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Dee!
He didn’t dare start thinking about her, Hugo recognised. Not now. Not whilst he was driving.
CHAPTER TEN
DEE woke up abruptly from the dream she had been having. In it she had been walking with her father along the river. He had been holding her hand, just as he had done when she had been a little girl, smiling at her as he’d paused and pointed a shoal of minnows out to her as they swam busily in the reeds. The water had been so clear she had been able to see the bottom of the river.
Further out from the bank, though, the water had been much deeper, and suddenly she had felt afraid, drawing back, gripping her father’s hand tighter, but he had laughed at her, telling her that there was nothing to be afraid of and that he loved her.
There were tears on her face, Dee recognised, but they were tears of love. As she sat up she noticed a piece of paper lying on the empty pillow beside her.
Uncertainly she picked it up, her heart thumping heavily as she recognised Hugo’s handwriting.
‘I love you’, he had written.
I love you.
Dee closed her eyes. Hugo loved her and Hugo had told her that he didn’t believe her father had taken his own life. She slid out of bed and padded over to her bedroom window. It was almost dusk, and Hugo’s car had gone from her drive. She had no idea where he had gone, or why, but Dee knew instinctively that he would come back.
‘I love you’, he had written, and coming from Hugo those words meant exactly that. He loved her.
Her body ached in odd, unfamiliar and yet somehow very familiar little ways and places. She could still smell Hugo’s scent on her skin, and if she closed her eyes she could almost feel the touch of him beneath her fingertips. She had no idea what lay ahead of them.
Hugo could, he had told her during their argument at Peter’s, live virtually wherever he chose. His role within the aid programme was no longer one that required him to work out in the field. Her work demanded that she live here in Rye-on-Averton, but if the committee refused to sanction the changes she wanted to make to the charity she wasn’t sure that she wanted to remain involved in it. Her father’s charity could be carried on without her direct involvement, and without her fearing any damage to her father’s name. She had no responsibility, no duty to keep her in Rye now. She could move, live wherever she wished, go with Hugo wherever he wished. If that was what he wished.
‘I love you’, he had written. Not, I want you, I need you...with me always...as my partner, my wife, the mother of my children.
Children. Dee touched her stomach. Did Hugo know, as she had known, had he felt as she had felt, that fierce pulse, that fusion, that heartbeat of time which had created a new life...their child? Or was it just a woman’s thing, a woman’s special secret knowledge, that awareness that her own body was no longer exclusively her own?
Hugo’s child conceived within her. Her father would have loved to have had grandchildren.
Her father.
Dee closed her eyes and then opened them again. Was Hugo right, or had he simply been trying to comfort her?
She went to the bathroom and showered quickly. There was something she had to do. Somewhere she had to go.
* * *
‘Well, now that Mr Stewart has been able to put Peter’s mind at rest, he certainly won’t need to be so dependent on you,’ Jane told Hugo briskly.
They were in the kitchen of Peter’s house. The specialist had left, having examined Peter thoroughly and then declared that he was extraordinarily fit for a man of his age and likely to live at least another ten years. But the doctor had lingered on after he had gone.
‘He feels very vulnerable and alone,’ Hugo told her.
‘Mmm... Well, you mustn’t allow him to become too dependent on you, you know. After all, you have a right to a life of your own,’ she added, with a coy look, before continuing, ‘Speaking of which, I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me one evening.’
Hugo smiled gently at her.
‘It’s very kind of you, but I’m afraid I can’t...’
Couldn’t and certainly didn’t want to. The only woman he wanted to be with was Dee—the only woman he had ever wanted to be with, the only woman he would ever want to be with.
It had been his pride that had prevented him from pleading with her to change her mind all those years ago when she had told him it was over between them, and if he had known then just why she had said it... But she had taken good care that he shouldn’t know.
It was later than he had hoped before he could leave. Peter had wanted to talk over the specialist’s comments, and Hugo hadn’t had the heart to cut him short or show any impatience.
‘You’re going out? But it’s late,’ Peter protested when Hugo explained.
