Love & Freedom (7 page)

Her eyebrows dipped. ‘Did one what?’

‘Did a runner. Went off with another woman.’

They’d reached the clifftop and the traffic and the breeze combined to make it difficult to hear each other so they’d crossed the road to the bungalow before she answered. ‘Poor Clarissa. I didn’t know about her husband.’

‘She and Duncan were going to live in the bungalow.’ He nodded up at it. ‘They moved in with Nicola while they did this place up so Clarissa’s still there, because when Duncan took off Clarissa had to take the mortgage on her own. That’s why she’s renting the bungalow out. Nicola’s between relationships – none of my sisters but Clarissa ever bothered getting married – so she’s happy to share living expenses. But I still feel bad for Clarissa.’ He watched Honor’s behind as she walked up the terrace steps. ‘Duncan Wells had always been a problematic bastard but the crunch was when another woman came on the scene. So Clarissa embraced being single again, and went back to calling herself Mayfair.’

Honor halted at her door. ‘Horrible for her.’

He tilted the baseball hat gently off her head, sliding it slowly down her ponytail and stretching around her to hang it on the door handle. Now she was in the shade her skin was safe. And the damned hat would only get in the way when he kissed her.

But she was still frowning over Clarissa’s troubles. ‘You’re obviously on her side when it matters. That’s real important.’

He propped his hand on the doorframe. ‘She drives me mad, but of course I’m on her side. She was hurt. Also, she gave me hell.’

‘Gave
you
hell?’

He shuddered at the remembered purgatory. ‘Straight after Duncan left, it came out – in the worst way – that I was in a relationship with a married woman, Rosie. In my defence, the first I knew of it was when Rosie’s husband turned up, threatening to kill me.’

‘Wow,’ she breathed. ‘That sucks. How could you not know?’

‘Exactly Clarissa’s point. But it seems that the endless lies and deceit that come with having an extra-marital affair can be used to blindside the lover as well as the husband. I honestly didn’t know. I was so pissed off with Rosie. Apart from subjecting me to a horrible scene and making me look an idiot, she involved me in hurting her husband, which I hated. She didn’t wear her wedding ring, she stayed out all night – how the hell was I
supposed
to know?’

‘Maybe she wasn’t all that married? Like – separated, or something?’

‘It’s true that they were only “kind of” married, according to her. But that message didn’t seem to have reached her husband
 
… Anyway, I’ve sworn off married women. I don’t need them.’ He dismissed Rosie and her excuses. His primary interest in this conversation was wondering when it would pause long enough for him to get to know that pretty mouth.

Which was no longer smiling. Instead, Honor sighed. ‘So this would be where I tell you I’m kind of married, too.’

He took a look into her eyes. There, too, the smiles were gone. His heart began a slow float downwards, hardening his voice as he straightened up and stepped back. ‘And you don’t wear a wedding ring, either.’

Her smile was defensive. ‘They’re not compulsory.’

Anger ripped through him, firing words from his mouth. Not loudly. Quietly. Like a ticking bomb. ‘Maybe they ought to be – to stop poor bastards making dangerous assumptions!’

And before he could soften, explain it was disappointment that made him snappy and that he was prone to speaking first, thinking later, she unhooked her cap and opened the door. ‘Assumptions are always dangerous. If they weren’t assumptions, they’d be intelligently researched conclusions, wouldn’t they?’

And the door shut, firmly, in his face.

Chapter Seven

From the way that his eyes, heavy with desire, had been fixed to her mouth and, damn, pretty hot, she’d known he wanted to kiss her. His spurt of anger told her just how much.

A kiss would probably have been a bad idea. For all kinds of reasons.

Like Stef. Stef. And
 
… Stef.

She could have told him that she and Stef were living separate lives but right now a man in her life, particularly an angry man with barriers against married women, would complicate her already knotty situation. And she knew little about Martyn Mayfair other than that he kept turning up in shining armour to rescue her from dragons – well, sunburn and thunderstorms – and he had a stalker, which was sad and, as she was pretty freaked by the whole Robina thing, an out-of-left-field complication.

There was no reason for her to feel affronted that Martyn had thrust her from him like a dog that had rolled in something stinky.

So she should just stop.

She sighed. Well, stop then, Honor.

But, before he’d turned so harsh and unforgiving, she’d been all set to drown in those dark eyes and let his lips make real the connection they were obviously both feeling. And as for that incredibly English way he said ‘bastard’ – barzstard. Not basstard. Cute
 
… She shook herself. Stop! Really, stop. Not going to happen.

A long soak in a hot bath went some way to easing her stiff muscles. Then, after a quick lunch, she fired up her laptop and resolved to work through her inbox to punish herself for wishfully thinking herself kissed by a specimen of almost perfect male physical beauty. First the mail she’d let build up from friends and recently ex-coworkers demanding to be told exactly what the hell she thought she was doing, pinging back the same breezy paragraph to each:
Hi! I’m fine, just enjoying a little time out before deciding where I go from here. Be sure to see you sometime.

But the concern from loved ones was harder to deal with. She clicked first on
Zach
:

Hey Honor, you OK? Dad’s stressing. He rang me, checking whether you were hanging with me down in Texas but I told him no. But if you do want to hang here, I’ll still tell him no, if you want. Zach

PS I keep hearing that everyone back in Hamilton Drives is so amazed. I knew Stef’s stunt would make it hard for you but you kind of took people by surprise by leaving.

She moved on to
Jessamine
:

Honor, I saw Stef and he’s totally subdued, wishing he was back in the days when his worst crime was blowing up a mailbox.

He says to tell you that he loves you and knows he deserves to be punished but he misses you like crazy and wishes you’d go see him. Love you, sis. Jessie xxx

Honor smiled, picturing Jessie, the image of blonde, pretty Karen, throwing her arms around Hon
or and delivering those kisses, heavy on the lipgloss.

She left the hardest till last.
Dad
:

Honor, honey, I’m not going to pretend that I’m in favour of you hiding out from your errant husband but I guess that’s a conversation for another day. Until you’ve got this fit out of your system, can we please continue to check in with one another? Regularly? Karen says Hi.

I love you.

She returned,
I love you, too. I’m really fine, Dad.

When she’d conquered her inbox, restless emotions and incipient muscle stiffness sent her to put up her hair and slap on her sun block and walk out to explore Eastingdean while the sunshine lasted.

Most commercial activity in Eastingdean was centred on The Butts, a broad road, off Marine Drive, of pubs, fascinating stores and places to linger. Honor suppressed a childish snicker at the idea of a street named The Butts. The British didn’t use the word ‘butt’ in quite the same way as Americans but if she were ever to open a shop here it would have to, just
have
to
, sell panties and boxer shorts. She could call it
Cover Your Butts
. Or
Beautiful Butts. The Butts for butts. The Butts Store
.

On the first corner of The Butts was a block of shops called Starboard Walk, studded with enormous pebbles row on row on row. The rest of the stores – no,
shops
– that lined The Butts were an eclectic mixture of more flint, plain red brick, rendered and painted in white or cream with the occasional pink, or the cross between a house and a zebra that was mock-Tudor.

The butcher’s shop and the one that sold fruit and vegetables were worthy only of a glance and she noted the fish and chip shop for when she hadn’t just eaten. Across the road from the Eastingdean Teapot, the tearoom that Martyn had said belonged to his stalker, she browsed happily around a leafy, peaty garden shop that sold spotted Wellington boots, neat packs of seed, and baskets of hanging plants swinging gently as they waited to be bought.

Her favourite, though, she found at the point where the shops were petering out – Pretty Old. The shop front was stained dark, the bevelled glass windows shone, and the air smelled of dust and beeswax as she stepped inside. From somewhere in the recesses she thought she could hear a radio but, although a tinkling bell announced her as she closed the door, nobody emerged to help her.

It wasn’t exactly an antique store, not like those she’d seen in London’s Chelsea. In Hamilton Drives the sign over the door would have said something about ‘collectibles’.

But, wow. It was crammed with cool stuff.

In cabinets crouched old telephones, from froggy-looking examples in two shades of green to brittle black, dials yellowed with age and a funny cord that looked as if it had been covered in cotton.

Then came the photographs. Faded photographs in tones of grey or shades of sepia; weddings and christenings, parades, family groups and solemn babies in long gowns, all framed in tarnished silver or wood smoothed by age. Even better was an album of postcards that were embroidered in faded silks and sometimes edged with lace.

She picked it up and breathed in the smell of old.

Old paper, old ink, old lives. It was exactly the kind of history she loved best: the kind you could touch, just on the edges of living memory. Inside the album’s back cover was written in a childish cursive script:
Mary Brownlee, The Rise, Eastingdean, East Sussex.
Was Mary Brownlee still around? Probably not, she realised, sadly, if her precious collection had ended up in this hushed, musty shop.

Each postcard had its own embroidered message:
Happy Christmas
.
Happy Birthday. To My Darling Wife. To My Little Girl. Don’t Forget Me.
Honor turned each thick page gently, reverently,
Souvenir de France
,
Right is Might
, until she reached the final one,
RFA 1917, my heart it wings to thee.
The colours were muted by the years but every stitch was beautiful and precise, just as it had been set almost a century before.

‘Lovely, aren’t they?’

The quiet voice came from right beside her and Honor jumped so hard she almost dropped the precious album. A woman in her sixties twinkled at her, eyes almost disappearing in her smile, cheeks as round as red apples. If her ears had been pointed, Honor would have suspected her of being a hobbit. ‘Sorry, did I startle you? You’re looking at First World War silks. They were embroidered for the servicemen. What you’re holding is a collection of cards a staff sergeant in the Royal Field Artillery sent home to his wife and daughter.’

‘They’re gorgeous.’ Honor stroked a page. ‘How much would you charge for the book?’

Hobbit woman crinkled up her face again. ‘I’m afraid it’s expensive. The collection will soon be a hundred years old, which is rather a magic figure, in antiques. And all together like that in the album, they sort of tell a story, don’t they?’

Honor waited.

The screwed-up face screwed up even more. ‘I couldn’t take less than two hundred pounds.’

‘Wow. I’d have to think about that.’ Regretfully, Honor closed the album and slid it back on to the shelf by a framed photo of girls in drum majorette uniforms, hems well below their knees.

The lady nodded, sadly. ‘I know. Expensive.’ Then her face scrunched up again with a pained smile, as if she were gently disappointed in Honor but was too gracious to make it plain. ‘Do enjoy browsing.’

Honor did. By the time she finally tore herself away from the shelves of beads, bobbins, boxes and brassware, she felt dazed. Holding bits of history in her hands had made her covet so many that, like a child confused by the largesse of a toyshop, she hadn’t bought a thing, just allowed herself a last loving flick through the postcards in their creased old hide binding. Maybe, just maybe, if she could get herself a job, she could justify buying that fabulous collection.

Outside, the sunlight made her blink as she crossed the street to return down the other side. In a recess almost opposite Pretty Old stood a wooden community hall. She was fascinated to learn from the glassed-in notice board that the hall was home to a whole bunch of groups and events: a visit to Rottingdean’s windmill – she’d seen it, big and black on a ridge above Rottingdean village, but hadn’t figured out how to get to it. A talk by a local author. Tai Chi for the over fifties. How to make dough animals for the under tens. And Zumba! The Zumba classes back in Hamilton had taken place in an air-conditioned dance studio with a polished floor and a wall of mirrors, rather than in something that looked like a large shed, but she couldn’t see how it could be too different. She’d loved the combination of aerobics and Latin music and, forgetting that her muscles were already stiffening from her run, she shifted her weight right as she went up on the ball of her left foot.
Yeahhh
 
… Zumbahhh!
Ow
 
… butt cheeks!