‘A lady?’
‘A Mrs Wilmot.’
He wrinkled his brow. ‘To my knowledge I know no one of that name.’ And to the tiny question mark in his mind and his churning stomach he said silently, It’s impossible. Quite impossible.
‘Do you want me to tell her to come back another time? To make an appointment?’
‘No, no.’ He checked his watch. ‘Tell her I can give her ten minutes but that’s all. If that won’t do she would be better making an appointment as you’ve suggested.’
The door hadn’t closed behind Mrs Howard above a second when it opened again, and now, as his secretary stood aside and the woman he had seen in the street came into his office, James remained perfectly still. Even before she raised her head so he could see more than just her lower face, he knew it was Abby. His gaze was riveted. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. And she was another man’s wife.
Somehow he managed to rise and say quite normally, ‘Hello, Abby. It’s been a long time.’ And then, before his secretary shut the door, ‘I was just going to have a cup of tea. Would you care to join me?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Two cups then please, Mrs Howard. Come and sit down, Abby.’
She remained standing when the door had closed, her eyes enormous and her face pale. He looked so like his father. Older, more rugged than in his youth but just as handsome. ‘I’m . . . I’m sorry about your parents, James.’ It wasn’t how she had meant to start at all.
‘Thank you.’ He became aware he was staring and cleared his throat, indicating the seat in front of the desk with a wave of his hand. ‘Do sit down and tell me what I can do for you. I presume it wasn’t just to offer your condolences about my parents that brought you here?’
‘No.’ She sat, swallowed, and then found herself unable to continue.
James made a small movement with his head, his eyebrows raised as he prompted her. It was only then that Abby managed to say in little more than a whisper, ‘I don’t know where to start.’
‘Are you in some kind of financial trouble? I’ll try to help you if I can.’
He was so distant, so correct. She hadn’t known what to expect but this wasn’t it.
He didn’t love her any more
. But of course he didn’t love her any more, she hadn’t expected him to, had she? Not after fifteen years and with him having married and divorced and probably had other women since then. And he thought she’d betrayed him, fallen in love and married someone else long before the war ended. No, of course she hadn’t expected he would still care.
But she had. Because she still loved him.
With a quick drooping movement of her head she said, ‘I’m not in trouble, not in the way you mean, but this afternoon I found out that my mother had lied to you when you returned from the war. It was my aunty’s funeral today and I came back’ - here the nerves which had caused a huge lump in her throat overcame her and she had to swallow twice before she could go on - ‘I came back to pay my respects. There . . . there was a row and she told me, my mother told me she’d said I was married when you called at the house.’
‘You did marry, you’re Mrs Wilmot.’
‘That was much later.’ She hadn’t raised her head. ‘He was a doctor, an American doctor and we didn’t marry till the war was over. I . . . I thought you were dead, you see.’
There was utter silence in the room now and Abby didn’t dare look at him, dreading what might be on his face. Disinterest? Puzzlement at why she had bothered to come even if what she said was true? Worse, pity or embarrassment that she thought it might matter to him now? She shouldn’t have come, she was such a fool. She should have written, phoned - anything but this. What should she do now? She didn’t know.
And then he made a sound, a tiny sound in his throat and she raised her head and saw the look on his face. Suddenly it was the easiest thing in the world to say, ‘I’m sorry, James. I’m so, so sorry. I never knew. I never knew.’
He bent forward, his elbows on the desk as he held his face in his hands, and when the door opened and Mrs Howard took a step into the room with the tray of tea, Abby turned and said, ‘I’m sorry, could you give us a minute or two?’ She wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand as she spoke. For a second she thought the woman was going to protest but then she put the tray down on a table just inside the door and backed out, shutting the door behind her.
Abby didn’t realise James was crying until she saw the tears run through his fingers onto the papers beneath, and then it seemed the most natural thing in the world to walk round the desk and gather him against her. He jerked away from her, visibly pulling himself together. He rose and put a few feet between them, standing with his back towards her as he wiped his face with a handkerchief. ‘Your husband?’ His voice was cracked and thick. ‘Does he know you are here today?’
‘Ike’s dead.’ She saw the words register in the stiffening of his back. ‘He died two years ago. A heart attack.’
It was a moment before he turned and then he said, ‘I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for reacting like this, what must you think of me? It’s the shock. All those years . . .’
‘I know.’ She was looking into his eyes and she knew she was trembling. ‘I heard you came home and married someone else. I thought you’d decided we’d made a mistake and you’d fallen in love with this girl—’
‘I’ve only ever loved one woman, Abby.’ He made no move towards her. ‘And the marriage was a disaster from day one. Hell!’ Anger stirred, sharpening his voice. ‘I should never have believed your mother, I wouldn’t have if I’d been in my right mind but I was ill, how ill I didn’t realise till much later. And she was convincing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.
‘And you found out today she had lied?’ His eyes were moving from one feature of her face to another. ‘And you came straight here?’
There was a question in the words which had nothing to do with what he’d asked. It was to this she replied when she said, ‘Of course I did, what else could I have done?’
‘And if your husband had still been alive? Would you have come then?’
Again it was a question within a question and this time Abby paused. Then she said simply, ‘I loved Ike.’ She watched him blink. ‘I wouldn’t have married him otherwise. It wasn’t the same as with us but it was good.’
He didn’t like the jealousy he felt towards a dead man but he managed to cover it when he said, a little tersely, ‘You were happy then?’
‘Yes, we were happy.’
He should say he was glad but he wasn’t. What kind of a man did that make him? Almost certainly less of a man than this husband of hers had been. ‘Bairns?’
‘Two boys. The youngest was only a few months old when Ike died.’
This time he could say and mean it, ‘I’m sorry, that must have been a bitter blow for you but at least he saw them before he went.’
She nodded. ‘Aye, yes he did.’ She had thought it was going to be all right a minute ago but now, since the talk about Ike, she wasn’t sure. But then what did she mean by all right? She heard herself saying, ‘I’ll get the tray, shall I?’
‘No, no, let me.’
She watched him as he walked across the room, noticing the slight limp with a rapid beating of her heart. She hadn’t known if he’d survived the war intact but he seemed fine apart from the limp. He was one of the lucky ones. But then he’d spoken of being more ill than he’d realised. What had that been about?
James lifted the tray with his right hand, steadying it with his weak one but the contents weren’t equally balanced and as the small plate of biscuits beside the cups, sugar bowl and milk jug began to slide, he made a hasty effort to tilt the tray upwards. The extra weight made his left arm give way completely and the result was disastrous as the whole lot crashed to the floor. Tea and milk mingled with broken biscuits and sugar lumps, along with a few choice words from James. As Abby rushed to help, embarrassment at his inadequacy made his voice a bark as he said, ‘Leave it, leave it. It doesn’t matter.’
He repeated this when Mrs Howard flung open the door. As she stood hesitating on the threshold, saying, ‘The carpet, Mr Benson, the carpet,’ he growled something distinctly rude about the carpet which caused Mrs Howard to turn pink and close the door very quickly, deciding it wasn’t the moment to announce Mr Fairley had arrived.
‘James?’ Abby’s touch on his arm was tentative. There was a second when she thought he was going to brush her away but then he turned, his arms going round her and his mouth taking hers in a kiss which took her breath away. Even in the emotion of the moment she was conscious that only one arm was really pressing her to him and the rush of feeling this caused was painful.
When eventually his grip lessened they were both trembling, and his voice was gruff as he murmured, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. A bull in a china shop, that’s me. Abby, you’re not going to go out of my life again?’
She looked into his blue, blue eyes, the eyes of her love, and said, ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’
‘What I want—’ He stopped, shutting his eyes for a moment before shaking his head, saying, ‘I’ll tell you what I want but not here. Can we go somewhere? Who is that waiting for you in the car?’
‘You saw me?’ said Abby, surprised.
‘I didn’t know it was you then.’ His eyes were roaming over her face, drinking in each feature as though he had to memorise them.
‘It’s my aunt’s youngest boy and Clara.’ With this came a return to reality.
He must have seen something in her face because now he said, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
‘James, I have to get the train back home soon. I only came up for the day for Aunt Audrey’s funeral.’ This was happening too quickly; she felt light-headed, dizzy.
‘Send Clara home,’ he said urgently. ‘Tell them you’ll go back tomorrow.’
‘I can’t. There’s my boys. They’ll be waiting for me.’
He didn’t make it hard for her. ‘Your boys, of course, how silly of me. I wasn’t thinking . . . I’m not used to children. ’ His left hand moved up to stroke the silky skin of her face. ‘Can we just go somewhere for a coffee then? You can tell Clara to meet you at the train station, can’t you?’
Could she? Of course she could. If they were going to have any chance at all they needed to talk now, to put things right so there were no more misunderstandings between them. She had to make it clear how important the boys were in her life, that she had responsibilities, ties. She was no longer the carefree girl he remembered, any more than he was the fresh young soldier who had left her so confidently all those years ago. But he was still her James. The other part of her. Whatever happened, she was sure about that.
‘I’ll go down and tell Clara, shall I,’ she said softly, ‘while you explain to your secretary?’
‘No way.’ He let go of her just long enough to tuck her arm through his. ‘I’m not yet convinced you’re not going to vanish in a puff of smoke or that all this isn’t a dream.’
She knew exactly how he felt because she felt the same.
Chapter Twenty-eight
F
rom the moment that Abby arrived back in Yorkshire, still with a slightly dazed look in her eyes, things at the smallholding began to change. Some changes were barely perceptible. Only Clara really noticed that Abby was always singing as she went about her work these days, and that her sister was subtly but very definitely delegating more tasks to the others. Abby was encouraging both Winnie and Rowena to cultivate a working knowledge of the way the company books were drawn up, despite the two women’s protests that such matters weren’t their forte, and she was no longer the one who always dealt with awkward customers or complicated orders.
Other changes were far more apparent. Every other weekend James would arrive at the smallholding late on Friday night and leave first thing Monday morning. On the weekends he didn’t come down to Yorkshire, Abby and the boys went to stay in a small hotel in Holmeside, close to where James’s flat was situated in a converted house in St George’s Square, overlooking Mowbray Park. After some initial shyness, both boys took to James. When a warm spring and short-sleeved shirts laid bare the savage scars on James’s left arm, John in particular was deeply affected, asking searching questions about the war. Abby noticed a deepening in John’s affection for James from this point on and this was a great relief. Henry had never really known his father but John had been very much Daddy’s boy, and she had been worried he would not accept another man into their small family unit. That her fears were totally unfounded was the icing on the cake.