Corner Cottage was as inviting on the inside as it was on the outside, but tonight Tony was most aware of tension in the small sitting room.
He stuck his head out of the door to look into the kitchen where Alex was clattering among pots and dishes making them ‘something easy’ even though he had tried to insist she let him drive them into Bourton-on-the-Water to eat.
After a horrible day, she needed to catch her breath, but she wouldn’t hear of going back on her invitation.
Katie and Bogie were in front of the fire he’d lit when Alex brought him in. With their noses to the warmth, they anchored a blanket to the floor, one each side and as far from one another as they could get without giving up occupation. The temperature was plummeting again and there was talk of more snow – not a cheerful thought for hill dwellers.
‘Coming through, Alex,’ he called and joined her in the kitchen. ‘I don’t need to be waited on. I’m not used to it and this is one time when someone should be looking after you.’
‘I’m almost done.’ Her face was tight, the mouth a straight line. ‘Mum said to finish the Oxtail soup she made. You get reheated soup but fresh bread from George’s and cheese and apples. Comfort food tonight. Here.’ She took a bottle of Pinot Noir from the counter. ‘Please open this for us.’
Her movements were too quick and too jerky. A tiny dining room opened off the kitchen with just enough room for a round table covered with a red cloth, four chairs and the row of shelves that adorned all four walls of a lot of these small cottages. A couple of feet from the low ceiling, books crammed every inch, and Tony had the thought that daughter had followed mother in a love of reading.
He carried the opened wine and two stubby, stem-free glasses to the table, poured and set the bottle in the middle. ‘I’ll lay the table,’ he said, and did just that with the cutlery, placemats and napkins she’d already heaped there.
‘Please, sit down,’ she told him. If she got much stiffer she was likely to stop speaking at all.
‘I was thinking you might like to run up to Lime Tree Lodge,’ he said. ‘After dinner? You must want to get more of your things.’
She mumbled under her breath and when she felt his eyes on her repeated, ‘I’d like to burn everything at the inn.’
Old blue willow plates reminded him of some his mother had used. The soup bowls Alex placed on top were big with wide rims, the way soup bowls used to be. He remained standing and held his glass, waiting while she loaded food on to the table.
Alex looked at him and he said, ‘Don’t mess with us,’ and touched his glass to hers.
At least she smiled a little. ‘It’s all unbelievable,’ she said, sitting down and clasping her hands in her lap. She popped up again and drew the heavy, red linen curtains.
‘The big question is whether or not that ring was on Brother Dominic’s finger. If so, where did he get it?’
‘Someone could have dropped it at any time,’ Alex said, playing with her soup. ‘It doesn’t have to be anything to do with him.’
‘Eat,’ Tony told her and dug into his own food. ‘Your mother makes a mean soup,’ he said. He tore off a hunk of bread from a braided, glazed multigrain loaf and slathered it with butter. ‘Start eating, Alex. Seriously, it’s so good you’ll get an appetite once you start.’
They carried on in silence. Tony cut big helpings of Cheshire cheese for each of them and cut up an apple.
‘Wouldn’t the Derwinters have reported a missing ring?’ With a piece of apple halfway to her mouth, Alex had a distant look. ‘I know the crest for the same reason you do, it’s on everything at the manor house on the estate. Not that I’ve been there more than a couple of times. I never noticed any rings. That’s the coat of arms over the door, right, not the crest?’
‘Right. I recognized the crest, too. A man’s hand in armor raising some sort of mangled bird claw. Never saw anything like that before. I don’t think I’d want it on anything of mine.’ He grinned at the thought. ‘I’ll have to ask my dad if the Harrisons ever had a crest. Probably a shovel and a pickaxe – that’d be in keeping with my serf stock.’
‘Serf stock?’ Now Alex actually laughed.
‘How about you? Anything interesting in your family?’ He managed not to either turn red or clamp his mouth shut. Idiot.
With raised eyebrows, Alex said, ‘I’ll have to ask Mum about her family. She never said anything. I think she came here after I was born. And although I remember your heroic defense, I really am a bastard.’ The little jerk at the corners of her mouth showed what it cost her to say it.
Moving right along. ‘Leonard wears a signet ring on his right small finger. I don’t think I remember one on Cornelius. He was around the horses a lot and I can see his hands in my mind. Leonard’s always been low key but I think Heather likes being lady of the manor. She’d probably want Leonard to wear his.’ He ate more soup.
‘That ring they found had nothing to do with Brother Dominic,’ Alex said. She sounded convinced. ‘But I do think he had a ring on his finger and the police were looking for it. The pathologist would work out what happened to that finger even if we hadn’t. It was obvious. I think the police were looking for it in my room before they knew one would be found on the hillside.’
‘They insist they didn’t search that room,’ he pointed out. ‘Don’t you think they’d admit it if they did?’
She nodded miserably. ‘I can’t find out anything about how Reverend Restrick is either and I can’t contact Charlotte Restrick. I don’t know where she is.’ Her voice clogged. Tears began to course her cheeks but when he made to go to her she waved him away. ‘I’m going to sound sorry for myself, but I’ve been doing well since I came home. It wasn’t easy, but I got it all together again.’
‘You do so well.’ He put a hand over hers on the table and she didn’t pull away. ‘Give yourself a break for being human.’
‘You heard all that stuff Lamb said about me.’
‘Lamb’s an ass.’
‘I lost it when I saw Michael looking as if he was devastated by the baby’s death.’
He doubted she could see through the wash over her eyes.
‘And at the same time I kept wondering if I could have done anything different that would have saved her.’
This wasn’t a good time to feel inadequate. Scooting his chair close to hers, he put an arm around her shoulders. ‘There aren’t too many absolutes in medicine. You can only guess at another outcome and that won’t help you.’
He wanted, badly, to tell her his own story, to get it into the open, but it would feel like piling on tonight.
She sobbed now. ‘It was a placenta first – placenta praevia, I think it’s called, where the placenta comes before the baby. I was at home on bed rest. I went into labor and then I haemorrhaged. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. The ambulance probably came really fast, but it seemed like it took forever. I should have been in the hospital earlier. I didn’t feel good all day but I kept thinking it would pass.’
Her breathing grew shallower and sweat sprang out on her brow.
‘I’m so very sorry,’ Tony said. And how stupid it sounded – he was so sorry her little girl died. Sheesh. ‘It’s a horrible, senseless loss and I don’t think you could have done anything to change it.’
‘I kept waiting for Michael to show at the hospital.’ Her tone rose and she held her mouth open to grab breath. ‘And I knew he wasn’t coming but I hoped. They couldn’t reach him, Tony. He wasn’t where he said he would be. I thought – dreamed things would get better after the baby. I don’t think he liked being around me when I was pregnant.’
‘Alex—’
‘When the placenta is at the bottom like that it doesn’t have to mean the baby will die. Women get through it all the time now. But it wasn’t found until I went into labor. They couldn’t stop the bleeding. They set up for a caesarian section but it was too late for my little girl.’
He didn’t want to ask where Michael had been. He wanted to take the man by the throat and throttle him.
‘Michael … was … with … another woman.’ She choked between each word. ‘But I knew that in my heart. I just didn’t want to admit it.’
‘You were the normal one – he was a monster,’ he said, desperate and angry. He went to his knees beside her chair and pulled her into his arms, settling her head on his shoulder.
‘I blamed him.’ She was starting to hyperventilate. ‘That’s what happened at the funeral. I had my first panic attack.’
‘Hush,’ he told her. ‘Take a deep breath. Do it, Alex. Let it out slowly. Now again.’
‘Panic again now,’ she managed to say. ‘Sorry.’
‘Alex, you’ve got guts. Look what you’ve worked your way through. And you don’t have to be sorry around me. I … I care about you. Now, another deep breath. Deep and slow, all the way to your toes. Let me help you up. Make some more room for that diaphragm.’
When she hiccupped he was relieved, and took a glass of wine with him while he guided her into the sitting room and on to a couch.
She pointed. Both dogs stood in the middle of the room with their tails between their legs.
‘See. We all care about you. Sometimes we aren’t so strong we can’t use some help from a friend.’ He kept shoving thoughts out of his head. He did care about her but he couldn’t let what that might mean intrude now. His own history with relationships hadn’t left him confident about trying again. And since his father warned him he’d better come clean about Penny or risk any chance of Alex trusting him, he had thought of little else.
‘Fine doctor I am,’ he said as lightly as he could. ‘I’m going to follow instinct and make you drink some of this. Don’t you choke on me, or tell me your heart’s doing crazy things. It should quieten you down.’
He sat beside her and held the glass until she took it herself and drank. ‘Feels good,’ she said, breathing easier. Glancing up at him, she held the wine to his lips until he let her tip some into his mouth. ‘You don’t look so good yourself. Harrison and Bailey-Jones, private eyes, aren’t at their best. I wouldn’t hire them today.’
With a smile, he eased the glass back in her direction. ‘I admire you, Alex. I always have and never more than now.’
‘I’m glad you’re with me, Tony.’