Page 10 of The Last Kiss

Into it sliced his mother’s crystal voice. “Perhaps Mr West would be more comfortable downstairs, darling?” She walked, smiling, down the steps. “Grieves, have cook make Mr West a plate.”

“Mother!”

“No, she’s right,” West said. “Truth is I… I came here looking for work. I ain’t had much luck in London and I thought you might have need of a stableman.”

“Work,” Ash said stupidly.

West’s jaw tensed, fingers twisting the cap in his hands. “I shouldn’t have come. I didn’t want to, but — ”

“Do you need money? I can help you. I — ”

“Ashleigh,” his father cautioned.

West’s head jerked up, eyes flashing with indignation. “I don’t want money. I’m not here to beg.”

“Of c-course not. I d-didn’t mean — ” Mortified, he lowered his voice, gripping West’s forearm. “We’refriends, for God’s sake. I owe you my life.”

“You don’t owe me nothing. I shouldn’t have thought to come, only my sister insisted.”

“Kitty? H-how is she? And the girls?” West had talked about her all the time. Had something happened?

A small smile. “Well enough, but — See, she’s working and I ain’t. And I can’t let her put food in my mouth and — ”

“We have w-work for you. Plenty, if you want it.”

But West shook his head. “I can’t. You don’t owe me.”

Ash tightened his grip on West’s arm, trying not to pay too much attention to the lithe strength of sinew and bone. “Idoowe you,” he said urgently. “As a brother in arms, if nothing else. My God, West, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten it all.”

He looked up, distressed. “No, I ain’t forgotten.”

Ash let out a breath. “It’s not charity,” he said in a calmer voice. “The house has b-been understaffed since Kitchener recruited half the village, and God knows f-f-few enough came home. We can give you work, West, and you’ll be doingusthe f-favour.” He turned as he spoke, looking at his father, daring him to object. “West’s an excellent stableman, sir. I c-can vouch for him entirely. And you know Boyd n-needs help.”

His father gave a small nod. Happier, no doubt, now West was in his proper place and not threatening to take a seat at the dining table. But the iniquity irritated like lice under his shirt and provoked a hot flare of anger. As if the man who’d shared every privation, every joy, every danger at the front, the man who’d carried him to safety on his back, wasn’t fit to sit at his table. Incomprehensible, all of it. Maddening. It was —

West touched his arm, a brief but firm pressure. “Thank you.” With a look, he added,Calm down, it’s alright.

For a long time, Ash held that look, then he turned back to his parents and Olive. Damned if he was sending West to the kitchen. “My apologies to your m-mother, Miss Allen, but I think I’ll show West the grounds. Grieves, please ask Mrs Pierson to prepare a small picnic for us both. It’s a b-b-beautiful day to be outside, eh, West?”

“That it is,” West said, clearly torn between relief and embarrassment.

Ash smiled. “Good God, I’ve missed you.”

“Aye.” West held his gaze only for a moment before looking away. “I’ve missed you too.”

***

“Those are the stables,” the captain said with a careless wave of his hand. “I’ll introduce you to Boyd later. He’s our head groom.”

Harry nodded, at once grateful and mortified that it had come to this. But he needed the work, he needed it for Kitty and for his own pride. Nothing but that could have driven him to this, and yet… Well, he couldn’t deny that it was bloody good to see the captain again. Harry’s heart had all but burst at the sight of him standing in the doorway, his voice ringing out in greeting. When their eyes met it had felt more like homecoming than anything since reaching England. And then the captain had embraced him and Harry’s arms had gone around him and —

That line of thought risked straying onto dangerous ground.

He brought his attention back to the here and now, where they were ambling along a gravel path. Highcliffe House rose up on his left, a substantial country pile of red brick with ivy clinging to its walls and roses drooping elegantly around its large white-framed windows. Something from the last century, Harry supposed, or maybe the one before. The garden they were walking through had an air of genteel neglect, overgrown shrubs tangling in the borders, and he guessed at the fate of the gardeners and groundsmen who’d once worked here. Dalton clearly hadn’t been exaggerating when he said the house was understaffed. In the distance, half hidden by the winding border, Harry made out an attractive circular doorway in the garden wall, promising secrets in the forest beyond. Altogether it was painfully bloody charming, a world away from Bethnal Green and its back-to-backs, and exactly the dreamy idyll the captain’s wistful descriptions of home had always conjured.

Not that the captain seemed particularly dreamy today. Harry glanced at him as they walked, their slow pace accommodating the captain’s pronounced limp, and Harry’s heart floated disconcertingly free. Captain Dalton looked so much the same as he used to, yet somehow entirely different. He was in civvies, for starters, dressed in a brown tweed suit with a half-belt jacket and slim trousers — the clothes nicely set off his shoulders, narrow hips and lean legs. His dark hair was mostly hidden beneath his cap, his profile as elegant as ever, but there was a tension about him that Harry had noticed right away. He could see it around his eyes, in the slight tick of the muscle in his jaw, the stiff way he held himself as he walked, shoulders bunched, knuckles white on the head of his cane.

For all that he was home, the captain — Dalton — wasn’t happy.

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