Mistletoe Marriage

She wasn’t going to let it go that easily! ‘Like what?’

‘Like the way you screw up your face when you’re trying to decide what you want to drink in the pub. The way you always say that you don’t want any crisps and then eat all of mine.’ He paused to think. ‘Those funny earrings you wear sometimes.’

Her mouth full of biscuit, Sophie put her hands up to her ears in an instinctively defensive gesture. Her friend Ella was a jewellery designer, and made all her earrings for her now. ‘What’s funny about them?’

Bram studied the feathery drops that trembled from her lobes. They were relatively restrained compared to the weird shapes and colours she usually wore. ‘You’ve got to admit they’re pretty unusual,’ he said.

Sophie sniffed and reached for another biscuit. ‘Anything else?’

‘Well, there’s the way you eat your way through a whole packet of biscuits and then spend the rest of the evening complaining that you feel fat,’ said Bram.

Freezing with the biscuit halfway to her mouth, Sophie saw too late that he was teasing. ‘Don’t you want to know what your irritating habits are?’

‘Tell me the worst,’ he invited.

‘You’re infuriatingly calm. You never make a fuss. You never get carried away.’ Sophie ate the biscuit anyway, with a certain defiance. ‘I can’t imagine a situation in which you’d lose your cool.’

Bram looked at her. ‘Can’t you?’

There was a tiny pause, and for some reason Sophie found herself picturing Bram making love with a vividness that was startling and more than a little disturbing in its clarity. He would be slow and sure to start with, but as the excitement built—yes, he might lose his cool then…

To her horror, Sophie realised that she was blushing. It didn’t seem right to be thinking of Bram in that way. She took another biscuit to give herself something to do.

‘OK, I’ll admit your habits aren’t as irritating as mine,’ she said, after a moment.

‘As irritating habits go, ours aren’t incompatible, though, are they?’

There was another pause while Sophie eyed Bram, still half convinced that he was joking. ‘You’re not thinking about this idea seriously, are you?’

Bram was turning his mug between square, capable hands, studying it thoughtfully. ‘I might be.’

His eyes lifted to her face once more, suddenly very blue and keen. ‘Why don’t we face reality, Sophie? Neither of us has got a chance of marrying the person we love. We can live alone and miserable, or we can live together. Our marriage might not be one of grand passion, but we would have friendship, companionship, comfort. They count for something.

‘I need help on the farm, to put it bluntly,’ he went on. ‘Sophie, I’d love to have you as my wife. I need someone who understands the moors and isn’t afraid of being up here on her own—someone who can help me run the place. A partner as well as a wife. Someone just like you. And you…you can’t have what you really want either, but you did say you wanted to come home. You’ve always loved it here. Well, you could live here all the time with me. Haw Gill Farm would be your home as well as mine. You could set up a wheel and a kiln in one of the barns and start potting again.’

The blue eyes rested on Sophie’s face. ‘Neither of us would have everything we wanted, but we would have some of it. Perfect happy-ever-after endings are for books and films, Sophie. We wouldn’t be the first people to compromise, to settle for good enough rather than the best.’

‘Compromising means giving up on your dreams,’ Sophie pointed out.

‘It means having something instead of nothing,’ countered Bram. ‘And it would solve your Christmas problem if nothing else,’ he added cunningly. ‘You said yourself that it would be easier to get through a family Christmas if you could produce a boyfriend. Why shouldn’t that boyfriend be me?’

‘Well…because they all know you,’ she said.

‘So?’

‘They know we’ve been friends all our lives. It doesn’t seem very likely that we’d suddenly decide to fall in love. Anyway,’ she remembered, ‘I’ve already told Mum that I’m in love with someone else.’

‘You didn’t say who it was, though,’ he reminded her. ‘Why couldn’t it be me?’

‘Because I would have told her if it had been you,’ said Sophie, a little baffled by his persistence and still more than half convinced that he was joking.

‘Not necessarily. If we’d only just realised that we were in love ourselves, I think we’d want a little time to get used to the idea before we told everybody. We wouldn’t rush out and spread the news straight away, would we?’

Sophie looked sceptical. ‘So we’d ask Mum and Dad and everyone else to believe that after all these years of being friends we suddenly looked at each other and fell in love?’

Bram shrugged. ‘It happens. I think it’s possible to look at someone familiar and suddenly see them in a completely different light.’

He remembered how startled he had been to realise how much she had changed when she was telling him about falling in love with Nick. Of course that wasn’t the same as falling in love with her, but still, it had been a shock. And look how conscious he had been of her leaning against him by the gate.

‘People change,’ he said. ‘Sometimes when you least expect it.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Sophie doubtfully. ‘I can’t really imagine falling in love like that.’

What would it be like? She couldn’t imagine it. With Nick it had been love at first sight. One look and she had tumbled helplessly in love with him. How could it be the same if you had known the other person all your life?

Imagine falling in love with Bram, for instance. How weird would that be? Her eyes rested on him speculatively. He had all the right bits, all in the right working order, but they looked exactly the same as they had always done. Eyes, nose, mouth—nothing wrong with any of them, but nothing special either. Nothing to make you stop and think Hello?

Although, to be fair, she had always loved Bram’s eyes. They were the deep, clear blue of a summer sea, and they gleamed with understated humour.

And actually, now that she looked at him properly, he did have rather an intriguing mouth. Funny that she had never noticed that before, thought Sophie. It must be something to do with all this talk about falling in love. She couldn’t remember ever noticing Bram’s mouth before. It was cool and quiet, as you might expect, but there was something about it that made her feel vaguely…what was the word? Not excited. Not definitely not that. No, disturbed. Did it make her feel just a tiny bit unsettled?

Just the teensiest bit sexy?

Horrified by the thought, Sophie shook the feeling aside. This was Bram. It felt all wrong to be studying him like this. She shouldn’t be thinking about his eyes, and definitely not about his mouth. Not that way, anyway.

‘If we were engaged you’d have the perfect excuse to stay here with me rather than at Glebe Farm at Christmas.’ Bram returned to the point of the discussion. ‘You’d still have to face Nick, of course, on your father’s birthday and at Christmas lunch, but it wouldn’t be for long. You’d be able to leave whenever you wanted, instead of having to wait for them to decide to go. We can always say that there’s a crisis here. We’re never short of those,’ he added, with a gleam of humour.

It would be easier to get through Christmas if Bram were there, Sophie had to admit. He had a quiet self-assurance that lent him an impressive manner. Bram was never rude, never showed off and, more importantly, he never let Sophie’s mother rile him. You could always rely on him to ease an awkward silence or defuse tension with humour—qualities which were likely to come in very handy indeed at the Beckwiths’ Christmas dinner.

His presence might make things easier for Melissa, too. Sophie was very conscious of how guilty her sister felt about the situation. Perhaps if Melissa thought that she had found happiness with Bram she would be able to relax and enjoy being married to Nick.

And Nick? How would he feel? Would he be glad to think that Sophie had found someone else and was finally over him?

No prizes for guessing how her mother would feel if she and Bram announced their engagement. Harriet would be delighted. Not only would she get the family Christmas she had planned, but she would have another wedding to plan in the New Year. It would be the best Christmas present Sophie could possibly give her.

Her father would be pleased, too, to have both his daughters at his seventieth birthday party.

Yes, it would be easier for everyone if she said that she was marrying Bram.

But could she marry him just to make her family happy?

Sophie turned the mug of tea between her hands.

Could it work? What would it be like to marry Bram? She had never thought of him as anything other than a friend before. What would he be like a husband? As a lover?

She studied him from under her lashes. His mouth was firm, cool, quiet. How would it feel against her own? What would his kiss be like? And those square, capable farmer’s hands. She had seen them gently easing a lamb into the world, running assessingly down the flank of a heifer, fixing an engine with deft fingers. She had never felt them smoothing over her skin. What would that be like?

The very thought made her uncomfortable.

‘This is crazy,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘I can’t believe we’re seriously talking about getting married just to save a bit of awkwardness at the Christmas dinner table!’

‘I was thinking more about saving awkwardness in life generally,’ said Bram lightly, sensing that the moment had gone.

‘We could never go through with it,’ Sophie said, still torn.

‘Couldn’t we?’

‘No.’ Her tentative smile faded. ‘No, we couldn’t. It’s not that I can’t see the advantages, Bram. I don’t really want to go through life on my own, watching from the sidelines and wasting my time feeling bitter. Of course I don’t. But it wouldn’t be fair. I care about you too much to marry you knowing how I still feel about Nick. You deserve better than that.’

‘Better in what way?’ he asked wryly, surprised at the strength of his disappointment.

It was funny. An hour ago the thought of marrying Sophie would never have crossed his mind, but now that it had it seemed like one of the best ideas he had ever had.

‘You deserve more than second best, Bram,’ said Sophie in a gentle voice. ‘You deserve someone who believes in you and loves you completely for yourself, and I know that you’ll meet her sooner or later. She’ll be real and warm and kind, and you’ll wonder how you could ever have loved anyone else. You’ll be her rock, and she’ll be your star, and you’ll be so happy together that you’ll wake every morning with her and be grateful to me for not marrying you now.’

Getting up, she moved round the table until she could put her arms around him from behind and bend to kiss his cheek. ‘You’re my best friend,’ she whispered in his ear, and Bram closed his eyes briefly, shocked at the jolt of awareness he felt at her nearness and her warmth.

‘I know you’re just trying to find a way out for me, but you’ve got to think of yourself too. I just wish things could be different for both of us.’

Bram put his hand up to cover hers, where they were linked on his chest, and wished that his throat didn’t suddenly feel so tight and uncomfortable.

‘So do I,’ he said.

CHAPTER THREE

HARRIET BECKWITH came out of the kitchen the moment she heard Sophie let herself in at the front door. In spite of wearing an apron and actually holding a rolling pin, she managed to look the antithesis of the clichéd farmer’s wife. No buxom figure or floury hands for Sophie’s mother. Instead she was a handsome, well-groomed woman, with every hair perfectly in place and an air of brisk competence.

‘Look at the state of you, Sophie!’ She tutted as Sophie took off her jacket. ‘You’re absolutely covered in mud! And as for your hair…’ She trailed off in despair. ‘I suppose you’ve been up at Haw Gill?’

As always, she managed to make Sophie feel like a scrubby, rather exasperating schoolgirl. Sophie tried not to feel sullen and defensive in response, but it was hard sometimes to remember that she was thirty-one and not fourteen.

‘I thought I’d go and see Bram,’ she said placatingly.

‘I don’t know what on earth you two find to talk about,’ said Harriet, shaking her head.

What would her mother say if she knew they had been talking about marriage? Sophie watched Harriet pick up the jacket she had just slung carelessly over the chair and brush it down fussily.

Knowing her mother, she’d probably just sigh and say, Not with your hair like that, surely, Sophie?

‘Oh, you know—this and that,’ she answered vaguely.

Harriet was still brushing fastidiously. ‘Where have you been in this jacket? It’s covered in dog hairs and leaves!’

‘That’ll be from the Land Rover,’ said Sophie. ‘Bram drove me home.’

They had talked easily enough once they had dropped the bizarre marriage idea. Bram hadn’t tried to persuade her to change her mind, and Sophie thought that it was just as well. She had been perilously close to taking him up on his offer at one point, and, even though she was sure that she had made the right decision, she had a nasty feeling that it wouldn’t have taken much for her to give in.

It was all just the same as ever. Or almost. Sophie had been aware of a faint constraint on the drive down to Glebe Farm. ‘I’ll maybe see you at Christmas, then,’ was all Bram had said when he dropped her off. He hadn’t asked her to think about marrying him, to take her time and maybe reconsider.

So that was that.

‘I’m glad to hear that Bram didn’t let you go wandering around in the dark,’ sniffed Harriet. ‘At least he’s got some sense.’

Bram was always sensible, always practical. Which made it all the more amazing that he would come up with that idea of getting married. He had even managed to make it sound like the obvious solution.

‘It’s only half past six,’ Sophie protested, following her mother into the kitchen as she tried to shake the whole thought of that strange proposal from her mind.

The kitchen at Glebe Farm could not have been more different from the one at Haw Gill. In place of comfortable, shabby chairs and cluttered dressers there were gleaming steel surfaces, installed when Harriet’s catering business had begun to take off. That had now been expanded into a specially designed outbuilding, where Sophie’s mother controlled the five women from the village who helped there with the ruthless efficiency of a Harvard MBA graduate. Talk about the iron fist in the oven glove.

‘How is Bram getting on, anyway?’ her mother asked as she went back to rolling pastry. When Sophie tried to make pastry she got flour everywhere, but Harriet’s apron was pristine. ‘It must be difficult for him now Molly’s gone.’

Sophie clambered awkwardly onto one of the modern stools at the breakfast bar. ‘He’s managing.’

‘He needs to find himself a wife.’ Intent on her pastry, Harriet didn’t notice Sophie’s instinctive start. What was this? A conspiracy? ‘I heard that Rachel took herself off to York,’ she went on, before Sophie had a chance to reply. ‘I didn’t think she’d last long.’

‘Mum, you hardly knew her!’

‘You didn’t need to know her. You just needed to look at her.’ Harriet clicked her tongue against her teeth. ‘I could have told Bram that he was wasting his time a long time ago. A city girl like that is no good to him. He needs someone who can help him make a go of that farm. There’s good land up there. He could do so much more with it.’

Harriet was a great believer in diversification. ‘You can’t get by on farming alone nowadays,’ she would tell anyone who would listen. ‘You’ve got to try something different.’ She herself had an excellent business brain, and Sophie had often suspected that she had been bored as a farmer’s wife until yet another agricultural crisis had prompted her to set up her own catering company.

It had been such a success that Harriet was always encouraging farmers like Bram to follow her example and branch out. She thought he should convert his steadings into holiday cottages, offer shooting weekends, or turn his lower fields into a par three golf course. She seemed frustrated that Bram was apparently content to stick with farming sheep and cattle at Haw Gill, as generations of Thoresbys had done before him.

‘I’m very fond of Bram,’ Harriet often said, tutting, ‘but he’s got no ambition. He’s not going anywhere.’

But it seemed to Sophie that Bram was already exactly where he wanted to be. He had no need to go anywhere at all.

‘It’s just as well Melissa didn’t marry Bram,’ Harriet said now. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to offer her the kind of life she’s used to. Look at Haw Gill. That farmhouse has hardly changed in fifty years!’

No, and as a result it was so much more comfortable than Glebe Farm, Sophie thought to herself.

‘Anyway, she’s much better off with Nick,’ her mother said with satisfaction. ‘His company’s doing very well, you know. He can look after her.’

Spoil her, you mean, Sophie corrected her mother, but only mentally. She wouldn’t waste her breath saying it out loud.

‘Melissa and Bram were far too young to get engaged.’ Harriet continued her train of thought. ‘Your father said so at the time, and he was right. It would never have worked. But it was a shame for Bram. I do wonder sometimes if he’s still got a soft spot for Melissa. He never seems to have got close to settling down with anyone else. It does seem a waste. He’s a nice young man.’

Bram was more than nice, thought Sophie, vaguely aggrieved but not quite sure why. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t always known that Bram was in love with Melissa.

‘Did he tell you about Vicky Manning?’ her mother was asking, laying the circle of pastry over a pie dish. She cut off the excess with a few swift, clean movements and began knocking up the edges with the back of the knife.

‘No.’ Sophie was surprised at the apparent non sequitur. Vicky had been in the year below her at school. She was a plump, pretty girl, nice enough, but a bit wishy-washy in Sophie’s opinion. ‘What about her?’

‘She was supposed to be getting married in less than a month,’ Harriet told her. ‘They’d booked that hotel over Whitby way. Her dress was made and the invitations had gone out and everything, and then her fiancé Keith lost his nerve and called the whole thing off! He’s gone off to Manchester to get a job, and Vicky’s been left to pick up all the pieces. She devastated, apparently.’

‘Oh, poor thing!’ Vicky might not be the most interesting person in the world, but no one deserved to be treated like that. Sophie knew how Vicky must feel. She might not have got as far as sending out invitations or choosing a dress herself, but that didn’t make the rejection and humiliation any easier to bear. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said sincerely.

‘It’s hard on her,’ Harriet agreed, ‘but I dare say it’s all for the best. According to Maggie, Keith was always going on about how boring it was up here, and hankering after the bright lights, but Vicky wouldn’t have wanted to move. She’s a real country girl.’

She checked the temperature on the oven, put in the pie and closed the door, wiping her hands on a teatowel. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up with Bram,’ she said.

‘Bram?’ Sophie sat up straight on her stool, outraged. ‘Vicky’s not the right girl for Bram!’

‘Well, I don’t know…’ Harriet considered the matter as she wiped down the work surface. ‘She could do with losing a bit of weight, but she’s got a sweet little face and she’s a hard worker. She’s grown up on the moors, too. I think she would make a good farmer’s wife.’

‘Maybe, but not Bram’s,’ said Sophie stubbornly.

‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ said Harriet. ‘There aren’t that many suitable girls around here. Bram will need to settle down soon, if he wants to have children. He’s certainly not getting any younger.’

And neither are you. Sophie didn’t know why her mother didn’t say it out loud.

‘Bram’s only thirty-two, Mother. He’s not exactly decrepit!’

‘He’ll need to be getting on with it,’ said Harriet firmly. ‘I don’t know why you’re all so picky nowadays. If you wait too long for someone perfect, you’ll have lost your chance. Look at you and that Rob,’ she went on in an aggrieved tone. ‘He sounded so nice, and all you can say is that it didn’t feel right.’

Sophie sighed. She didn’t want to start this argument again. ‘It didn’t feel right, Mum. You can’t marry someone just because they’re available and you’re not sure if you’ll find anyone better! And now I’ve met someone else. I told you that.’

Her mind flashed to Bram, and she thought about what he’d said. What would it be like to be able to say, Look, it’s Bram, Mum. We’re in love and we’re going to get married! What would her mother say? Would she believe it?

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