‘You’ll never let yourself get that close,’ she whispered. ‘Will you?’
‘Lily, I’m saying I think I love you.’ He sounded exasperated rather than passionate, she thought. He sounded…confused? ‘I’m offering marriage.’
She shook her head. ‘How can you say you think you love me? Don’t you know?’
‘How can I know?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ she said, anger coming to her aid. ‘Love’s great, but it’s opening yourself again to that chasm of loss. It’s lots else besides, but it’s definitely not putting a signature on a piece of paper and a deal to spend a few days each year together.’
‘I can’t-’
‘Of course you can’t,’ she said, anger fading and a bleak acceptance taking its place. ‘Of course you can’t. I should never have agreed to come here. I’m putting more pressure on you than you can bear. Even by telling you that Benjy is your son…’
‘You should have.’
‘If I had, maybe the pressure would have been on you for the last seven years and maybe you would have fallen properly in love. Or maybe you would have cracked under the strain. I don’t know. But I do know that I need to back off now. I need to let you be.
‘I’m going to bed now, Ben,’ she said, and somehow she kept her voice resolute. ‘I’m going to bed alone and I’ll stay that way. Because no marriage at all is better than the one you’re offering. I have to stay sane, for Benjy’s sake if not my own.’
‘Lily-’
‘If I were you, I’d take another walk up to Blair Peak,’ she told him. ‘I think you need it more than I do. Oh, and, Ben…’
‘Yes?’ It was a clipped response. He was angry, she thought, and she knew it was confusion that was causing the anger. He thought he was doing the right thing-the noble thing. And she was rejecting that absolutely.
How hurtful was that?
Practicalities. When in doubt, talk medicine.
‘Ben, Rosa’s really worried about Doug,’ she told him, and somehow her voice was steady. And it worked. She’d deflected him, she thought, seeing the relief in his eyes. Medicine was the great escape. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about Benjy. We’ll be fine. Worry instead about Doug, who isn’t fine.’
She saw the confusion fade still more. She saw him clutch at medical need as if he was clutching a lifeline.
‘How long has he had pain?’
‘Rosa says for months, but he’s admitting little and he won’t see a doctor. Rosa says he’s been waiting for you.’
‘For me?’ he demanded, startled. ‘Why the hell? I’m not his doctor.’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘There’s an attachment there that I don’t think you’re admitting either.’ She hesitated. ‘Rosa’s scared it’s worse than Doug’s letting on. She thinks Doug might want to talk to you about caring for Rosa if…’
‘He’d know I would.’
‘You would what?’
‘Look after Rosa. But I need to find out what’s wrong.’
‘You’ll look after Rosa how? If anything happened to Doug, she could hardly stay here.’
‘This is a dumb conversation. Nothing’s happening to Doug.’
‘He’s showing every sign of worrying himself into a coronary. Sure, he needs an examination and maybe treatment but the best thing you could do is what you’re incapable of doing.’
‘Which is?’
‘Giving yourself,’ she whispered. ‘Telling Rosa you’ll be here for her.’
‘I’ll look after her.’
‘The same way you’d be husband and father to us? No,’ she said sadly. ‘That’s no use to anyone. Oh, Ben.’
And she turned before he could say another word. She walked into the house and let the screen door slam behind her.
He did indeed walk up to Blair’s Peak but the answers weren’t there. She was asking too much of him, he told the night, but he knew that was a falsehood.
He was afraid.
She’d accused him of not loving. Of not throwing his heart into the ring and letting fate take a hand.
She was right.
Why?
He needed a shrink, he decided, but he sat up on the peak and he knew the answers were already his.
For the first time in more than twenty years he let himself think about Bethany.
At six he’d been sent to boarding school. Lots of kids were sent to boarding school at six. They survived, and he’d hardly seen anything of his parents anyway. He could hardly say he’d missed them.
But there’d been his kid sister. Bethany had been four years old to his six. His little sister. Even now the memories of her were warm and strong. With an assortment of nursery staff caring for them, Bethany had been his constant.
She’d suffered from asthma.
He still remembered the terror of her attacks. The feeling of helplessness as she’d gasped for breath. His six- year-old self telling untrained nursery staff what to do.
And then his father leaving him at boarding school. ‘Who’ll look after Bethany?’ he’d demanded, and he could remember his desperation, the fear.
‘She’ll be looked after,’ his father had said brusquely. ‘You look after yourself.’
There had been nothing else to do. He’d looked after himself but Bethany had died before the year had ended. The school matron had told him of her death, her face crumpling with sympathy, moving to hug him, but he’d wanted none of it.
His parents hadn’t come near him.
He looked after himself.
Any shrink in the world would tell him that was holding him back now. He knew it himself. But to break through…
He couldn’t. He just…couldn’t.
Even Blair Peak had no answers.
CHAPTER TEN
BREAKFAST the next morning was a strained affair. Once again Doug had gone to enormous trouble, frying home-cured bacon, making pancakes, setting the big kitchen table with fine china, old and fragile. Lily looked across at Doug’s strained face. It was better than looking at the silent Ben, she thought, and there was enough tension on Doug’s face to make her concerned. Why had he used the best china? The kitchen was equipped with a dishwasher but china like this would have to be hand-washed.
She concentrated on this small domestic problem rather than let herself think about Ben. Ben was eating silently, while Benjy was watching him with a certain degree of speculation. The knowledge that Ben was his father was clearly of immense importance to Benjy, and he was cautiously reassessing the man before him for parental qualities.
All in all, it didn’t make for a casual breakfast.
Think about Doug, she told herself. Doug’s eyes were as strained as Lily felt, and she wondered just how bad his chest pain was.
‘Rosa and Benjy could take Flicker down to the river this morning,’ she suggested. ‘Ben and I will do the
