Seven Dials - Anne Perry [143]
The knock came again, urgent and persistent.
She picked up the rolling pin, then put it down and chose the carving knife instead. Keeping it hidden in the folds of her skirt, she tiptoed to the back door and opened it sharply.
Tellman stood on the step with his hand raised to knock again. He looked cold and worried.
“You should have asked who it was before you opened,” he said immediately.
The criticism stung her. “You stop telling me wot ter do, Samuel Tellman!” she retorted. “You in’t got no right. This is my ’ouse, not yours.” She realized as soon as the words were out that her heart was pounding with suppressed fear, and she knew he was right. It would have been so simple to ask who it was, and she had not thought of it because she had been so preoccupied with thoughts about Martin Garvie, and people taken against their will and shut up in Bedlam, and the fact that they had not been able to solve the case of a man shot to death in a woman’s garden at night. What was he there for? No good, skulking in the bushes.
Tellman came inside. He was pale and his face was drawn with lines of tension.
“Somebody’s got to tell you what to do,” he said, closing the door hard. “You haven’t got the sense you were born with. What’s that?”
She put the knife down on the kitchen table. “A carvin’ knife. Wot does it look like?” she snapped back.
“It looks like something a burglar would take off you and hold to your throat,” he replied. “If you were lucky.”
“Is that wot yer came ’ere ter tell me?” she demanded, swinging around to face him. “It in’t me ’as got no wits.”
“Of course I didn’t come to tell you that!” He stood near the table, his whole body too tight to sit down. “But you’ve got to act with more sense.”
If anyone else had said that, she would have brushed it aside, but from him it stung unaccountably. He was at once too far and too close. She hated that it mattered so much because it confused her, it stirred up feelings over which she had no control, and she was not used to that.
“Don’t you tell me off like I belonged to yer,” she said, gulping back a surge of emotion, almost a loneliness, that threatened to swamp her.
He looked startled for a moment, then he frowned very slightly. “Don’t you want to belong to anyone, Gracie?” he asked.
She was stunned. It was the last thing she had expected him to say, and she had no answer for it. No, that was not true, she did have an answer, but she was not ready to admit it to him yet. She needed more time to accustom herself to the idea. She swallowed, opened her mouth to deny it, then like a wave breaking over her, she knew she could not. It would be a lie, but he might believe her and not ask again. He might even go away.
“W-well . . .” she stammered. “Well . . . I . . . s’pose I do . . .” She had said it . . . aloud!
He took a deep breath also. There was no indecision in him, only a fear that he would be rejected. “Then you’d better belong to me,” he answered. “Because there isn’t going to be anyone who wants you more than I do.”
She stared at him. The moment had come. It was now or never. The warmth rose up inside her like sliding into delicious, hot, sweet water, almost like floating. She did not realize she was not saying anything.
“Well, you’re stubborn and self-willed, and you’ve got the daftest ideas about people’s places I ever heard,” he went on in the crackling silence. “But heaven help me, there isn’t anybody else I really want . . . so if you’ll have me—” He stopped. “Are you waiting for me to say I love you? Maybe you haven’t got the wits you were born with, but you’re not so daft you don’t know that!”
“Yes, I know it!” she said quickly. “An’ . . . an’ . . .” It was only fair that she answer him honestly, however difficult it was to say. “An’ I love you too, Samuel. But jus’ don’ take liberties! It don’ give you the right ter tell me wot I’m doin’