Читать книгу The By Request Collection - Kate Hardy - Страница 92

CHAPTER TWELVE

FLORA WOKE WITH a start, rolling over to check her phone automatically. Five a.m. and still no answer from Alex.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the luminous green stars still stuck to her ceiling. It had been a typical Christmas Eve; Horry had turned up during dinner, ready to hoover up all the left-over rice, pakoras and dahl, and then Greg had insisted on babysitting so that Minerva and Flora’s mother could join the rest of their family for a couple of drinks before they all trooped to the ancient Norman church for the short and moving celebration of Midnight Mass. It wasn’t often they were all together like this, but it just made Alex’s absence all the more achingly obvious. Flora had tried not to spend the whole evening checking her phone. She had failed miserably, barely taking part in the conversation and mouthing her way through the carols.

Still no word. She just needed to know he was okay.

No, she was kidding herself. She wasn’t that altruistic. She wanted to know, to look deeper, to see if somewhere, deep inside, he cared for her the way she so desperately wanted him to.

And if not to ask herself if that was all right. If all he was capable of offering was friendship mixed with passion, then should she agree to marry him anyway—because she would still be with him? Was it settling or being pragmatic? Selling herself short or grabbing the opportunity with both hands?

Although it was rather moot; having said no once, she wasn’t sure how to let him know if she did change her mind. It wasn’t exactly something you could drop into conversation.

Flora turned her pillow over, plumping it back up with a little more force than was strictly necessary, and attempted to snuggle back down; but it was no use. She was wide awake. Not the pleasurable anticipatory tingle of a Christmas morning but the creeping dread that nothing would ever be the same again.

Well, she could lie here and brood or she could get up, make coffee and make a plan. She reached for her phone again and the sudden light illuminated her room and the bags of presents still piled in the corner. It was an unwritten law that all presents had to be snuck under the Christmas tree without the knowledge of anyone else in the household. Flora and Alex usually spent most of the early hours trying to catch the other out—a heady few hours of ambush, traps and whispered giggles because it was also a sternly enforced law that nobody could get up before seven a.m., the edict a hangover from her childhood.

She swung her legs out of the bed, feeling for her slippers in the dark and shrugging on the old vintage velvet dressing gown Alex had bought her for her sixteenth birthday, before padding quietly across the room to retrieve the bags. The house was in darkness and, not wanting to wake anyone else up, she switched on the torch on her phone to help guide her down the windy stairs. Alex’s door was still ajar, the empty room dark.

Her bags were bulky and it was all Flora could do to get them quietly along the landing and down the main stairs. Every rustle of paper, every muffled bang as the bag hit the bannister made her freeze in place, but finally she stepped over the creaky last step and into the hallway. Not for the first time she cursed her mother’s decision to furnish the wide hall as a second sitting area. Not only did she have to dodge the hat stand, umbrella stand and the hall table, but she also had to weave around a bookcase and a couple of wing-backed chairs before she reached the safety of the sitting-room door.

Flora froze, her hand on the handle as she clocked the faint light seeping under the door? Another early riser? She could have sworn she had heard all her family make their stealthy present-laying trips soon after she had gone to bed, and it was far too quiet to be either of her nieces.

One of them had probably left the light on, that was all. She turned the handle and nudged the door open with her hip as she lugged the two bags into the room, turning to place them next to the tree...

Only to jump back when she saw a shadowy figure already kneeling under the tree. Grey with tiredness, hair rumpled and still in the clothes she had seen him in yesterday morning, on his knees as he added his own gifts to the pleasingly huge pile. ‘Alex?’

He rocked back onto his heels. ‘Merry Christmas, Flora.’

Her throat swelled and she swallowed hard, so many things to say and she had no idea which one to start with. ‘You’re here?’ Great, start with the blindingly obvious. ‘I tried calling...’

‘I know. I got your message, thank you.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘That’s a long story.’ He nodded at the bags lying forgotten at her feet. ‘Shall I pretend I haven’t seen those and go and put some coffee on?’

She blinked, trying to clear her head, take in that he was actually here, that he had come home. ‘Yes. Coffee. Thanks.’

The corners of his mouth quirked up in a brief smile. ‘Good. I could kill for one of your dad’s mince pies as well.’

Normally Flora took her time placing her gifts, making sure they were spread out, tucked away, but right now she didn’t care, chucking them onto the pile haphazardly with no care for the aesthetic effect. She switched off the lamps and sidled out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her before turning into the kitchen.

The scent of coffee was as welcome as the sight of Alex. Really here, reassuringly here, leaning against the counter, a mince pie in one hand, a mug in the other. ‘Nothing says Christmas like your dad’s baking.’

‘That was the title of his last interview.’ Flora leaned over and stole a crumb off his plate. ‘It’s good to see you, Alex.’ It didn’t feel like less than twenty-four hours since they had parted; it felt like a lifetime.

‘I’m sorry I just took off but I needed some time, some space. I took your advice. I looked up my mother’s family.’

Whatever Flora had been expecting, it wasn’t this. ‘You did? I thought you didn’t know where they were?’

‘I didn’t. Only since you mentioned them the idea was niggling away at the back of my mind. You were right, there had to be someone out there. And then I remembered, when I was a little boy I used to see my grandmother sometimes—and I wrote to her a lot. I remembered enough of her address to be able to track her down.’

‘What it is to have a photographic memory.’

‘Turns out it comes in useful.’

‘So.’ Flora felt unaccountably shy. ‘What was she like? Did you meet her?’

To her surprise Alex laughed. ‘Nothing like I expected, very chic, rather cool and very lovely. You’ll like her, Flora. And it was as if all the missing pieces just slotted together. She had answers and photos and she knew.’

‘Knew what?’

His voice broke. ‘That my mother loved me. She didn’t kill herself because she hated me. She killed herself because she thought she was letting me down. It was her illness that was to blame, not me.’

Tears burned the backs of her eyes, her throat. How could he have lived all these years believing it was his fault? How could his father have allowed him to? All awkwardness, all restraint disappeared as Flora reached over to grab his hand, her fingers enfolding his. ‘Of course it was—and of course she loved you. How could she not have?’

‘She hung on for two years after I was born, terrified and so unhappy, but she tried. She really tried. If she’d got help it would all have been so different but she was in denial and my father thought that she was weak. He didn’t want her talking to anyone but him.’

‘If anyone’s to blame he is. For all of it. For your mother, for taking your stepmother’s side, for allowing you to leave home.’

‘I think I know that now. The stupid thing is I have spent my whole life wishing I had a family and a home and yet I had one all along.’

Flora looked down at the counter. ‘With your grandmother.’

‘No.’ His voice softened. ‘With you.’

She looked up, startled at his words. Her eyes locked onto his and her pulse began to thump at the look in his eyes. It was more than the desire she had enjoyed over the last week, more than the candid friendship of the last twenty years. It was new, unknown and so intense she could barely breathe. ‘I’m glad you know that. No matter what happened with you and me your home is here...’

‘I know that but that’s not what I mean. I mean that wherever you are, Flora, that’s where I belong. London, Kent, Bali, Austria. My house, your room or a tent in the pouring rain. I could lose everything tomorrow and as long as you were with me I wouldn’t mind. You...’ His voice cracked. ‘You make every day an adventure, Flora, and I was too blind or too scared to see it before.’

The blood was rushing in her ears and she had to grip the counter tightly, afraid that she might fall without its solid support. ‘Me?’

‘I think I’ve always known it—from the very first day when you helped me make a den. Remember? I was running away but I wasn’t scared because I’d found someone to be with. But I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t want to taint you. My father said I ruined everything and everyone I touched and, oh, Flora, I didn’t want to ruin you.’

‘You won’t, you couldn’t.’

‘When I asked you to marry me I was a fool. I thought I meant those things, those sensible reasons, the list of positives, but really I was a coward. I was too afraid to tell you what I really meant. I wanted to tell you that you were the most beautiful woman in the ballroom, that I couldn’t take my eyes off you all night, that you were my best friend and that I loved you and didn’t want to spend a single second of my life away from you. That’s what I should have said.’

Flora blinked hard, willing the tears not to fall. ‘It’s a little more convincing than storage.’

‘If I’d told you all this then, would you have said yes?’

She nodded, unable to get the words out.

‘And...’ he stepped around the counter so that he was right next to her, turning her unresisting body so that she faced him, cupping her face in his hands and looking down at her, tenderness in his eyes ‘...if I ask you now?’

Flora smiled up at him, her voice scarcely more than a whisper. ‘Why don’t you ask me and see?’

Laughter flashed in his eyes as he took her hand in his. ‘No flash mobs, no rings in ice cream, no sonnets. Just you and me, Flora. Just like it’s always been.’

She nodded, her chest so swollen with happiness she thought she might drift away.

‘Flora Prosperine Buckingham, would you do me the incredible honour of being my best friend, my companion, my lover, my confidante and my partner in adventure every day for the rest of my life?’

‘I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend my life with.’ Flora looked at him, at the ruddy, disordered curls, the freckles, the long-lashed eyes, and her heart turned over with love. ‘Of course I’ll marry you. I think I fell in love with you too, that day in the lane. You were so determined and so brave. I just wanted to make it all better.’

‘You did, you do. It just took me far too long to notice.’

‘Look.’ She pointed upwards to the beam overhead. ‘Mistletoe.’

‘I don’t need mistletoe to tell me to kiss you, not any more.’ Alex leaned forward and brushed her mouth with his. ‘Merry Christmas, Flora.’

‘Merry Christmas, Alex.’ She could finally say the words she had been holding in for so long. ‘I love you.’

He looked over at the grandfather clock in the corner. ‘We still have ninety minutes before the household’s allowed to get up. Can you think of any way to spend it?’

Flora rose onto her tiptoes and allowed herself to kiss him properly, deeply, lovingly. Her fiancé, her man, her best friend. ‘I’m sure we can think of something...’

* * * * *