by Marie Joseph
‘Stop talking like that!’ Annie had heard herself shouting, then she had yelled at a cat for doing no more than raking its claws along the already tattered chair cushions.
Now at last the house was quiet. Biddy had gone to bed telling Annie that she understood, that however Annie behaved she would always understand. Annie gave a deep sigh.
What was it making Biddy so annoyingly understanding? Why had she scuttled off to bed with that silly expression on her face? That simpering look, as if she was a bit doo-lally.
There was an ache in Annie’s head that had nothing to do with the beating her father had given her. She was trembly without being cold; her heart was beating rapidly though she lay perfectly still. She was bewildered, unhappy, so nervous that when Seth had slammed the door of his room behind him, obviously irritated by her fussing, she had wanted to run after him to say she was sorry.
Sorry for what? Only one way to settle that.
Annie was half-way downstairs, her long nightgown trailing behind her, and still she didn’t know what she was going to say.
‘I’ve come to say I’m sorry,’ she told him, standing in the doorway still shivering from a cold she couldn’t feel.
He was reading as usual, with his empty pipe on the small table beside him. He was wearing his dressing-gown; his fair hair was sleeked back – still damp, she guessed.
‘For what?’ The light grey eyes were steady. ‘For what?’
‘For fussing you when you came in. For mothering till you took your wet things off. For behaving as if I was your mother.’
‘Do you feel like my mother, Annie Clancy?’
She hung her head. ‘No, I don’t.’
He got up from his chair, came round her and closed the door. ‘Then what do you feel like?’ He was standing very close to her. ‘Is that what you’ve come downstairs in the dead of night to tell me?’
‘I don’t know …’ The admission came from her on a long drawn-out sigh.
‘Look at me, Annie.’
Slowly she raised her head, looked straight into his eyes. She had always thought they were the kindest eyes she had ever seen in a man, but now, in the darkened room, they were filled with a tenderness that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else but the deepest love.
‘Seth?’
She had never of her own volition touched a man like this before. Her fingers traced the line of his eyebrows, the curve of his cheek, lingered at his mouth. She swayed towards him, tracing the shape of his lips, parting her own in anticipation of a kiss, closing her eyes. Failing to see the hesitation in his expression before he took her in his arms.
But this time there was no terrified rejection, no shrinking from his caresses. This time it was how he had known it could be – all sweet surrender and an awakened passion that drove away every vestige of his carefully guarded control.
The pity of it was that Biddy, who had imagined this very moment, lived it for them, adding more than a few embellishments of her own, was fast asleep upstairs, totally oblivious of the fact that what was happening downstairs was more romantic than anything she’d ever read. Or was ever likely to.
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First published in hardback by Century 1989
Arrow edition 1990
© Marie Joseph 1989
The right of Marie Joseph to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
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ISBN 0 09 968660 0
