Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Although Gwen was supposed to send notice that the batch of tincture was ready for collection, she had decided to take it to the chop house herself.
Partly, this was so she could avoid Archibald meeting whoever arrived as messenger, and partly to avoid Archibald himself after yet another argument.
This morning, it had been because the tea was too stewed for his liking.
It tasted just the same to Gwen and she was sure this was just his frustration at his poor eyes spilling out into his manner.
She picked up her hem gingerly as she wove her way through the people gathered on the pavements to chat or beg or sell flowers.
It was a bright Tuesday afternoon, and for once it wasn’t raining, but that only meant the debris and silt did not get washed away.
This part of the city was considerably more down at heel, with roads and pavements that were clearly uncared-for.
Coming from a small town, where there had been very little change from street to street, Gwen always marvelled a little at what a difference a couple of miles across London could make to the atmosphere in a neighbourhood.
Because she was musing so deeply, she didn’t notice the pothole until her foot caught in it and she lost her balance, sliding sideways. She gave a cry of alarm as she flung her arms up in a futile attempt to steady herself, and she crashed down, catching one knee on a low wall.
The pain was intense and she gasped, but before the other leg gave way, a pair of hands caught her by one arm and her waist and held her from behind, knocking her bonnet forward over her face in the process.
A stranger taking hold of her in such a manner was more alarming than the initial fall and she cried out again.
‘Take your hands off me!’
She had the presence of mind to clutch her basket tightly, fearing it was about to be stolen.
The bottles were safely wrapped in a tea towel and hidden beneath a loaf of bread, a string of sausages and four apples.
If she lost the entire batch of tincture, she wouldn’t know how to explain it to Augusta.
Instead the arms gave support and eased her upright.
‘I beg your pardon. I shouldn’t really have done that, but I could see you were about to injure yourself. You didn’t injure yourself, did you?’
The accent more than anything else that had happened in the last few minutes was the biggest surprise to Gwen. It had an unmistakably Welsh lilt. It was very similar to how her own had sounded before the vowels of London had subsumed it, but in a pleasant baritone with melodic hints at the edges.
‘You’re Welsh!’ she murmured in surprise.
‘I am.’ The voice was amused. ‘So are you, I hear, though not for a long time, I think.’
Gwen tested the weight on her leg and found she could stand upright without much discomfort and turned around to face her helper.
‘I’m sorry for shouting at you. Thank you for catching me. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’
She pushed her bonnet back into place and looked up. She met a pair of blue-grey eyes, creased at the edges, and a salt-and-pepper set of whiskers. Her hands flew to her mouth, which fell open with astonishment.
‘Daniel Parry?’ she gasped. ‘Danny! It really is you!’
The face she had known since childhood had aged, reminding Gwen of his father who had been the village schoolmaster.
The hair around Daniel’s temples had grown greyer and the whiskers more splendid than in his youth but she would have recognised the clear, intelligent eyes anywhere.
Currently, they were suspicious, then they widened with surprise and recognition.
‘Gwennie Lewis? It can’t be!’
It had been a long time since anyone had used the diminutive or her maiden name and Gwen’s throat tightened. Danny’s eyes darted to the side and he swallowed, then he looked back at her with a smile.
‘Of all the people I expected to meet, you’d be the last. Do you live in London or are you visiting?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded then realised he’d asked a question that had two answers. ‘I live here.’
He stared around him and wrinkled his nose.
‘Not here, exactly,’ she amended. ‘This isn’t the part of the city I live in, but I do live in London.’
Speaking was not coming easily. Her chest felt tight and her heartbeat was rapid.
She’d forgotten the effect he had on her, back when she was of the age when boys might become more than playmates.
She tried to suppress her indignation that he would think she belonged in this part of the city, but then why would he know otherwise?
She’d left the village to marry and never returned, only sending letters home to her mother, who would not have shared them with Danny’s mother.
‘I haven’t been home for many years,’ she said quietly.
His eyes had been cool as she babbled, but at that, the smile in them deepened.
‘But you still call it home?’
‘Yes, I suppose I do,’ she said thoughtfully. A pang of longing for the jagged hills and clear skies caught her by surprise and she put her hands to her belly as if that could contain it. ‘Do you still live there?’ she asked.
‘I’ve moved to Swansea. I’m a solicitor now.’
‘That’s wonderful!’ Gwen beamed at him. Danny had been ambitious and clever as a young man, though when Gwen had last seen him, he had been considering teaching like his father.
‘Now, let me look at you. Are you hurt? Do you think you can walk?’ Daniel asked. ‘Are you very far from home?’
‘No. That is, yes, I can walk, but no, this isn’t particularly close to home.
I was running an errand.’ She clutched her basket a little tighter to herself.
How could she possibly explain what she was doing here?
She didn’t have to, of course – it was none of his business, after all, and he’d be gone in a minute.
He had other ideas about that, it seemed, because he held his arm out and raised his brows expectantly.
‘In that case may I escort you where you need to go? This isn’t the nicest area, I think, and we’ve already established that the streets are hazardous. You shouldn’t be walking around somewhere like this alone, Gwen.’
How easily her name slipped from his lips.
A mix of astonishment and pleasure ran through her, causing a frisson.
It had been a long time since she had felt a spark of interest in a man, but there was no doubt about it now.
She knew the feeling of attraction as instinctively as she could tell when the kettle was about to come to the boil by the sound it made.
That feeling of a lid rattling replicated itself in her belly.
He had called her ‘Lewis’, suggesting that he didn’t know she was married. She should correct him, but her instinct was not to put him straight. Something in her had woken the moment their eyes met, even though five minutes before she would have vowed that such things were not possible.
She did her best to send the beast back to sleep.
‘Thank you, but no. I still have my errands to run, then I can take the horse tram back to Islington.’
‘Islington? Where you live?’
‘Close,’ she said, not seeing the need to explain that to get to Finsbury Park was added expense.
‘Well, perhaps we can meet again?’ Danny said, lowering his hand. He stared around. ‘This area is of interest to me – and I am staying in London for a fortnight longer, at least.’
‘Perhaps,’ Gwen agreed.
No, her conscience shrieked. Yes, her heart demanded.
He smiled and lifted his hat (revealing that the hair at his temple did not extend to covering his whole scalp).
‘Well, goodbye, then, for now. Take good care as you walk.’
‘I will and thank you again,’ Gwen said.
Neither of them moved or took their eyes from the other. It was completely improper, but Gwen didn’t care. Her heart filled with long-dismissed memories that she wanted to share, to see if Danny remembered any of them.
A delivery boy approached them, dragging a cart.
‘Mind yerselves!’ he shouted cheerfully, as he hauled his empty cart towards the greengrocers they were standing in front of.
From his speed, it was obvious that he wasn’t going to stop advancing, and Danny moved backwards before the boy and cart trampled his feet.
The interruption broke the spell, and Gwen turned and walked away.
She forced herself not to look back, though it was hard.
Would he be watching her, or would he have turned away immediately?
At the corner of the road, she looked back along the street, which was perfectly in order since she was crossing and needed to check that nothing was coming.
Danny wasn’t where he had been standing when she left him, but had walked further in the opposite direction.
However, he was still looking back at her, and for a brief moment, their eyes met once more and lingered.
Another hot tickle ran around Gwen’s neck and she was aware that her body was responding to him in a way it shouldn’t.
It was what she had felt in the first days of courtship with Archibald, and it was deeply unsettling to think that at her age, and as a married woman, she might be falling prey to such ridiculous emotions.
She told herself it was only the novelty of speaking to a good-looking man who had given her the time of day.
Danny had always been an attractive man, and time had done nothing to lessen that.
She wished fervently she could say the same about herself, but was under no illusion that a beau from the time before she was a wife and mother would not see her as changed.
Any pleasure he had got out of the encounter was from the diversion of seeing an old friend in unexpected circumstances.
She briskly crossed the road and made her way into the chop house, using the front door. Wolf was sitting at a table beside the bar, playing cards with another man who was almost as large and forbidding as he was. He nodded her through without a second glance.