by Gloria Cook
‘What figures, Ben? What business? By your reaction just now you must think I’m not capable of understanding such matters.’
He would never tell her the business was illegal, hiding black-market goods in his farm buildings. He was going to build his own little empire, and for that he wanted to make a lot of money fast. ‘Not now, Honor. I just want you to enjoy yourself.’
He escorted her to her bedroom door. Then instead of going downstairs, he lingered at the other end of the landing, outside Polly’s bedroom. Had he read her signals right? If he tapped on her door would he make a terrible fool of himself? He wished he had the sophistication to know about these sorts of things.
The door opened. Her hair loose, in an exotic nightdress that exposed one long leg to the thigh, Polly beckoned him in.
* * *
Emilia came out from behind the screen of the master bedroom. ‘Alec…’
He was staring into nothing, still dressed, the champagne he had brought upstairs unopened.
She swished the filmy folds of her nightgown, the only one she had ever worn with a décolletage and leaving her arms bare. ‘Alec, what do you think?’ This was her wedding night, the union she was expecting to share with him need not be quick or furtive, and she was feeling a little shy.
At last she gained his attention. He came to her. ‘I think you’re the most beautiful bride a man could ever have. Sit down, darling. I’ll brush your hair.’
He employed the hairbrush with gentle devotion, gliding, smoothing with his hands, but his reflection in her mirror was set tight. She turned round to him. ‘I know what’s on your mind. Please don’t let Ursula being here spoil this night for us.’
‘I’m worried she’ll upset Tris and Jonny again. I don’t understand why Tris was so eager to give her succour after all she’s done to him.’
‘He still loves her.’ Emilia caressed his face, hoping to ease away his stem expression. ‘Darling, I wish you didn’t brood so.’
He moved to the champagne, dithered with it. ‘I suppose I’ve got into the habit of building up my defences, for myself and those I feel responsible for.’
She followed him. ‘Do you think Tris needs to lay down defences against Ursula? She’s been beaten and abandoned, has had to beg for food and has practically walked all the way back here from Bristol. Anything terrible could have happened to her, perhaps did. Don’t you find some sympathy for her?’
‘None, and I’ll never trust her.’ He thumped the bottle down on the tray, making her blink. ‘She chose to go off with a man I hate and she knows the reason why – that shows me what sort of character Ursula is. And do you want to know why I hate Ashley? It’s because he helped Lucy to kill my baby!’
As suddenly as he’d flown into a fury, he was swiping at the tears flooding down his face. ‘I’m sorry, I should have told you before, not now, when a woman’s got the right to be at her happiest. Forgive me, Emilia. But Lucy did it to spite me. We’d agreed, you see, that once she’d given birth I’d release her from the marriage. She had suddenly declared that she’d never wanted children, that she only married me because she didn’t want Eugenie to have me. I was even going to allow her to divorce me as the guilty party. Then she saw Maudie larking about in front of me and she got rid of my baby, even though it was a dangerous thing to do in the later months. The botched-up affair cost her her life, but rather than dying in fear or making peace with her Maker, she taunted me to her last breath. I can’t forgive and forget that, Emilia, please don’t ask me to.’
Emilia took hold of his hands. ‘All I ask, Alec, is that you look forward to our baby. I want it with all my heart and lots more children too, and I want you in the same way. I’m glad I know how Lucy really died, even on our wedding night. It means we can look forward to the future with no secrets, only our hopes and dreams. I love you, Alec. You can trust me. Say you’ll try.’
It seemed as if heavy scales of despair fell away from him and he visibly relaxed. ‘I love you, Emilia, and of course, I trust you. You and Tris are the only two people I really trust in the world, and I’d do anything, absolutely anything, to protect you both and his and our children.’
He kissed her, finally opened the champagne and the wedding night began. Long after he had fallen asleep in her arms, blissfully replete from their passionate lovemaking and their new empathy, Emilia lay thinking about this complex man she had married. She had told Honor she thought she knew all about Alec. Now she was sure she did not, and she was glad. She did not want someone boring and easy to read, whom she could take for granted.
Alec stirred and his hand came to rest over where their baby was growing inside her. Emilia was consumed with love and joy. Ursula was back because she had made a mistake. Honor was definitely making a mistake with her future. She, herself, knew that whatever lay ahead, she had done the right thing.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘You did it Daddy. You found Mummy and brought her back. It’s better than anything Father Christmas will bring me.’ All night long Jonathan’s excited, trusting words echoed inside Tristan’s head in the same way the ghosts of the bombardments still did.
‘My dear boy,’ Tristan whispered through the bleak lonely hours, watching Jonathan lying asleep in perfect ease next to his mother, unaware of what the bump protruding from her body was, or what it meant to his father.
‘Please, Tristan, let me stay,’ Ursula had begged him after coming round in this room, shortly after Alec and Jim had carried her upstairs. ‘I went to my parents but they turned me away. I was so relieved when the maid called after me that you were alive, and home and well. I didn’t know where else to go.’
She had wept and hugged Jonathan until he had cried out. ‘Oh, Jonny, Jonny, I’ve missed you so much. It’s been unbearable. I should never have gone. Let me stay, Tris,’ she had whispered. ‘Please don’t tear me away from my boy again.’
How could he dismiss her pleas? Leaving Jonny behind must have been the hardest decision of her life, and Jonny loved and needed his mother. She was ill and hurt and almost starved. She and her lover had been forced to hide from the successive troubles he had brought on them from the law, various landlords and crooked associates. Tristan hated Bruce Ashley for that.
Tristan was so close to the bed that Ursula’s dull, lifeless black hair was only an inch from his arm. She was thinner. Her skin, where not bruised from a violent beating, was parchment white. He could smell her. That wonderful, exquisite sweetness was still the same. He couldn’t bring himself to touch her, and didn’t know if he ever could again. She was contaminated. Bruce Ashley was on her and in her, and Tristan wished him dead. He wanted Ashley to suffer. At that moment, he felt he would not hesitate to try to kill him.
Ursula moaned in her sleep, as if in fear, in anguish. She snapped her eyes open as if sensing menace. Gasping, she tugged Jonathan to her as if seeking protection from his little body. Her chest heaving, she expelled a frightened breath.
‘You’re quite safe,’ Tristan said, and he was mystified at how soft and calm his voice sounded. He wanted to comfort her. He couldn’t help himself.
‘Th—thank you, Tris. Thank you for taking me in. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ She was weeping in full flood, at times incoherent, but he was able to cipher her pleadings. ‘I made a dreadful mistake. Please don’t think too badly of me. Did you read my letter?’
‘No, I couldn’t bring myself to. What does it say?’
She reached out a hand. Tristan flinched inside but outwardly it seemed he had merely ignored it. He had touched the dead many times, bodies of men and animals, some horribly corrupted, but he couldn’t touch her.
‘It asks you to forgive me, and begging you that if I made a good life for myself to allow me to see Jonny three or four times a year. It all went wrong, Tris. I was so ashamed, I didn’t want Jonny to know my humiliation, so I never wrote to him, although I wanted to so much. You won’t send me away, will you?’
‘No, of course not, Ursula.
’
‘Thank you. I knew you wouldn’t really, although you have no reason to be kind to me.’ She used the hem of the sheet to dry her eyes. ‘What happens now?’
A sudden wave of weariness came over Tristan. His head felt as if it had taken a battering. His nerves were shredded, his bones ached. He had suffered enough of thinking and wishing and hoping. He felt abused. All used up. ‘The district nurse says you must have bed rest for the next few weeks, and Alec is prepared to let you stay here for your— for your confinement.’
‘And then?’ she went on, anxious again.
‘I can’t think that far ahead now. You must excuse me, I’m so tired.’
If he didn’t get out of the room he would suffocate, lose his mind. Ursula was back and had brought a whole lot of new problems with her, not least what to do about her baby. He didn’t want to think about that. He staggered to the door, stumbled blindly to Henry’s room, recently vacated by the bride. He fell down on the bed, wanting only to sleep and sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘Ben, have you seen Sully?’ Honor had slipped outside after breakfast to feed the old dog some scraps, becoming puzzled, and then worried at not finding him in any of his usual places near the house. Half an hour had passed and there was still no sign of him.
Ben was on his way to the office with the plans, and the builder who had made them, for Tremore House. ‘I’ve got more important things to see to, Honor,’ he replied, giving her brief eye contact. ‘He’ll turn up.’
‘But it’s so cold today. I don’t think Sully usually goes off for as long as this.’ Hearing Ben’s impatient sigh, she answered with one of her own, marched away, wrapped herself up against the biting weather, and set out across the fields to look for Sully.
She was glad to get away from the shabby, draught-ridden farmhouse, where her opinions did not seem to matter. Where she was excluded in the discussion today over the extensions, including two more bedrooms, a conservatory and a balcony, of the house where she was to spend her married life. The improvements, during a time when such work was rare because of the war, were invoking unwelcome comments. Ben was impervious to them, declaring jealousy as the cause. He was out to impress and he wasn’t going to let anyone stand in his way. Granted, he had brought her catalogues and swatches of material to choose the new drapes and colours for Tremore House, but that was causing strife. Aunt Florence disagreed with her and Ben’s simplistic choices and was demanding tradition and ostentation. Ben had muttered something like, ‘You won’t be living there anyway.’ Did he have other plans for her aunt? Honor wouldn’t see her pushed out.
If I can just get through the winter, Honor told herself, perhaps everything will be better. The house would be ready to move back into then, but she would happily forego its new luxuries if she could gain Ben’s attention. Was it too much to ask to be courted a little? He drove himself hard and any spare time he gave to Julian Andrews and their business associates. He wouldn’t say what the business was but it had to be dishonest. From time to time he and Cyril would disappear after dark with the workhorses and cart. With his plans for the house and the farm growing increasingly adventurous, how he was funding it was causing speculation, equal to that of why his brother had taken back his trollop of a wife, and why, on the other brother’s wedding day, Archie Rothwell had suddenly disappeared.
Honor would never believe Jim Killigrew’s vile assumptions about Archie. She had seen him at his gentlest. He was just an ordinary man who had been dealt a terrible fate, again and again. Where was he now? Damn that stupid workhouse boy.
* * *
Archie was lurching across a field on Tremore property. There had been a light fall of snow in the night, but he didn’t hear the crunching noises his boots were making on the frozen tufts of grass. He was dreadfully thirsty. Just ahead was a well, where he assumed the farmhouse had got its original water supply. His throat was burning and his head was throbbing so much he could hardly focus to see. The fever that had afflicted his every sense during nearly all the four weeks he had slept rough was remorseless.
Hitching a ride on a cart on the outskirts of Hennaford on the afternoon of the wedding had been easy due to his smart appearance. The carter, an old, weather-grimaced, chattering smallholder, had been on his way to nearby Zelah. From there, travelling by foot or the kindness of others, Archie had moved on, taking pot luck in the destinations of St Newlyn East, Mitchell, Indian Queens, Holywell Bay and St Agnes, hoping always to be rid of his persistent cold. There had been no need to work for food – Alec Harvey had paid him a fair wage and he had saved it all. He’d washed in streams and rested in places away from humanity. Lonely every minute. So utterly lonely. Loneliness that had shredded his soul. But he couldn’t have stayed on where someone had planned to cause such dreadful mindless trouble for him.
Yesterday, at Perranporth, while on the sea front, shivering with cold, the salty mist chapping his lips, believing, as he so often did since his ship had been sunk, that he’d be better off dead, he was startled when a woman in a formidable overcoat and no-nonsense hat, wearing a steely pince-nez clipped to a redoubtable nose, had thrust something into his hand. She had nearly unsettled his precarious balance, buffeted as he was by the cruel winds. ‘You’ve done your bit, haven’t you? Take this with my blessing.’
She’d walked away before he could gather his wits to respond. Her compassion made his thoughts sweep towards the gentle young woman who had earned his trust, his admiration. He had been disappointed to see so little of Honor Burrows since the time he had allowed her to get physically close to him, to ease away a little of his detachment. She was an amazing young woman. Others, not even Emilia Harvey, saw her strengths, recognized her needs. He couldn’t go back to Ford Farm, but he’d likely find a welcome of a sort from Honor Burrows and her fiancé – Ben Harvey had always treated him with respect.
He had caught a horse-bus to Hennaford, eating the food the angel-in-disguise had given him. He could have been taken right into the village, for such was the horse-bus’s route, but he got off at Henna Lane, where he had hitched his first lift, and walked the rest of the way via the back lanes until, forced by fever and dizziness and an unrelenting shower of rain, he had taken shelter in the manor ruins. He was tantalizingly close to his goal, but his crippled feet and steadily growing weakness prevented him making the last part of his journey.
He hadn’t wanted to stay huddled in a comer of the stripped building, leaning against cold hostile stone where the panelling had been ripped away, under a scrap of ceiling. Comfortless, desolate – needing people, needing friends. But when the rain had eased, it had immediately turned to snow, then the darkness had fallen as if some mighty hand had dropped a heavy black curtain. He had tried to stay awake but his frailty had won. Woken by the screams of his own nightmares, he had panicked, not knowing where he was.
Then he had remembered Honor. She would be living at the farm now that work was being done on the former Bracken House. Next had been an agonizing wait for daylight, the struggle to get up and walk, and then the rampant thirst that urgently needed to be assuaged. Through a five-barred gate he had seen the well. From there it was only a short walk across the field to the farmhouse, and hopefully warmth and acceptance again. If not, he would find it impossible to bear out until the end of this day.
His feet never more painful, his breath coming in anguished gulps he was finally closing in on the well. And then he was going down, his sticks hurtling out of his hands, his hat tumbling to the iron-hard ground. He tried to fight the fall, but the moment after his knees struck the frozen sod his head hit something solid. He knew nothing more.
* * *
Honor was so deep in thought she didn’t see the obstruction close to the well until she fell over it. A scream built up in her throat. She was half sprawled across a man’s body. There was blood on his temple and matted in his hair. It was Archie Rothwell. He was dead.
Honor took her weight off him, pressed her hand
s either side off his stiff face, his beard frosted, his eyelids closed tight, as if frozen to his dramatic sad eyes. ‘Oh, no, Archie. How did you come to this?’
Then he moaned and her nerves leapt in relief. He tried to raise his hand. She took it. ‘Archie, can you hear me? It’s Honor.’ His eyelids flickered. She sought the farmyard but she could see no one about outside. ‘Ben! Eliza!’ It was unlikely anyone would hear her above the wailings of the wind.
‘Ohh…’ Archie was squinting up at her. ‘Help me.’
This was the first time he had asked for anything and it made her want to cry for him. ‘Don’t worry, Archie, I’m going to look after you. Do you think you could get up?’
‘Don’t know. I came here to get a drink. Dizzy, fell, think I passed out.’
On the rim of the well she saw blood. She pressed her hanky to where he was bleeding. His rolled-up belongings were lying inches away and Honor reached for them and placed them under his head. ‘Archie, I’m not strong enough to help you up on my own, but you couldn’t walk far anyway. I’m going to get Ben. I promise I won’t be long.’
The eyes that were usually piercing glazed over, and Honor tore back the way she had come.
Moments later she returned with Ben and Eliza. Archie was still unconscious.
Ben shook him, then more forcefully, but he didn’t stir. He put his ear to his chest. ‘His breathing’s harsh. If we don’t do something quick he’ll die of pneumonia.’
‘He might well have died if I hadn’t gone looking for Sully,’ Honor said. Someone else would have to look for the collie – Archie needed nursing.
‘That bleddy old mutt come back just after you went out,’ Eliza guffawed, before helping to heft Archie up and off to the farm.