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‘But I believe in my heart that you would never abuse my trust again.’
‘You’re just saying that to placate me,’ he said, from between gritted teeth. ‘Because I am blind and you pity me.’
‘And barring maybe one occasion, since when did I ever say things to you that I didn’t mean?’
At this he said nothing. Seconds passed—or maybe they were minutes—and Ashley’s breath caught in a throat which was as dry as bushfire although she could feel the wet pricking of tears in her eyes. Until suddenly he reached for her—his hand moving from her shoulders down to her waist and then to the curve of her hip. And something of the old, masterful Jack was back as he gathered her towards him and pulled her down into his lap.
‘Do you really mean that?’ he demanded.
‘I really do. Every single word. Every syllable.’
Her heart was racing as she pushed a lock of raven hair back from his brow—across which now ran a livid scar, an ugly raised ridge of a thing. She looked into the ebony eyes which once had been so brilliant and gleaming but which now looked back at her, opaque and sightless. And her heart turned over with sorrow and regret—but mainly with love. Pure and deepest love that no scar could ever diminish. ‘Jack,’ she breathed. ‘My sweet, darling Jack.’
‘Kiss me,’ he instructed unsteadily. ‘Just kiss me once, Ashley, and convince me that I’m not dreaming this—and that any moment I’ll awake to nothing but empty arms and a cold memory.’
She lowered her lips to his and as his mouth brushed over hers she cried out at the poignant sweetness of that first contact. ‘Oh, Jack,’ she breathed again. ‘My darling, darling Jack.’
The kiss went on for countless minutes, and for Ashley it said everything that needed to be said. It healed and it consolidated. It comforted and renewed. She wondered if he felt it too—that utter sense of unity, of two lost souls and hearts who had found each other again.
When the kiss ended, he threaded his fingers in her hair. ‘You’re wearing it loose,’ he observed unevenly.
‘Yes. I do that more often these days.’ And then, because she was acutely aware of how precious these moments were—that they could determine their whole future—she forced herself to confront reality. ‘What happened?’ she whispered. ‘What happened to you?’
‘To blind me? You mean you haven’t heard?’
She shook her head—until she realised that such gestures would no longer do. ‘No,’ she said instead. ‘I knew you’d been injured, but that’s all. And as soon as I heard that—I came.’
His fingers played with the spill of her hair, just as they used to do after he’d made love to her. ‘Where do I begin? With the obvious, I suppose. After you’d gone, my life seemed. I don’t think there’s a single word which could define it. Empty. Incomplete. Aching. I’d never experienced such a feeling before—not even when I’d been in active service. It was as if I’d lost a part of myself. And the worst part of all was knowing that it had been my own fault—that if I’d been truthful with you from the start, then you might still be with me.’ He gave a ragged sigh. ‘Until I told myself that you were so pure and fundamentally innocent that you would never have begun an affair with me if you’d known I was married.’
Again, she smoothed a thick lock of raven hair away from his eyes, thinking that it was longer than he usually liked to wear it. And then she kissed his scarred brow for good measure and saw his lips curve briefly in response.
‘Did you know that my wife has died?’ he questioned suddenly.
In his arms, Ashley stiffened. ‘No.’
‘So you came back in spite of that?’ he mused.
To be honest, she hadn’t even stopped to consider it—her thoughts had all been about his welfare, not their future. And yet when she’d seen him, she had gone straight into his arms like a homing pigeon—as if Jack was her future. But wasn’t that leaping ahead of herself?
‘What happened to her?’ she whispered.
‘The very same morning you left—I had a phone call from the clinic to say that she’d passed away peacefully during the night.’
She remembered the phone ringing as she had slipped silently from the house and her own determination to close the door on her life at Blackwood.
‘I thought of contacting you to tell you—but realised it would make no difference. I knew that I had no right to see you—and I resigned myself to the fact that you were gone from my life for ever. But my heart felt shattered and my sleeping became worse again—although, ironically, the biography I was writing was working well. It became a kind of refuge for me—as work so often can be. I took to going to bed later and later in order to put off the inevitable moment of lying in a bed
which seemed so empty—and wishing that you were still there in my arms.
‘One night while I was reading, I fell asleep in the chair—and a spark from the fire hit the rug. I must have been more exhausted than I’d realised because I slept through the initial smoulder—and by the time I awoke, the fire had taken hold.’
‘Oh, Jack.’
‘That extinguisher we kept in the hall didn’t even make a dent in it. I called the fire brigade and then I ran to one of the outhouses and found a hose. I was standing spraying water at the front façade of the house when a beam came toppling down and hit me in the face.’ There was a pause. ‘And when I awoke, I found myself in hospital with my eyes bandaged and Blackwood no more.’
‘And can you see anything?’
He stared straight ahead and screwed up his dull eyes. ‘I can just about make out the glow of the fire. And the vague outline of that piano over there.’
