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“What?” Rachel stared at him in surprise. “Sell off the entire herd? He never said anything about that to me.” Ben shrugged, and she knew what he was thinking.Why would he?“But if he sells off the herd…” she began slowly, unable to finish.There wouldn’t be any more farm.The Mowbrays had farmed this part of Yorkshire for over two hundred years. Was it really going to end with her dad?
“Who’s going to farm the land?” Ben asked, his tone turning almost gentle. “Or milk the cows? You’re in London, and Harriet can’t manage the farm on her own. I don’t think she wants to, even if she might not say as much. Your dad was being pragmatic, that’s all. He wanted to keep farming as long as he could, hence the mortgage. But by the time he wasn’t able to farm anymore, he was intending to have everything in order. No mortgage, so you and Harriet get the house free and clear, along with the land.”
“I don’t care about the house,” Rachel protested, thinking of Harriet’s barb about the inheritance. “It’s not about the money.”
“Well, it was about the money for your dad,” Ben replied evenly. “He wanted to make sure to pay all his bills, but he also wanted to keep farming as long as he could. He loves it, you know.” His voice was quiet. “He’ll miss it.”
Rachel stared down at her plate. A lump was forming in her throat, and she needed it to dissolve. She definitely did not want to cry in front of Ben. “His appointment for an MRI came today,” she said in a low voice, still gazing at her plate.
“That’s good.”
She tried to nod but couldn’t quite manage it. She forced herself to ask, “Do you think there’s something really wrong with him?” Ben was silent for a moment, and Rachel risked a look up, even though her eyes were swimming with sudden tears. “I mean I know there’s something, but something properly serious. Do you?”
“Do you?” he asked, and the gentleness in his voice undid her. A tear slipped down her cheek and she dashed it away quickly.
“Sorry—”
“Don’t be sorry, Rach.” She couldn’t remember the last time he’d called her that, not since their school days. Her vision was too blurry to see him, but she heard his chair scrape across the stone-flagged floor, and then, to her shock, his arms were around her and he was pulling her up into a tight hug, and her damp cheek was pressed to his chest just as she’d remembered, so she could feel the steady thud of his heart, and it felt like the most reassuring sound in the world.
Rachel drew a shuddering breath, knowing she should pull away but not quite able to make herself. It felt far too nice to be held in Ben’s arms, to feel the warm and comforting touch of another human being. When had she last been held like this, save for Diana’s brief hug at that dinner? She had friends in London, yes, but there was a sterility at the centre of her life, an emptiness that she felt now more than ever, when she was in an embrace with someone she cared about.
You don’t still care about Ben,her sensible self reminded her rather frantically, but her heart was saying something very different.
“The thing is,” she said after a moment, her cheek still against his chest, her voice wavering and wobbling all over the place, “I told myself he wasn’t a very good father in some ways. He was so distant, a lot of the time. He never really tucked us into bed or played with us. He always seemed as if he’d rather be in the barn than in the house with his family. But he was stillthere. I still depended on him, without even realising that I was.”
“He was your dad,” Ben said simply, as if that explained everything, and maybe it did. He was resting one hand on the small of her back, and his palm felt warm and sure through the material of both her shirt and jumper. As they stood there together, unspeaking, he began to move his hand in slow circles, his thumb brushing the base of her spine, and a sudden, fierce longing blazed up inside Rachel until she felt as if it would consume her; it would burn her right up, into sparks and cinders.
She pulled away from him, just a little, to look up into his face. Her heart was thundering, and her body was flooded,floodedwith an immediate and desperate need. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so strongly, so fiercely. She wanted to kiss him. Shehadto kiss him.
Ben glanced down at her, and she felt as if she could fall into the glinting depths of his golden-brown eyes. Everything in her tensed, strained,yearnedas her lips parted and she came up on her tiptoes, her head falling back a little. Ben began to dip his head towards hers, that glinting gaze focused on her lips. Her eyes fluttered closed.Yes, this was happening. Yes…
And then she felt his hands move from her body to her shoulders and he set her away from him, like he was pushing in a chair.
Rachel’s eyes flew open. She stared at him for a second, registering the look of firm decision in his face, with only the barest flicker of regret. Realisation scorched through her, along with a deep humiliation that felt more like grief.
For a second she couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. She could feel a mortification, but—worse—a deep, pervading sadness.
“Rachel,” Ben said, and his tone was too close to pity for her to be able to stand it.
“No,” she said, although she didn’t even know what she was saying no to.
“Rachel—”
“No, look, I need to go.” Even though she knew, in her head if not her heart, that running away like a scalded cat was just about the worst thing to do right now, and definitely the most revealing, Rachel couldn’t keep herself from it. She had to get out of there,now. “Harriet’s expecting me,” she babbled as she reached for her coat and thrust her arms through its sleeves, making sure not to glimpse Ben so much as in her peripheral. She grabbed Fred’s lead and clipped it to his collar. “And I’ve actually got a lot of work to do, you know, with my very important job.” She’d meant to sound lightly self-deprecating, but it came out pointed and sharp, her voice vibrating with hurt. Heavens, but she was making everything a million times worse, and yet she just couldn’t seem to stop. She’d pressed the self-destruct button without even meaning to, and she was now on that ominous course with no way to step on the brakes.
“Rachel,” Ben said for a third time, and now he sounded exasperated.
“Sorry, have to dash!” Her voice came out high and bright now, so she sounded like a positive lunatic. “Bye-ee!” And then she was hurtling out the door, dragging Fred along with her, across the farmyard, grateful that the darkness cloaked her, and wishing it could swallow her whole.
Chapter Thirteen
“It’ll be fun,”Harriet said, without any enthusiasm at all.
Rachel stood in front of Mathering’s village hall, a squat building of Victorian red brick on the banks of the Derwent, feeling mutinous. The cheerful, slightly manic strains of a ceilidh band could be heard from within, along with the occasion burst of raucous laughter and the stamp of feet.
“I’m not going.”
“Rachel.” Harriet sounded sympathetic, but also a little exasperated. Rachel had been dragging her feet all evening, first with getting dressed—Harriet had made an effort with a denim skirt and some lippy, while she’d flatly refused to wear one of her so-calledsmart outfits, settling for jeans and a jumper. Then she’d balked when it was time to go, insisting they couldn’t leave their father behind. Despite the agreement he reluctantly gave to Diana to attend, he was now claiming a headache—Rachel wasn’t entirely convinced—and was firmly installed in his armchair in the sitting room, in front of their ancient TV, watchingMastermindand reading the paper.
