Matt slept round the clock until the afternoon of the day after Boxing Day. It was some moments before the stinging and heaviness left his eyes and he could see properly. He was lying on his back and moved gingerly to ease his stiff limbs under a mountain of bedclothes, pushing them away because the crackling fire had made the room stuffily hot and a jumper had been put on over his pyjamas. He groaned in pain, feeling battered and bruised all over his body, which indeed he was.
He remembered the fall off the Misty into the sea, the battle to tread water in its icy, monstrous grip. Then as he’d pessimistically thought that Hannah wouldn’t want him if he went to her, the desire had come like a welcome balm to let the water drag him down into its depth and end the misery of facing all those long lonely years on his own. He couldn’t recall being dragged on to the Mount’s Bay lugger, of being stripped of his clothes and put into dry clothes. The fishermen must have looked after him well otherwise he would probably have died from the effects of his prolonged drenching in the sea even if he hadn’t drowned.
His body and bones had stayed remorselessly frozen and there had been voices and an unwelcome disturbance as he’d been lifted out of the strange, hazy succour of numbness back into the harsh, cold weather and then into the lifeboat. The lifeboat men had rubbed his arms and legs and kept talking to him to keep him awake. Then there had been a woman’s voice. Hannah’s? Yes, she’d told him she loved him. Matt was still hopelessly weary and drifted off to sleep again in a state of bliss. Then he came to in a terrible panic. What if the part about Hannah had been a dream, an hallucination brought on by his ordeal?
‘Hannah!’ His voice wouldn’t come but he kept shouting. ‘Hannah! Hannah! Hannah!’ He wanted to die if the beautiful words she had spoken to him were just a cruel trick of his imagination. ‘Hannah!’ Sheer desperation forced sounds from his throat.
Hannah and Mrs Penney came running up the stairs together and found him in a state of near hysteria. Mrs Penney clutched one flailing arm while Hannah dashed round the other side of the bed and took the other.
‘Speak to him, Hannah,’ Mrs Penney cried. ‘He’s calling your name.’
He was too weak to fight against them and allowed his arms to be pressed down at his sides. Hannah sat on the bed and took his shoulders. ‘Matt, it’s Hannah, I’m here. Calm down, darling.’
The glazing over his eyes cleared and finally he saw her. ‘Hannah? I was so afraid your coming to me was only a dream,’ he whimpered and her heart went out to him. She kissed his forehead and placed the covers back over him.
‘I came to you on the lifeboat, Matt,’ she smiled down on him and stroked soothing fingers over his damp brow, ‘and I’ve been with you ever since. Your mum and I were just downstairs having our tea.’
‘Wh-what did you say to me, in the lifeboat?’
‘I told you I loved you. I do love you, Matt, and I’m never going to leave you.’
‘Stay with me. Don’t go downstairs.’
Mrs Penney, content Matt was alive and well and had secured Hannah’s love, made a tactful withdrawal.
Matt couldn’t tear his eyes away from Hannah, still afraid she’d disappear like a puff of smoke. He pushed the covers off but she piled them back on.
‘You have to keep warm, Matt. You’ll soon start shivering again.’
‘I want to feel you against me.’
Certain that Mrs Penney wouldn’t come back, Hannah slipped off her shoes and got into bed with him. She took him in her arms, her face on the pillow looking into his. He smelled slightly sweaty and salty and wonderfully of himself. She kissed his cheek, and brushed her lips over his. ‘Better now?’ she murmured tenderly.
He lifted his arm, it felt as limp as a dried-out vegetable leaf, and placed it over her firm feminine body. He had longed to touch her again for so long. ‘Thanks, darling. I feel as weak as a baby.’
‘The doctor says it will take a few days to recover your strength. He’s kept a close eye on you. You’re lucky not to have gone down with pneumonia.’
He closed his eyes, smiling faintly, immediately slipping into a warm comfortable sleep. When he woke about fifteen minutes later, Hannah’s beautiful blue eyes were gazing adoringly into his. He felt a little stronger and took advantage of it by kissing her with some passion.
‘What made you realise you loved me, Hannah?’ he asked, his voice low and husky. ‘The thought I might be dead?’
‘No,’ she ran a row of gentle kisses along the line of his eyebrow, ‘it was before that. I knew it deep down but with Mrs Opie offering me a new life – we were about to leave Cornwall and live in Torquay – I didn’t see it clearly. I was dreadfully unhappy and confused. Then on Christmas Eve, Daniel came to Roscarrock. He was as friendly as usual at first but when he found out I was going away he got agitated and demanded that I marry him. The nurse looking after Mrs Opie heard us shouting and she ordered him out of the house and I thought he’d gone.’
Matt listened, serious and quiet, but Hannah could feel him getting tense, she could hear his heart thundering and she wondered if she should go on. ‘What happened next?’ he said, moving his face closer to hers.
‘He came to my room. You see, he realised something about me and he went berserk. He pushed me down on the bed and nearly raped me.’
‘I’ll break his bloody neck when I get out of this bed,’ Matt exploded, making himself cough and gasp for breath.
Hannah held him tighter. ‘No, you won’t. Don’t talk like that, darling. He can’t come between us any more. It was a frightening experience but I managed to talk him out of going any further. I want you to forget about him now. I don’t want him to spoil what I’m going to tell you, the reason behind me and Mrs Opie going away.’ She smiled into his concerned eyes. ‘Matt, I’m going to have a baby.’
His splendid velvety dark eyes widened then shone with wonder. His handsome face broke into a wide smile. ‘A baby? My God, that’s wonderful!’ He kissed her as long and as hard as he could. ‘Is that what you were going to tell me that day?’
‘Yes.’ She clung to him.
‘I would have asked you to marry me. What would you have said?’
‘I would have said yes, with mixed feelings. But now I know I want nothing but you. So, Matt Penney, will you marry me?’
‘I’d better,’ he laughed, placing a gentle hand on her tummy and glorying in the slight swell he felt there. ‘You need to be made an honest woman, Hannah Spargo, and pretty darn quick.’ Matt knew a moment of doubt. ‘Will you be happy living here after life in a grand house?’
‘It wasn’t really the house that had a hold over me, Matt, but Mrs Opie and now I know why. She told me something, just after you were brought ashore. You see, she will be our baby’s great-grandmother.’ She gave Matt a brief account of what Feena Opie had told her in Janet’s parlour. ‘In a couple of days, when you’re better, I’ll go up to Roscarrock and see if there’s any more to the story.’
‘Don’t you believe she was telling you everything? How do you feel about what she said?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ she snuggled into him. ‘I’ve only been thinking about you and that’s all I really care about.’
Hannah spent some time at Janet’s, called on Sarah, Naomi and Lizzie and on the very welcome invitation from her father, left before he’d gone back to the herring grounds on Boxing Day, she finally crossed over the granite bridge and went home to Cliffside Cottage. In ten years nothing had changed in the small dark kitchen, except her grandmother wasn’t sitting in her rocking chair to put a blight on the occasion.
Prim fussed over her as if she was royalty and plied her with her favourite treat, pilchards roasted on the grid iron. Hannah spent a happy afternoon with her mother and Josh. She kept what Mrs Opie had told her about Prim not being her real mother to herself, she wanted to talk to her father first, but she shyly told Prim she was expecting Matt’s baby. She thought her mother would at least express disappointment in her but her chubby face broke into a sunny smile.
‘That’ll be three new grandchildren next year after all. I take it you and Matt are getting married?’
‘Yes, we asked the minister to call on us and have set the date.’
‘A proper wedding is just what we need after the miserable time we’ve had lately.’ This was the best news possible for Prim; it meant Hannah would be staying in the village and Feena Opie had lost her tight grip on her. ‘Though we might be having two weddings in the family,’ she went on, trying not to sound bitter because she might be losing a daughter to Roscarrock after all. ‘I can’t get used to Leah being so familiar with that Greg Opie.’
‘I have misgivings too, Mum, but if it’s what Leah wants, I don’t think we should stop her. You’ll find Mr Greg is a good man when you get to know him.’
‘Well, if anything comes of it we’ll just have to get used to it, I suppose. Your father has warned him to behave like a gentleman and in view of her age he won’t give consent for a year. If Greg Opie really loves Leah, he’ll be happy to wait.’ Prim looked down in her lap. ‘Will you be going back to live at Roscarrock until you get married?’
‘I haven’t really thought about what I’ll do,’ Hannah said carefully, going to her mother. ‘I have to give her two weeks’ notice whatever happens.’ If she moved out of Roscarrock, and Hannah was sure Mrs Opie wouldn’t want that, Janet would probably hope she’d live with her. She kissed Prim, whose kindness and forbearance had been large enough to adopt her, and they hugged emotionally. ‘It’s so good to be able to come home at last, Mum.’