A Family of His Own

CHAPTER TWO

“There has fallen a splendid tear

From the passion-flower at the gate.

She is coming, my dove, my dear;

She is coming, my life, my fate.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

KAY DIDN’T waste any time. The minute she’d waved Polly goodbye, she loaded up her wheelbarrow with the tools she’d need and headed for Linden Lodge. She’d behaved embarrassingly out of character yesterday and she wanted this over and done with.

She did her bit for the community, helped in the village school, worked hard to support herself and Polly, and she kept her head down. She never stepped out of line, never did anything to attract attention to herself, cause talk. There’d been enough of that to last a lifetime when Amy had first taken them under her wing, then let them move into the cottage.

She couldn’t think what had possessed her.

She stopped, parked the barrow.

She was lying to herself. She knew exactly what had possessed her.

The mystery of a garden locked away from view. That was what had possessed her. A chance to see more than the tantalising glimpses of it she could see from her upstairs windows. She’d wanted to see more. She’d always wanted to see more.

Polly wouldn’t have talked her into trespassing unless she’d been a willing accomplice.

As she pushed back the gate, the mingled scents of crushed grass, germander, valerian gone to seed everywhere, welcomed her. The blackbird, perched in an old apple tree, paused momentarily in his song and then continued. And she felt…accepted.

What utter nonsense.

She set about the grass and weeds behind the gate, making short work of them with her shears, so that she could open it wide enough to manoeuvre her big wheelbarrow inside.

Then, since securing the gate was more important than tidying up some mess no one was likely to see in the very near future—and she was the neighbourhood-watch coordinator—the first thing she did was to replace the bolt. She oiled the hinges, too. It was the neighbourly thing to do and little enough thanks for all the blackberries.

As if anyone would notice. The buyers—and there would be buyers; no one was going to be put off by tired paintwork, a neglected garden…it was rare for a house in Upper Haughton to come on to the market—wouldn’t give a hoot. They’d probably rip it out and replace it with a fancy new one. Which was a shame. The old one, despite the cracked and peeling paint—where paint still remained—had character.

They would probably grub out the high-maintenance cottage garden, too, and replace it with something modern that wouldn’t involve a constant battle with slugs, blackspot on the roses, the rust that attacked the old-fashioned hollyhocks if they weren’t constantly watched. They’d certainly tear down the crumbling summer house.

Maybe they’d put in a swimming pool.

She tossed the oil can into the barrow and looked around. It was still early, quiet as only a village that didn’t lead to anywhere else, tucked away from the main road, could be on a Sunday morning.

Tattered dew-laced spider webs sparkled in the low, slanting sunlight, slender crimson berries of the Berberis thunbergii glistened like droplets of blood against purple leaves that were fading to autumn crimson, and in the little orchard ripe apples were poised in that moment of perfection before they fell to the grass to be plundered by birds and hedgehogs and wasps before the insects and micro-organisms got to work and they rotted away to nothing. The food chain in action.

She walked the overgrown paths, sighing over the horticultural treasures that were struggling to survive against the more robust species. The temptation was to linger, set them free. But what would be the point? Without continuous care nature would rampage into the vacuum she created with renewed vigour. She’d do more harm than good.

She hadn’t needed Amy Hallam’s raised eyebrows to know that wasting her time cutting back the brambles had been plain stupid. In the spring they’d be back, stronger than ever, and in the meantime she was having to pay for her ridiculous gesture with time and effort that would have been better spent on her own garden.

She certainly didn’t have time to waste daydreaming about how this one would look if it was rescued from neglect, she reminded herself, and pulled on thick leather gloves before she set to work chopping up the brambles so that they’d fit into her barrow.

And did her very best to ignore the delicate branches of a witch hazel that was being strangled by bindweed.

Dom started awake and for a moment he had no idea where he was. Knew only that he was cold and stiff from a night spent in an armchair. That at least was a familiar experience.

He rubbed his hands over his face, dragged his fingers through his hair, eased his limbs as he willed himself to face another day. Then, as he sat forward, he saw the garden, sparkling as the sunlight caught the dew.

For a moment it looked like a magical place.

And then, as he caught a glimpse of Sara at work near the summer house, he knew it was. No longer feeling the ache in his limbs, or in his heart, he stood up and walked down the shallow steps into the garden, oblivious to the wet grass soaking his feet.

All that he cared about was that his beloved Sara was here, working in her garden, kneeling in front of a small shrub, gently releasing it from the stranglehold of some weed. And he was going to help her.

Engrossed in her task, taking care not to snap the slender branches of the shrub as she unravelled the bindweed, Kay had scarcely any warning that she wasn’t alone.

Only the rustle of grass that she assumed was a bird, or one of the squirrels which, having already come to give her the once-over and decided she was harmless, had continued their own busy harvest of the hazel copse on the far side of the wall.

Nothing more.

Scarcely a moment to register the presence beside her, a heartbeat for fear to seize her before he was on his knees beside her.

‘Sara…’

His voice shivered through her, held her.

Sara?

The word was spoken soft and low, as if to a nervous colt that might shy away, bolt at the least excuse.

Maybe she had started because, more urgently, he said, ‘Don’t go…’

Soft, low, it was a heartbreaking appeal and she needed no introduction to know that this gaunt, hollow-eyed man was Dominic Ravenscar. Needed none of Amy’s famed insight to make the leap from his low plea to an understanding that, with her back to the sun, her face shadowed by the broad brim of her hat, he thought she was his poor dead wife come back to him.

Needed no feminine intuition to know that whatever she did was going to be wrong. Was going to hurt him. Even as she struggled to find the words, he said, ‘I won’t leave you again. Ever.’

She remained frozen in the act of slicing through the bindweed, unable to think, unable to move.

There were no words.

While she knelt there, trying to decide what to do, he reached out and, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, began to unravel the bindweed she’d cut through. As his hand brushed against hers a jolt, like the discharge of static electricity, shot through her and she dropped the pocket knife.

As if afraid that she would disappear, he caught her hand, held it for a moment. His fingers were long and wrapped around her own hand with ease. His hand and wrist were deeply tanned, strong, attenuated like those of a fasting saint in some medieval painting.

He traced the scratch on the back of her hand where the bramble had caught her with his thumb.

‘You aren’t wearing gloves,’ he said. ‘How many times have I told you that you should wear gloves?’

‘No… Yes…’ She mouthed the words, but her voice, thick with the choking rush of emotional overload, didn’t make it past her throat.

Maybe he heard her anyway, or maybe he just read her lips. Maybe he thought she was making him a promise instead of desperately searching for the words to tell him, make him see that she was someone else, because he reached out with his other hand, cupping her face in his long palm. And while she remained locked between the need to run and the certainty that she must stay and convince him of the reality of the situation, he leaned forward and kissed her.

It had been a lifetime since she’d been kissed and never with this sweetness, this gentleness. As if she was something precious but fragile that might shatter to dust if he was careless.

Her body, starved of tenderness, starved of the touch of a man, responded like a primrose to the sun after a long, hard winter, and, overriding her brain, she returned the kiss with every scrap of longing, all the need engendered by years of emptiness.

The kiss deepened as his confidence grew that she would not vanish at his touch.

Her hat fell to the grass as his fingers slid through her hair and he cradled her head as it fell back beneath the sweet invasion of his mouth.

The stubble on his unshaven jaw rasped against her face. His hand curved about her waist, drawing her into a closer embrace, crushing her against him as if he would make them one. In the tree above them, the blackbird pinked an urgent warning. And she felt his hot tears against her cheek. Or maybe they were her own.

The kiss had a dream-like quality, the perfection of fantasy, and it seemed that a lifetime had passed before his hold on her eased and he straightened. While her breathing returned to something approaching normality.

An age while he looked down into her face, confronted reality, and his expression of perfect joy turned first to confusion, then to pain as he realised his mistake.

Forever, while the light died in his eyes and they became dark, bottomless, unreadable.

She felt an answering hollowness in her own breast. To have shared such perfect intimacy, to have been gazed at with such devotion and then to have it snatched away…

Oh, good grief. What was she thinking?

‘Mr Ravenscar?’ She heard the shake in her own voice, but what did her petty feelings matter compared to what he must be going through? ‘Dominic, are you all right?’ She was too concerned about him to worry about her own feelings and it really was far too late to bother about the formalities of introduction.

‘Who are you?’ The urgency of her query had apparently got through to him, and when she didn’t immediately answer, ‘Who the hell are you?’ he angrily repeated, rising to his feet, stepping back and putting a yard of distance between them. It felt like a mile. A cold, unbreachable distance. ‘What are you doing here?’

Well, what did she expect? “Thanks for the kiss, ma’am. It was a real pleasure…”

‘I’m Kay Lovell.’

She forced herself to her feet, forced herself to act normally, as if nothing awkward or embarrassing had happened. The kiss had been neither. It was the aftermath that was difficult. Reality, as she’d long ago discovered, was always a lot harder to deal with than fantasy.

She forced herself to brace her knees so that her shaking legs wouldn’t collapse beneath her. Maybe kissing was like drinking, she thought. If you didn’t do it for a while the effects were amplified…

On the point of offering her hand, she managed to stop herself. It was a little late to be shaking hands. Instead she tried to concentrate on an explanation of what she was doing in his garden. ‘I’m just…’ No. It was no good. Any attempt to explain what she was doing, explain anything, was, for the moment, totally beyond her. And he didn’t want to know what she was doing. He just wanted to know why she wasn’t his wife. There was no explanation that would satisfy him. No answer that would help. ‘I’m just a neighbour,’ she said.

He took another step back as if, with every moment that passed, the enormity of his mistake increased. Then he looked beyond her to the peach trees, the newly cut brambles.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘Yesterday?’

He’d been here then? He’d seen her? She saw all hope die in his eyes and knew he had. Knew what he’d thought. ‘Yes, I was here,’ she said, guilt washing over her at the damage she’d done. At the forlorn hopes she’d unwittingly raised and then dashed.

‘And the child? The little girl?’

She frowned. If he’d seen Polly then surely he must have realised that she couldn’t be Sara?

‘Who is she?’ he persisted.

‘My daughter. Polly. We were picking blackberries to make pies for the harvest supper. She’s gone out with friends today. To the sea. The Hallams? I think you know them. Their youngest boy is just a few months older and they’re best…’ She stopped. She was talking far too much. ‘I’m so sorry—’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he snapped, cutting off her apology.

‘If I’d known you were home I’d have—’

‘You’d have knocked and asked permission?’ he enquired, with cutting sarcasm. ‘Why did you come back? To make sure you hadn’t missed any? Or was there something else you’d taken a fancy to?’

He glanced at the shrub, then at her, raised one brow about half a millimetre—more than enough to imply everything that he was thinking—and she felt the blood rush to her face.

‘No! I was just…’ She let it go. If he really thought she’d come to steal a shrub that size armed with nothing more than a pocket knife and a screwdriver, there wasn’t a thing she could say that would convince him otherwise. ‘The lock on the gate was rusted through. I came back to fit a new one. It should hold now. And I—’

‘Will it keep you out?’ His voice was no longer soft, but hard and cold as ice, perfectly matching the chilling lack of emotion, lack of anything, in his eyes.

‘It will if you bolt it behind me,’ she managed, with measured politeness, despite the fact that her heart was still pounding like a jackhammer. ‘In fact you’d be doing me a favour. I thought I’d have to bolt it from the inside and then climb over and it’s rather a long drop.’ She made a stab at a smile. He didn’t respond. Well, fine. She was in the wrong here, she reminded herself. He had every right to be angry. She gestured vaguely towards the wheelbarrow filled with the thorny trimmings that were destined for her bonfire. ‘I’d better go. I’ve done everything I came for.’

He glanced across at her barrow as if to reassure himself that she wasn’t making off with a haul of valuable plants. Frowned when he saw the contents.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Fix the gate?’

‘Cut back the brambles. Why did you do that?’

‘They were growing over the peach tree. It was suffering…’ Then, because he didn’t say anything, it occurred to her that she’d never have a better chance to put her case for some work. The very worst he could do was throw her out and he was pretty much doing that anyway. ‘I’m a gardener. I was going to contact the house agents tomorrow to see if they were interested in giving me some work. To tidy up in here. Now it’s on the market.’

‘Don’t bother,’ he said abruptly. ‘I like it just the way it is.’

Suffocating. Like him, from the heart outwards.

‘You’re probably right,’ she said, bending down to pick up her hat. ‘Better let the new owners clear it out. Start again.’

‘Maybe they’ll employ you.’

‘I doubt that. It’ll take months to put this straight. I expect they’ll get in a contractor. Someone who can provide instant results with an earthmover. They’ll just dump all this in a skip and bring in fully grown plants like they do in those television makeover programmes.’

If she’d hoped to drive the chill from his eyes with hot anger, wake him from the coma of grief, she realised immediately that she was reaching a long way beyond her grasp. He was far beyond such pathetic pseudo-psychological tricks.

All she got was a blank expression.

Of course, he’d been working abroad for a long time. He’d probably never seen one of those programmes where a garden was transformed from backyard tip to easy-care Mediterranean landscape—with water feature—in a weekend. For a man who’d been working on aid programmes, the very idea of such a frivolous waste of resources would probably be anathema.

‘Well, I’ll go, then. If you need anything, I live at Old Cottage,’ she said. ‘Just down the lane.’

‘What could I possibly need?’ Between them hung the unspoken corollary “…from you?”

Nothing was clearly the answer. He was wrong. She could offer human contact. Be there for him, as Amy had been there when she had been lost in depths of despair, guilt. Day after day. Week after week. Gently persistent. Unwavering in the face of rejection. Refusing to be pushed away.

‘One day someone will need you, Kay,’ she’d said when she’d bemoaned her inability to repay such patient, unasked-for, unrewarded care. ‘Just pass on the love and don’t count the cost. That’s all any of us can do.’

She had a sudden, terrible premonition that this was her moment. And she wasn’t ready. Hadn’t a clue what to do.

‘I could offer you a cup of tea,’ she prompted. Oh, good grief. How English. How predictable. ‘Breakfast?’ she persisted. ‘The eggs are organic. I keep a few hens…’

He didn’t reply. Not by one twitch of his facial muscles did he indicate that he’d heard.

For heaven’s sake, politeness cost nothing.

‘How about a towel to dry your feet?’ she tried, but a little waspishly, rapidly losing any desire to pass on anything, let alone care.

He glanced down and frowned as if only then aware that he was wading through damp grass in his bare feet. That his trousers were soaked through to the knees. Then he turned, without a word, and walked back towards the house.

Kay watched him walk away from her. Stiff-backed, rigid with anger and pride and misery. Probably hating himself for having mistaken another woman for his beloved Sara. Hating himself for having kissed another woman.

Yes, well. She knew her limitations. She wasn’t wise enough, clever enough for this. Amy should be here. She’d know what to do. Exactly the right words to say.

The one thing she wouldn’t do was walk away and leave him like this.

But Amy wasn’t here. She was on her way to the coast with Jake and a car-load of children, so it was down to her and, while common sense suggested that it would be wiser to do as he’d asked and leave, simple humanity demanded a braver, a more compassionate response.

‘Oh…chickweed!’ she muttered. And followed him.

She paused on the threshold of the drawing room. Despite the delicate floral wallpaper, the pale blue silk curtains, the atmosphere was oppressive, musty. Like the garden, it felt abandoned. Out there she itched to tear out the weeds, let in the light so the plants could grow, reach their full potential. Inside, she yearned to rush through the rooms, opening the windows to let in the sun, let in the air so that the house could take a deep breath.