‘Oh—’ her lips pouted, her head wagged and she repeated, ‘alterations you have in mind.’
‘Yes. It is poky, you must admit, so I thought of sticking on a parlour. Not a drawing room’ – he looked around the room, his head making a waving motion the while – ‘just a nice comfortable parlour. The present room I’ll turn into a kitchen, for that alone, and I’d like a little dining room and a couple of bedrooms up above. I would arrange all the windows to be mostly at the back, because it’s a very nice view from there, isn’t it, being on that bit of a rise? I’ve also seen Mr Pringle who owns the fields at the bottom. He’s quite willing to sell a few acres because they run soggy in the dip and the cattle get bogged down there sometimes in the winter. When I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve had to laugh to meself because that’s how manors and big houses started, didn’t they, mostly anyway, from a little cottage and a bit added on here and there? This very house’ – he waved his hand about – ‘I learned recently had only eight rooms when it was first built, and now how many has it got? I bet they can’t count them. Of course, I won’t be able to achieve it at one go but that’s the kind of pattern I’ve worked out. So what about it, eh?’
She just couldn’t believe her ears. There was something wrong here. What did he want the cottage for and all the extensions if he was going away? She tried to speak but her words were choking her and she had to swallow deeply twice before she could bring out, ‘Why do you want to buy the cottage if you are taking on a new position?’
‘I never said I was taking on a new position.’
Again she swallowed. ‘You indicated in your ultimatum that if my answer didn’t suit you, you would then take up Mr Coleman’s offer. Such a lucrative one you gave me to understand.’
‘Oh that! And aye, it was very lucrative, as you say. He jerked his chin upwards. ‘But I told him straight away no. I never had any intention of taking it on.’
‘But you said . . . ’
‘Aye, I know what I said.’ His voice had lost its bantering tone. His face was straight now and the muscles began to jerk in his cheekbones, and then he muttered thickly, ‘I had to do something to bring you to your senses and to stop you actin’ like a young lass who didn’t know her own mind while all the time you did. I was sick of being played about with, being used; I wanted to know where I stood for once. And now I do.’
As she watched the stiffness leave his face and a twisted smile draw up the corner of his mouth, the anger in her swelled. To think he had put her through all this for months, and on top of all the other trouble. He had been laughing up his sleeve at her while knowing what she must be suffering.
She could have been yelling at the sightseers who were looking at the burning cottage, or staring at Alvero Portes before she sprang at him, or standing in the square confronting the villagers, her anger was as deep as any she had felt before, and she reacted to it.
When her hand came slap across his face he staggered back for a moment, then covered his burning cheek with his palm. Slowly now his mouth opened as he stared at her; then a most unusual thing happened. It took the fire out of her anger and she slumped like a pricked balloon when, his head going back, he let out a great roar of laughter. It rose and rose and the tears gushed from his eyes as it became louder.
Willy heard it in the library. It brought him up from his chair but he didn’t move towards the drawing room; but it caused him to smile, the first time his features had moved in this direction for weeks.
The laughter was heard as far away as the kitchen and caused Fanny to exclaim, ‘Oh, isn’t that good to hear somebody’s laughing?’
It caused Peabody in the hall to unbend so much that he forgot himself and addressed Biddle as Clem, saying, ‘Well, well, Clem! What do you make of that?’ And what any of them would have made of the scene in the drawing room would be hard to say, for now Steve was holding Tilly tightly in his arms. His face was wet, his mouth wide and his eyes looking straight into hers, he was saying, ‘You don’t hit a man unless you either hate him or love him, and there’s one thing I’m sure of, you never hated me. Aw Tilly! Tilly!’ Again the laughter slid from his face and, his voice thick and coming from deep in his throat now, he said, ‘I haven’t any need to tell you how I feel, you’ve known it since I was a lad, but I must put it into words. I love you, Tilly, with no ordinary love because I’ve lived you and breathed you since I can first remember. You’ve never been ordinary, not even as a lass, and when you became a woman . . . well, you had something, and all the men who met you knew it. It is a strange quality you have about you, Tilly. But I’ll say this for you, you’ve never played on it because I’m sure you don’t realise you’ve got it. It’s a kind of power you have, either to make or to break a man. And you know, that’s been proved. But I didn’t want it to happen to me, the breaking I mean. Although taking the crumbs you’ve dropped over the years has been hard, I’ve put a face on it just to remain near you. Discovering Phillipa, as I’ve said afore, helped, but nothing or no-one could fill your place. I was rough on you a few months ago but I could see it as the only way to end this impasse because what I don’t want, Tilly, is you as a mistress. Many a man would say I’ve been a damn fool because with a bit of manoeuvring that could have come about some years ago . . . Don’t move.’ He shook his head at her. ‘You’re not going to get away. And deny it as much as you like I know I’m right, and you do an’ all. I want you as a wife, Tilly. I’ve always wanted you as a wife, and that’s what you’re going to be to me at last, isn’t it? Willy will eventually marry Josefina, it’s a foregone conclusion. You know that as well as me, and you’ll have to be prepared for more tongue-wagging . . . Oh aye. And those two as much as they love you they won’t want you here. You’ll have to face up to that too. That’s why we’re going to live in the cottage.’
She was limp within his arms. She wanted to say something, upbraid him for the way he had gone about this business, but all her mind was saying was, ‘Oh, Steve! Steve! Oh, my dearest Steve!’ She wanted to say the word ‘dear’ or ‘dearest’ aloud, words that he had never heard her apply to him, but she was unable to speak, so she let her lips speak for her. When she placed them on his there was a space filled with stillness before his grip became like a vice and her whole body seemed to merge into his for a moment, two moments, three, a passage of time going right back to their childhood.
They were both different beings when still holding her he pressed her gently from him and, drawing a deep breath, said, ‘Tilly. Tilly. Mine at last. I . . . I can’t take it in yet, but I will . . . Oh Tilly!’ There was a break in his voice. Then as if in an effort to cover his emotion he reverted to a jocular tone as he said, ‘I’ve got a name for the house when it’s finished: Trotter Towers. What about that?’
‘Trotter Towers.’ She bit on her lip and said again, ‘Trotter Towers.’ Her mouth went into a wide gape. ‘Trotter Towers.’ When a great gurgle of laughter rose from where it had lain dormant for so long and they fell against each other once more, their mirth mingled and the house became alive with it.
‘Oh Steve! Steve! Trotter Towers. Trotter Towers. Trotter Towers. You and me in Trotter Towers.’
The fears of the years seemed to slide from her as if in one of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales she saw the tower rising from the stones of the cottage and, standing guard, was Steve, and as long as he was there she knew she would be safe against attacks. She was wise enough to know she’d still be attacked, for even when she changed her name from Sopwith to the once-hated name of McGrath, she’d still be known as Tilly Trotter. But what matter; she was loving again and being loved. Oh yes, she was being loved, by this man who had never stopped loving her.
Her body was lost in his again, she had no breath, no desire to think except that she was loving for the last time, and it felt as if she’d never loved before.
The End
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Tilly Trotter Widowed (The Tilly Trotter Trilogy) Page 32
