‘Indeed,’ Matthew said. The thought of Stella and the wedding dress that he guessed was all that was spurring her on to get well making him feel distinctly uncomfortable.
‘Are you a friend of Emma’s then?’ Tom asked. His hands were still firmly clasped around the handle of the hoe and he hadn’t budged an inch. ‘Only the name Caunter rings a bell.’
‘I am.’
And I’d like to be more than that.
‘’Ere,’ Tom said. ‘I’m placin’ you now. You was up to Nase Head House fer Smythe’s wedding. Best man and that. I saw you dancin’ …’
Yes, best leave it at that, Matthew thought, as Tom’s voice trailed away. He’d seen him dancing with Emma, as had most of the room in all probability. Seen him holding her so close it had been almost indecent, and especially as she was Seth’s wife – or so everyone thought at the time.
‘In that case,’ Tom went on, ‘’ow about a cup of tea while we wait for the women to come ’ome? I’ve got free run of the kitchen – well, the ’ole ’ouse really if I wants it, only I don’t take advantage.’ Tom turned and leaned his hoe up against a shrub that had purplish blue flowers on it, a bit like roses, only Matthew knew they weren’t that. ‘I don’t know what’s keepin’ ’em. Emma were visitin’ a friend, she told me when ’er went out. Women do prattle on a bit when they get goin’, don’t they?’
Matthew couldn’t imagine Emma, his sharp-thinking, fiery Emma, ‘prattling’. But it wouldn’t hurt to agree with Tom, would it?
‘It’s been known!’
Tom laughed. ‘Come on, I’ll get the kettle on.’
Matthew slammed shut his car door and followed Tom around the side of the house and in the back door.
Tom bustled about in the kitchen, boiling the kettle and bringing cups and saucers, tea strainer, milk and sugar and a full teapot to the table. They sat in easy companionship until the tea had brewed and Tom had poured it into the cups, putting the milk in first.
‘Did you fight, Tom?’ Matthew asked. ‘In the Great War, I mean.’
Tom set the teapot on the table, blinked, closed his eyes as though trying to shut out some ghastly scene and Matthew regretted asking the question. Tom reached for his own cup, drained it of tea even though it was still very hot, his eyes still closed. Then he slowly opened them and Matthew could see they were full of tears.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked,’ Matthew said. ‘I didn’t fight. I wasn’t called up, and I didn’t enlist. And I wasn’t a conchie either.’ God, but he was babbling now. Emotional women he was used to and could cope with, but he’d never met a man who looked so wretched after one short question before.
Tom smiled then, a rather lopsided and watery smile, but a smile.
‘I ’spect, what with you ’avin’ done the spyin’ job you did before the war that you were too useful to send down a stinkin’ ’ell-’ole of a trench, clearin’ latrines, puttin’ a bullet through a man to put ’im out of ’is misery.’
Tom’s words were spoken with the deepest sadness Matthew had ever encountered – man or woman. But they’d been said without malice or accusation that Matthew had escaped all the things Tom had not.
‘Yes,’ Matthew said. ‘That was exactly it.’
More or less.
‘An’ I dare say you saw things that come to you in nightmares sometimes, too.’
‘That, too,’ Matthew said. He picked up his cup. The tea was lukewarm now and he drank it down in one, put the cup back on the saucer.
‘Well, all I can say,’ Tom said, ‘is that although it’s a tragedy ’er’s a widow now, even though it weren’t a war as made ’er so, if it weren’t fer Emma comin’ back to England when ’er did, and bein’ so generous with ’er money fer my kiddies, and a few other things you probably don’t want to know about, and givin’ me this job, I’d ’ave been another victim of that bloody war.’ Tom thumped the table, making the now empty cups rattle on their saucers. ‘More tea while we wait?’
‘No, thanks,’ Matthew replied. He tried quickly to think of something else to say. Change the subject. Lighten the mood. ‘Fleur must be what, fifteen or sixteen now? Dark like her father or—?’
‘Why do you ask?’
Tom looked suspicious all of a sudden and Matthew wondered just how much he knew about Fleur and who her birth mother was. Tom’s wife, Ruby, and Emma had always been the best of friends and he couldn’t think that Ruby didn’t know – or if she didn’t hadn’t suspected that while Seth was Fleur’s father, Emma most certainly wasn’t her mother.
Matthew shrugged. ‘Just curious. She was a toddler when I last saw her. Just wondering how she’s turned out.’
‘Beautiful’s the word you need. Dark, like ’er pa. Same darkish skin, ’air like a raven’s wing with the rain on it.’ Tom laughed, and Matthew got the feeling he hadn’t laughed in a long while. ‘’Ere’s me comin’ over all poetic.’
‘So, when is she expected back?’ Matthew prompted.
Tom shrugged. ‘I ’eard ’er telling Emma she was stoppin’ to tea or summat after she’d been workin’ in the ice cream parlour. So not fer a while yet. Although why ’er wants to sit around with old man Cascarini and ’is motherin-law is a mystery to me.’
‘And Mr Cascarini’s wife?’ Sometimes Matthew couldn’t help himself, weedling information out of people the way a pin gets a cockle out of its shell.
‘Ain’t got no wife no more. ’Er were killed by a bomb up to London so Emma told my Ruby. Old man Cascarini – Eduardo – is sweet on Emma I think. Only she ain’t so keen. Been to the theatre together a time or two they ’ave, and out to dinner, so Ruby said, but it was only because Emma was asked and didn’t like to ’urt ’is feelings seein’ as ’ow ’e’s still grievin’. Come to think of it, ’er ’asn’t mentioned ’im in a while. ’E’s not been ’ere neither to my knowledge.’
Unknowingly, Tom was providing Matthew with more information than he had dared hoped for. Emma didn’t have another man in her life now she was a widow.
‘Gawd, but I’m gettin’ worried about Emma now,’ Tom said when Matthew returned to the kitchen. ‘I said I’d wait until ’er were back before goin’ ’ome but I expected ’er ’ere before now. Oh! That’s ’er comin’ in in ’er car now. She’ll come in the front door, I ’spect. Come on, I’ll let ’er know you’re ’ere and then I’ll ’ave to go. If it’ll be all right with Emma, you know …’
Matthew knew exactly what it was Tom meant – that it would be all right for Emma and him to be alone in the house. He guessed Emma would have seen his car parked down the bottom of the drive and would wonder who had called on her.‘Tom! Tom! Are you here?’ Emma’s voice rang out, loud and clear, in the hallway. ‘Only there’s a strange car in the drive. Ah, there you are,’ she said, sounding relieved as Tom stepped out into the hall.
‘Just going,’ Tom said.
From his vantage point, through the crack in the opened door, Matthew could see Emma taking off a hat and plonking it down unceremoniously on the hallstand. She had her back to him and he could see she’d cut her hair! Her glorious, glorious, mahogany hair was now … a glorious, glorious, mahogany bob. And she had legs. Rather shapely legs and slim ankles above quite high-heeled shoes. He’d never seen Emma in anything but a skirt or a dress that covered her ankles before. How times change! And not quite as skinny as she’d been when he’d last seen her, worn out with worry that Miles was going to get to her and Seth, snatch Fleur, maybe kill to get the baby. Emma had a lovely wholesomeness to her now. Womanly.
Tom looked back over his shoulder towards the kitchen. He beckoned Matthew forward.
‘Whose is the car, Tom?’ Emma asked. ‘Have you asked him, or her, to wait in the sitting room?’
‘I think you’ll know whose it is,’ Tom said. ‘The gentleman what’s come to see you, Emma. ’E were Smythe’s best man. I saw ’im at the weddin’ dance. You an’ ’im, dancin’ like.’
‘Really? Matthew, you mean? Here?’
‘Yes. ’Im. Us ’ad plenty to talk about while us waited for yer, me and Mr Caunter. So it’ll be all right if I leave you, won’t it?’
Matthew stepped into full view then. He thought his face might crack with the wideness of his grin when Emma looked at him – but he was only mirroring her grin anyway.
‘Perfectly all right, Tom,’ Emma said. She opened the front door for Tom, as though she couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.
‘Same time in the mornin’, then,’ Tom said. ‘Good day to you, Mr Caunter.’
And then he was gone.
‘He took his time going!’ Emma laughed, throwing herself at Matthew. ‘I thought he was going to give me chapter and verse about what it was you’d been talking about!’ She linked her hands behind the back of his neck. ‘I can’t believe you’re here. The living, breathing Matthew and not the one I’ve dreamed about so many, many times. Pinch me so I know I’m not dreaming.’
‘I wouldn’t dare!’ Matthew said.
‘Oh, but it’s so good to see you,’ Emma said, leaning into him. She touched the side of his face, and then his neck, and then she ran a finger over his lips.
‘And me, you,’ Matthew said, hoarsely.
‘You’ll have to hold me up,’ Emma said. ‘I’ve gone weak at the knees.’
Matthew put his arms around her back, holding her as though she was an open, and very precious book, and then pulled her towards him.
‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dreamed of this moment. I’ve got so much to tell you, Matthew. But first …’
And then Emma kissed him. Her lips warm and soft and just a little bit moist against his. She sighed from somewhere deep inside her and her lips parted slightly so that he felt the exhalation of her breath go from her mouth into his.
What else could he do but kiss her back? And keep kissing her until he knew that his lips would be raw around the edges and no doubt Emma’s would as well.
Emma ran the palm of her hand up and down the front of his shirt and then she slid two fingers in between the buttons.
‘Just checking it’s really you,’ she said, laughing, breaking off the kiss, but with her fingers still inside his shirt. ‘Do you remember, way back in 1909, when I was your housekeeper and I washed one of your shirts and you got so cross with me for going into your room when you’d forbidden me to do so?’
‘You can wash my shirts any time you like now,’ Matthew said. ‘And the door to my room is open.’
‘No secrets to keep from me any more? Like the little issue of you telling me you couldn’t read and write and then I found, when I was looking for washing because it was a windy and sunny day, when I went in your room that you could read because you had at least half a dozen books on your bed, and that you write very well.’
‘Nothing like that,’ Matthew said.
Which was the truth.
‘Good,’ Emma said, as she pressed her body close to his, leaving him in no doubt about what it was she wanted of him. ‘I have every intention of making up for lost time.’
‘Go easy on me, Em,’ he said. ‘I’m an old man now.’
‘I don’t believe it for a minute,’ Emma said. ‘That was the least whiskery, old man’s kiss I’ve ever had in my life and … oh my God, Matthew, I don’t know I’ve ever felt like I do at this moment in my entire life.’
‘Or me,’ Matthew said.
He wanted – no needed – to make love to Emma, and he knew she felt the same. Her breasts were pressed hard against him and he could feel her nipples, stiff and erect, through the fabric of her dress.
‘If I didn’t think we’d be rudely interrupted by Fleur, then I’d—’
‘Oh, we won’t be,’ Emma said. ‘She’s gone to see her friend Paolo. She said she was going to help in his father’s ice cream parlour and that he was going to pay her. And that she’s been invited to stop and eat with them. I told her to telephone me when she wants me to go and fetch her.’
So, what Tom had told him was correct. But it had been best to check.
‘If I didn’t know you better,’ Matthew said, kissing her forehead, her nose, her lips – just the briefest of touches this time, to check he wasn’t dreaming. ‘I’d say you’d planned to have Fleur out of the way so we could …’
‘Could what? Play Ludo? Scrape the wallpaper off the hall wall?’ Emma jerked her head back a little, studying him.
Matthew laughed. Still the same Emma, making jokes to relieve the tension. Her eyes though were alight with her need of him, weren’t they?
‘It’s what I’ve dreamed of,’ Emma said more seriously. ‘Night after night, over the years, even when I was with …’
Matthew knew exactly what it was she meant – when she’d been with Seth, in his bed and in his arms probably. He hoped she’d been happy in the years between then and now, but now didn’t seem to be the moment to ask.
‘And trouble seems to be courting me again,’ Emma said, her face serious.
‘Is it something you can fix if I leave you now to go and fix it?’
Emma shook her head. ‘I wish I could but I can’t – not at this very second I can’t. And you’re here and I don’t think I want to let you out of my sight for a moment. If we could turn back the clock, Matthew, how do you think our lives might have been?’
‘Well, we could wind it back a little. I seem to remember you asking me down on Crystal Cove back in … 1912—’
‘1913,’ Emma corrected him. ‘I asked you to kiss me one more time before we had to part and—’
‘I refused to because I knew one kiss would never be enough and so did you, I think. Well, I stand corrected. I think I made the biggest mistake of my life that day.’
‘Well, that’s a first. Matthew Caunter admitting he was wrong.’ Emma wrinkled her nose at him deliciously.
‘So, if you have somewhere more comfortable than this tiled floor to do it on, I will rectify my error.’
How long would it take him to make love to Emma? All night wouldn’t be long enough, he knew that. He wanted to make love to her slowly, gently, to begin with – that had always been his plan. But his body – and hers – was telling him that sort of lovemaking would have to wait for another time. Now, all the time they had was a little window – a couple of hours at best – before Emma had to go and pick up Fleur. And their bodies were aching for one another. And he had no intention of wasting another second until he could do something about it.
He scooped Emma up into his arms and she wound her arms around his neck, kissed him just below the earlobe. His turn to sigh with pleasure.
‘Be gentle with me,’ Emma said, laughing.
‘The hell I will.’ Matthew laughed back as Emma pointed in the direction she wanted him to take her.
Up the stairs, into her room … back where they belonged, the both of them.
Chapter Eighteen
Matthew’s lovemaking was every bit as wonderful as Emma had always dreamed it would be. He’d taken her to another plane somewhere and she’d screamed out with delight.
But now they were sitting up against the headboard, Matthew’s arm around her and with her head leaning against his shoulder. Both were totally naked.
‘I should have asked you, before we did that,’ Emma said, ‘if you were a free man, as in not married.’
‘Stable doors and the closing of same and bolting horses springs to mind,’ Matthew said. ‘But if makes you breathe a little easier, I’m not married.’
‘Well, I can’t be sure I would have said “no” even if you were,’ Emma replied.
‘You always were impulsive,’ Matthew said, stroking Emma’s arm with a middle finger – such an innocent and guileless gentle gesture but one that was making her want him all over again. ‘And thank God for that. But that took the biscuit.’
‘What did?’
‘You, throwing yourself at me, dragging me upstairs to bed.’
‘You carried me, if you remember.’
‘Ah, but you led the wa
y – in more ways than one.’
‘I know,’ Emma said, nestling into him even further. They’d have to get up very soon but for now she would snuggle, breathe him in, taste him on her lips a little longer. ‘It’s just that, well, I’ve been a good wife – or at least I think I was – and I’ve been the mother to Fleur that Seth wanted me to be and I’m still doing that, and I’ve built up businesses only to have them taken from me by various means, and along the way I lost who I was. And then I saw you and I knew … and it was as though the years between had never been. I saw it in your eyes. I could see you felt the same way about me as I do about you and I … well, I lost all caution, all control, and I knew if it was only the once that we could make love then it would be worth being a wanton hussy for.’
Matthew groaned beside her.
‘Too poetic for you?’ she asked.
Matthew’s finger ceased its rhythmic massage of her forearm. He jiggled his shoulders.
‘Don’t tell me my thinking was all wrong,’ she said, anxious now.
‘Not wrong at all,’ Matthew said. ‘Just getting a bit …’
‘Uncomfortable? I’m no lightweight these days.’
‘And there’s not a spare ounce of flesh on you either,’ Matthew said. ‘I barely had anything to hold on to when you were getting your wicked way with me.’
‘Hmm,’ Emma said. She wasn’t convinced. Something she’d said or done had brought him up sharp about something. Well, she wasn’t going to spoil the moment by giving him the Spanish Inquisition about it.
‘Oh,’ Matthew said, leaning away from her a little and picking up her copy of Pride and Prejudice from the bedside table, the one he’d seen her throw across the back garden of Shingle Cottage way back in 1909 – almost eighteen long years ago now. The one he’d stopped up all night in the sitting room to mend for her while she slept in his bed, exhausted through illness and grief and loneliness. ‘I see you’ve kept this on your travels.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘My mama bought it for me and you mended it. The title’s been very apt over the years – I had more pride than it’s probably ladylike to have, and there was enough prejudice against Seth because of his criminal father and brothers to sink a whole fleet of their fishing boats. So, I always took it as hand luggage. I couldn’t risk it being lost in transit by some careless baggage-handler, could I?’
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