‘This isn’t funny, Jake. You heard what Dr Stefford said the last time. This could have taxed your heart and you’ve got to be patient and take things slowly.’
‘Take things slowly?’ A moment ago, even while he’d been talking, he’d had the desire to drop off to sleep. Now he opened his eyes and glared at her. ‘Damn it, how much slower can they be? And I’m not a bairn so don’t talk to me like one.’
‘Then don’t act like one and I won’t have to.’
‘This is driving me mad. You’ve no idea.’
‘Nor ever likely to have if you don’t talk to me and
tell
me how you feel.’
‘What?’ He had expected sympathy, which was what he had been resenting for the last couple of weeks when it came from her. Now, perversely, he missed it.
‘But that’s too much to ask, isn’t it? Coming from you. Jake Fletcher. The man determined to go it alone no matter who he hurts in the process.’
He was amazed. ‘I haven’t hurt anyone.’
‘I don’t count then?’
‘You?’ He couldn’t believe his ears. ‘When have I ever hurt you?’
‘How long have you got?’ She gazed at him, her eyes steady and clear. ‘It would take too long to list all the occasions so I’ll just take the last months, shall I?’ Counting on her fingers, she continued, ‘You made me feel like I’d committed an unforgivable sin when I kissed you at Christmas.You’ve been hinting - and not particularly tactfully - that you think it’s time I left here and found somewhere else to live.You didn’t trust me enough to tell me about your father and what he was doing, not even when his body was found not a hundred yards from the lane to the farm.You wouldn’t let me see you in gaol until the last day although I’d come every single afternoon since you were arrested. Need I go on?’
There was a taut silence. Outside the window they could hear Jack Osborne calling to someone and then the sound of him laughing, and somewhere in the distance one of the farm dogs barked.
Jake swallowed hard. His throat felt like sandpaper. Part of him was crying out, I haven’t got the strength to deal with this now. I can’t think straight. I’ll give myself away. The other part was horrified she could have been feeling hurt.
She looked beautiful, more beautiful than he’d ever seen her, sitting there with her great liquid eyes fixed on his face. Her face blurred and he swallowed again, looking down at his hands. Quietly, he said, ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. I didn’t want to involve you, that’s all. Not in something so unpleasant.’
‘What would you have said if I’d done a similar thing?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Why? Because I’m a woman?’
‘Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know.’ He paused. ‘But it wasn’t that I didn’t trust you, I want you to believe that.’
‘Then it can only be that you don’t think I love you enough.’
He stopped breathing, his eyes remaining fixed on his lifeless hands on the counterpane. They didn’t look as though they belonged to his body. He didn’t recognise them.They were too white, too limp looking. His mind was taking refuge in the mundane and he forced himself to respond to what she’d said. She was talking about sister love. He knew that. But this conversation was crucifying him. ‘No, I don’t think that,’ he said woodenly. ‘You’ve always been very kind, very good—’
‘So why are you making me behave in such a forward way? It shouldn’t be me saying I love you, that I can’t live without you and that those three weeks when I thought they might wrongly convict you were the worst of my life. That a world that didn’t have you in it wouldn’t be worth living in. It’s not seemly for me to say all that when you’ve given me no indication that you feel the same way.’
He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. If he did, all this might fade away and he would be forced to recognise his mind - the mind that had played such tricks on him the last weeks - was misbehaving again.
There was a pause which stretched into eternity and then she said brokenly, ‘If you want me to leave, I will, once you’re better.’
‘
No
.’ He raised his eyes to her face and what he saw caused his throat to swell and his heart to knock against his ribs. ‘But you can’t feel like that, not about me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m—’ He stopped. Shaking his head, he said, ‘You’re young and bonny.You could have anyone.’
‘I don’t want anyone. Just you.’
‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘On the contrary. And before you start thinking this and that, let me make it plain this is no sudden thing.’
Her cheeks were burning with hot colour but her voice was calm, cool even. For a moment he allowed his mind to clutch at the hope that this was no girlish fancy that would evaporate once he was on his feet again and she had stopped feeling sorry for him.
‘And the reason I can’t have much sympathy for Adam being locked away for good is because he would have happily seen you hang for something he was guilty of.’
So that was it. Reality rushed in. She was seeing him as the injured party, the innocent victim. Not only that but the nursing of the last weeks, when he’d been as helpless as a babe, had brought out her womanly emotions. It would be very different when he was back on his feet and behaving like a man again. Stiffly, he said, ‘You don’t have to make atonement for what Adam did.’
For a moment she stared at him. Slowly she got to her feet. ‘If you weren’t so ill I’d punch you on the nose for that, Jake Fletcher.’
A line of red stained his cheekbones as he stared back at her. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘You’re the most patronising, arrogant, awkward, stupid man I’ve ever come across,’ she said slowly and distinctly. ‘Why I love you I don’t know, but I do and I’m stuck with it. I can’t force you to believe me though. You’ll have to work through that for yourself. And I’m not going to turn cartwheels trying to convince you either. And now you’ve made me say this all wrong and spoilt everything.’To his amazement she actually stamped her foot in temper before turning and walking across the room.
She had her hand on the door handle when his voice came. ‘Hannah?’
‘What?’ Her eyes were misty with unshed tears when she faced him.
‘Doesn’t this,’ he lifted a hand to his face, ‘repulse you even a little?’
How could she make him understand? What chance did she have of breaking through thirty-three years of aloneness? She didn’t know the words to say, she wasn’t articulate enough to express all she felt. ‘If it was me who had been hurt, would you be repulsed or would you love and respect me all the more for making a good life for myself? I know you won’t believe this, but I don’t see your scars, Jake. I stopped seeing them a long time ago. To me you’re the most handsome man in the world and I mean your whole face when I say that, not just the undamaged side.’
‘I . . . I find that hard to believe.’
‘Try,’ she said simply, before opening the door and leaving the room.
Outside on the landing, she stood with her back against the wall, her chest heaving. She wanted to cry but suddenly her eyes were dry, her heart aching. She had said it all wrong. How could she have called him those names? She lifted a hand to her mouth, biting down hard on her thumbnail. She had always known he would never speak first and so she had determined she would tell him calmly how she felt, once he was well enough, and then leave the rest with him. But him suggesting she was offering herself as some sort of compensation for what Adam had tried to do had made her mad. It had been little short of insulting.
She looked towards a shaft of April sunlight slanting across the floorboards at the end of the landing. She walked over to the tall narrow window and peered out. Peter and the twins had already left for the walk into Southwick where they were now attending a new school on the west side of the parish, but to one corner of the farmyard she could see Daniel Osborne and Stephen talking to Naomi. It had been decided Naomi would leave the jam factory and work on the farm. Anne Osborne was getting married in a few weeks and Naomi would take her place in the dairy. Enid had already offered to train Naomi up. Naomi was getting on well with Daniel’s mother, something she herself had never done.As she watched, Daniel lifted his hand and brushed a strand of hair from Naomi’s cheek.
Hannah turned abruptly. Naomi and Daniel. Anne getting married. Florence expecting another bairn. Even Grace Osborne had just started walking out with a lad from the village. For a moment envy swamped her. It was all so easy for them.
She stared down at her chewed nail. Jake had never said he loved her. What if she’d misread that look in his eyes at the police station? But then she reminded herself it had been her name he had muttered in the midst of his delirium, not just once but many times. And she loved him. No one else would do.
Moving her head impatiently at her thoughts, she made her way downstairs. She had too much to do to stand mooning, as Clara would call it. Dear Clara. She had been a rock the last weeks. She had already made it her business to make a friend of Rose, chivvying Jake’s mother along as best she could when Rose’s despair had threatened to overwhelm her.
Pausing outside the kitchen door, Hannah took a deep breath, composing her face before she pushed the door open. Rose was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of tea. Glancing at Hannah’s empty hands, she said, ‘I thought you went for his breakfast tray?’
‘He hadn’t finished.’
‘But he was eating something? That’s a good sign.’
‘I’m not sure if he’d had anything.’
Rose looked up into the face of the girl she thought of as a second daughter. Her voice changing, she said, ‘What is it? What’s happened now?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Something’s wrong. Is he worse?’
‘No, no. He’s fine. Well, as fine as he was yesterday anyway.’ Hannah plumped down on a chair. ‘It’s just - oh, I shouldn’t be bothering you, you must be feeling awful. You’ve enough on your plate.’
‘Lass, I’ve had plenty on my plate, as you put it, since my Joe died and I’m going to be feeling awful for a long time. Every time I think of my lad locked up in that place, in fact. But that don’t mean life don’t go on. It went on after Joe and it’ll go on now, that’s the way of it. Wilbur . . .’ Rose paused. ‘That’s going to happen and I can’t do nowt about it. The good book says an eye for an eye and God won’t be mocked.’
Hannah nodded. She always felt acutely uncomfortable when Rose talked about Wilbur but there was nothing she could say or do. Wilbur insisted he’d been the one to deliver the fatal blow. Adam had not challenged this and certainly it was more acceptable to Rose that it was her husband and not her son who had murdered Silas. Hannah knew that her suspicions were something she would have to live with, shared only with Jake.
‘So what is it, hinny? What’s upset you?’
‘You remember the day I came to see you when we found out about Wilbur and Adam, when I said how I felt about Jake? Well, I told him this morning that I loved him. I should probably have waited a while. It . . . it didn’t go well.’
‘Oh, lass.’
‘But I do love him, Mrs Wood, and I’m not going to give up.’ As she spoke, Hannah’s voice gathered strength. ‘And he would never have said anything to me, you know that yourself.’
Rose nodded. ‘That’s for sure.’ There was silence in the kitchen for a moment; then Rose said, ‘I want you to know this, lass. However things turn out in the future, I want to say this now. I think of you as one of my own, I always have, and I’m for you come hell or high water. Just so you know.’ She paused. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Carry on as before.’ A voice inside her head said, can you? Do you really think you can pretend this never happened and just act normal? She answered it by saying out loud, ‘I’m going to let the next move come from him and if he chooses not to say anything . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I can’t do more, Mrs Wood.’
‘No, I see that, lass.’
‘But thank you, for what you said about being for me.’
‘What will be, will be, hinny. Take comfort in that.’
Hannah smiled at Jake’s mother. What will be, will be. Did she believe that? Not altogether, no. Many a time since coming to the farm she’d heard Clara say that it was all very well to pray to God to bring you into His harbour of blessing in times of trial and turmoil, but He expected you to do your bit and row the boat as well.Well, she’d done her bit of rowing, she’d pointed the boat in the right direction; where it ended up wasn’t down to her any more.