‘Won’t you be cold?’ Bobby asked, removing her soaked headscarf so she could wring it out.
‘Me, cold?’ He struck a heroic pose, making her laugh. ‘I’m a mountain man born and raised, lass. Yorkshire’s own Hopalong Cassidy.’
Bobby sat down and huddled into his thick greatcoat. ‘And what are you watching for, Mr Cassidy? Is there an Indian raiding party on the horizon?’
‘You never know what might be roaming the moors. Marauding sheep. Invading Germans. Spectral hounds.’ He glanced at her. ‘Besides, I saw that look in your eye before. Since you’re worried I’ll find it hard to behave like a gentleman while I’m alone in the desert wastes with you, perhaps it’s better if I keep my distance.’
‘When in your life did you ever behave like a gentleman?’
Bobby expected him to laugh, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned away to look out of the door. The atmosphere seemed to have changed suddenly and she wasn’t sure why.
‘Did I say something wrong?’ she asked, frowning. ‘I was only teasing, Charlie.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s only… never mind. Forget I said anything.’
‘Charlie, what is it? If I’ve offended you, tell me why.’
For a moment, he didn’t answer. When he spoke again, his voice was choked.
‘Bobby, you have no idea.’
‘No idea about what?’
‘About how it feels, having to see you every day and hardly ever being allowed to touch you. Do you know what that’s like?’
She frowned. ‘Are you being serious now?’
He laughed bleakly. ‘Deadly, I assure you.’
Bobby had heard speeches like this from boys before. They only ever happened when men got you alone, and they were usually the prelude to increasingly urgent pleading, cajoling and even threatening as they tried to convince you that their inflamed state was entirely your fault and it was up to you to put it right. She knew the right time to extricate yourself from such situations was as soon as possible, before they started pressing for what they wanted with more than mere words. But she thought she knew Charlie well enough by now to know he’d never push her to do anything she didn’t want to. Besides, he didn’t sound like those boys did. He sounded pained and a little sad – not at all like his usual teasing self.
‘I know what people say about me and women,’ he went on. ‘I know what they think – what you think too, probably. But I don’t… I’m not… oh, hang it!’
He turned back to her, and the expression that had appeared on his face did make her feel a little afraid. Bobby had never seen Charlie’s usually merry eyes so filled with fire, or his brow knit into such a determined frown. This was a different man from the one she knew. She felt like she was suddenly alone with a stranger.
‘You really don’t know how tough this is for me, do you?’ he said in the same choked voice.
‘I don’t…’
‘I love you, Bobby. I want you. And damn it, I respect you – too much to press you to be with me until I know you’re really mine. Do you think because I tease and I joke that it isn’t real?’
‘I never thought that.’
‘I don’t want a mistress. I wouldn’t insult you by expecting you to be anything less than my wife, and I honestly don’t know how much longer I can wait for you to decide that’s what you want to be. Every time I ask and you say no, I make a joke of it because…’ He swallowed, and the fire that had been in his eyes fizzled out in an instant. ‘Because I hope you won’t see how every time it breaks my heart a little bit.’
Bobby wasn’t afraid now; she was only filled with pity, and with guilt for the ‘yes’ she still hadn’t given him. She beckoned to him and he went to sit by her on the stone bed, looking limp and defeated after his outburst. Bobby took him in her arms.
‘I wish I could say yes,’ she whispered, stroking his hair. ‘You don’t know how much I want to.’
‘Then do,’ he whispered back, nuzzling into her neck. ‘Nothing bad will happen, Bobby. We’ll be together, that’s all.’
‘For now, perhaps.’
‘What are you so afraid of?’
‘That the world and all it expects of us will kill how we feel about each other now. That I’ll be forced to give up the job I love to be with the man I love. That I’ll fail you as a wife and our children as a mother, because I can’t be content with being only those things. And that…’ She swallowed. ‘That I’ll lose you. That having had you, I’ll be forced to face life without you – me and our children, perhaps.’
‘Maybe none of those things will happen. Maybe we’ll live our lives together as Reggie and Mary have, still loving each other when we’re old and grey. Why shouldn’t it be that as well as the other?’
