The Forbidden Innocent (17 page)

Blindly, he reached out his hand towards her and the gesture nearly broke Ashley’s heart. ‘Who
is
it?’ he repeated. ‘God, am I going mad at last? For a minute then I thought—’

She could not help herself—her hand reached out and entwined with the outstretched fingers of his.

‘What did you think?’ she whispered.

‘But that is her voice,’ he said, like a man in a dream as his fingers now locked around hers. ‘And this is her hand in mine. Ashley? Ashley? Is that really you?’

‘Yes.’ She swallowed. ‘Yes, it’s me, Jack.’

‘Not a dream?’

‘No dream, no—although maybe it feels a bit like one.’

‘Let me touch you. Let me touch you properly.’

She had thought that he meant to kiss or to caress her, but Ashley realised that for Jack touch had taken on a whole new dimension. His fingers had become his eyes. As she bent towards him they reached up to her face—their feather-light contact tracing the contours of her features as if he was learning them all over again.

‘So it really is you,’ he said wonderingly. ‘Ashley Jones.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve come back to me?’

‘Yes, I’ve come back to you.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t have bothered,’ came his harsh assertion and Ashley stilled as he let her hand fall—turning his head away and waving her away in a gesture of dismissal. ‘You should have stayed where you were and forgotten all about me.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘For God’s sake, Ashley,’ he grated. ‘Don’t let your tender heart blind you to the truth—or to reality. You’ve seen me—so now go.’

‘And if I don’t want to go?’

‘You have no choice in the matter. I’m telling you to go. You think I deserve someone like you, after what I did to you?’ He shook his head and bit the words out as if they were poison. ‘I’m not the man you need—especially now that I have a disability. And maybe that’s my punishment for having lied to you and misled you
for so long. For having taken your innocence with scant regard for anything except my own pleasure.’ His voice deepened with some kind of emotion which made it sound as if it was close to breaking. ‘But don’t worry, Ashley—nobody will blame you for not wanting me. Not even me. Especially not me. I’m blind—and it’s the perfect let-out clause.’

She could feel the walls pressing in on her—and her heart felt as if it were being squeezed by some ruthless and powerful fist. ‘And what if I told you that I don’t want a “let-out” clause?’ she demanded quietly. ‘If I said that I didn’t care about your blindness? That you are still Jack—my Jack—and you always will be—and that no disability could be greater than the one of not having you in my life any more?’

‘Stop it right now! Stop it,’ he raged. ‘You think I’m in any position to withstand your sweet words of comfort? It’s over, Ashley—and I’ve accepted that. So go. You once told me that you didn’t think you could ever trust me again, and that no relationship could ever be founded on a lack of trust, and you were right.’

‘But I believe in my heart that you would never abuse my trust again.’

‘You’re just saying that to placate me,’ he said, from between gritted teeth. ‘Because I am blind and you pity me.’

‘And barring maybe one occasion, since when did I ever say things to you that I didn’t mean?’

At this he said nothing. Seconds passed—or maybe they were minutes—and Ashley’s breath caught in a
throat which was as dry as bushfire although she could feel the wet pricking of tears in her eyes. Until suddenly he reached for her—his hand moving from her shoulders down to her waist and then to the curve of her hip. And something of the old, masterful Jack was back as he gathered her towards him and pulled her down into his lap.

‘Do you really mean that?’ he demanded.

‘I really do. Every single word. Every syllable.’

Her heart was racing as she pushed a lock of raven hair back from his brow—across which now ran a livid scar, an ugly raised ridge of a thing. She looked into the ebony eyes which once had been so brilliant and gleaming but which now looked back at her, opaque and sightless. And her heart turned over with sorrow and regret—but mainly with love. Pure and deepest love that no scar could ever diminish. ‘Jack,’ she breathed. ‘My sweet, darling Jack.’

‘Kiss me,’ he instructed unsteadily. ‘Just kiss me once, Ashley, and convince me that I’m not dreaming this—and that any moment I’ll awake to nothing but empty arms and a cold memory.’

She lowered her lips to his and as his mouth brushed over hers she cried out at the poignant sweetness of that first contact. ‘Oh, Jack,’ she breathed again. ‘My darling, darling Jack.’

The kiss went on for countless minutes, and for Ashley it said everything that needed to be said. It healed and it consolidated. It comforted and renewed. She wondered if he felt it too—that utter sense of unity,
of two lost souls and hearts who had found each other again.

When the kiss ended, he threaded his fingers in her hair. ‘You’re wearing it loose,’ he observed unevenly.

‘Yes. I do that more often these days.’ And then, because she was acutely aware of how precious these moments were—that they could determine their whole future—she forced herself to confront reality. ‘What happened?’ she whispered. ‘What happened to you?’

‘To blind me? You mean you haven’t heard?’

She shook her head—until she realised that such gestures would no longer do. ‘No,’ she said instead. ‘I knew you’d been injured, but that’s all. And as soon as I heard that—I came.’

His fingers played with the spill of her hair, just as they used to do after he’d made love to her. ‘Where do I begin? With the obvious, I suppose. After you’d gone, my life seemed. I don’t think there’s a single word which could define it. Empty. Incomplete. Aching. I’d never experienced such a feeling before—not even when I’d been in active service. It was as if I’d lost a part of myself. And the worst part of all was knowing that it had been my own fault—that if I’d been truthful with you from the start, then you might still be with me.’ He gave a ragged sigh. ‘Until I told myself that you were so pure and fundamentally innocent that you would never have begun an affair with me if you’d known I was married.’

Again, she smoothed a thick lock of raven hair away from his eyes, thinking that it was longer than he usually
liked to wear it. And then she kissed his scarred brow for good measure and saw his lips curve briefly in response.

‘Did you know that my wife has died?’ he questioned suddenly.

In his arms, Ashley stiffened. ‘No.’

‘So you came back in spite of that?’ he mused.

To be honest, she hadn’t even stopped to consider it—her thoughts had all been about his welfare, not their future. And yet when she’d seen him, she had gone straight into his arms like a homing pigeon—as if Jack
was
her future. But wasn’t that leaping ahead of herself?

‘What happened to her?’ she whispered.

‘The very same morning you left—I had a phone call from the clinic to say that she’d passed away peacefully during the night.’

She remembered the phone ringing as she had slipped silently from the house and her own determination to close the door on her life at Blackwood.

‘I thought of contacting you to tell you—but realised it would make no difference. I knew that I had no right to see you—and I resigned myself to the fact that you were gone from my life for ever. But my heart felt shattered and my sleeping became worse again—although, ironically, the biography I was writing was working well. It became a kind of refuge for me—as work so often can be. I took to going to bed later and later in order to put off the inevitable moment of lying in a bed

which seemed so empty—and wishing that you were still there in my arms.

‘One night while I was reading, I fell asleep in the chair—and a spark from the fire hit the rug. I must have been more exhausted than I’d realised because I slept through the initial smoulder—and by the time I awoke, the fire had taken hold.’

‘Oh, Jack.’

‘That extinguisher we kept in the hall didn’t even make a dent in it. I called the fire brigade and then I ran to one of the outhouses and found a hose. I was standing spraying water at the front façade of the house when a beam came toppling down and hit me in the face.’ There was a pause. ‘And when I awoke, I found myself in hospital with my eyes bandaged and Blackwood no more.’

‘And can you see anything?’

He stared straight ahead and screwed up his dull eyes. ‘I can just about make out the glow of the fire. And the vague outline of that piano over there.’

‘And anything else? Can you see me?’

‘No, my angel—but holding you and hearing you is enough.’

She thought how thin he looked, and how pale—and her fingers crept up to the recalcitrant lock of hair. ‘Your hair needs combing,’ she observed.

‘Am I so repulsive to you, then, Ashley?’

She pretended to consider it, just as she would have done before. ‘You know you can’t start blaming your blindness for
everything,
Jack! ‘

At this, he laughed and then shook his head in wonder. ‘Witch!’ he murmured as he bent his head to her ear. ‘You know, I never thought I’d laugh or smile again—and yet just ten minutes in your company and I’m doing both.’

‘Ah, but I can’t promise that will be representative of our life together. I may soon drive you mad.’

There was a pause. ‘I’m pretending I didn’t hear that.’

‘Well, I’d rather you didn’t, otherwise I could accuse you of ignoring me—which would be a bit much since I’ve travelled all this way to see you.’

‘You mean you want a life together?’

‘Of course I want a life together—I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I can’t bear the thought of anything else. Why else do you think I’m sitting on your lap and kissing you whenever I get the opportunity?’ She placed her lips over his and just breathed him in.

‘Now I know why they say love is blind,’ he said mockingly.

Ashley bit back a smile. How irreverent he was! And she realised then that nothing could ever lessen the vibrant life-force which was Jack Marchant. She bent to kiss the tip of his nose and to feel the warmth of his skin against hers. ‘I’m going to make us both some tea—and after that we’re going for a walk. I’m going to describe all the spring flowers to you and tell you about the way the sun is shining on the grass and then we can stop, and listen to the birdsong. When did you last go outside, Jack?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t remember. And as pressing and as entertaining as both those proposals are—there’s something which will always take priority, Ashley.’

It was one of those questions which didn’t really need asking—but Ashley couldn’t resist.

‘And what’s that?’

He smiled again, his fingertip tracing the upward curve of her lips. ‘I’d quite forgotten how well you had learned to flirt. Come closer, my sweet minx—and I’ll show you.’

She realised that his sightless eyes could still weep, for she felt the wetness which mingled on their cheeks. But as he bent his head and began to kiss her, Ashley’s eyes fluttered to a close to block out everything but the sensation.

And in that moment she was as blind as he was.

S
HE
married him on a soft summer’s day in the little village church, near Blackwood. Their only witnesses were Christine and Julia—one a widow and the other a spinster. Two middle-aged women whose own dreams of love had been cut short or never realised—but who looked with deep affection on the couple who made their vows so tremulously in that small church. Ashley wore a simple gown of white cotton and carried a bunch of cream roses she had picked herself from one of the now-wild bushes at Blackwood.

Dismissing the two carers with a generous pay-off, they made their home in Ivy House while Blackwood was being rebuilt—because Jack had discovered he couldn’t bear to see the house which had been home to generations of his family simply crumble into the earth. Ashley was charged with overseeing much of the reconstruction—and she determined to use as many local craftspeople as possible to recreate the magnificent manor house which she had grown to love. There would be gleaming floors and sweeping staircases and
stained glass just as before—but there would be modern touches, too. More en-suite bathrooms, for a start—and the opportunity to make the huge building more energy-efficient.

To Ashley’s delight, Jack continued to write the biography he’d been working on before the fire—he dictated it into a machine and she typed it up for him once she’d completed his novel. But the novel was never published—nor even read by anyone else, much to the chagrin and persistent pleas of Jack’s agent. Ashley was no expert, but even she suspected that the explosive and powerful content of the book was enough to ensure a massive global success—and a film was just crying out to be made. She said as much to her husband one evening, when she was lying on the sofa with her head in his lap where she’d just been reading aloud to him.

‘I know,’ he murmured as he kissed the top of her head. ‘But I don’t want that kind of success, Ashley. It disrupts. It takes over—devouring what it creates. I have the estates and the farms to provide us with income. In fact, I have everything I want here—with you. Why should I go seeking more?’

She knew exactly what he meant—she’d read enough celebrity magazines to see how fame could corrupt. She could just imagine the field day the publicists would have:
Blind hero writes powerful anti-war polemic!
Their lives would be dissected. He would be like a butterfly pinned to a piece of cardboard—trapped and watched over—this fiercely proud husband of hers.

For a man as independent as Jack, she had thought
that occasionally he would rail and protest against his blindness—but he did not. He seemed content to rely on Ashley for support and guidance—maybe because that support and guidance was reciprocal. For Ashley felt she took from him as much as she gave. She was his eyes, yet he was her heart—and never had the marriage vows seemed to be more applicable than in their case.
One flesh and one blood.

Until one bright clear morning he startled her by asking whether she was wearing a pale-blue dress.