Page 60 of The House at Hope Corner
A wave of heat washed over her. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said softly, feeling the life drain out of her. ‘So please don’t ask me.’
She felt physically sick. How could she possibly tell him now what she’d done? She’d accused him of keeping secrets in the past but she was no better than he was.
She could feel Ned’s eyes boring into the top of her head as she sank back into her chair.
‘So youdidhave money from the sale,’ he argued. ‘Caroline was right…’ He stopped, realising what he’d said but in his anger unable to stop himself. ‘And what about the other money too, from the sale of your paintings? More money that I’m not supposed to know about. Makes me wonder what other secrets you’ve been keeping,’ he said, the disgust in his voice plain to hear.
She stared at him in confusion. What money from the sale of the paintings? And then she remembered Grace’s words from the day before. She’d said she had good news about the paintings and some not so good news. So Grace must have sold them and somehow Caroline must have found out that she had asked Grace to keep her earnings a secret between the two of them. And of course she had hotfooted it to tell Ned straight away.
‘I think you need to make your mind up, Ned, about who you believe; Caroline or me. You tell me how much you despise Caroline and yet you’re quite happy to listen to her lies. Why are you doing that to yourself? Why are you doing it to me?’
His face softened for a moment but then he pinned her with a look.
‘Just tell me, Flora. Have you kept the money a secret from me?’
How could she possibly answer that? She had done just what he had accused her of, but it wasn’t what he thought. She was damned either way.
He took her silence as his answer.
‘And you accused me,’ he said bitterly.
His words were like knives, but she deserved them. She should have told Ned what she’d done right from the start, but she’d had a hard time admitting it to herself. Her future was just opening up in front of her – a glorious, magical, whirlwind romance that she could never have dreamed of. She’d been scared that if she told Ned what she’d done, it would have killed them stone dead, and so she had kept it to herself and, if there was ever a moment for coming clean, it had long since passed. And now her secret had destroyed them anyway because she would have offered the money if she’d had it, of course she would… and now Ned had practically accused her of hiding it so that she didn’t have to give it to him.
She could feel herself filling with anger at Ned, at his attitude, and even though it was she who was in the wrong, she also acknowledged that a part of her wasn’t prepared to let it go for some reason. And then, suddenly, as she tried to reason with herself why that was, the thought which had been evading her throughout their conversation skewered her brain like a white-hot spike. The bottom of her stomach dropped away in shock and her hand travelled to her mouth unbidden.
‘Oh, my God,’ she said slowly, staring at Ned with wide eyes. ‘How could I have been so stupid?’ She shook her head. ‘How long did it take you to think upyourplan, Ned? I mean, it can’t have been all that long, because my shop was on the market when you first came in…’
‘What…?’
‘And I even remember thinking to myself how things like this didn’t happen to people like me. That men didn’t just come into my shop to tell me how beautiful I was, or go on to wine and dine me, buy me presents and tell me that they just can’t get me out of their minds…’
Her eyes bored into his. ‘And the reason that doesn’t happen other than in soppy films is because it wasn’t true, was it? You didn’t think any of those things at all, you just wanted someone to get you off the hook with Caroline. To be the love of your life so that she would see how impossible her plan was… maybe even give it up. The fact that I would potentially arrive with a pot of money as well was even better – God, I bet you couldn’t believe your luck.’
Ned stood up, throwing himself backwards and away from her as a gale of sarcastic laughter exploded from his lips.
‘Me?’ he accused her. ‘That’s whatI’msupposed to have done? What about you?’ He licked his lips as a dribble of spittle rolled down his chin. ‘You say you had no money, no business… and therefore no home… My God, Flora, it would be funny if it wasn’t so bloody insulting. Not only have you accused me of being false, butyouactually are. You didn’t come here because you loved me at all. You came here because I was your meal ticket. Admit it. Coming here has given you a roof over your head.’
He broke off only to gather breath, but she had got to her own feet now and pointed a finger at his chest.
‘Well that just goes to show how little you know me, or how little you think of me. Don’t you dare accuse me of that. Not after all I’ve done. Running around after you all, back and forth to the hospital, caring for Fraser like he was my own dad. How could I have done that if I didn’t love you?’ She was close to tears, her anger rapidly fading, as a wrenching sadness threatened to overwhelm her. ‘Just tell me the truth, Ned. Tell me that it didn’t honestly occur to you how useful I could be…’
She looked up into his face, longing to see the denial there, hoping that even after all they had done to each other he could still find it within himself to protest his innocence and pull her to him. But although he opened his mouth to speak, he hesitated for a fraction of a second. Just long enough for the truth to climb inside. And even through her pain Flora could see the irony of it. Ned was a good man, he was basically an honest man not given to lying, and now his hesitation had given him away.
‘I thought so,’ she said as a single tear broke free and rolled down her cheek. And then she left the room.
Chapter Twenty-Two
For the first twenty minutes or so Flora walked blindly; she didn’t care where she was going, she just wanted to be away from the house. It wasn’t until she reached the stile at the far end of the field that she realised she was heading for Grace’s house, or rather her garden. She wanted to sit on the slope below the beehives and let the peace she’d found there seep inside her before she could even contemplate thinking about what had just happened.
She’d pushed past Hannah as she walked through the kitchen on her way out, evading her concerned questions, but aware that her anxious face was following her movements. She stopped only to collect a coat from the scullery and pull on her boots and, although Hannah had come to the door after her, Flora hadn’t even turned around before she walked out. Hannah wasn’t daft; Flora and Ned hadn’t exactly shouted at one another, but the walls were thin and their dispute had been heated. Flora knew that she would have heard enough to figure out what their argument had been about. She just prayed that, with the dining room door closed, Fraser hadn’t heard a thing. If she were really lucky, he might even have been asleep. She scrubbed the thought from her mind; her luck seemed to have well and truly run out.
She reached the gate at the bottom of Grace’s garden and looked up at the steep slope ahead of her. On other days it might have seemed a little daunting, but Flora was not in the mood to let anything stand in her way and she picked up her pace, powering up the incline until she reached the point where she wanted to be. She sank to the ground, not caring about the cold and damp, and then brought her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and dropped her head.
She gazed out across the fields she had just walked, the farm spread out and perfectly framed in front of her, just like a photograph. Which was of course the very reason she had walked here in the first place; she wanted to see how far she had come. Not today, but from that first day when she had arrived with all her dreams of a new future packed in her suitcase, thinking that the house at Hope Corner would be the place to see them come true. Now those thoughts seemed foolish… or did they?
Her breathing had slowed with her march across the fields, risen after her ferocious ascent of the hill, and now began to settle again as the soft breeze of a fine spring day nudged her gently. It was mild under the shelter of the trees and the sun, still tentative, had found a little warmth. And as she breathed out her worries, she breathed back in the stillness she had been longing for.
The trouble was that she could still see the future mapped out. The solution to the farm’s problems that had been staring her in the face was now literally right in front of her, and she thought back to the day not long ago when she had caught her first glimpse of it. She had seen flowers everywhere, standing in rows and rows against a cloudless sky, their heads swaying gently in a benign breeze, and it had felt possible. It had seemed like something which could actually happen here, not a hare-brained scheme, but part of a new life which she and Ned could forge together. And everything she had learned and planned over the last couple of days had proven that to be the case.
