed like a lifetime ago now, although in reality it was only three years.
‘I don’t know that I feel comfortable being watched. Even by you.’
Matthew raised a questioning eyebrow. And then he winked at her.
Oh, how she’d missed that wink, but she’d best forget winks and Matthew when even thought about in the same sentence.
‘A spying sort of watching is what I meant.’
‘I know what you meant, Emma Le Goff. Trust me, I know. If you stayed there’d be rather a lot of the sort of watching – by me and others – that would make you uncomfortable. I don’t want that for you. So you agree it’s best for you to leave?’
Emma nodded. There was nothing for her here now.
Except, perhaps, Matthew. And he, she knew, wouldn’t be around for long, once this issue over Miles had been sorted. If she chose to stay, would she be following Matthew all over the country, the world, never settling? Always living on the edge of danger? Did she want that?
‘So seeing as we both agree it’s best for me to leave, and you’ve been watching the house and you know Seth and Fleur aren’t here, and I’m here alone, why have you come?’
‘If I said because I wanted one last look at you before you go, would you believe me?’
‘No.’
‘You’re right. I don’t need one last look because you’re’ – Matthew made a fist of one hand and brought it up to his heart – ‘there.’ Then with the other hand he tapped the top of his head. ‘And in there.’
‘Don’t,’ Emma said. ‘Don’t tease me.’ And don’t tempt me either she wanted to say, but never would. Not here, not now.
‘I’m not teasing you, Emma, merely telling you the truth.’
‘I’m still going,’ Emma said.
‘Yes, you’re too honourable not to. Impulsive, without a doubt. Questioning, as ever. But honourable. You’ve told Seth you’ll go with him and there’s no turning back now, is there?’
Emma shook her head. No, there was no turning back. Her future in Canada with Seth might be an unknown, but it was safe. Safer than here.
‘Just as there’s no turning back for me now I’ve taken on the job of running Miles Jago to ground. And I’ll do my level best to do that. I want him off the scene for good.’
‘But not at the risk of your life?’
‘Oh, I hope to hang on to that.’
‘I hope so, too.’
Matthew smiled at her for the first time since entering the house and, despite what she hoped was iron resolve, she felt her legs go weak and her bones begin to melt almost. It was all she could do to hold herself upright.
‘I hope to hang on to it,’ Matthew said, ‘because we have unfinished business, you and I. You asked me for a kiss down on Crystal Cove and I refused you. I—’
‘I don’t want it now!’ Emma said, trembling. ‘It’s too late. Just for once, Matthew Caunter, my head is ruling my heart.’
She fully expected Matthew to laugh at her, but he didn’t. He put a hand in the pocket of his trousers and brought it out again clasped around something.
‘I thought you might like this before you go.’
Matthew held his clenched fist towards her. It wasn’t a small thing – like a keepsake ring which she knew she could never accept – because his large hand could hardly contain it. He flipped his hand over, so that it was palm upwards, and uncurled his fingers.
‘My amethyst,’ Emma said, not a hint of surprise in her voice. If anyone could have got it back for her she knew Matthew would be the one to do it.
‘One telephone call was all it took. Well, one telephone call and then a visit to a very unsavoury institution in Plymouth for those considered mad, or bad, or both. That telephone call, and that visit, led me to Margaret Phipps. It’s amazing what a gift of pretty petticoats and chocolate can get a man—’
‘Matthew!’ Emma interrupted knowing he wouldn’t be cross with her for the interruption. Not this time. ‘We don’t have time for you to recite a whole book!’
‘And those gifts,’ Matthew went on as though she hadn’t spoken, and that time and the world had stopped for them, ‘led me to one, Mrs Phipps who, after much persuasion and more gifts – this time gin and tobacco and two crisp five-pound notes – went upstairs and came down with this. I’ve given it a good scrub in case you’re nervous of having it next to your skin.’
‘Thank you,’ was all Emma could find to say.
‘Turn around and I’ll put it on for you,’ Matthew said. ‘And then I’ll go.’
‘No!’
She didn’t think she’d be able to bear the closeness of him, or that his fingers might touch her skin.
‘What? Not go?’
‘You’re teasing again.’
‘Guilty as charged,’ Matthew said. ‘Be gentle with your sentence.’
Emma’s heart turned a somersault at the delicious rumble of his voice and the way his eyes danced with merriment as they held hers. He made a pouty gesture with his lips and Emma so wanted to kiss them, to have those lips kiss her back.
‘I meant,’ she said, swallowing back her desire, ‘no, don’t put it on for me.’
She knew what she had to do now, to say. That inevitability she’d felt when she’d let Matthew in, as though she’d been expecting him, rose to the fore.
‘As much as I love it because it was Mama’s, I think it’s jinxed. It’s been lost to me twice now and it’s you who’s returned it. I think it would only mean bad luck if I were to take it with me. So, I’d like you to keep it for me,’ Emma said. ‘And one day, I hope to find you again. And when that day comes, you can – if you’re a free man and I’m a free woman – put it around my neck for me.’
Matthew slipped the necklace back into his pocket. He walked towards the door, opened it, and without turning around he said, ‘I hope so, too, Emma. With all my heart, body and soul, I hope that.’ He turned then. ‘Safe journey, Emma. Happy life. Until we meet again.’
And then as suddenly as he’d come, he was gone again.
After leaving the bank, Seth went to Ireland’s and left money for flowers to be put on his ma’s grave – and on those of Emma’s parents and Johnnie’s – once a month for two years. After that, he told Mr Ireland, if he wired him then he would send more, or he could contact Olly Underwood and Olly would pay.
And then he went to the cemetery with nine white carnations for his ma – one for each year she had been his ma before she’d been pushed down the cellar steps by his brothe
r, Carter.
Passing the grave of Rachel and Johnnie Le Goff, he saw that Emma had been there, although she hadn’t told him she was going. The small metal pot was brimming with winter jasmine and a few sprigs of leaves he didn’t know the name of, but which he recognised as growing at Shingle Cottage. Emma had helped Ruby take things there and she must have picked it then, and said a last goodbye. Guillaume Le Goff’s grave was decorated with a similar posy.
‘I’ll take you in my heart, Ma,’ Seth said, poking the stems of the flowers through the lid of the pot set into his ma’s marble gravestone. ‘And one day I hope to … return.’ But there was a wave of something unwanted that wrapped itself, like damp fog, around his heart as he struggled to get the words out that that day might never come.
Seth turned then and strode over to where Guillaume Le Goff was buried. He placed the palm of his hand on the small tablet he’d had carved for Emma.
‘I’ll love your daughter to the end of my days, sir,’ he said, his voice firmer now. ‘And I’ll take care of her, or die in the attempt.’
At her ma’s grave he bent to smell the jasmine Emma had placed there, committing the scent of it to memory. Was there winter jasmine in Canada or were the winters too harsh? He didn’t know. But he’d soon find out.
‘I like to think that one day, Rachel,’ he said, ‘Emma will bring her daughter – our daughter – to show you.’
And then he laughed. He knew Emma better than he thought he did, didn’t he? Wild horses and an ocean between them wouldn’t stop Emma doing that.
‘And she’ll call her Rachel,’ Seth said. ‘And so she should. You were so strong standing up to my pa and my brother, and you paid for it with your life. Johnnie’s, too.’
And then, before someone called the men in white coats to cart him away because he was talking to himself in a cemetery, he blew a last kiss across all the graves and hurried home to Emma.
‘It’s so big,’ Emma said, staring up at RMS Royal Edward. The ship had two funnels, painted mostly yellow. A red line ran around the plimsoll line – or at least Emma thought it might be the plimsoll line; she had a vague memory of reading about just such a thing in school.
The train journey from Devon to Bristol had been wonderful – almost too wonderful at the start of it – and Emma had wondered, a heavy feeling in her heart, if she was making the right decision to go. The scenery along the coast and then beside the River Exe was breathtaking and she had never seen either before. Would she ever again?
And then the journey across country which had opened her eyes to the way other people had to live, especially when the train neared Bristol and she saw rows and rows of houses, back to back, hugging the railway line. How noisy that must be, with the sound of the steam engines, to say nothing of the steam belching out day in and day out.
Emma had leaned towards Seth and taken his hand in hers as the train passed a huge mill of some sort with buildings as big as Exeter Cathedral almost.
‘We were lucky being born where we were, weren’t we?’ Emma had whispered to him, holding tightly to his hand.
Seth had merely nodded and Emma guessed he was perhaps having second thoughts himself about leaving the only place he’d ever called home.
To be born in a place with clean air and warmer weather than many other parts of the country – a place where it rarely snowed – seemed like a gift now to Emma and something she hadn’t appreciated at the time. When she was struggling to survive there, clean air and warm weather had been the last things on Emma’s mind. But she was going to miss them – how could she not?
And now, in front of her, stood the ship they were to board.
‘We can’t board yet,’ Seth said.
‘I know. You told me. I just wanted to come and see it. To see what we’re trusting our lives to, seeing as the Ti—’
‘Don’t say it!’ Seth said. ‘We’ll be fine. All sorts of safety procedures have been put in place since that tragedy. Not the least enough lifeboats. But I’m not going to let either of you out of my sight. Besides, I’ve got a theory.’
Seth grinned at Emma and the sadness she knew she’d put there over Matthew wasn’t as finely etched as it had been. Good.
‘What’s that then?’
‘That the reason that ship went down was because not everyone asked permission to go aboard. One should always ask permission to board a boat that doesn’t belong to you, or on which you don’t work on a regular basis.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Emma said.
‘You do now,’ Seth said. ‘So, have you seen enough for the moment? The woman in the café might be busy and not able to keep her eye on our luggage all the time.’
He placed an arm around her and laid his hand gently on her shoulder and she leaned into him as she always had. Safe. Content. Cared for. Loved.
Emma crossed an arm in front of her and touched Seth’s hand where it rested on her shoulder. Then she turned her head towards it and kissed the base of his thumb, following that kiss with little pecks all the way down to his wrist.
‘Oh, sweetheart,’ Seth said, his voice husky.
And they both knew what it was that huskiness implied – that her heart had come back to him.
And it had, well most of it. A tiny bit of it was still back in the cemetery at St Mary’s with her mama and her papa, and Johnnie. And another tiny bit she’d left with Ruby. And a sliver to the memory of Beattie Drew and all that she had been in her, and Seth’s, life. And Matthew? Well, he had her amethyst necklace, didn’t he? She’d left that with him.
‘Tea,’ Emma said. ‘I’d like a cup of tea before we go. A last cup of tea, in case they don’t make tea in Canada the way we do here.’
‘A cup of tea it is, then,’ Seth said.
Hand in hand they hurried back to the café where the woman in charge was, as Seth had guessed, very busy. So many people had come to wave loved ones off that the place was full to bursting now with men, women and children of all ages, all dressed up in their Sunday best. The mood in the room was a mixture of excitement and sadness among those leaving and those being left behind.
‘The cakes aren’t up to your standard,’ Seth said, eyeing up the glass dome that covered some sickly-looking iced confections.
‘No, they’re not,’ Emma agreed.
A wave of sadness hit her then. She’d tried so hard to build up her business, worked like the very devil, when sometimes – and especially after Fleur came into their lives – it had been a struggle to keep her eyes open and her head from drooping because she’d been so tired. And she had made a success of it, twice over, only to have it snatched from her again by circumstances.
‘I’m sure there’ll be an opening for your skills in Vancouver,’ Seth said.
‘I’m not sure I want to run that sort of business ever again,’ Emma said.
‘You don’t?’
‘I don’t think it was meant to be. It wasn’t something I thought of doing, it was …’ Emma halted. It was Matthew who had suggested she make crab tarts for Nase Head House and got her business started – she’d never have thought of it otherwise. And by the look on Seth’s face she could tell he didn’t want her to say any of that. ‘… thrust upon me, as it were,’ she finished.
She wasn’t sure if there were crabs to be caught off Vancouver anyway. Salmon, yes, and lots of cod, so Seth had told her. And Canada was already a hotch-potch of nationalities what with Quebec being mostly French-speaking, although that was on the other side of the country to where they were going. But, no doubt, more than a few Quebecois had migrated to Vancouver, so there were more than likely more than a few French bakeries opened up by now.
Emma twisted her hands together in her lap. It was going to be a whole new life, a whole new set of opportunities and people to meet and get to know. Dare she hope she’d make a friend as good and as loving and as loyal as Ruby? And would Seth find another Olly, closer and more supportive to him than his brothers had ever been?
‘I expect
it’ll be strange for a while, sweetheart,’ Seth said into the silence between them. ‘But I’m sure you’ll find something to occupy you. Interest you.’
‘I already have,’ Emma said.
‘Well, you’re a surprise a minute and that’s for sure.’ Seth reached out and touched her cheek briefly with the back of his hand. ‘There’s a light in your eye at the prospect already. Let me guess. You’re going to teach French? Make—’
‘You’ll never guess,’ Emma said, laughing. ‘I’m going to sew. Mama taught me how, even though I resisted her teaching at the time. She said it never hurt to have another string to your bow, and I have. I’m glad she was strict with me and made me learn now. Remember when I was recovering from the attack in the cemetery and I had to sit for hours and I thought it was boredom that might kill me off, not the attack?’
‘I’m trying to forget all that,’ Seth said.
‘As I am. But that time gave me the opportunity to sew. Like my mama did. I made all those smocked dresses for Fleur, remember?’
‘Smocked?’ Seth said. He looked genuinely puzzled.
‘It’s a woman thing.’ Emma laughed again. ‘Lots of fabric gathered up and then over-embroidered to hold the gathers. I thought I might make nightwear to a similar design. I’ve never been able to find nightwear I really like. So, I’m guessing that other women have that problem, too. And dresses. And pretty blouses. And with Canada being less-developed than here—’
‘Ssh, sweetheart,’ Seth said. ‘The Canadians probably won’t want to hear you say that and I thought I detected a Canadian accent on that man over there.’
Emma glanced in the direction Seth was indicating with a toss of his head. She shrugged. ‘And I can cut a pattern the way I saw Mama cut a pattern out of old newspaper to make a skirt or a blouse when she didn’t have the money to buy a tissue-paper Butterick pattern. This coat Fleur’s wearing,’ Emma said, running her fingers playfully up and down the sleeve which made Fleur giggle, ‘I made from a pattern I cut myself. Only the rate at which she’s growing I’ll need to make her another one soon, and possibly before the ship docks in Halifax.’
Emma: There's No Turning Back Page 31