one perfectly drawn black brow as she’d run her scornful eyes over Nerissa’s plain, creamcoloured dress and the Victorian posy of summer flowers she carried in a silver holder.
Ben had seemed oblivious of his secretary’s hostility to his new wife, just as he was indifferent to his sister’s dislike of Nerissa. Ben’s sister hadn’t even come to the wedding, in fact. But then neither had any of Nerissa’s family.
It had been an odd wedding.
Nerissa stared at Ben’s face in the photo—tough and uncompromising, his eyes locked and hiding secrets.
Nerissa turned away, biting her lip. When he found out…She couldn’t even bear to imagine what he would do to her. He was capable of killing; she was convinced of that. The dark vein in his nature ran deep, and his pride was stony, unbending. Any injury to that pride was never forgiven.
She shivered, which reminded her that she was going north—the weather at this time of the year would be cool if not downright chilly. She went back upstairs and found a warm, heather-coloured tweed coat, a purple woollen scarf and knitted gloves that matched—a Christmas present from Aunt Grace last year. Aunt Grace always made the presents she gave; she was very good with her hands, could sew and knit expertly. For much of Nerissa’s life Aunt Grace had made most of her clothes on the sewing-machine in the little sewing-room looking out over the farm orchard.
Nerissa stiffened as she heard the unmistakable sound of a taxi throbbing away outside.
She ran downstairs and picked up her case, opened the front door and hurried out—a slightly built, almost fragile girl, with a wild cloud of dark hair around a pale, triangular face, dominated by those huge, cornflower-blue eyes.
‘Where are we going, Snow White?’ joked the taxi driver, turning to stare at her.
‘King’s Cross station, please.’
He started off, saying over his shoulder, ‘Where are you off to, then, love?’
‘Durham,’ she said, hoping he wasn’t going to talk to her all the way. She was in no mood for a light chat with a taxi driver. She had too much on her mind.
‘Never been there—what’s it like?’
Nerissa stared out of the window at London’s busy, crowded streets and thought of the wind off the moors, the open sky, the dinosaur contours of the green and brown hills with their rounded shanks and bony shoulders lifting against the horizon.
She had missed it, ever since she’d left just over a year ago. She realised suddenly how much she ached to see it again.
‘Cold, at this time of year,’ she said. ‘Durham is almost in Scotland, you know.’
‘Don’t fancy that much; give me lots of sun, that’s what I need, especially in winter.’ The taxi driver began to tell her about his holiday in Spain and how hot it had been there last month on the beaches of Torremolinos. Nerissa heard one word in every three.
She caught her train by the skin of her teeth. She had reserved a seat but her compartment was halfempty anyway, and got emptier as the journey continued up north. The train was an express and only stopped at a few stations—the important cities along this route. At intervals someone came round with a trolley containing sandwiches, crisps, drinks, but she wasn’t hungry so she just had a coffee midmorning. She spent the long journey staring out at the changing scene—the smoke-blackened chimneys of London, the grey and yellow London brick, the dull red tiles in the endless rows of little houses as they flashed through the suburbs, and then the flat, rather scrubby fields and hedgerows which succeeded them before they broke out into the real countryside of the heart of England.
By the time they were in the Midlands the sun was quite warm on the window, summer’s last, flickering, expiring flame moving over the landscape, the autumnal trees, the stubbled fields, the mist-hazed hills in the distance.
She had not been north since the spring, since that visit with Ben, since her marriage.
Had she changed? she wondered, trying to remember how she had felt before she’d met Ben, how she had felt as she’d made that first journey southwards to work in London.
She grimaced, still staring out at the countryside flashing past. Of course she had. A lot had happened to her in London. She was very different from the girl who had left the farm all those months ago.
Would they notice? Did it show—was it visible? She bit her lip. Philip would see it; he knew her better than anyone else in the world. He would know at once that the Nerissa who had come back to them was not the same girl who had left the north a year ago to work in London.
Except that Philip might never get the chance to notice anything about her.
She flinched at that idea, her skin white, stretched, taut. Stop it! she told herself. Don’t even think it. He is not going to die.
She looked at her watch; they were running to time. They would pull into York any minute, not much longer now. Her uncle would meet her at Durham. He would have the latest news.
As the train slowly steamed into Durham she collected her case and her other belongings and a moment later stepped down on to the platform, her long, slender legs admired by one of the porters hanging about waiting for someone to require his services.
‘Carry your bag, miss?’ he asked, but she shook her head.
‘I can manage, thank you.’ She hurried away with her case; it wasn’t very heavy.
She saw her uncle before she reached him and waved, breaking into a run.
He hadn’t changed, which was one comfort. Still tall and loose-limbed with iron-grey hair, a weathered countenance, deep-sunk pale eyes, John Thornton was a man who spent most of his days out in the open and it showed. Sun and wind had given him a skin like leather, the horizon-gazing eyes of a sailor and the slow patience of a ruminating animal—like those he looked after on his farm, the wiry upland sheep of the Northumberland hills.
‘Nerissa—thank God you’re here. We need a miracle.’
He bent and kissed her cheek, took her case from her. ‘I was afraid your husband might not want you to come.’
‘Ben’s away, abroad.’
Their eyes met, exchanged wordless understanding. ‘How long for?’
‘A week,’ she said, and saw her uncle’s face tighten.
‘A week? It’s going to take longer than a week.’
She had realised as much, had known as she left her home that she was going for a long time. She hadn’t been able to face telling Ben; she had known how he would react. His pride would never have agreed to letting her come. He would see it as a betrayal, a choice between him and Philip, and in a sense she supposed it was, but in another sense she had had no choice. She had had to come.
‘How is he?’
‘Bad.’ The monosyllable was flat yet filled with pain.
Her eyes stung with unshed tears. As they walked out of the station Nerissa slipped her hand through her uncle’s arm in a gesture of silent comfort.
He
