were here, but it was now nearly four. They’d all be gone soon.
Was Violet here, or was she not? What to do? He could stay at an inn and look again tomorrow, and then the next day and the next. Yet what if Mrs Mayer was not Violet? Then he’d just waste time – and possibly lose her.
His heart thumped in a steady rhythm and his gaze ran across the houses about him. Nothing.
He turned and faced a narrow street, one he’d not walked down yet. Perhaps?
Arms swinging at his sides, his fists still clenched and legs slashing at the skirt of his greatcoat he walked on; his jaw taut.
It was as if his fingertips clung to the cliff of sanity and he was about slip off.
“Damn, Violet?” Where had she gone?
At the end of the street he faced a little ford through a stream which ran about the edge of the village. There were three small cottages on the far side. He couldn’t imagine Violet in any of them.
He turned away from the possibility of the stepping stones to the left and continued up a short hill.
The cottages grew sparser about him.
He didn’t stop walking. He’d given up hope of finding her today. He reached the brow of a hill and looked down.
There, before him, as the road dropped again, was a woman, clothed in unrelieved black.
She stood with her elbows resting on a wooden gate, looking out across a field. She wore a bonnet so he could not see her face, and her black cloak hid her figure entirely, yet there was a certain curve to her neck.
He’d stopped still, and it was as though his heart was stilled too.
He began moving. His steps urgent as pain and love whirled through him in a sudden storm. “Violet!”
She turned.
“Violet! My God. Violet!” He kept moving as she merely looked at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
“What the hell is going on, Vi?” His voice became bitter when he drew near. “Why did you leave?” Despite his anger and the pain ripping threw his middle, he lifted his hand. He wanted to hold her, but she backed away. The rejection cut into him. His heart belonged to this woman.
“Violet?” Geoff’s voice shifted into a tone of confusion.
Yet she couldn’t let him hold her, she would crumble and the child would be lost.
His hand reached out further but she stepped back again.
“Violet. What is going on? Tell me. Why are you wearing black, and calling yourself Mrs Mayer? For God’s sake, what or who are you hiding from?”
You
“I don’t understand Violet. You just disappeared. Why did you run? Why did you not come to me?” There was anguish and anger in his pitch. It reached inside her and played on the aching strings in her heart. But she daren’t concede and let him know.
Hardening her heart and taking up the mantle of the merry widow again, she smiled and made to walk past him. “Well you know me Geoff, I like to have fun, nothing holds my attention overlong –”
He caught her upper arm. “Violet. Damn you. You have caused me untold agony. Do not act as though you do not care. We have had far more than fun .”
His eyes blazed as he looked down, as if he was trying to look into her soul.
She bit her lip and turned her head away, but he caught her chin and turned it back.
“Violet.” It was a question, a declaration and an accusation as his head descended and then his lips pressed against hers tipping her head back.
She longed to cling to him and she wanted to weep as all they’d been to each other flooded in. It had always felt good with Geoff, but this summer it had become much more. She’d fallen so deeply in love with this young, elemental man. She was the sea to his moon. The feelings he could quicken inside her were terrifying.
Her palm pressed against his chest and pushed him back as she urged herself to remember sense. “Go away, Geoff.” She would have to go too, and find somewhere else to hide.
“Go away?” His voice lifted in pitch and anger. “Go away? Vi? Have you been playing with me all summer? Was this some bloody game