Flight of a Witch

He let Miles go halfway across the hall, and then he couldn’t let him go the rest; not without a word of caution, at least, because he was heading gallantly in full armour for a sickening fall.

‘Miles—’

Miles halted and turned, surprised and wary, brown eyes wide. The curled lashes arched towards his brows. Faint colour came and went in his thin, shapely cheeks. He looked like his mother; Eve disarmingly young and apparently vulnerable, but already, beyond mistake, a dangerous person.

‘Miles, I shouldn’t. There’s nothing there now for you. The best’s gone.’

‘I know,’ said Miles, not retreating a step.

He was doing this badly, but he couldn’t stop now. The detachment they had so considerately restored to him he was endangering again, but at least this was between himself and Miles, man to man again with no witnesses.

‘She won’t want to look at any man, not for a long time yet. And even if she ever does, what she’s got left to give—’

‘I know,’ said Miles, honestly, ruefully, even gratefully, but without the slightest intimation that it made any difference.

It was something in the voice that made Tom pause. He caught the maturing intonations of patience and forbearance, and turned with the sudden shock of recognition to confront himself. Here we go again, he thought. You were going to save Annet, weren’t you? You, without a clue to what went on inside her, or what she was capable of! Now you’re setting out to save Miles, and just about as likely to find him in need of it, and just about as well-equipped to make a hash of it. How do you know what he has it in him to do? Just because you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, and been forced to own it, does he have to give up, too? Wake up and stand by for a shock: you can be outdone!

He drew back into silence, carefully, respectfully, and looked at the whole set-up again. But what future was there in it? Next week Annet was going with her parents to Cambridgeshire, and if there was one thing certain it was that they’d never come back to Comerford.

Well, next year Miles was going to Queens’, wasn’t he? Not that the issue depended on such small, convenient accidents as that, he thought, studying the boy’s courteous, wary company-face. There was nothing here now for Tom Kenyon, no. But might there not be something for Miles Mallindine? Some day, if his patience held out?

For Miles there’d have to be. Because he had no intention of ever giving up. He knew what he wanted, he meant to have it. The whole, or half, or whatever there was to be won at last. He was never going to settle for any substitute.

And Annet, whole or broken, sick or convalescent, had her values right. Sooner or later she’d recognise what it was she was being offered.

‘All right, forget it,’ said Tom. ‘You go ahead your own way. And good luck!’

Miles said: ‘Thank you!’ and for a moment it was touch-and-go whether he would add: ‘sir!’ It was on the tip of his tongue, but he snatched it back generously, flashing for one brief instant the engaging and impudent smile he had inherited from Eve. Then he turned, patient, stubborn and profoundly sure of himself, and went in to Annet with his roses.

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[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[A 3S Release— v1, html]

[July 16, 2007]