Chapter 28 #2
Freddy smoothed back my hair. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’re all complex people. Edward hadn’t mentioned he’d been in the army either. You’re not a mind reader.’
‘No. And don’t you think that is odd, especially as he knows my dad served? It makes me feel like I should have picked up on something earlier.’
‘Don’t be silly. As much as he says it’s not, this is different from how both of us grew up. There’s bound to be a learning curve.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘Are you going to go to the housewarming party on Saturday?’
‘I think so. Harriet did seem nice, as did Giles. Posh for sure, but not like Verity. That is, if he still wants me to come.’
‘Of course he does.’
‘He sounded quite happy to make my excuses.’
‘Because he wasn’t going to push you and because you were both angry. Talk to him.’
‘I’m not sure he’ll want to listen.’
‘Unless you try, you won’t know. Now,’ she said, standing up from the bed, ‘drink that then get some sleep. Things will seem better in the morning.’
* * *
Things did not seem better in the morning. In fact, having slept on it, or more accurately, having not slept on it, I felt like a total shit.
I sat up in bed, leant over and gave the curtain nearest me a tug.
A sliver of early, pale-grey, dawn sky peeked through, the birds singing their morning songs, competing with each other, greeting each other and filling the air.
It should have been perfect. I pushed myself out of bed, grabbed some undies, a pair of pale khaki cotton shorts and a white semi-fitted t-shirt from the oak chest of drawers and a pair of trainer socks.
I stepped into the shorts and, having brushed my teeth, I pulled on the t-shirt (I was done sacrificing tops to the gods of toothpaste) and then crept as soundlessly as I could down the stairs, using the banister to slide over the two steps that creaked the loudest. Opening the front door, I inserted the key, this time on the first try, and closed it quietly behind me.
I hadn’t got a route planned. I just needed a walk.
Whether that was to think or to not think, I wasn’t entirely sure yet, but as my feet began to carry me along, I knew it had been a good decision.
Looking to the horizon, the sky promised another glorious day and I hoped that Isaac hadn’t meant what he said about me shovelling poop all day – but if he had, then that’s what I’d do.
In the distance, I heard a horse whinny and some early-morning mooing.
Perhaps it was time for milking or perhaps they’d already been milked and were chatting as they made their way out to the field.
I didn’t know enough about cows to have a definitive answer.
I didn’t know enough about quite a lot of things, as it turned out.
I’d decided that after work, I’d message Edward and see if I could meet him somewhere.
I wanted to apologise but I didn’t want to go up to the house where Penelope or Barney might be.
Knowing Edward, he wouldn’t have told them anything, protecting them as he was clearly always keen to do, but it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to work out something had happened.
Even if Edward was that good an actor, I wasn’t.
I’d briefly entertained apologising by text but had quickly discounted that idea. He deserved better than that.
‘Emmeline?’
I’d been so caught up in my thoughts of Edward that I hadn’t noticed the man himself emerge from a pathway in the woods.
‘Edward… I… I didn’t expect to see you out here.’
‘Nor I you. You’re up early.’ He was pleasant, but there was a definite step back to the reserved man I’d first met.
‘Yes. I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Beautiful day. Shame to waste it anyway.’
Whether he was purposely dodging the reason I hadn’t been able to sleep or had merely fully reverted to the small-talk stage, I didn’t know. But I was about to find out.
‘Well, I’ll let you get on.’ He made to continue on his way.
‘Edward.’ I stepped into his path and he brought himself up short, surprise registering in his amber eyes. ‘I want to apologise for yesterday.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Nothing to apologise for. All forgotten. I’ll give your regards to Harriet on—’
‘Could you stop just for a minute and talk to me?’
His eyes flashed and he stood even straighter. I saw it now. The military bearing. How could I have missed it when I’d lived with it all my life?
‘Of course. What is it you’d like to say?’
Oh God. This was horrible. I wish I’d just kept on kissing him and never stopped to say the words that had put a grenade into the middle of everything.
He shifted his weight.
‘I… I wanted to say I’m sorry.’
‘Which you did, and I accepted.’ I could see he was about to set off again.
‘Yes, you did. But I wasn’t finished. And you’re not really accepting it, are you? Not in here.’ I began to put my hand on his chest and hesitated, then placed it on my own instead. ‘You’re angry at me and hurt and I’d rather you said that than pretended everything was forgotten. Because it’s not.’
‘OK. No, it’s not. But it will be.’
His words stung and I did my best to squish back the tears trying to push through as he spoke. A micro expression on his face registered he’d seen them and he looked away, into the distance, over my shoulder.
‘Isaac told me you were in the army.’
His attention was back on me now. ‘He shouldn’t have.’
‘Why not? I thought we were supposed to be getting to know each other. That seems like a pretty major thing to omit.’
His lips quirked into a, very brief, smile.
‘What’s funny?’ I asked, wrong-footed.
‘Nothing. A pun. I was a major in the army. A major thing…’
‘Oh. Yes.’ I gave a weak smile back. Barney’s tease of ‘Major Fancy Pants’ suddenly made sense.
‘My apologies. It’s early.’
‘Edward, I had no right to accuse you of knowing nothing about the real world. Clearly, you do and I shouldn’t have judged you like I did.’ I shook my head, the tears less secure now. ‘I’m no better than Verity really.’
‘That’s going a little far, don’t you think?’
‘No!’ I cried. ‘I don’t think it is at all.
For some reason, because you have all this,’ I swept my arms around me, ‘I assumed that was your job. It didn’t occur to me that there was more to you than this place, than generations of family looking down at you from the staircase. It was stupid of me.’
Edward took a step towards me. ‘It wasn’t stupid, Emmeline.
’ He shrugged one shoulder. ‘We grew up differently. We’ve lived very different lives in a lot of respects.
But in some, we’ve been quite similar.’ He took my hand and led me to a nearby tree that he’d once told me had fallen in a storm the night after his dad died.
Now it had sprouted its own saplings but one part remained clear and it was here we sat now, Edward gently tugging me down beside him.
‘I don’t know why I didn’t mention it, especially as your dad served. I’m proud that I served my country and of my brothers-in-arms. But I did see things I wouldn’t wish on anyone and those are the times, the places, I don’t want to remember. I’m still working out how best to balance it all.’
‘You should talk to my dad,’ I said. ‘I mean… you know, if you wanted to.’
His smile was warmer than the sun that had now risen, and more beautiful. ‘I’d like that very much.’
‘Perhaps we can arrange something.’
‘Definitely. I mean, I should really have met my fiancée’s father long before this.’
I looked up under my lashes at him. ‘I didn’t know if you’d still want to go ahead with that, especially when you said earlier you’d give my regards to Harriet.’
He took my hand. ‘I’d rather assumed you wanted it over and done with.’
The words of last night echoed in my mind.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,’ Edward added quickly, the same moment clearly having just been highlighted in his own mind too.
‘I messed it up, kissing you.’ I couldn’t even look at him when I said it.
‘That certainly didn’t feel like anything was being messed up to me.’ His words were soft, his breath warm on my ear.
I turned my head and his lips brushed mine. My eyes closed and he rested his forehead against mine.
‘I know this wasn’t the plan, Emmeline. Life is full of plans and they rarely comply.
But if you want to stick to the plan, I get it, and I will.
If you don’t want to go ahead with the charade either, that’s fine too, although I refuse to allow the reason to be because Verity made me see sense. You must allow me that.’
I pulled back so that I could see him properly.
God, he was beautiful. And kind and funny and damaged and warm and I knew, deep down, that this might really be something.
But what if it wasn’t? Or what if it was but only for the time that I was a novelty?
He’d already said that I was different from everyone else he’d been out with.
Maybe that was it. That was the thing that lit the fuse for him.
But that fuse would fizzle out and then I’d still be different but for all the wrong reasons.
And I couldn’t bear to see that same look of disappointment in Edward’s eyes that I’d seen in Monty’s.
I thought I’d been in love before but this, with Edward, this would be a whole other level.
Deeper and higher and wider than anything I’d ever known. And if it failed, I’d be lost.
So, I gave it up.
‘I think perhaps we’ve both just got a bit caught up in things.’
‘Emmeline, I’m not—’
I pressed my forehead back against his and he stopped. This would be easier if I wasn’t drowning in his eyes.
‘Let’s stick to the original plan. OK?’
The wait felt eternal.
Finally, the word came. ‘OK.’