The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,130

had happened, the Masons didn’t want Rose back at the farm. They had tolerated her presence all these years, but even they had their limits.

On the low table in front of Mary was Jack’s letter, begging for her return. She had read it, but felt nothing. It was all too much.

Slowly she drifted, fragile and damaged. The fire crackled intermittently. Hurt and rejection had swallowed themselves and she was numb. She didn’t know what she should do.

A rap on the door startled her. She knocked her cup of tea from the broad arm of the chair and watched the sepia stain spread across the carpet. The sound came again, but she didn’t have the strength to get up. She was buried by an immense inertia, eyes fixed on the fire, watching the flame trickle lazily along the glowing log. Back and forth. Back and forth. The clock ticked on the mantelpiece. The fire popped and flickered. The house was so quiet with the children and her parents having gone to the circus.

She heard the click of a handle being turned. Wind gushed through the door and then subsided. She heard footsteps in the hall. Then there was nothing. It was just a trick of the wind. Her eyelids drooped shut.

She dreamed of a soft hand touching her hair, fingers sliding through her loose brown curls. Soothing fingers massaged her head, warm and real. It had been a long time since she had known such tenderness. She was cold, but these fingers were bringing her back. They belonged to someone alive and warm.

Gently the fingers crept over her scalp. They circled at her temples and made tracks across her forehead. She felt the soft whisper of exhaled air on her head, heard the steady sound of breathing. The fingers slid down the bridge of her nose, below her eyes, across the arches of her cheeks, around her chin. They lingered on her lips, tracing them. Her heart fluttered and her breathing deepened. She was afraid to open her eyes.

There was a rustle of movement. A shifting shadow. A body, blocking the light and heat of the fire. She sensed someone kneeling. Her hands were enclosed by strong fingers, warm palms. Hands that belonged to a man. He guided her fingers to his face and drifted them over his cheeks, his eyes, eyebrows, across a corrugated brow. She felt hair—wavy, longish—and hooked her fingers in it, feeling the texture, her breathing light.

Her hand was drawn to warm lips and then her fingertips were kissed, one at a time, slowly, deliciously.

She woke, eager; her eyes flew open and he was smiling at her. A mouth that she remembered. Eyes she still fell into. ‘How did you find me?’ she asked.

‘Apple season,’ he said. ‘I come looking for you every year. I waited near the house and watched the others leave.’ He smiled, something hidden in his eyes. ‘The girl is you all over again, but darker, less hopeful. I see you in the boy as well.’

He lifted her left hand. Studied it. Then he turned it over and traced circles in her palm. Goosebumps spread up her arm. His smile was thick with intent. He kissed her palm and the touch of his lips was almost unbearable. She grasped his hair again, this time to push him away, but her hand softened amid its coarseness and her fingers tumbled to his ear, then his cheek.

‘What have you done?’ she whispered.

‘By coming here? By touching you?’

She pulled her hand away, trying to withdraw, to hold down the surge in her chest. He sat back, smiling.

‘How long has it been?’ His voice was a purr. ‘How old is the girl?’

‘Her name is Jan.’

‘I don’t need names.’

No. He didn’t need names. But it reminded her. It recalled her to the fact that she had a life beyond this moment, beyond the liquid depths of his eyes, beyond the heat of his hand resting on her knee. ‘Jan is thirteen. Gary’s eleven.’

‘They should have been mine.’

His eyes flashed and she felt a chill. There was much more to this man than the little she knew. She suspected he had violence within him. But he quickly smoothed his lips to that gentle smile.

‘Fourteen years since I saw you last. In the park.’ He lowered his head and touched a finger to her ring. ‘It was torture to see this on your finger. You cheated me. You gave him what was mine.’ His eyes brimmed with tears; he gripped