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‘You’re allowed to be sad, and you’re allowed to let other people know your worries. Let us help you more. Letmehelp you.’
‘Jowan?’ Minty pushed the hankie back into her pocket and met his eyes. ‘You’re my oldest friend. You already do so much for me. Asking for more would be taking advantage.’
At this, the two stood in silence, neither wanting to cross the delicate line that separated their treasured friendship and the uncharted waters of a romance, and yet they’d both been inching closer to the boundary these last few days.
Jowan, who’d been so bold a moment ago, gulped and faltered as he tried to find the words that would bring them closer.
‘I feel I’ve had a… a revelation of a kind, this week. I feel that having young Alex in the house and giving over…’ Jowan swallowed hard. ‘Giving over my Isolde’s belongings, and letting the girl sleep in that room where I nursed my wife…’ Jowan’s voice shook, and Minty pressed her hand to the spot where his heart was aching. ‘I feel I’ve allowed some… movement, after all these years of being afraid of losing touch with her, keeping her room just as she left it.’ Tears fell fast down his cheeks. ‘I feel now that I could… I could—’
The tumultuous air above the Big House bellowed a sudden thunderous cry as the sky released a flash of lightning so bright they both jumped closer. Jowan was surprised to find it was Minty who heldhimprotectively.
‘Jowan,’ she whispered low, as more thunderbolts split the sky, seeming to pierce the ground all over the estate. ‘I can’t lose your friendship, I couldn’t bear it.’
Jowan pulled back. The sincerity was etched across Minty’s face and it unnerved him, but before he could torment himself any longer with his fears and reservations, Minty pressed a kiss to his lips.
They held still like that for a moment, neither daring to move, as the rain poured and the lightning flashed, until Jowan took her in his arms and kissed her properly, the way he’d wanted to for a long time, longer than he’d wanted to admit.
For the first time in years Jowan’s mind was quiet. He wasn’t poor old Jowan de Marisco, the bookseller who’d given it all up to nurse his wife. He wasn’t the grieving husband haunted by the gaping mouth of the grave where he’d dropped a red camellia bloom on an awful winter’s morning. He was just a man remembering what it felt like to kiss a woman.
For them, there was no more thunder or rain, no sounds at all. There was only the two of them together, not thinking any further than their lips touching.
And yet no kiss, not even one this good, was going to hold it all back for long.
It was Minty who broke away first, blinking and astonished, looking for all the world like a girl of twenty, her eyes great pools of innocence and surprise. ‘Jowan?’ she breathed.
Hearing his name brought him back to the kitchen of the Big House with the harsh unshaded bulb too bright above them. The thunder and lightning was right above their heads now.
He stared back, unsure what to do. His mouth worked, knowing he should say something but no words came. He was frozen to the spot as everything he’d pushed to the back of his mind while they kissed came flooding back to him.
‘Jowan? Jowan, don’t,’ Minty said, somewhere between pleading and warning.
He took a step backwards, then another, as Minty’s eyes widened.
‘Don’t you dare, Jowan de Marisco!’ Minty’s voice quaked as it dawned on her. He was going to run.
That was when the loudest thunderclap rent the sky and the whole of Clove Lore was lit from above by shooting fingers of blinding fire bolts accompanied by the sound of stone blasting apart and bricks flying somewhere at the back of the estate.
Minty picked up her feet. She ran all the way through the house, bursting through the doors onto the parterre patio and out into the lashing rain.
Jowan followed behind her, leaving Aldous to cower under the kitchen table.
Down the stone steps and across the lawn, now so waterlogged Minty struggled to keep up her pace. Down the dark rhododendron valley lit only at intervals by the flashes in the sky.
Minty only understood what had happened when she stumbled over the first of the masonry blocks blown clean off the chapel roof by the lightning strike. Still, she picked her way towards the chapel, her hands extended in front of her, expecting at any second to make contact with the wall but meeting only airy nothingness.
Jowan finally caught up to her, calling her name. ‘Stay back,’ he cried, but she couldn’t hear him.
The thunder clouds, blowing fast, now passing over the main road, heading inland, gifted them one last bright burst that confirmed all Minty’s fears. The chapel was gone.
She stepped up onto the great pile of slate shards, rubble, shattered glass and splintered wood. It was as though an incendiary device had detonated inside the place.
‘Minty!’ Jowan called again. ‘Come away, get back inside.’
The lights from the Big House began to penetrate the gloom a little as their vision adjusted.
‘It’s ruined,’ she said, barely audible. Minty turned blank eyes upon him as she staggered out of the destruction. ‘You,’ she said, rain drenching her hair and soaking through her layers of clothing to her blouse, her skin prickling with cold. ‘You kissed me, and you regretted it.’
‘Mint, I…’ Jowan tried to protest but gave up, seeing the tears shine in her eyes. ‘Mint, this is the camellia grove where I proposed to my Isolde. This is the village where she lived and breathed… and you… you loved her too, I know you did. No woman could have a better friend, but I… I am her husband still, even though I’m a widower. I…’
Minty’s face turned hard like flint and she pushed past him. She didn’t look back when she spoke. ‘There’s a bed made up for you in the ballroom.’
Making her way back to the house like a woman in a trance, Minty’s muddy feet carried her to the small bedroom she called her own at the back of the kitchens. She brushed her wet hair back and changed into a nightgown, letting her sopping clothes fall in a heap on the bare floorboards. Her body rattled with shock and cold until she was under the covers in the dark.
That night she cried herself to sleep while the storm blew itself out over the hills and towns inland, its anger calming as Christmas Eve dawned in Clove Lore.
