Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [71]
He blushed. “No, of course I’m not. I meant it’s fair that I do something of the work to keep it up, while I’m here. And even if I do stay, it’s still your home for as long as you want it to be.”
“But you might stay?” she asked eagerly, ignoring the fact that something had obviously angered him.
“I don’t know.” His expression was deeply unhappy.
“You don’t have to decide today,” she tried to comfort him. “It will be another three or four weeks before your arm is completely better.”
“I know.” None of the misery left his face.
“Why are you so angry?” she asked. “Is it the Irish news? Do you really think there’ll be war there, too?”
“No, it’s not the Irish news,” he replied. “Hannah, that young man is falling in love with you, and don’t pretend you don’t know it. That would be unworthy of you.”
She felt the blood scald up her face. Yesterday she could have denied it, but today it was impossible. She felt intruded upon. Joseph had no right to enter that part of her life. It was not only embarrassment that burned in her but anger.
“I didn’t deny it!” she snapped at him. “How dare you accuse me like that, of something I haven’t done. I said nothing to you about it because it is none of your business.”
He did not flinch, as if he had expected her to react exactly as she had. It added insult to the turmoil of feelings inside her.
“Is that as honest as you can be, Hannah?” he asked. “You are afraid something will happen to Archie, so you are allowing yourself to care for someone safe, and letting him care for you. I understand fear, and loss, but that doesn’t make it right.”
Her temper snapped. All the loneliness, tension, and fear, the sense of exclusion tumbled out of the tight repression in which she had kept it.
“No, you don’t!” she said savagely. “You don’t understand the waiting, the being shut out. You don’t understand having to pretend it doesn’t hurt all the time so you protect your children. You don’t understand being a family for a few days, and then being on your own, then having a family again, and then wondering if it’s for the last time. When it goes one way or the other, you can begin to recover from it, but this never lets you get used to anything!” She drew in a shivering breath, still glaring at him. “I hate all the changes! I don’t want women bank managers, women police, women taxi drivers, and I don’t want to be able to vote for members of Parliament. I want to do what women have always done, be a wife to my husband and a mother to my children! I hate uncertainty, anger, fighting, destroying everything we used to value.”
“I know.” His face was bleak and very pale. “I don’t like it much myself. I think a lot of people who make the best of it do so because they have no choice. You can be dragged into the future, kicking like a child, or you can walk in upright and with some dignity. That’s almost all the choice you’ve got.”
“You sound pompous, Joseph. This is just about Ben Morven being a little in love with me,” she responded. She knew Joseph despised pomposity. She ached for the warmth and the brightness of being cared for, that softness in Ben Morven’s eyes when he looked at her. It gave her hope that even if Archie were killed, there was still someone who could love her. She had put words to it at last—if Archie were killed. It was like a miniature death just to think it.
Joseph leaned back a little against the kitchen table, easing the weight from his damaged leg. “Is that how you would explain it to Tom?” he asked.
“That is horribly unfair! Tom is fourteen!” she protested. “He has no idea. . . .” She stopped. Joseph was standing there with his eyes wide, his dark eyebrows raised a little. She felt her face burn.
“Really?” he asked with surprise.
She turned around and marched out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.
Jenny