Chapter 31
31
The country experienced an Indian summer that September and Olivia allowed herself to delight in the good weather, abundance of food and opportunities to reconnect with nature. Benji helped her to sort the puncture in her front wheel and she persuaded him to undertake one last trip to the coast together before he returned to boarding school. He was a young man of sixteen now and shy with girls, even her, but reluctantly agreed.
It proved to be a delightful expedition. They took a picnic, bathed in the sea, and even stopped at the shrieking pits on the way home to listen for the fabled ghost. He was no longer afraid of it and instead almost eager to encounter the axe-wielding maniac – but, of course, no ghost was to be found, even in the twilight of a September evening, and they only heard the birds sharing the exploits of their day from the lofty treetops.
As they whizzed through the ford on their bicycles, feet held aloft to save them from being splashed, she realised that it was now Seth she thought of in her quiet moments, and not Howard. It was the excitement of relaying her exploits through the wall that occurred to her first, not the sadness she so often associated with the bridge. When she wrote of a dashing hero in her stories, she pictured Seth; when people talked to her of a future, she pictured Seth; and when she closed her eyes at night and thought about the coupling that had taken place amongst the dying bluebells, occasionally and unintentionally, she pictured Seth.
The guilt that came with this she boxed up and put away in a part of her brain she refused to access, but it sat there gathering dust, nonetheless.
The Fairchilds, in their capacity as the land owners, were always part of the harvest celebrations and, that year, the night of the supper was unseasonably hot. Olivia had drunk some ale but not felt much like dancing, even though she’d stayed until the end. Back in the tower, she wondered if Seth had been a part of the same estate gathering in his world. His stumbling steps and loud hiccoughs through the wall sometime later made her suspect that he had. She told him about her evening and he reciprocated, giving an impromptu and hearty rendition of the song, ‘John Barleycorn’.
‘I made cider from the apples my grandfather planted,’ he said, explaining his inebriated state. There had been no Seth and no cider at the harvest supper in her world. ‘And I danced my feet off,’ he continued, ‘even though the one face I wanted to see in the barn wasn’t there…’
Was he saying what she thought he was?
Silence.
‘You do know, don’t you, Olivia, that the only girl I wanted in my arms was you?’
She froze at his unexpected words. What could she possibly reply to that?
‘I shouldn’t have said nothing. I’m sorry. It’s the drink. And now you’ve gone quiet so I’ve probably embarrassed you.’
Every square inch of Olivia’s skin felt on fire and she found herself tracing her fingers across her body as he talked, the tiny beads of sweat enabling them to glide across her skin as though it were made of silk.
Another hiccough.
‘It’s just… it’s just I hadn’t realised until the other day how beautiful you’d become… or maybe, it’s not even that… how hypnotising you are as a person. There’s something about you that completely zings – I can’t describe it any better. Talking to you through the wall all these months, even before I saw your face, I wanted to spend time with you and now I can’t stop thinking about you when we’re apart,’ he blundered on.
She wasn’t classically beautiful but she was spirited and had what her mother had always described as an expressive face. But she also knew that the men at the hospital had always been drawn to her. She certainly had a ‘something’ and it appeared Seth found that too.
All this talk of attraction and being held in his arms made her tummy flip. She dragged her fingertips across her lips and a shiver ran through the length of her body, despite the heat, as she shuffled closer to the wall. How could he make her feel this way when she couldn’t see him or touch him? It was extraordinary. Or perhaps it was just the ale.
‘The last time I saw Tanner, he was about nineteen,’ she said. ‘But I’m afraid I’ve got no closer to finding out if he survived the war.’
‘I’m not sure I want you rootling around in the other Tanner’s life.’
‘You don’t want to know if you’re alive?’ She didn’t understand.
‘Imagine if you find me still working at this other house – a strapping young man of twenty-six, handsome, tanned and a mighty interesting and amusing chap to boot, then he’ll be the one you’ll talk to, befriend, look at… be able to touch…’ He was half-joking but he was also half in earnest. She could tell by his tone. Her stomach clenched. ‘Because I’m all those things, you know, and quite a catch about these parts. Women throwing themselves at me when I go down to the village, with the vicar’s daughter paying me particular attention.’
Now it was her turn to be jealous. Even if he was teasing her, she knew that a young, healthy war veteran would be as rare as hen’s teeth. Look at the baker. He may be the wrong side of thirty, but every young girl for miles around had taken a sudden interest in collecting the weekly groceries from the village, particularly the bread, since he’d returned from service.
‘I think of you all the time too,’ she finally admitted.
The silence that followed could not have been more pregnant if it was a springing heifer about to calf.
She pressed her forehead to the rough bricks and spread her fingers out, over the wall, willing it to dissolve, like a morning mist burnt away by the sun, but it was going nowhere.
A loud thump made her jump.
‘What was that?’ she asked.
‘Just frustration. Sorry, but I can’t bear that you are standing not a foot from me, and even though I can picture your face, I can’t touch you, or even, if I was brave enough to risk dismissal, kiss you.’
She jolted at that.
‘It’s nonsense though, isn’t it?’ he said, moving on from his brave words quickly. ‘Because you wouldn’t be alone in the tower with me under any other circumstances, and you certainly wouldn’t let me kiss you, even if we were.’
Her heart was bouncing around like a wildcat, and she felt clammy and uncomfortable. The almost suffocating heat of the night was cloying and she felt shaky and sick all at once, but suspected there was another, less meteorological-related reason for that.
‘Why would you want to kiss me?’ she whispered.
‘You know why. The young girl I befriended all those years ago has grown into a woman over the years I’ve been away. She was always a comfort to me but now she’s become something more. Seeing Miss Davenport recently only made me realise how much I care about you. And I can only be this bold because you can’t reach out and slap me.’ She heard him groan in frustration, followed by his heavy footsteps as he paced, and then the squeak of the bedsprings as he threw himself back onto the bed.
‘Eurgh, this heat and far too much drink makes it hard for a man to think properly. Words are slipping from my mouth like butter melting in the sun, and I can’t do a damn thing to stop them. My apologies.’
Olivia sat back on her knees, still facing the wall, and determined to be equally bold. Besides, she’d spent a lifetime negotiating with marauding armies, wrestling with fire-breathing dragons, and seducing foreign princes. Courage she had in spades.
‘What are you wearing?’ she asked.
‘You can’t ask me that.’
He sounded indignant but as she looked down at her glistening arms, tiny droplets of sweat sitting like diamond shards on her pale-pink skin, she couldn’t help but wonder what Seth’s view was in that moment.
Shafts of bone-white light cut across the room and one lay across her bed, as though the moon had chosen her in that moment. Was he similarly illuminated? He must surely be shirtless in this heat, and she pictured the light falling over his chest as he stretched out. She felt exactly the same as he did – hearing him was no longer enough. She needed to see him, touch him, smell him… but it was an impossible wish.
Was it worse or better that she had been with a man? She knew what it was to have someone trace his lips across her face and push them down on her mouth, to have his hand slide up her body and press into the small of her back to guide her closer. To be as one. She should be married by now, but the war had taken that from her, and the man she now cared for – and she did care deeply for Seth – was out of her reach yet, ironically, barely a yard from where she was kneeling.
‘I mean,’ she blustered, ‘it’s a hot night and I’m struggling in a nightdress that is determined to smother me. The window is open but the air outside is so still, it’s made little difference.’
There was a longer than expected pause. She knew he occasionally went quiet if he didn’t like where the conversation was going, so inched nearer to the wall.
‘Take it off, then,’ he finally said. ‘No one can see you.’
She swallowed. ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she pointed out. ‘Are you wrapped in an equally sticky nightshirt in this unsufferable heat?’
Another pause.
‘I’m in my cotton underpants.’
She slid back and sat on her feet, closing her eyes, trying to recall the memory of his naked torso from all those years ago. Was his skin also covered in a million pinprick beads of sweat? Had military service enhanced those already well-defined muscles? Or was he thinner now from the poor nutrition and harsh conditions of war? At least he was safely back at Merriford Manor where he had access to good food, fresh fruit and a comfortable bed.
A further rush of bravery swirled inside her. Had he suggested she remove her nightgown as a joke or a challenge? She swung her legs to the floor, pulling the damp cotton over her and shook her head so that her loose, wavy hair fell to her shoulders.
‘Well, it’s off but it’s not made that much difference, to be honest. The air is so still and humid that I don’t feel any cooler.’
There was a squeak of bedspring.
‘You removed your nightgown?’ he said, surprise evident in his voice.
‘It was your idea.’
‘I didn’t think you’d actually do it. If only all the young ladies that I came across disrobed so easily.’
Those dratted women again – the ones who could see his face and make eyes at him. She swallowed, every nerve ending rippling across her body like the meadow grasses being toyed by a gentle breeze.
‘But we’re good friends, Seth. We’ve known each other for years and shared our darkest secrets and deepest fears. I’d do anything you asked me to do…’
The silence that followed was unsettling. She leaned closer to hear what was happening the other side of the wall. Damn those bricks – they muffled the quieter sounds that might have given her some indication of what was going on. What was he thinking? Was he imagining her without her nightdress? And if so, was that having a similar effect on his body as the thought of him naked was having on hers?
‘You’re right.’ His quiet voice finally mumbled from the other side. ‘Taking off your clothes doesn’t make much difference, does it?’
The implication of his words made her heart thud alarmingly. Two people separated by the thickness of a house brick and an entire universe, baring their flesh, together and yet they could not be further apart if he was on the moon. What were they doing? This was madness.
She kneeled on the bed and faced the wall. Every inch of her clammy skin felt alive and, even though he couldn’t see her, her body reacted as if his gaze was travelling all over her exposed flesh. She closed her eyes and reached out her hand to trace the tips of her fingers along the indents of mortar – a surprisingly erotic sensation.
‘Are you still there?’ His voice was hoarse and anxious.
‘I’m here, kneeling on the bed, facing you, with my hands on the wall, wishing there was nothing between us but an empty space.’ It came out as a shaky whisper.
‘And I’m barely a foot away from you, wishing the same.’ She could tell from his voice he was nervous. ‘Do you think you’d slap an impertinent undergardener if he kissed you?’
‘Would you think less of a forward young woman who knelt naked on a bed before you, wishing more than anything that you could kiss her?’
She heard the frustrated groan come from his room.
‘I can’t touch you, but you can touch you.’ His voice was unsure but she knew exactly what he was suggesting. It was something she did from time to time, especially since her sexual awakening, on those lonely nights when she missed Howard and found herself thinking back to how he’d made her feel in the boathouse. But, more recently, when she’d thought of Seth.
‘And you can touch you ,’ she said.
‘If my hands were yours right now, where would you want me to put them?’ But she was ahead of him and was already tracing a line around her breasts with her soft fingertips, and then sliding her hand down her side, over her hip and round to her inner thigh.
Not afraid to say the words out loud, mainly because he couldn’t see her hot cheeks or quivering body, she told him what she’d done and he immediately responded with details of what his hands were doing. Every caress, every intimate exploration, they described to one another. But their words quickly dried up, their breaths became more jagged, their movements more feverish, as everything became too much and all that pent-up longing was released on both sides of the wall. Seth cried out her name and it was followed by the noise that Howard had always made as he’d rolled away from her. She lay breathless, hotter than ever, and the occasional uncontrollable judder rippling through her body, like the aftershocks of an earthquake, as she let her jelly limbs fall to her sides.
After a minute or two, when she finally had control of her body again, she turned back to the wall.
‘I know it makes no sense, and I’m not sure I can do anything about it, but I love you, Seth,’ she said.
‘That, Olivia, was a given,’ he replied. ‘I may be just a gardener but I’m still a gentleman and I would not have been intimate with a lady if we were not in love.’