Snowbound Wedding Wishes. Louise Allen

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ that one, please. Just turn down the wick on the lantern, but leave it alight.’

      ‘You are expecting someone?’ He did as she asked and turned back, steadying his breathing when he found himself face to face with her. ‘The rain has almost stopped.’

      ‘Expecting? No.’ Emilia Weston stood untying the strings of her apron, not a brisk mother or a damp, smiling temptress any longer, simply a tired young woman. All the more reason not to reach out and pull her into an embrace that would be anything but comforting, he told himself. ‘But then I was not expecting you either, and I assume it was the light from that window that brought you here. There may be other travellers out in this. I have made tea—would you like some?’

      She turned before he could answer and went back into the other room. Hugo followed and took the battered old armchair opposite hers, flanking the wide range. ‘Thank you, I would appreciate that. Are stray travellers commonplace here, then?’ He guessed the tea was her night-time indulgence, an expensive treat. He would send some from the nearest town as a present.

      She passed him a cup and leaned back with a sigh, her whole body relaxing with cat-like sensuality. ‘Ah. Peace at last. No, you are the first lost soul. But I would always leave a light in the window when Giles went out in the evening and I have never got out of the habit, I suppose.’

      ‘Giles was your husband, Mrs Weston?’

      ‘Call me Emilia, won’t you? No one calls me by my proper name any more. Yes, Giles was my husband. He died three years ago.’ She sipped her tea and stretched out her toes to the blaze.

      Just how old is she? Hugo wondered.

      ‘Giles worked at night. He was a gambler, a card player.’ His expression must have betrayed his thoughts, for she added hastily, ‘Not a sharp, you understand. He never cheated, he was just a very, very good gambler. We eloped, I’m afraid. I was supposed to marry his elder brother—not that we were in love or anything, just one of those family things. You know?’

      Hugo nodded. He knew how these things worked, although there was no one to arrange a suitable marriage for him, that was down to his own efforts. And he had better be getting on with it.

      ‘But Giles and I fell in love,’ Emilia said, gazing into the fire. ‘And Mama and Papa would not approve because he was the younger son and wild and I was only just eighteen. So we ran away. We were very young and very thoughtless. It did not occur to me how much shame I was bringing on my family.’

      Her voice wavered and she glanced up, her face blurred by the rising, fragrant steam. ‘I am talking too much and shocking you, Major. I am sorry, but you will be on your way tomorrow and we will never meet again and it is so…soothing to talk to someone like this. But I will stop embarrassing you.’

      ‘No. You aren’t embarrassing me.’ Normally he would have recoiled from confidences like this, but he was intrigued and to talk to a woman in this way was a novelty. Besides, it was all about her feelings and he doubted she would expect him to reciprocate.

      ‘We are like ships that pass in the night. Or, no, that is too well worn a cliché. Perhaps we are two birds sheltering from the storm in a bush and we will fly away on our own courses in the morning. What happened, Emilia? And my name is Hugo.’

      ‘I remember.’ It was not as though she would forget anything about this dark, serious man who had arrived so dramatically and who seemed so very alien. He was closed, as though a door was shut firmly on his emotions, and what she saw on the surface, although undoubtedly the real man, was no more an indication of what was happening under the surface than a view of a shuttered house revealed the life of its inhabitants. She liked his bird analogy, even though she was a sparrow and he was, she guessed, an eagle.

      It was a novelty, that reserve of his. Her neighbours were unsophisticated people whose lives were unprivileged and whose reactions mirrored that. They worked hard, played hard when they had the opportunity and both loved and hated without concealment. Emilia liked that honesty, responded to it. She and Giles had lived in the open, too, enjoying every happy moment, storing up joy against the black times, pushing away the memories of the families they had left behind.

      Perhaps, she thought as she watched those big, capable hands enveloping the china cup, her reserves of joy were running low and needed replenishing, although why that would draw her towards someone full of shadows and detachment, she did not understand.

      He was aware of her as a woman, she could sense it. But the boys liked him and she trusted their instincts, as she trusted her own. Whatever Hugo Travers was concealing behind that unsmiling face, it was not villainy.

      ‘What happened?’ She made herself go back in time to that dreadful night. ‘We were in Aylesbury, west of here. Giles was deep in a game and winning, so they told me, although the money miraculously vanished afterwards. His opponent accused him of cheating, drew a knife. The man said it was in self-defence, but of course, all the witnesses at the inquest were his friends and neighbours.’

      The cold swept through her as it had when she had heard the shouting in the inn parlour below, had left the children to run downstairs. No, she would not think about what she had found, only of Giles alive and laughing.

      ‘I had little money and two three-year-old boys to feed,’ Emilia went on briskly. ‘I went into the market to look for work and helped an elderly man who tripped and fell on the cobbles. He had broken his wrist, so I drove his cart home for him, all the way here with the children tucked into the malt sacks behind. He was the brewer and this was his alehouse. I worked for him for two years and then, when he died, he left it to me, bless him.’

      ‘So you are now the alewife. A hard life.’

      That worried him, she could tell. ‘It is not restful, that is certain. But would you comment on it if I was not, as you suspect, gentry-born?’ she wondered out loud.

      She judged from the frown that he did not like the implication that it was snobbery that made him feel that way.

      ‘It would be hard for any woman, alone and with children to rear, and I suspect that things will become harder in the countryside now the war is over. The price of grain will fall, men will be flooding back from the army with no occupation to go to. Victory always has a cost.’

      Emilia shrugged away the cold worry that breathed spitefully down her neck, as she did whenever it crept past her defences. ‘All one can do is work and hope and plan.’

      ‘What do you plan for those boys? the church?’

      She picked up his meaning at once and laughed. ‘The Latin? I do not think so, somehow, do you? The law, I hope. I teach them at home and then they go to the vicar in Great Gatherborne for Latin and Greek twice a week. He likes them and finds them intelligent to instruct, so he takes them in return for his household’s ale.’

      ‘And one day they will be leading lawyers and maintain their mama in the manner befitting her?’

      He grinned; it was the first time she had seen a smile crack that lean face and Emilia blinked at the impact. Enough of her problems—she had allowed this to become too personal and, along with the fear of revealing too much and making him uncomfortable, speaking of the past was like rubbing salt into half-healed wounds.

      ‘And have you far to go tomorrow?’ she asked. ‘Your family will be worrying that you have been delayed.’

      ‘If the roads are clear, I should СКАЧАТЬ