It took an age to reach the lower limits of my land. I think I was a terrible hindrance to him but he bore it all patiently as he nursed me across tumbling walls and swollen streams on our route to safety.
I was exhausted and very cold, and I felt that I had never appreciated the warmth of a wood fire as much I did that night when we finally opened the kitchen door onto the reassuring comfort of my peaceful home. Freddy was already in bed and while I suspected that he had fully intended to wait up for us, I was thankful for it; I desperately wanted to be allowed to just rest and sleep, although I feared that the rough sound of Simon’s heavy breathing would haunt me even there.
“Sit,” Matthew said, ushering me over to the settee. He knelt down and tugged at my sodden boots and I am afraid to say I just sat there like a lemon while he fussed around me, wrapping me in blankets and stoking up the fire.
“Drink,” he said firmly, thrusting a steaming cup into my frozen hands. I drank it automatically, uncaring and unthinking, and it was only when I finished the second cup that I finally came back to life sufficiently to make my brain formulate words into a sensible order.
“I’m sorry,” I eventually said. “You must think that I’m an idiot.”
“There are many things I think of you,” he replied gently, adding a smile, “but that is definitely not one of them.” He stretched his feet before the fire and looked so utterly relaxed that it seemed impossible to believe that we had just been within a hair’s breadth of total disaster. “Hungry?”
Even the idea of feeling anything so mundane as hunger was inconceivable after all that fear and exhaustion but just as I was about to decline, my stomach forced me to admit that actually, I was ravenous. “Has Freddy left us anything?”
Matthew climbed to his feet and went over to peer into the pot which stood by the side of the stove. “Some left. It’s not very hot though.”
“At the moment, I really couldn’t care less.”
We ate in silence. Conversation was impossible; to re-live the night’s events was a terrifying prospect and to chatter about anything else seemed nonsensical, but eventually the tasteless meal was finished and with it, grudging warmth began to creep back into my frozen limbs. My mind, however, was still entirely numb; I would probably have dropped my forgotten bowl as I slipped back into staring vacantly into the fire except that, with unvarying kindness, Matthew climbed to his feet once more and took the dish away to set it down upon the table.
When he came back, however, he surprised me by sitting next to me on the settee rather than on the armchair where he had been before. He stretched his arm out along the back of the chair in comfortable ease and it felt only natural that I should shuffle closer to lean my head on his shoulder. Oddly, there was a very brief moment of what seemed like caution in spite of this having evidently been his intention but then his arm gently came around me and, at long last, I felt myself begin to relax as the warmth of his body seeped slowly into mine.
I almost jumped when he spoke, the stubble of his chin brushing lightly against my hair. I had been fiddling absentmindedly with the fraying edge of the blanket, barely thinking of anything at all, and it was a shock to be forced back from comfortable oblivion by the unwelcome intrusion of memory and reality.
“How are you holding up?” he asked gently, preserving the dreamy haze after all.
I leaned a little closer, tucking my damp feet up under the blanket. “I’m fine, actually,” I admitted with perfect honestly. It was impossible to feel anything else when in the warm protection of his arm.
“I shouldn’t have let you come. I’m sorry.” His hand tightened momentarily where it rested above my elbow. “Are your feet thawing yet?”
“Getting there,” I said, wondering if the evening had almost been worth it if it meant I got to be so close to him without the usual accompaniment of awkwardness or impossible arguments. “Anyway, I asked to come. I don’t think I quite realised what would be involved.”
Suddenly and unavoidably the night’s events flashed back through my mind; the long wait and the listening, the smell of the timber and Simon’s rough voice as he spoke from the darkness. I sat up with a gasping breath and fixed him with a wide-eyed look that betrayed my very real fear, “You don’t think they’ll come after us, do you? Do you think that they’ll come here?”
His arm tightened as he gently pulled me back down into his embrace. “No, they won’t,” he said firmly against my hair. His hand gave me a reassuring squeeze. “I didn’t get the impression that he recognised you; he thought you were a boy, do you remember? And I suspect they’ll be rather preoccupied with finding a new hiding place for whatever it was that they were guarding.” His cheek brushed lightly against my hair. It was extraordinarily comforting, and his voice had a lovely soft timbre to it that was warm and soothing as he added, “You were incredibly brave, my dear. I’ve seen hardened troops show less nerve than you.”
There was a pause and then he spoke again, this time in quite a different tone; “I know I promised I wouldn’t fling unreasonable demands at you, and I won’t. But I will just say this: I’m very proud of you. Do you know that?”
Suddenly shy, I gave something that was halfway between a nod and a shrug, but a smile could not help breaking the dry line of my lips.
Matthew seemed to be smiling himself and his hand tightened briefly in affirmation of his words on my arm. Then he gave a funny little sigh and allowed his head to fall back against the cushions, saying in a more regular tone of voice, “More than ever now, I refuse to believe they were simply waiting there just in case I turned up. I wish we had found a clue as to what it was.”
“I think you’ll find that it was me that thought they were hiding something, actually,” I said, with a trace of my usual self putting in a brief appearance.
He tutted. “You can say that as much as you like but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re wrong, I was definitely the one that came up with that idea. Ouch—” He laughed. “Langton was right, you have changed. You used to be such a delicate little thing. But don't worry; I like this version too.”
I could have prodded him again for that but that, still laughing, he deftly fielded the next blow and then, ignoring my token resistance, firmly returned my hand to the warm straightjacket of my blanket once more.
“So you were listening,” I said accusingly from within my cosy little bundle. “I thought you were. I could have fainted when Freddy took me literally and started telling the truth.”
“I suspect, my dear, that you’re not the fainting kind,” he said cheerfully, giving my thoroughly entrapped hand a condescending pat. “Anyway, it’s your own fault. Freddy has only learnt what you’ve taught him. Hoist by your own petard I believe is the appropriate saying.”
I grinned, relaxing happily into the curve of his arm. The fire flickered gently and, staring into its depths in a comfortable silence, I found my mind drifting wonderingly on to this surreal discovery of sudden ease. It seemed incredible now to think that only a week ago I had still been cursing his name, if I could be brought to mention him at all. Only seven days ago I had been struggling out into the snow to find him injured and raving, and tonight…Tonight, here I was nestling cosily into the turn of his neck while fantasising about the kiss he had stolen in the car earlier…
“My dear, you’re snoring,” he said gently, jerking me guiltily out a confused but pleasant dream. I hadn’t even realised that I had fallen asleep. “Time you were in bed, I think.”
For a wildly nervous moment I thought he was suggesting that he should follow me. But then my brain clicked out of that particular haze and I walked dreamily past him to the stairs. At the door I handed him the blanket and then, without really knowing what I was doing, I turned, stepped closer and in one breathless movement, reached up and kissed him lightly on the mouth. The touch was soft and very fleeting, but his lips were warm and, I thought, not entirely displeased.
When I stepped away he looked thoughtful, but it seemed to me as if some other expression was beginning to lighten the surprise behind his eyes.
Instantly flushing crimson, I flung a hoarse farewell at him and fled for the stairs. “Goodnight,” he whispered softly after me, and there was a smile in his voice.