Mistletoe Marriage. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ is. She’s useless. I’m never going have a starring role on One Man and His Dog with Bess.’ Bram pretended to complain. ‘Sometimes I think it would be easier to run around after the sheep myself and let Bess have the whistle!’

      Sophie laughed. ‘At least she tries. And she adores you.’

      ‘I wish she’d adore me by doing what I told her,’ sighed Bram.

      ‘I’m afraid that’s not how adoring works,’ said Sophie sadly, and he glanced at her, compassion in his blue eyes.

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘I know.’

      Sophie kept swirling the hot water around in the teapot.

      ‘Does it ever get any better, Bram?’ she asked.

      He didn’t pretend not to understand her. ‘Yes, it does,’ he said. ‘Eventually.’

      ‘It doesn’t seem to have got better with you,’ she pointed out. ‘How long is it since you were engaged to Melissa?’

      ‘More than ten years,’ he admitted.

      ‘And you’re still not totally over her, are you?’

      Bram didn’t answer immediately. He warmed his hands by the wood-burning stove and thought about Melissa, with her hair like spun gold and her violet eyes and that smile that made the sun come out.

      ‘I am over her,’ he said, although he didn’t sound that convincing even to himself. ‘I don’t hurt the way I used to. It’s true that I think about her sometimes, though. I think about what it would have been like if she hadn’t broken our engagement, but it’s hard to imagine now. Would Melissa have been a good farmer’s wife?’

      Probably not, Sophie thought. In spite of growing up on a farm, Melissa had never been a great one for getting her hands dirty. She had never needed to. She’d always seemed so helpless and fragile that there had always been someone to do the dirty jobs for her.

      Sophie had long ago accepted that she would have to get on and do things that Melissa would never have to contemplate, but she didn’t feel resentful about it. She loved her sister, and was proud of her beauty. When they were younger she had used to roll her eyes and call Melissa the sister from hell, but she hadn’t really minded.

      Until Nick.

      ‘I do still love Melissa,’ said Bram. ‘Part of me always will. But I don’t feel raw, the way you do at the moment, Sophie. I know it’s a terrible cliché, but time really does heal.’

      The pot was as warm as it was ever going to be. Sophie threw the water away, dropped in a couple of teabags and poured in boiling water from the kettle.

      ‘Is Melissa the reason you’ve never married?’ she asked, setting the pot on the table.

      Bram pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Partly,’ he conceded. ‘But it’s not as if I’m still waiting for her or anything. I’m ready to find someone else.’

      ‘I thought Rachel was good for you,’ volunteered Sophie. ‘I really liked her.’

      If anyone could have helped him get over Melissa, Sophie would have thought it would be Rachel. She was a solicitor in Helmsley, warm and funny and intelligent and stylish. And practical. Bram needed someone practical.

      ‘I liked her too,’ said Bram. ‘She was great. I thought we might be able to make a go of it, but it turned out that we wanted very different things. Rachel wasn’t cut out to be a farmer’s wife. She told me quite frankly that she didn’t think she could stick the isolation, and the moors frightened her in the dark. She wanted to move to York, where she could go out in the evenings, meet friends for a drink, watch a film…and I couldn’t stick living in the city.’

      He shrugged. ‘So we decided to call it a day.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ said Sophie, wondering if Rachel might not have realised that a big part of Bram’s heart would always be Melissa’s. Even if she had never met Nick, she didn’t think that she would have wanted to marry someone who was still in love with another woman.

      From sheer force of habit she went over to the dresser, where Molly had always kept a battered tin commemorating the Queen’s wedding. Inside there would be a mouth-watering selection of homemade biscuits—things like flapjacks or rock cakes or coconut slices. But when Sophie pulled off the lid it was empty.

      Of course it was. Stupid, she chided herself. When would Bram have had time to do any baking?

      Nothing could have brought home more clearly that Molly was gone. Sophie bit her lip and replaced the lid carefully.

      ‘I miss your mum,’ she said.

      ‘I know. I miss her too.’ Bram got up and found a packet of biscuits in the larder. ‘We’d better put them on her special plate,’ he said, taking it down from the dresser. ‘She wouldn’t like the way standards have slipped around here!’

      Sophie had made Molly the plate for Christmas, the first year that she had discovered the pleasure of clay between her hands. She had fired it and then painted it herself with some rather wobbly sheep. Compared to her later work the plate was laughably crude, but Molly had been delighted, and had insisted on using it every time they had tea.

      Bram shook the biscuits onto the plate and put it on the table. Then he sat down again opposite Sophie and watched her pour tea into two mugs.

      ‘It was funny coming back to the house tonight,’ he said. ‘The lights were on, and I could hear the kettle whistling…it was almost as if Mum was still here. This is when I miss her most, when I come in at night to an empty house. She was always here…cooking, listening to the radio, drinking tea…It’s as if she’s just popped out to feed the chickens or get something from larder. I keep thinking that she’ll walk back in any minute.’

      Sophie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, Bram, I’m so sorry. I go on and on about my own problems, but losing Molly was much, much worse than anything I’ve had to deal with. How are you coping?’

      ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ said Bram easily, as she had known that he would. ‘It’s only now that I understand how much Mum did for me, though. When she was around I didn’t really have to think about cooking or shopping or washing. I guess I was spoilt.’

      ‘Are you eating properly?’ Sophie asked, knowing that Molly would have wanted her to check.

      He nodded. ‘I can’t manage anything very posh, and I’m always forgetting to go to the shops, but I won’t starve. It’s not that I can’t look after myself, but there seem to be so many household chores I never knew about before, and it all takes so much time when I get in at night.’

      ‘Welcome to the world of women,’ said Sophie dryly, taking a biscuit and pushing the plate towards him.

      ‘Sorry.’ Bram grimaced an apology. ‘That sounded as if I was looking for a replacement servant, didn’t it? It’s not that,’ he said. ‘I just wish I had known how hard Mum worked when she was alive. I wish I hadn’t taken it all for granted, and that I could have told her how much I appreciated everything that she did for me.’

      Sophie’s heart ached for him. ‘Molly loved you,’ СКАЧАТЬ