CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Driving over to the café, I was rehearsing how I’d tell Dan and Leonard about my exciting discovery.
It still didn’t prove that Jane was Lovell’s mysterious lover . . . that she actually did have a great love in her life, despite the general opinion to the contrary.
But come on . . . wasn’t it just way too much of a coincidence to be just a coincidence?
The note scribbled by Lovell had contained details of the jobs he’d done that day.
But crucially – and this fact was making my head spin so crazily, I felt quite dizzy – the final job on the list was crossed out!
‘Mend door’, Lovell had written.
But then for some reason, he had crossed it off his list!
Maybe Jane’s mother, Mrs Austen, had spoken to Lovell about the repairs she wanted done, and he’d written them down.
But then what if when it came to ‘mending the door’, that maybe had an annoying squeak, Jane herself had refused to allow him to mend it!
Jane would already know of Lovell through her friendship with Charlotte, but could this have been the first time they were alone together?
The first time they talked? Perhaps they’d laughed about Jane’s preference for a squeaky door, and he’d asked her about her stories?
Had their conversation been intriguing enough for Jane to think about Lovell with a smile after he left?
I doubted that it would have been Lovell who ‘made the first move’, as it were. The class barriers of the time would surely have made that impossible. She was a gentleman’s daughter and Lovell was a lowly agricultural worker and odd-job man.
Did Jane herself engineer another meeting? Perhaps calling on Charlotte on a Sunday afternoon after church, knowing that Lovell was likely to be at home?
And what about Charlotte’s part in all of this?
Had she sensed a spark of attraction between her clever friend and her kind, unassuming brother?
If she had, it would surely have worried her – because of the obvious class differences, but also because of the age gap between them.
An older, educated woman consorting with a young farmworker?
What a scandal it would have been if it had been discovered!
As I drew into Sunnybrook and indicated to turn off the high street, I looked across the village green and my heart sank to see Dan emerging from the café with Leonard. They were already parting ways and walking to their cars.
I knew I had to catch Dan before he left and talk to him right now .
. . not just to see what he thought about my exciting discovery – Lovell’s list – but so that I could apologise for not trusting him.
I desperately needed him to know just how sorry I was that I’d believed Wyatt’s total fabrication over Dan’s relating of the true story . . .
As I approached the café, Leonard drove past me. I waved at him but he was concentrating on manoeuvring around a parked car and he didn’t see me.
Seeing Dan was reversing out of his space, I flashed my lights as I drove along the lane to catch his attention, and to my relief, he braked and pulled forward again.
I quickly parked in the spot Leonard had vacated, then I jumped out and ran over to Dan. He’d stopped the car but he hadn’t got out. And when I smiled at him through the window, he just stared back at me for a moment, a neutral look on his face that I couldn’t decipher.
Then he looked away from me and reached for the ignition. And my heart gave a thump of dismay.
Was he just going to drive away, leaving me and my desperate apology hanging?
To my relief, next second he removed the key and was getting out of his car.
He shut the door and we faced each other.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
I made a despondent noise in my throat. It was a simple enough question. But the tumult of emotions that were coursing through me as my eyes met his made a simple answer impossible.
‘I’m . . . well, it’s been an odd few days,’ I confessed. ‘Meeting Judith and her daughter and finding out the horrible truth.’ I shrugged. ‘I had doubts about Wyatt when you told me your side of the story, but I suppose a sense of loyalty towards him made me doubt you and believe him instead.’
He nodded. ‘Understandable. You’ve known him for a long time. You’d only known me for five minutes. Why would you believe a relative stranger over your boyfriend?’
‘He’s . . . not my boyfriend anymore.’
‘I kind of gathered that.’
I stared at him. ‘You heard me telling him what I thought of him? After you saved him from drowning? Well done, by the way. I thought you were quite the hero.’
‘Thank you.’ His mouth twitched. ‘And yes, I think everyone heard you breaking up with him at the Regency Romp. I think the crowd imagined it was all part of the drama.’
‘Really?’ I grimaced, flushing with shame.
I had been pretty vocal. And loud. But I’d been so incensed.
Dan was openly grinning now. ‘How was it you described him again? The biggest, most conniving, self-serving knob in the history of knobs?’
‘Oh, don’t!’ I shuddered.
‘Hey, don’t feel bad. For what it’s worth, I was thinking of getting a T-shirt printed with those very words, prefacing them with ‘Wyatt is . . .’
I started to laugh, because the idea of that was wickedly amusing – but mainly because I was so relieved that Dan and I appeared to be friends again.
It was suddenly dawning on me that whatever the future held for each of us, as long as Dan was still in my life, I’d be okay with that.
Friends would be fine.
I just didn’t want to live in a world where I couldn’t see him and laugh with him about silly things, and talk to him . . . about books and the ridiculous absurdities of life and everything else in between . . .
‘Shall we walk?’ he suggested, nodding at the green.
‘Yes, please,’ I croaked.
The warmth in his smile as his eyes met mine made me melt inside and almost lose my voice at the same time.
I suddenly remembered my other reason for coming to see him – to tell him about my discovery of Lovell’s list. But that didn’t seem to matter right now. There would be time later to tell him about that . . .
‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s check on the duckling you rescued. Make sure it’s doing okay.’
I smiled up at him, delighted he’d remembered.
As for me, I knew I’d never forget our first meeting as long as I lived. Although there was a question I’d been burning to ask him. Maybe now was the time?
‘You seemed quite angry that day,’ I began. ‘The day we first met. Had something happened to annoy you? Because I realise now that my first impression of you was entirely wrong.’
He smiled. ‘Ah, first impressions. I was wrong about you as well.’
‘First Impressions was Jane Austen’s original title for Pride and Prejudice.’
‘Oh, yes. Of course. I remember the guide at Chawton Cottage mentioning that.’
‘So why the stern face when I first got to know you?’ I asked, as we sat together on the bench.
He frowned, staring out over the pond to the trees beyond. ‘I’d had all the business with Leonard being scammed, to start with. It was an investment scam and his life savings were in danger of disappearing.’
‘That’s awful! Poor Leonard.’
Dan nodded. ‘Fortunately, we managed to stop the transaction going through at the last minute, so everything’s fine now. But on that same day – the day you and I first clapped eyes on each other at the duck pond – I actually caught sight of Wyatt for the first time in years.
‘He was walking along the high street when I was parking the car, and my instinct was to walk very quickly in the opposite direction in case I ended up doing something I’d later regret. But Arabella was being objectionable and refusing to walk across the grass to the café.’
I nodded. ‘I remember that. So you were really going through it at that point.’
He turned towards me, his face grim. ‘I sometimes wish I had punched that bastard’s lights out.’
I sighed. ‘He’s not worth your anger.’
‘No.’ He smiled at me. ‘You’re absolutely right. He’s not.’
‘So what were your first impressions of me, then?’ I asked, intrigued to know.
He laughed softly. ‘Well, think of it from my point of view. I spot this eccentric woman flailing about in the duck pond, soaked to the skin, covered in green slime and laughing hysterically, and Arabella suggests you might have escaped from somewhere. I confess I thought she might be onto something.’
I burst out laughing. ‘When you put it like that . . . it must have seemed like you’d stumbled upon the crazy lady of the village!’
‘You certainly caught my attention that day.’ He looked away with a strange little smile.
Then he turned and caught my gaze. ‘If I’m honest,’ he murmured, ‘ever since that day, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.
You’ve . . . bewitched me, Lizzie. That’s the only way I can describe it .
. . these feelings I’ve had for you, ever since we met. ’
I stared at him, lost for words, a feeling inside me like a balloon soaring up into the sky, taking me with it.
It was all so sudden and unexpected my head was swimming.
I felt dazed. With confusion. But as his words started to sink in and I realised what they meant to me, a feeling of deep joy began to take over everything . . .
At my silence, he gave a sheepish laugh. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Am I making a fool of myself here?’
‘What? No!’
‘Really?’ His wariness turned to hope.
‘It’s been the same for me,’ I said, realising it myself for the first time.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have such feelings for you because .
. . well, because of Wyatt. I told myself we were just friends bonding over a mystery we both wanted to solve.
But deep down, I knew I was lying to myself.
’ I smiled ruefully. ‘I guess that’s why I was so determined to believe Wyatt’s side of the story.
Because I was feeling guilty about betraying him. ’
‘You didn’t betray him,’ he said softly. ‘Nothing happened between us.’
‘No, but I really wanted it to, that second night in the hotel. I was guilty – in my heart.’ I swallowed. ‘I’m still finding it hard to believe you want to be with a woman who’s nearly a decade older than you. Won’t it bother you when people point it out?’
He laughed. ‘Why on earth would people point it out? We look the same age. And even if we didn’t, it wouldn’t matter to me at all.’
‘You think we look the same age?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Freda didn’t think so.’
‘Freda?’
‘Yes. She actually came up and more or less congratulated me on landing a toy boy! She was like: Well done, Lizzie! We more mature women can still pull younger men, or words to that effect. So she definitely thought I look a lot older than you.’
Dan shook his head in disbelief. ‘Is that why you’ve been so hung up about our ages? Because of what Freda said?’
‘Partly, yes.’
‘Well, you might be pleased to hear that it wasn’t because of you looking older than me that made her say that. She already knew there was an age difference between us – because I told her there was.’
‘Really? When was that?’
‘After the doctor left, I chatted to Freda while Jeremy and I helped her up to their room, and she asked me if we were a couple. So I told her no, but that I had hopes in that direction.’
I laughed. ‘You told Freda you fancied me?’
He shrugged. ‘I might have. But then I said I thought you were struggling with the idea of there being an age difference between us.’
‘Right.’
‘So the reason Freda would have said that to you would have been to encourage you to forget your age and just go for it.’
‘Oh.’ I smiled at him. ‘Well, I suppose that puts things in a whole different light.’
‘Exactly.’
Suddenly, there was a splashing noise. We both looked over at the pond and there, emerging from a clump of reeds, were Daffy and her baby. We smiled, watching them swim away.
‘They’re okay, then,’ he said softly, turning towards me.
‘Everything’s okay,’ I whispered.
I gazed into his eyes, longing for him with a scorching passion that astonished me. And then he shifted position and we moved together as one, and a little moan escaped as I felt myself crushed blissfully against Dan’s hard, muscled body.
And when our lips met at last in an urgent kiss, it was as if the balloon soaring in the sky exploded and showered us from on high with a million glittery stars . . .