Daughter of Dark River Farm (30 page)

‘It’s all right,’ I said quickly. ‘You just took me by surprise.’

We stopped walking, and he turned to face me. ‘Promise you’ll tell me if anything I do makes you…uncomfortable, or scared.’

‘I will.’

‘I mean it. I don’t know what, how it… I don’t know how you…’ He broke off, a frustrated sigh escaping on the night air. ‘I just don’t know any of it. I’m trusting you to tell me.’

‘I think…’ The words were dancing on my lips, and I heard them in my head the second before they fell, but was powerless to stop them. ‘I think I need you to make it go away.’

He went very still, and the only sound was the rain hitting the broad dock leaves and the nettles, and plinking into the newly made puddles. ‘How?’ he said at last.

‘You know,’ I whispered. He didn’t move, so I stepped closer, putting my hands on his chest. My breathing had sharpened again, and I felt a pull deep in my belly that I had no name for, or understanding of. I only knew that this man loved me, and if he took me now, in that love, then I might be able to look at myself in his light instead of the shadow Drewe had cast over me. My fingers fumbled at the buttons of his shirt, but he caught at my hands and lowered them away.

‘Kitty, think what you’re saying. What happened back there, in the yard, it
was
real, and it was beautiful, but this? Here?’

‘What better place?’ I said, my voice trembling. ‘Archie, I can’t be near you and not touch you. I’ve lived like that for too long. But I’m terrified.’

‘Which is why—’

‘No! Listen, please. If I have time to think, I’ll frighten myself even more. You’ll be gentle, we’ll be quick…and when it’s over I won’t be scared any more. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be you.’

He spoke very quietly. ‘And what if you get pregnant again?’

My heart twisted. ‘Then this time I won’t wish the baby gone,’ I said on a hiccupping sob, and he pulled me to him and wept with me, for a time of darkness and fear, and the legacy it had left us. I’d never known a man cry like that. I’d always thought it would lessen his masculinity somehow, but Archie’s tears came silently, and they were for me, and he had never seemed stronger. The only sign of his anguish was a hitch in his chest as he caught his breath, then took my face between his hands.

‘Are you sure?’ he whispered.

I nodded and stepped away onto the wide verge, aware of him following me, and now that he wasn’t holding me a kind of cool realisation dropped over me and I wondered if I were doing the right thing after all. But as soon as he reached me my doubts fled again. He spread his greatcoat on the wet grass, and I shucked off mine too, and we lay down together in the softly falling rain while I eased my trousers down until I could wriggle out of them. His hand moved up inside my shirt, his fingers finding my breast and brushing the nipple so I could feel it pressing against the material of my shirt, and then he kissed me. His lips moved gently over mine, cautious, until I pulled him closer and only then, our mouths parted, and our hands restless on one another, did we lose all hesitation and let the moment take us. He tugged at his belt, and in a moment he was lying beside me, both of us undressed from the waist down, but feeling strangely chaste above it.

‘Now,’ I whispered against his mouth. ‘Please…’ I was scared I would panic, and that if I did he would never trust himself with me again. He rolled onto me, and in a moment of bright, joyful clarity, I realised what I was doing. And it was with Archie.

Then he was inside me, and it hadn’t hurt, not like when Drewe… I shoved the thought away and captured Archie’s face in my hands. ‘I love you,’ I breathed. ‘Oh, please, Archie, I love you…’ I didn’t know what I was begging for, but he let out a sobbing breath and his hips moved faster. Mine rose to match his urgency, and my hands dropped to grip his waist, and then he uttered a low cry and stopped. I stopped too, the sweet ache he’d given me growing with every second that passed, and then a sudden, shuddering ecstasy overtook everything and I didn’t know where I was any more. I was vaguely aware of him pushing forward, slower now, but I couldn’t have moved had my life depended on it. Eventually he lowered his face to kiss my forehead, his arms shaking as he fought not to collapse onto me, and then he eased away, letting the chilly air at my skin once more.

He rolled off to lie at my side, and I lay very still, the echo of that glorious pulsing still tugging at my insides.

Then his blindly seeking hand found mine, and his voice was hoarse. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, then smiled. ‘Better than fine. Is it like that for everyone?’

A chuckle drifted out of the darkness. ‘How would I know?’

We lay in silence, waiting for our hearts to regain their normal rhythm, and then I rolled towards him. ‘Thank you,’ I said in a small voice.

He half sat up, propped on one elbow, and touched my face. ‘Why on earth are ye thanking
me
? That was probably the most selfish good turn I’ve ever done anyone.’

‘You’re right,’ I said, turning to kiss his palm. ‘You are utterly selfish. How could you?’

He snorted, and lay back down. ‘Now, Miss Maitland, comes the real question.’

‘What question?’

His hand flapped at the edge of my rain-soaked coat, and I heard the grin in his voice. ‘Well, I may have a wee smudge of yard-dirt on my knee, but I’d like to see how you’re going to explain
those
stains to Mrs Adams.’

In the event I didn’t have to. I had woken early, still smiling from the warmth of the dream of Archie and me racing donkeys on Blackpool beach—the fact that Archie had kept falling off had made it even funnier; I’d never met anyone less likely to tumble—and as I’d arrived in the kitchen Frances had immediately gestured to the laundry pile.

‘I know you want to get off out quickly today, but I’ve got to go over and see Colin after breakfast, see if he’s got that padlock.’

‘We can go out later,’ I said, trying not to grin at this stroke of luck. ‘I’ll do it after breakfast.’

She looked at me oddly; laundry was my least favourite chore and she knew it. Then she smiled. ‘Do you know, I’ve never seen you really happy,’ she said. ‘Not
proper
happy, I mean.’

‘I don’t know that anyone has,’ I said, and the truth of that surprised me too. ‘Not for a long time anyway.’ It wasn’t that I’d felt miserable, as such, just…adrift, slightly, from everything that other people seemed to find so effortlessly. Now I had this beautiful home, the love of the man who’d lived in my heart all my life, had I but known it, and the care of an eerily quiet, but sweet little girl, who was gradually emerging further from her shell every day she spent among us. And, to shine things off nicely today, I needn’t try to explain the telltale smudges on my clothing from last night without having to lie.

I helped myself to a ladleful of oats from the pot, always bubbling on the stove, and welcome in the chilly morning, even in summer. ‘Is anyone else up yet?’

‘No, you’re the first. They’ve got some sleep to catch up on, I would think, and Amy’s slept so well these past few nights.’

‘She likes Sally’s bed,’ I said, pouring honey on my oats, ‘but I really think it helps that she’s starting to accept she’s staying a while.’

‘I hope so; she’s a dear.’

‘Frank won’t raise the money to take her for a good while yet,’ I assured her. ‘Especially if he’s sending some of it here for her.’

‘Well I’m happy to have her here for as long as she needs a home.’

That reminded me of something I’d meant to ask. ‘What’s Jessie’s mother like? She never talks about her.’

‘Just as you don’t talk about yours,’ Frances pointed out, but her voice had taken on an evasive tone. ‘Now, will you fetch Amy down, or let her sleep?’

‘But we know why I don’t talk about mine,’ I persisted. ‘She wanted nothing to do with me until she realised I served her purpose. But you’re friends with Jessie’s mother, and I can’t think you’d be friends with someone who mistreats their own—’

‘She has
never
mistreated Jessie!’

I blinked, taken aback by the vehemence in her voice. ‘That’s just what I mean!’

‘Never mistreated her,’ Frances repeated in a low voice, more to herself than to me. I felt a little uneasy, and subsided. It really wasn’t my business, after all.

‘I’ll let Amy sleep,’ I said instead. ‘She’ll be doing a lot of walking today. She can have her breakfast later, while I do the laundry.’

‘That’s a good girl.’ Something told me she was thanking me for more than acquiescing to a hated chore, and I was glad I hadn’t pressed the issue any further. ‘Now, you’d better finish that and make a pot of tea. The others will be down soon.’

I was scraping the last of my breakfast from the bowl when I heard Archie’s feet on the stairs. I knew right away it was him—not simply because the only other male here was Will, who moved so carefully now, but because of the years I’d spent listening to Archie’s footsteps as a child. I’d heard them change, but I still knew them. Gone was the light, athletic but boyish leap down the stairs in our old house, and in its place the firm, steady tread of a grown man, who, when he was happy, still took the last few steps in a little run, as if eager to see what lay at the bottom.

I heard that little run now, and smiled into my bowl. Then the door opened and my heart stopped for a breathless second. He ducked through the doorway, all sleepy-eyed, with a dark stubble along his jaw, and his shirt open at the collar, still fastening it with morning-stiff hands until he looked up and saw me. The tiredness vanished, replaced by a brilliant smile, and my insides turned to soft cotton.

‘Good morning, young Kittlington,’ he said, and his voice, unused yet that day, was husky from sleep; I could have listened to it all day. ‘Good morning, Frances.’

‘And to you, Archie,’ Frances said, handing him a bowl. ‘Oats in the pan, tea’s in the pot. Be a few minutes though. Did you sleep well?’

‘Aye, I can’t thank you enough for giving up your bed to me.’ Archie spooned some oats into his bowl and sat down opposite me. I could hardly keep myself from reaching across the table and stroking his finely shaped wrist, but contented myself with remembering how it had felt last night, instead. We talked of nothing in particular while we ate, and I saw his gaze going to the pile of laundry, then returning to me with a smile of deep amusement, underlaid by the same memory that made my heart beat a little faster when I looked at him. When he’d finished his breakfast he rose to rinse his bowl and mine, and we heard a light step outside the back door. Lizzy.

Her gaze immediately lit on Archie at the sink, and if I had felt my own breath catch at the sight of him, hers must have locked tight in her throat; she raised a hand to her mouth, then gave a shaky, faintly embarrassed laugh. ‘Archie! For a moment I…sorry. It’s wonderful to see you.’ I remembered how I’d thought he was Jack too, not so long ago. My heart crumpled at the sight of her disappointment, but she recovered quickly, smiled, and slipped off her coat, turning to hang it on the peg by the door. ‘How are you?’

I exchanged an anguished glance with Archie, who looked as though he had accidentally slapped someone and didn’t know what to do about it. He gave me another helpless look, then cleared his throat. ‘I’m very well thank you, Lizzy.’ He dried his hands on the dishtowel, then stepped over to her. He lowered his voice, lost that falsely polite greeting tone, and touched her shoulder. ‘I’ve a message for you. Would you like to walk a moment?’

She nodded. Archie glanced at me before following her out into the yard, and his reassuring smile told me Lizzy had nothing to worry about. While I made fresh tea I watched the two of them from the window; Lizzy’s hands were folded in front of her, her slender form held taut, her shoulders squared as if waiting for some kind of blow, and when Archie started to speak I saw her slump in relief.

Frances looked out at them over my shoulder. ‘That girl dies a bit more every day he’s not here,’ she observed, and I felt her hand on my arm. ‘It’ll be the same for you, when it’s Archie’s time to go back.’

‘How does she bear it, and stay so cheerful?’ I already felt the pain of his leaving, and he’d only just arrived.

‘She does it because there’s no other way to do it,’ Frances said. ‘And because, so far, he’s come back to her.’ She stared out of the window, seeing something other than what was there, and it was easy to understand what. Or who.

‘I’m so sorry about Harry,’ I said quietly. I could still see the shadow his absence had left on her.

‘He was so excited about going.’ Her voice was distant. ‘Joined up the first day, him and half the other lads from the village.’ She blinked and turned away. ‘Them as are in charge mightn’t like Pals Brigades no more, but the boys still go willingly. Still manage to fool themselves it’ll do some good.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘No, love.’ Frances squeezed my arm. ‘Not any more I don’t. But God bless them for going. We’ll look out for you, same as we do for Lizzy. Meantime, enjoy the time you’ve got with him.’

I looked into the yard, where Archie and Lizzy were making their way back to the door, walking slowly and still talking.

Lizzy came in first, wearing a look of wary relief. ‘Samuel Wingfield’s dead.’ She did not seem shocked, nor particularly surprised, but she swallowed hard, as if the next piece of news was stuck in her throat. ‘Jack…Jack killed him.’

Hearing Evie’s suspicion confirmed, and knowing the truth had come from Archie, brought my old suspicion bubbling to the surface once again. We needed to talk, but later, away from everyone.

Frances frowned. ‘Wingfield? He’s that one ran away to Germany after his daughter-in-law shot you?’

I nearly dropped the teapot in shock. ‘
Shot
you?’ I sat down next to Archie, my legs suddenly turned to water.

‘It’s a long story,’ Lizzy said, distracted and concentrating on what Archie had told her, what I’d already heard at Oaklands. ‘Apparently he was carrying secret papers. He was found near the border with Switzerland. Jack’s…’ She shook her head, looking down at the table.

‘A government man,’ Frances finished for her, her face giving nothing away. Then she looked straight at Archie, and asked the question for me. ‘And what about you, Captain Buchanan? You’re on loan from the army. Are you a government man too?’