the woman he had been talking to and came over to them, his pale grey eyes glittering with ice as he held up his wrist and pointed to his watch.
‘What time do you call this?’
Kit pondered the question, staring at his gold Cartier watch, which she knew had been a twenty-first birthday present to him from his father thirty years ago. It was still as beautiful as it must have been then, but Gerald Keble had been dead for twenty years. Was that part of the power of antiques—that they outlasted those who had created them or owned them? Or was it more that they somehow carried the patina of the times they had lived through, their surfaces polished by love over generations?
‘Are we late?’ she began, pretending not to be sure of it, and Liam’s face tightened. He wasn’t fooled by her wide-open eyes and surprised expression. He knew her too well.
‘You know damned well you are! You should have been here half an hour ago! Every other stall was set up and doing business by half eight. Why weren’t you here? I was; I was here by twenty past eight—where were you?’
She abandoned innocence in favour of defiance. ‘Fred’s van can only do forty miles an hour when it’s loaded down with stuff, you know that! It might break down altogether if he pushed it.’
Fred and Paddy became very busy, not wishing to get drawn into the battle. They didn’t enjoy confrontation or argument; they liked life to be peaceful, and Kit sympathised—she would rather have had a peaceful life too, but Liam was making that impossible for both of them.
‘You should have left earlier!’ he accused.
‘We left early enough—but there was a lot of traffic on the road!’
‘You should have made allowances for that.’
It was never easy to argue with Liam; he had an answer for everything. She looked at him furiously, her green eyes glittering. ‘This is just wasting time! I’ve got better things to do than stand here bickering with you!’
As she turned away Liam tersely demanded, ‘Where were you all last night?’
She froze, staring up at him. ‘What?’
‘Don’t give me that innocent look! I know you weren’t home. I wanted to remind you to get here by half past eight. I kept ringing from six-thirty onwards but just got your answering machine. I left a couple of messages asking you to ring me back, but you never did.’
Fred and Paddy had discreetly deposited their loads on the empty stall and melted away back to the van to get some more of the items they had brought, hoping no doubt that by the time they got back here she and Liam would have stopped snarling at each other. Some hope!
Turning her back on him, Kit began to unpack some of the wrapped pieces in one of the boxes, setting them out carefully on the stall. She felt Liam glaring at her as she unwrapped a piece of art nouveau glass—a twisty candlestick in rainbow colours which had been allowed to run like melting wax.
Casually without looking at him, she said over her shoulder, ‘I went to the cinema club to see Garbo in Camille last night.’
‘Was it a midnight performance?’ he bit out.
‘Midnight performance?’ she repeated, baffled. ‘Of course not!’ She couldn’t actually remember what time she had got back to her flat, but it hadn’t been that late, surely?
She went on unwrapping porcelain, talking without looking at him. ‘I was back home by midnight! I didn’t check my answering machine; I forgot it was on so I didn’t think of switching it off, and this morning I was in such a rush, grabbing some coffee and toast, that I still didn’t remember to check to see if there were any messages. I went straight to bed as soon as I got home last night.’
‘Did you go alone?’ he asked, his tone as cutting as a knife going through silk.
Kit gave him an incredulous, angry stare. ‘To bed?’ She couldn’t believe he had asked her that. Hot colour rushed up her face—the scarlet of rage rather than embarrassment.
‘No, to the cinema!’ he bit out like someone snapping cotton between their teeth.
‘Yes to both, as it happens!’ she snapped back. What was he suggesting—that she had gone out with someone else last night? Was having an affair? He was reacting with possessive jealousy, yet he kept saying that he didn’t want to own her or have her own him. Why didn’t he make up his mind? He was the most contradictory, bewildering man she had ever known.
‘Really?’ His mouth twisted cynically, disbelievingly.
She hated the way he was looking at her. ‘Believe it or not, just as you like! It doesn’t bother me,’ she muttered. ‘Look, are you going to stand there and watch me working? Would it be too much to ask you to help?’
His face tight, he took a set of six French silver dessert spoons out of the box and put them down on the stall in a prominent place, his long fingers automatically caressing even in his temper. Liam loved beautiful things; he and Kit had that in common, which was why their partnership had worked so well until now.
He had inherited the auction rooms from his father, Gerald Keble. He had worked for the firm ever since he’d left university with an art degree two years after Kit had graduated. Kit had been engaged to Hugh by then and hadn’t quite made up her mind what she was going to do for a career. She had worked in her father’s shop until she’d got married and had her son, and even while she was running a home and taking care of Paul she had still managed to work part-time for her father during his lifetime.
It wasn’t until later that she’d begun working with Liam, but she had always known him through the auction rooms which she and her father had frequently visited to buy objects for their shop. His family—on both sides—had lived in Silverburn for centuries; their names, many covered in moss and fading, were carved on rows of graves in the old churchyard behind St Mary’s, the medieval church which stood on the top of the winding high street, as were those of Kit’s ancestors.
Neither of them came from rich or powerful stock. They were descended from shopkeepers and market traders, farm labourers and wagoners—the ordinary working people of this little English town over many generations.
‘I saw Mrs Walton, the vicar’s wife, just now,’ Liam murmured as he set out a Waterford crystal rose bowl on the stall. ‘She told me she saw you last night coming out of the cinema with what she described as a very attractive man, much younger than you!’
Kit swallowed, going a furious shade of fuchsia. She should have known that someone was bound to notice her with Joe. This was a small town-anyone who had lived here for years knew almost everyone else; nothing you did was ever missed and people were always curious, and always talked about anything they saw or heard. You couldn’t hope to keep a secret here.
That was, paradoxically, one of the things she loved about the place for all that it made her cross too; there was no chance of being forgotten or ignored here, of leading a lonely existence. You were part of the community whether you liked it or not and your entire life was an open book. That might have had a down side but it also made you feel good; you knew you belonged.
‘I may have come out with him—I didn’t go in there with him!’ she said irritably, and then her heart suddenly began to beat like an overwound clock.
Was Liam
