my father had condemned my mother to.’ She looked away—far away—back into the past to her childhood. ‘She knew she should never have given in to my father. Knew she was at fault. Knew she was a fool to love him. Knew she deserved what she got from him—rejection and short shrift. It was a lesson, she taught me well,’ she said heavily. Her eyes came back to Athan. ‘Which is why it was so unbearable to realise you thought I’d stoop to carrying on with a married man. Why I was so angry that evening Ian told Eva about me.’
Athan’s face was drawn. ‘You had every right to be.’ His voice was sombre. ‘I misjudged you totally. Thought the very worst of you.’
She could hear the self-laceration in his voice, and something twisted inside her.
‘I hated you for it!’ she burst out. ‘I thought I hated you for what you did to me—deliberately seducing me. But when I realised … realised that what you thought of me was a million times worse than simply trying to latch on to my wealthy brother and mess up his family … oh, then I hated you a million times more than I did before.’ She felt her hands fist in her pockets. ‘When I threw in your face what I truly was to Ian—what our relationship actually is—oh, it felt so damn good. Wiping that condemning contempt off your face. And slapping you felt even better!’
She jerked to her feet, yanking her arm free of him. Standing there, buckling with emotion, she swayed in the wind, her face convulsed.
Why had he come here? To torment her again? What for?
It was over now—all over. Nothing more to be done, or said. It was all a mess—a hideous, insoluble mess. But she knew she had to accept that in the end, it wasn’t his fault. Heavily, she turned around to face him again. He hadn’t moved. Was just sitting there immobile, looking at her.
His expression was …
Was what? she thought, finding thoughts skittering across her mind inchoately, incoherently.
Wary—that was what it was. But there was more than wariness in it. His eyes—his dark, gold-flecked eyes, whose glance had once turned her to jelly—were now regarding her with …
Such bleakness.
That was what was in his face. His eyes.
She took a scissoring breath. ‘There isn’t any point to this—there really isn’t. It’s just a mess—a total mess all round. I can see … understand … why you jumped to the conclusion you did. I can see why you wanted to protect your sister. You did what you thought best at the time. But now … now that it’s all out in the open—the actual truth, not your assumption—it just makes it impossible for me to have anything more to do with you, or Eva—or even Ian, really. I can’t ever see you again—you must see that. What you did to me will always be there, poisoning everything.’ She looked at him. Looked into those dark, wary, bleak eyes. ‘I can’t get over what you did—I will never be able to get over what you did.’
For one long, unbearable moment they just gazed at each other across everything that divided them. An impossible divide.
A huge, crushing weariness pressed down on her. Her head bowed. She knew she should head for home, back to the sanctuary of her cottage. But her legs were suddenly like lead.
Then behind her she heard a movement. Hands lightly—so lightly—touched her hunched shoulders, then dropped away.
‘And nor will I.’
Athan’s voice was low. Conflict filled it. Filled his head. Was she right? Should he never have come here? Never have followed the crushing imperative to find her—talk to her? Because he had to talk to her. He couldn’t just leave it the way it had been—with her denouncing, punishing slap ringing across his mind. His soul.
Punishing him for what he had thought about her. Punishing him for what he’d done to her. Punishing him for getting her totally, utterly wrong …
‘It will be like a brand on me all my life,’ he told her. ‘What I did to you.’
She gave a little shrug. It was all she could manage. ‘It doesn’t matter. I understand why you did it. It was a … misunderstanding, that’s all.’ Her voice gave a little choke as she said the word that was so hideous an understatement. ‘A mess up. But it doesn’t matter. In the end it doesn’t leave any of us worse off, does it? If anything, Ian and Eva’s marriage is stronger than ever, so that’s surely some good out of it. He finally has a job where he feels he can not only make a real contribution to the world, in a way he never could before, but he can stand on his own two feet—out from under your shadow. Plus, of course—’ her voice twisted ‘—he has finally won your trust—convinced you he’s not cut from the same corrupt cloth as our father. So that’s all to the good, isn’t it?’
She spoke negligently, carelessly. As if nothing mattered any more—just as she was saying.
‘As for you and me—’ She swallowed. There was a stone in her throat. Making it hard to speak. Impossible almost. But she had to force the words all the same.
She stared out ahead of her, towards the granite tor beyond. Rocks that had thrust up out of the burning earth so deep below, then cooled and congealed in the air. Hardened and set. Unchangeable now. Only the wind and the rain would weather them, wear them down over aeons of time. Aeons that mocked the brief, agonised flurry of human lives. Just as the vanished ghosts of the dead village they stood in haunted those who came after them.
‘As for you and me,’ she said again, ‘what does it matter? What happened was … a mistake. An error. Regrettable, but understandable. It can’t be mended, but—’ The stone was harder now in her throat, but she had to get the words past it all the same. ‘It can be ignored.’
She heard his intake of breath behind her. Then, carefully, he spoke.
‘No—it can’t. It can’t be ignored. It has to be faced. I have to face it.’
The hands came again—lightly, briefly, on her shoulders. She could barely feel them, yet it was like electricity shivering within her as he turned her around to face him. Face what he was going to say.
His expression was sombre. The bleakness in his eyes was absolute.
‘I wronged you. I wronged you and I will regret that all my life—however unintentioned it was, the wrong remains. But if you ask me to regret what happened, then … I won’t. I can’t. I came here to you afterwards wanting only one thing. Thinking that because you were now no longer a danger to my sister I could indulge myself—take from you what I wanted so, so badly. Have you back for myself again.’
He gazed down at her, and behind the bleakness in his eyes something else flared. Something that was dangerous to her. That threatened her. That sought to set aside the aeons of time that formed the moors, the millennia that separated them from the people who had once dwelt here in the shadow of the tors. That sought to mock the effect of time on human lives.
Something that was stronger than time. That would outlast all things.
‘To have you back,’ he said. ‘To have you as you were in that brief, precious time we had—a time that enraptured me. And tormented me. Tormented me because I knew it was only a fleeting bubble—a bubble I would have to burst, cruelly and callously, when I denounced you.’
Emotion came to his eyes again, but it was stormy
