‘Well, for a start, if you think I’m sharing that mattress on your very uncomfortable floor for a single night more, you have another think coming,’ Elizabeth told her. ‘Doris has promised to help me set my new house up and we think I have time to settle in there this very night.’
‘By yourself?’ To say Ally was hornswoggled was an understatement.
‘I’m borrowing Darcy’s dogs,’ Elizabeth told her, and actually chuckled at Ally’s look of astonishment. ‘I have it all arranged. Darcy thought I needed company and we thought that, seeing you and he…’
‘Darcy thought…’
‘OK.’ Elizabeth held up her hands as if in surrender, but she chuckled again. ‘I know. It’s none of my business. But here are my friends.’ Darcy reached out a hand to steady her as she climbed from the boat to the wharf, and she smiled up at him. Her smile was one of pure joy.
‘Thank you for saving Jerry for me,’ she said. ‘None of us wanted his death on our consciences. So thank you for saving him.’
And then she turned and looked at Ally. Her smile deepened, and it was a look of pure love.
‘And now…’ she whispered, and she gave Darcy a slight push toward the boat. ‘Now you go and save my daughter. She’s just sitting there, waiting to be saved. So what are you waiting for?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
THEY were left alone.
Elizabeth took the dogs with her. She had their leads in her hands and they were bouncing along by her side as if they belonged there. Ally stared after them as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.
‘What have you done to my mother?’ she whispered at last, and Darcy, who’d been standing on the wharf watching her watching her mother, grinned and swung himself down onto the deck.
‘Nothing,’ he told her. ‘Not a single drug. Not a prescription in sight. You did the curing.’
‘I think saving Jerry did the curing,’ she managed, still watching her mother’s retreat along the wharf. ‘If he’d died…’
‘I think your mother would be strong enough to cope with even that now,’ Darcy said thoughtfully. ‘She’s an amazing lady. Mind, she didn’t help very much in the initial drama. Talk about getting her priorities wrong. She called in the medics to a murder scene and didn’t worry about calling the police.’
Ally frowned. ‘Um…yeah.’ The events of the afternoon had been puzzling her. ‘I don’t understand how I was second on the scene.’
‘Third,’ he told her. ‘Helga Matheson, the sergeant’s wife, was first.’
‘So?’
‘Helga let Kevin in to say goodbye to Jerry. Kevin produced the knife and stabbed him. So she went screaming next door for help, and next door was the refuge. But instead of saying there was a man still wielding a knife and he was still stabbing, she said that Kevin had stabbed Jerry, he was bleeding to death and I had to go. Everyone at the refuge-me included-assumed the sergeant was on the scene and he’d sent his wife to fetch me. So I went alone. If your mother hadn’t decided you’d be needed, and if you hadn’t agreed to come to help-and come fast-heaven knows what might have happened.’
‘If Kevin had realised Jerry was still alive, he might have attacked again,’ Ally whispered.
‘Yeah. I didn’t see the knife when I walked in. He was standing back from the bars looking appalled. I grabbed the cell keys from the desk and let myself into the cell. He made no move to stop me. Jerry was spurting blood and I had to move fast.’
‘So you helped Jerry first.’
‘Yeah.’ He gave a wry grin. ‘But I wasn’t noble. I was just stupid. As I said, I didn’t see the knife and I wasn’t thinking. I hadn’t realised Kevin would think he was dead. After all, any medic would know that with the sort of blood flow I was facing the heart had to be pumping.’
He hesitated and he was suddenly taking her hands in his and holding them as if he urgently needed to reassure himself that she was here. She was real. She was alive. ‘And then you came,’ he said softly. ‘My Ally. You came and you saw the threat and you disarmed a potential murderer.’ He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. It was a feather kiss, but it was so important. It warmed parts of her that she hadn’t realised were cold. ‘Well done, you,’ he whispered. ‘My Ally.’
‘I didn’t-’
‘You did,’ he said, and he kissed her again. ‘We’re a partnership, Ally.’
‘So my mother says,’ she managed. Just. How was she supposed to make her voice work? she wondered desperately. How was she supposed to make anything work? It wasn’t possible. Not when Darcy was looking at her like that. Not when he was kissing her as if he loved her.
As if he truly believed that they belonged together.
It was an amazing thought. It was a concept that was so overwhelming it was almost frightening.
‘You’re angry?’ He raised his brows and he smiled at her in that heart-flipping way he had that made her heart do backward somersaults, one after another. Try as she would to make it behave itself, it kept right on somersaulting.
‘My mother is organising my life,’ she managed with what she hoped was asperity. ‘And you…’ She fought for something she could be angry about. ‘Lending your dogs to my mother without so much as a by your leave.’
‘It seems your mother’s gone and cut the apron strings,’ he said, smiling at her with gentle humour. ‘Your mother…taking my dogs for a walk without asking your permission first. Tch, tch.’
‘Don’t laugh at me.’
‘I’d never laugh at you.’ His smile died. His hold on her hands tightened, and the look in his eyes made her somersaulting heart stop its somersaulting and almost stop beating. ‘How can I laugh at you?’ he asked. ‘I’ll laugh with you, my Ally. Now and for ever. I’ll laugh with you and I’ll live with you and I’ll share my life with you. With all honour. I love you.’
Her heart not only had stopped beating, it had stopped existing. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. That this man could say those things. ‘But-’
‘You know, there’s always buts,’ he said, almost conversationally. ‘You’ve been telling me you want to live here but you can’t be a doctor. You can’t be a doctor’s wife. Well, I’ve decided the buts are OK. You don’t have to be a doctor. You don’t have to be a doctor’s wife. You can just stay as Ally. Then it’s up to me. You don’t have to be a doctor’s wife but…can I be a massage therapist’s husband?’
She gasped at that, but suddenly, as if from nowhere, came belief. This was real. He was sitting on the deck of her favourite old boat, and he loved her.
Darcy Rochester loved her, no strings attached.
Her crazy heart started up again somehow, but this time it was doing handsprings.
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Nope.’ He was still smiling at her, with that wonderful smile that was a caress all on its own. ‘I’ve been doing my homework,’ he said, and there was a sudden mock smugness in his tone. ‘I reckon I can start being your helpmeet straightaway. I know my herbs. What would you like as I give you your massage, my sweet? Angelica for gout and flatulence? Or cypress for constant running of the nose?’
She choked. ‘You’re crazy.’
‘No.’ He tugged her against him so her breast curved against his chest. She could feel the strength of him-the sheer arrant maleness. ‘No, I’m not crazy. I’m in love. I’m in love with you and I believe-and I really, really hope I’m right here, Ally, because if I’m not I’m in all sorts of trouble and I don’t know where to start-that you love me right back. Please.’
Silence. He was holding her, waiting for her response. Just holding her. Touch, she thought suddenly. It was the most important thing.
Darcy’s touch.
His love.
‘I looked up from Jerry this afternoon,’ he said softly, and his voice was suddenly unsteady. ‘I’d run in and gone straight to him and I hadn’t checked. I saw Kevin but Jerry was bleeding to death in front of my eyes and he had to
