Page 59 of Watch For Me By Candlelight

‘Are you ready for the onslaught again tomorrow?’ Theo asked her. ‘You’ve got plenty of ice-cream? That sky tells me it’s going to be a hot day again.’ He nodded across to the west, where the sun was just dropping behind the horizon in a big, fiery ball and the sky was streaked with red, as if reminding people it would be back tomorrow, blazing down on them again.

‘I have plenty,’ Kate responded, gazing at the sunset. ‘And plenty of clotted cream. Cassie insisted.’

Theo laughed. He leaned forward and pulled the basket towards them, dipping into Kate’s line of vision. She tore her eyes away from the sunset and studied him instead. His face was shadowed by the sun, the contours around his cheeks and jaw strong and defined. She couldn’t stop staring at him. They’d done this before, she knew they had. They’d sat under the setting sun and talked — and not just the time they had eaten cheese on toast in her garden. These fields, these woods — everything had been here, much as they were now, for centuries. It was, Kate decided, too easy to mistake the comfort of the past for the uncertainty of the present.

She dragged her gaze away from Theo and stared at her knees instead. It was, she realised now, so very dangerous, sitting here with Theo outside his tent. She recalled that veiled suggestion earlier about not encouraging Hughie anywhere. If this evening continued as it had done, Kate wouldn’t be responsible for her actions and Theo wouldn’t have to encourage her to do anything—

‘I’d better go,’ she said, too sharply. ‘It’s getting late and I need to prepare for tomorrow.’ She dragged her fingers through her hair again. The curls had dropped quite a lot now, and it was with a vague sense of annoyance that she realised she needed to wash and set it all again in the bendy rollers.

‘Why are we always saying that to one another?’ he asked softly. ‘Are we really so terrified about what might happen?’

‘Yes.’ Her answer was simple and truthful. She turned to face him. ‘I’m absolutely terrified that I fall into this with you so completely that I can never climb out. It’s the way it is and the way it has to stay for now.’

He reached over and touched her curls, brought his fingertips down to her lips and touched them briefly. His eyes flickered with something like desire and regret all mixed together. ‘I could easily fall into things with you.’

‘And that’s why it’s dangerous and why I need to go. It’s bad enough parting as — friends. If I let myself slip too far into whatever we feel for each other, I couldn’t let you go again.’

‘Again?’ He looked at her curiously, tucked a curl behind her ear and trailed his finger down her cheek, then dropped his hand.

Kate looked at the ground. Her cheeks burned but something compelled her to tell him.

She took a deep breath. ‘What I said about Hartsford looking after its own — I meant it. I think I belong here. I think I’ve always belonged here — even before I was here. It sounds crazy, I know, but it’s happened to you as well, hasn’t it? In the museum cottage? Tell me you didn’t feel you belonged there. I bet you can’t — because you can’t lie to me, can you?’

Theo stared at her and shook his head slowly. ‘No, I don’t think I can lie to you. Yes. That was a very weird experience.’ He looked away and pushed his hand through his hair. ‘It was almost as if it was my cottage and I lived there and you . . . you were there. But you weren’t you. And I wasn’t me.’ He furrowed his brows. ‘I don’t know who I was, but I belonged there and I felt like I belonged with . . . you.’ His gaze stole back to her and her cheeks burned even more fiercely, but she found she couldn’t look away. ‘It was like you were my other half and we should have made something whole. I’ve heard about that sort of thing before, but I truly didn’t think it happened in real life. It’s like I knew you before.’

‘So, if you look at it like that,’ she said, ‘we were perhaps last here about one hundred and thirty years ago, give or take a decade or two. And here we are again. And it’s no easier for me this time. We couldn’t be together because you had to leave, all those years ago, and I don’t even know if you came back to me. And I still feel the same way about you now as I did then. But now you’ve got — other things — to deal with. And I can’t be part of it. Not yet.’ She shook her head and pulled her knees closer. ‘There’s something about closure, I think. I don’t have that with the way things used to be, because I don’t know what happened then. And I don’t know what’s going to happen now. It’s all out of my control.’

Theo, surprisingly, didn’t seem scared or worried at the notion that somewhere in the past their souls had met before. The magic of Hartsford was creeping all around them, wrapping them in a warm, silken embrace, drawing them together, coaxing everything back into order. Kate could almost hear those stars shifting and fizzing as they twinkled into the alignment she so firmly believed in.

‘I said something to you a while ago, and I’m going to say it again. I really do wish I’d met you again three and a half years ago. Before Chris and before Lori and before my life took the direction it did. I wish I could go back and change it all. But if I did that . . .’ Theo plucked at a blade of grass. Tugged it out of the ground and flicked it away. ‘Perhaps Poppy wouldn’t exist and that’s a concept I find hard to deal with.’ He sighed. ‘Come on. I’d better walk you back to the village before we do something quite reckless.’

Kate felt wretched. ‘No need to do that. I’ll be safe.’

‘Half way then?’

‘Half way.’ That wasn’t as dangerous. It wasn’t near her flat. It wasn’t within the temptation zone. It was also getting her away from Theo’s tent and the big, squashy airbed she had spotted inside it.

Oh, God.

Kate briefly wondered if the connection they were clearly feeling between them was born more of her ventures into the past than anything contemporary, but somehow she doubted it. They were, and always had been, twin souls.

She still felt the same way about him now as she had done then.

* * *

They walked, almost in silence, half way back to the village.

The lights of Hartsford were just visible in the darkening twilight. Theo had intended to just leave her there, as he had promised to do, mid-way between the campsite and the Folk Museum. He was planning to simply watch her walk towards her home — perhaps wait until he heard her ducks quacking a sleepy “welcome back” before he turned back to the campsite. Sound travelled in the country and he was certain he would have heard them.

But when it came to it, they stood, facing each other, at the side of the country lane, not really knowing what to do.

He knew what he wanted to do. And so he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her in a way that left no doubt about how he felt. If that was all they had at the moment, then he was damn well going to make sure she knew that his entire heart and soul were in that kiss. And it would be forever, even if he was forced to walk away at the end of this weekend and never see her again.

* * *

Sunday

Kate dragged herself out of bed early enough to cut flowers for Cassie’s cottage garden display before the ducks had even properly woken up. It had rained overnight as Cassie had predicted, and there were diamond-clear droplets decorating the plants. Once again, thoughts of Theo had interrupted her sleep. It was becoming a habit — frustrating in the extreme, as well, because if he was going to be in her head keeping her awake, then he might as well be in the bed next to her doing it properly.