Page 51
Pa shifted in the doorway, suddenly ill at ease. He wasn’t a man for whom speaking about feelings came easily, she knew, and she sensed he was in a rush to deliver whatever was to come next. ‘I hope you’ll learn to be happy again. You’ve grown into a fine woman. Your mother would be proud.’
Meg pinched her lips together tightly. They would have trembled otherwise, emotion rising to meet her father’s rare show of sentiment, and she didn’t want her tears to begin anew. If they started again she feared they might never stop, and it was a relief when Pa gave a self-conscious sniff, throwing her a brief nod before stepping backwards into the sunlight.
‘Well. I’ll leave you to it. You don’t need me peering over your shoulder while you’re trying to work.’
He shuffled away, his limp more pronounced than ever since he’d marched up to Wellbourne House. His leg wasn’t healing as quickly as she would have liked, and she’d already added it to her internal list of concerns that was growing longer by the day, although her father’s old injury was kept away from the very top of it by something else she knew was soon to come.
She fumbled as she reached for another apple, misery making her clumsy. The conversation she had to have with Jacob was surely imminent, and yet she would have done almost anything to avoid it. She’d have to look him in the eye and tell him she wanted to dissolve their marriage and she couldn’t change her mind, even though it would mean sentencing herself to a life of loneliness she’d never be able to escape.
For an untold time, she worked in silence. It was better to be an unthinking automaton than to let her feelings run loose, and she would have carried on mindlessly stacking until she’d run out of fruit if a shadow hadn’t suddenly fallen over her from the open door.
She didn’t turn away from the shelf. ‘I thought you were going back to the house, Pa. Don’t worry about me. I said I’m fine.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
Her heart shuddered to a halt. A completely different voice had answered, and even before she spun round she knew who it belonged to.
‘Good morning, Meg. I hope you don’t mind me coming to call on you.’
Jacob stood in the doorway, in almost exactly the same place her father had so recently leaned. He looked slightly guarded and she had to steel herself against the instinct to kiss the unease from his mouth, set in a line that told her more about his state of mind than any words.
To see him was a delight, but any pleasure was almost immediately obscured by a terrible flood of dread. As long as they were apart she was able to put off having to speak to him about things that would cut her like a knife, but now he was before her she had nowhere to hide.
She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘Of course not. This is your land, after all. You have every right to cross it whenever you please.’
‘Our land. It belongs to both of us, if you recall.’
He gave her a smile that wouldn’t have convinced a child. ‘I didn’t want to interrupt your time with your family over the past week, but I confess I couldn’t stay away any longer. I was hoping we might discuss when you’d come home.’
The moment of truth had arrived far more quickly than she’d envisioned. She’d imagined she would have some time to think how best to raise the subject, but faced with a direct question she couldn’t tell a lie.
She took a deep breath, and despite everything that screamed for her to hold back she leapt out into the sea of sorrow she knew would drown her. ‘I am home, Jacob. I think we both know this is where I ought to be.’
‘I’m not sure I agree.’ He ducked down to advance further into the shed, his head brushing the rough wooden ceiling. ‘Where you ought to be is wherever you say it is, not where other people might make you feel you belong.’
He watched her closely. She had nothing to say, however; despair had taken hold of her and it stole any argument she might have made to defend what she knew to be true. She could only gaze up at him in agony, and when she didn’t open her mouth he tunnelled both hands through his hair, a sign of frustration she’d recognise anywhere.
‘Does this really come from you? Is returning to live in the village what you want, uninfluenced by anybody else?’
‘What I want doesn’t matter.’
‘Of course it matters. Nothing matters more!’
She hadn’t realised his patience had been stretched quite so paper-thin. When he’d entered the shed, he’d seemed relatively collected, but now the passion of his response stunned her into silence.
His voice was raised, although to beseech rather than berate. ‘Damn it all, Meg. How can you not see it? Since the first day I met you, I’ve wanted nothing but to make you happy. I’ve adored you, ached for you, wished you to be the very centre of my world, but still you don’t seem to understand. How else can I say it? How can I make you see that I love you, and that what you want is all I care about?’
He shrugged helplessly, the very picture of exasperated forbearance. There was no sign yet of defeat, however, and he didn’t try to snatch back his words as they rang in Meg’s ears.
If he had intended to shock her, he had succeeded.
The rapid whirl of her thoughts slowed to a crawl. Her mind had felt as though it was overflowing but now it emptied entirely, only one thought remaining to fight through the haze.
‘That’s not true. It can’t be.’
‘Why not?’ Jacob seized on her pathetic bleat of a reply with the merciless speed of a hawk. ‘Do you think I’m likely to be confused about my own feelings?’
‘No, but…’ She couldn’t summon anything more than a murmur. ‘If you loved me… If you loved me, you wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye.’
