“I can imagine. Although actually I can’t.”
“Can’t you?” Emily gave him a surprisingly shrewd look. “You mentioned your dad had a drinking problem. That must have been a bit up and down.”
“Ye-es, but it wasn’t like your mum, from the sounds of it.” He didn’t want to equate his situation with hers, and yet Emily wasn’t having his rather obvious prevarication.
“But maybe it was, in some ways. I’m realising,” she explained slowly, “that I’m not as terribly unique as I thought. All during my childhood and even later, I thought everyone else had a happy family. A normal life. And I never got to know anyone well enough really to think differently. But since coming here to Wychwood…I’ve realised that everyone has their baggage. Their burdens. And it was arrogant of me to think I was the only one.”
“I’d hardly say it was arrogant,” Owen protested. “Naïve, perhaps.”
“Fine. Naïve, then. So tell me what your childhood was like, Owen. I want to know.” She looked determined and interested, and here he was, feeling reluctant. It was so much easier to make this about her.
“What do you want to know exactly?” he asked. More prevarication.
“You said you grew up in a small town in Wales…”
“A village, really. A mining village. My father worked in the mines until they closed.”
“I didn’t even realise people did that anymore. I thought all the mines closed about a hundred years ago.”
“Many of them did. Not all.”
“And what was that like? Living in a mining village?”
He shrugged, feeling twitchy all of a sudden. “Normal, I suppose, since I didn’t know anything else. But also…grim. Everybody wanted to leave, but nobody ever did. And after the mines closed, most of the men were unemployed and bitter. Not a good combination.”
“Is that why your father drank?”
“He always drank. He was one of those larger-than-life types, and he was even more so when he’d had a couple of pints. A bit like your mum that way—when he was on form, he was loads of fun. When he wasn’t…” He stopped then, because he really didn’t want to go into it.
“That must have been hard.”
Another one of those twitchy shrugs. “Sometimes.”
“What did he do for work afterwards? Once the mine had closed?”
“He did a lot of odd jobs, not all of them legal.” A pause. “He used to work as a beater for the lord of the local manor. He had a hunting lodge up in the hills. My dad would flush out the pheasants.”
Emily cocked her head, her grey-blue gaze sweeping slowly over him. “Is that why you have a thing against the manor set?”
“I don’t have a thing.”
“You do,” Emily insisted. “You said so yourself.”
“Fine.” Owen sat back in his chair, doing his best to relax, or at least look relaxed. He hadn’t expected Emily to ask all these searching questions, and neither had he expected to react the way he was, with a prickly self-defensiveness that was more her vibe than his. And yet this was part of the reason he’d come, wasn’t it? The whole get-to-know-each-other thing? “The la-di-da lordly type had a son. A spoiled arse, if I’m honest.”
“Sounds rather typical.”
“I suppose it was. Anyway, during one of the shoots he was larking about, and his father didn’t do a damned thing. His gun went off when it shouldn’t have, and my father was hit in the leg.”
“Oh no!” Emily covered her mouth with her hand, eyes wide with horrified shock. “Was he all right?”
“Eventually, but it broke the bone and he was in hospital for weeks. The lord and his son didn’t even care.” His throat worked, acid burning in his gut at the memory. “He sent my mother fifty pounds as recompense.” Which had been a lot of money for them then, but the injustice, the insult of it, had cut deep, and still did now.
“That’s so unfair. I’m not surprised you’ve got a chip on your shoulder.” She paused, seeming to choose her words with care. “But Henry’s not like that.”
“Actually, he was exactly like that.” Emily looked up at him in surprise. “Although it’s not for me to say.”
“What do you mean?”
Owen knew he shouldn’t have said anything. “Ask Jace,” he said.
“Jace…?”
“He’s had some experience with Henry.”
“What, Henry shot him?” She sounded disbelieving, and yet in some ways she wasn’t that far off.
“No, not that. But…something. I’m not saying he hasn’t changed, only that seven years ago he seemed as hard and uncaring as my good Lord Westcott did. And Jace bore the brunt.”
Emily frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything. It wasn’t my place.”
“If I asked Henry, would he mind?”
Owen shrugged. “I don’t actually know. I’ve lived in Wychwood for nearly fifteen years and I’ve never spoken to the man.”
“Really?” Emily’s frown deepened. “That should change.”
“Don’t worry, I haven’t minded.” He needed to change the subject before Henry Trent of all people derailed their date.
Emily must have been thinking along the same lines, because she straightened, shaking off her unease about Henry, and asked, “And how did your mother cope with it all? Six children, too…”
Unfortunately that was not the kind of change in subject he was looking for. He didn’t want to talk about his mum, either.
“She…struggled.” He looked away because he didn’t trust the expression on his face. “It was difficult.” And that was all he could say about that. He wasn’t going to tell Emily how he couldn’t save his mum, how she ended up blaming him for something that had been, arguably at least, his fault. How he’d grown up watching her pain, just as Emily had with her own mother. Nope, he was definitely not going to say any of that.
“I’m sorry, Owen.” Emily reached over and put her hand on top of his, a small, gentle touch that he knew instinctively was a big deal for her.
“It’s okay.” It wasn’t,
