The Forbidden Innocent

by Sharon Kendrick

  Her habitual reserve initially made her baulk at the thought of getting to know a whole batch of newly discovered relations—but the aching hole in her heart left by the end of her affair with Jack made her make a tentative move towards meeting them. A large family party followed—a confusing and noisy affair which left Ashley feeling faintly bemused. But to her surprise, she was welcomed into the fold and she quickly began to know and to love her little nieces and nephews. Her weekends now began to include occasional trips to Gloucestershire, where many of them were based—and having her own family gave her another unfamiliar taste of security, and of roots.

  But the second thing which happened rocked Ashley’s world far more than an unexpected inheritance. Another phone call arrived from the agency—with Julia moaning that she felt like her personal secretary—telling her that Christine had been in touch and was pleading with Ashley to ring her, urgently.

  Ashley hesitated for only a moment because she knew that Jack wouldn’t dream of asking his housekeeper to intervene on his behalf. He was much too proud for that—he could have tried himself through the agency and he hadn’t done. So why was she wanted? Some instinct made fear swell up inside her stomach and grip at her throat. She stood in a quiet alcove at the boutique hotel as she gripped the phone, while a shaky-voiced Christine told her that there had been an accident.

  ‘What kind of an accident?’ demanded Ashley.

  ‘A fire. A terrible fire. Ashley.’ There was a kind of gulping sound, the sound of someone swallowing their tears. ‘Blackwood has been destroyed.’

  Ashley’s knees buckled. The world threatened to cave in around her. ‘And Jack? Was he hurt?’

  There was a silence—a terrible, gathering silence.

  ‘He was,’ said Christine, her solid voice sounding precariously close to breaking. ‘Badly hurt. He’s blind, Ashley. Mr Marchant’s blind.’

  Blind? Her beloved Jack blind? Only some inner strength she didn’t know she possessed stopped Ashley from falling to the ground—and from railing at a God who was clearly not listening. Sucking in a ragged breath, she steadied her breathing enough to ask, ‘And where is he? Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s living in one of the other properties on the other side of the estate. You know the old Ivy House?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘He’s there. I still work for him. I go in most days now and he has… well, he has a couple of carers living in who help look after him.’

  Carers? Her brave, strong Jack—the man who had been commended for bravery in all the active service he had seen—was being looked after by carers? Ashley swallowed down the acrid taste of horror as she tried to imagine the reality of his life. How on earth would such an independent man cope with having to rely on others for his very existence?

  ‘Christine,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m coming to see him—but you must not tell him. You must not. That is imperative. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Ashley. I understand.’

  Ashley went into the office to speak to her boss. He was a fair man who she hoped would let her go with his blessing—though she knew that she would leave without it, for she had no choice. ‘I need to go urgently to see a dear friend who is very sick,’ she said, in a low voice—the irony not escaping her that this was the second time she had failed to give adequate notice to her employer.

  ‘And are you planning on coming back?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly—for wasn’t honesty the only thing she had ever been able to rely on?

  Something in her face made him treat her kindly, as though she herself were some kind of invalid, and Ashley made the long journey back north with nothing more than an overnight bag. The journey took hours—punctuated by delays at two railway stations and a train which seemed to rattle like a sack of bones. Her stomach was so churned up that she couldn’t bear to eat anything—sipping only at weak, warm tea and unable to settle until at last the train drew into Stonecanton station.

  She jumped into the waiting taxi and gave the driver directions and, if he looked at her curiously, she was too tired and too scared to satisfy his curiosity with any kind of explanation. Ivy House was on the western side of the estate but the taxi took her past Blackwood and, on an impulse, Ashley made the driver take the car up the long drive so that she could have a look at it.

  From a distance, it all looked the same as the first time she’d seen it. The same imposing and beautiful structure which had so impressed her—straddling the edges of the stark northern moorland she’d grown to love. But as the car drew closer she could see that the façade was nothing but an illusion. She told the driver to stop and she got out, her heart as heavy as a stone. Much of the building had crumbled and was lost—and at the back were just blackened remains where once a home had stood. A grim ghost of a place with pane-less windows and no roof or chimney. Jack’s beloved Blackwood was nothing but a fragile shell with all the life blown away from it.

  Hearing something was not the same as seeing it for yourself and the reality of the destruction made her feel sick. Tears threatened to burn her horrified eyes—but there was no time for tears and she climbed back into the taxi, taking one last forlorn look out of the window. The lawns were wild now and the shrubs badly in need of pruning and with every second that mounted Ashley could feel the painful acceleration of her heart as the car took her towards the Ivy House.

  What would she find there? Would blindness and disfigurement have changed Jack beyond recognition?

  A woman she didn’t know opened the door, and she looked at Ashley with a question in her eyes.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m… a friend of Jack’s. I heard about his accident and I’ve come to see him.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid Mr Marchant isn’t seeing any visitors.’

  ‘Please. I think he’ll want to see me.’ But as she said the words she realised their bitter irony. If Jack was blind then he wouldn’t be ‘seeing’ anyone.

  There was a pause while the woman studied her and maybe something in Ashley’s plea touched her because she opened the door wider and stepped aside.

  ‘You look harmless enough—and it might do him good to talk to someone for a change. But not for long, mind,’ she warned. ‘Come this way.’

  The woman led the way along a long corridor to a door right at the far end, and she opened it to let Ashley step through and then shut it behind her.

  The room was gloomy, the light from the fire its only illumination, and Ashley was trembling as her eyes took in the scene in front of her. Because there, sitting in front of the fire—his head bowed in a way she had never seen it bowed before—sat the blinded form of her lover. His tall frame was still striking but all the energy and vitality seemed to have been sucked from him—as if, just like Blackwood, he were nothing but an empty shell. By his feet sat Casey, who looked up as she entered. The dog’s ears pricked and, with a little yelp, he jumped up and ran towards her.

  ‘Down, boy,’ said Ashley softly and she saw Jack start.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he demanded, putting his head to one side—as if to listen more keenly. ‘Is that you, Mary?’

  ‘No, it is not Mary. Don’t you know who it is?’ She swallowed. ‘Casey does.’

  Blindly, he reached out his hand towards her and the gesture nearly broke Ashley’s heart. ‘Who is it?’ he repeated. ‘God, am I going mad at last? For a minute then I thought—’

  She could not help herself—her hand reached out and entwined with the outstretched fingers of his.

  ‘What did you think?’ she whispered.

  ‘But that is her voice,’ he said, like a man in a dream as his fingers now locked around hers. ‘And this is her hand in mine. Ashley? Ashley? Is that really you?’

  ‘Yes.’ She swallowed. ‘Yes, it’s me, Jack.’

  ‘Not a dream?’

  ‘No dream, no—although maybe it feels a bit like one.’

  ‘Let me touch you. Let me touch you properly.’
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  She had thought that he meant to kiss or to caress her, but Ashley realised that for Jack touch had taken on a whole new dimension. His fingers had become his eyes. As she bent towards him they reached up to her face—their feather-light contact tracing the contours of her features as if he was learning them all over again.

  ‘So it really is you,’ he said wonderingly. ‘Ashley Jones.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve come back to me?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve come back to you.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t have bothered,’ came his harsh assertion and Ashley stilled as he let her hand fall—turning his head away and waving her away in a gesture of dismissal. ‘You should have stayed where you were and forgotten all about me.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Ashley,’ he grated. ‘Don’t let your tender heart blind you to the truth—or to reality. You’ve seen me—so now go.’

  ‘And if I don’t want to go?’

  ‘You have no choice in the matter. I’m telling you to go. You think I deserve someone like you, after what I did to you?’ He shook his head and bit the words out as if they were poison. ‘I’m not the man you need—especially now that I have a disability. And maybe that’s my punishment for having lied to you and misled you for so long. For having taken your innocence with scant regard for anything except my own pleasure.’ His voice deepened with some kind of emotion which made it sound as if it was close to breaking. ‘But don’t worry, Ashley—nobody will blame you for not wanting me. Not even me. Especially not me. I’m blind—and it’s the perfect let-out clause.’

  She could feel the walls pressing in on her—and her heart felt as if it were being squeezed by some ruthless and powerful fist. ‘And what if I told you that I don’t want a “let-out” clause?’ she demanded quietly. ‘If I said that I didn’t care about your blindness? That you are still Jack—my Jack—and you always will be—and that no disability could be greater than the one of not having you in my life any more?’

  ‘Stop it right now! Stop it,’ he raged. ‘You think I’m in any position to withstand your sweet words of comfort? It’s over, Ashley—and I’ve accepted that. So go. You once told me that you didn’t think you could ever trust me again, and that no relationship could ever be founded on a lack of trust, and you were right.’

  ‘But I believe in my heart that you would never abuse my trust again.’

  ‘You’re just saying that to placate me,’ he said, from between gritted teeth. ‘Because I am blind and you pity me.’

  ‘And barring maybe one occasion, since when did I ever say things to you that I didn’t mean?’

  At this he said nothing. Seconds passed—or maybe they were minutes—and Ashley’s breath caught in a throat which was as dry as bushfire although she could feel the wet pricking of tears in her eyes. Until suddenly he reached for her—his hand moving from her shoulders down to her waist and then to the curve of her hip. And something of the old, masterful Jack was back as he gathered her towards him and pulled her down into his lap.

  ‘Do you really mean that?’ he demanded.

  ‘I really do. Every single word. Every syllable.’

  Her heart was racing as she pushed a lock of raven hair back from his brow—across which now ran a livid scar, an ugly raised ridge of a thing. She looked into the ebony eyes which once had been so brilliant and gleaming but which now looked back at her, opaque and sightless. And her heart turned over with sorrow and regret—but mainly with love. Pure and deepest love that no scar could ever diminish. ‘Jack,’ she breathed. ‘My sweet, darling Jack.’

  ‘Kiss me,’ he instructed unsteadily. ‘Just kiss me once, Ashley, and convince me that I’m not dreaming this—and that any moment I’ll awake to nothing but empty arms and a cold memory.’

  She lowered her lips to his and as his mouth brushed over hers she cried out at the poignant sweetness of that first contact. ‘Oh, Jack,’ she breathed again. ‘My darling, darling Jack.’

  The kiss went on for countless minutes, and for Ashley it said everything that needed to be said. It healed and it consolidated. It comforted and renewed. She wondered if he felt it too—that utter sense of unity, of two lost souls and hearts who had found each other again.

  When the kiss ended, he threaded his fingers in her hair. ‘You’re wearing it loose,’ he observed unevenly.

  ‘Yes. I do that more often these days.’ And then, because she was acutely aware of how precious these moments were—that they could determine their whole future—she forced herself to confront reality. ‘What happened?’ she whispered. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘To blind me? You mean you haven’t heard?’

  She shook her head—until she realised that such gestures would no longer do. ‘No,’ she said instead. ‘I knew you’d been injured, but that’s all. And as soon as I heard that—I came.’

  His fingers played with the spill of her hair, just as they used to do after he’d made love to her. ‘Where do I begin? With the obvious, I suppose. After you’d gone, my life seemed. I don’t think there’s a single word which could define it. Empty. Incomplete. Aching. I’d never experienced such a feeling before—not even when I’d been in active service. It was as if I’d lost a part of myself. And the worst part of all was knowing that it had been my own fault—that if I’d been truthful with you from the start, then you might still be with me.’ He gave a ragged sigh. ‘Until I told myself that you were so pure and fundamentally innocent that you would never have begun an affair with me if you’d known I was married.’

  Again, she smoothed a thick lock of raven hair away from his eyes, thinking that it was longer than he usually liked to wear it. And then she kissed his scarred brow for good measure and saw his lips curve briefly in response.

  ‘Did you know that my wife has died?’ he questioned suddenly.

  In his arms, Ashley stiffened. ‘No.’

  ‘So you came back in spite of that?’ he mused.

  To be honest, she hadn’t even stopped to consider it—her thoughts had all been about his welfare, not their future. And yet when she’d seen him, she had gone straight into his arms like a homing pigeon—as if Jack was her future. But wasn’t that leaping ahead of herself?

  ‘What happened to her?’ she whispered.

  ‘The very same morning you left—I had a phone call from the clinic to say that she’d passed away peacefully during the night.’

  She remembered the phone ringing as she had slipped silently from the house and her own determination to close the door on her life at Blackwood.

  ‘I thought of contacting you to tell you—but realised it would make no difference. I knew that I had no right to see you—and I resigned myself to the fact that you were gone from my life for ever. But my heart felt shattered and my sleeping became worse again—although, ironically, the biography I was writing was working well. It became a kind of refuge for me—as work so often can be. I took to going to bed later and later in order to put off the inevitable moment of lying in a bed

  which seemed so empty—and wishing that you were still there in my arms.

  ‘One night while I was reading, I fell asleep in the chair—and a spark from the fire hit the rug. I must have been more exhausted than I’d realised because I slept through the initial smoulder—and by the time I awoke, the fire had taken hold.’

  ‘Oh, Jack.’

  ‘That extinguisher we kept in the hall didn’t even make a dent in it. I called the fire brigade and then I ran to one of the outhouses and found a hose. I was standing spraying water at the front façade of the house when a beam came toppling down and hit me in the face.’ There was a pause. ‘And when I awoke, I found myself in hospital with my eyes bandaged and Blackwood no more.’

  ‘And can you see anything?’

  He stared straight ahead and screwed up his dull eyes. ‘I can just about make out the glow of the fire. And the vague outline of that piano over there.’

&n
bsp; ‘And anything else? Can you see me?’

  ‘No, my angel—but holding you and hearing you is enough.’

  She thought how thin he looked, and how pale—and her fingers crept up to the recalcitrant lock of hair. ‘Your hair needs combing,’ she observed.

  ‘Am I so repulsive to you, then, Ashley?’

  She pretended to consider it, just as she would have done before. ‘You know you can’t start blaming your blindness for everything, Jack! ‘

  At this, he laughed and then shook his head in wonder. ‘Witch!’ he murmured as he bent his head to her ear. ‘You know, I never thought I’d laugh or smile again—and yet just ten minutes in your company and I’m doing both.’

  ‘Ah, but I can’t promise that will be representative of our life together. I may soon drive you mad.’

  There was a pause. ‘I’m pretending I didn’t hear that.’

  ‘Well, I’d rather you didn’t, otherwise I could accuse you of ignoring me—which would be a bit much since I’ve travelled all this way to see you.’

  ‘You mean you want a life together?’

  ‘Of course I want a life together—I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I can’t bear the thought of anything else. Why else do you think I’m sitting on your lap and kissing you whenever I get the opportunity?’ She placed her lips over his and just breathed him in.

  ‘Now I know why they say love is blind,’ he said mockingly.

  Ashley bit back a smile. How irreverent he was! And she realised then that nothing could ever lessen the vibrant life-force which was Jack Marchant. She bent to kiss the tip of his nose and to feel the warmth of his skin against hers. ‘I’m going to make us both some tea—and after that we’re going for a walk. I’m going to describe all the spring flowers to you and tell you about the way the sun is shining on the grass and then we can stop, and listen to the birdsong. When did you last go outside, Jack?’