‘You get these headaches regularly, then?’
Not every month, fortunately. But even when her head didn’t feel as if it was about to split open, she could never go riding, sometimes not even out walking. And she always felt so unclean, so diminished at this time of the month. Not even Sukey could understand why she couldn’t manage her monthly indisposition with more grace. But then Sukey floated through it all so daintily. She hardly ever complained about experiencing anything more than the occasional twinge. Because she was far better at the business of being a woman.
She dragged the pillow from her face and scowled up at him.
‘Yes,’ was all she said.
‘I’m so sorry. I always thought...I mean, you always seem so healthy.’
She made an effort to peer at him more intently and saw that he was not as calm as she’d at first thought. But then, how could he be calm when the chances were he was going to be discovered, in her bedroom, at any moment?
‘Edmund, I don’t know why you came in here, but really, you shouldn’t have done.’
‘Yes, I should,’ he said with a glint of defiance in his eyes. ‘When I was ill, you always came to visit me. Nothing could keep you away.’
‘That was different. I didn’t know any better.’
‘Do you mean,’ he said slowly, ‘that you regret befriending me and offering me comfort?’
She sighed. ‘Sometimes, yes, I do,’ she admitted. She was sick of hiding the truth from Edmund. Sick of having to put on a brave face when he was about. Of having to pretend that she only thought of him as a friend. Only pride, stubborn pride had kept her going, through so much, for so long. But he was seeing her at her absolute worst today. And somehow, now he’d seen her reduced to this, there didn’t seem any point in hiding all her feelings from him, any longer.
‘It wouldn’t have been so awful when you went away, if we hadn’t grown so close. Or at least, if I hadn’t thought of you as my best friend. But what I meant about not knowing any better was that I honestly had no notion that it was wrong to make friends with a boy, or to be alone with a boy, or to go and play in a boy’s bedroom.’
‘Ah.’ He lowered his gaze to where she’d curled her fingers into the edge of her sheet. ‘Well, now there are two points that need addressing there. Firstly, your approach to your own gender. Which is understandable, since your father treated you as though you were a son. No concession was made to the fact that you were, in actuality, a girl. Which meant that it was perfectly natural for you to look for companionship from a boy of about your own age, rather than any of the local girls, whose habits and interests were limited to a strictly feminine sphere.’
‘That’s true.’ The other girls in the area had always seemed such silly, empty-headed little things. All too easily shocked at the notion of climbing trees, or wading through a pond to see how deep it was, or saddling their ponies and staying out all day, eating whatever they could find in the hedgerows.
Which had made it come as a terrible blow when her body began to demonstrate that it was capable of conceiving a child. She felt as if it had betrayed her. Along with Edmund and her father. Her whole life had undergone a series of drastic changes in such a short period of time that she’d sometimes thought she knew what it must be like to live through an earthquake. There had been no solid ground on which to stand. Nowhere to run, to escape from the huge great boulders that were raining down on her, threatening to crush the life out of her.
‘So you need not feel any guilt, whatsoever,’ he said firmly. ‘You acted in complete innocence.’
She felt a great rush of affection for him, so strong it was all she could do not to reach for his hand and clasp it. It was a good job she was hanging on to the sheet so hard, to preserve her modesty, or who knew how foolishly she might have behaved?
‘And now to move on to the second point,’ he said, his jaw firming, as though it was something he felt very strongly about. ‘From the emphasis you placed on the personal pronoun, I take it you were implying that I did not consider you my best friend.’
Golly. She wouldn’t have thought he would want to take issue over that.
‘But you didn’t, did you? I didn’t realise at the time, because I was such a silly little goose. But later on I realised you simply tolerated me, because you were bored and your parents wouldn’t let you have anything to do with any other child—’
His hand shot out, but the touch of his finger to her lips to silence her was very gentle.
‘That was not how it was,’ he said sternly. ‘You were my best friend, Georgie. My only friend.’
He seemed to mean it. But it couldn’t be true.
‘You soon forgot me, though, didn’t you?’
‘No. Far from it.’
‘Oh, come on—’
‘The memory of that last day we spent together, the day you brought me the butterflies—’ He shook his head and blinked, as though attempting to rearrange his thoughts. ‘No, that was not the last time I saw you, in point of fact. It was the day they sent me away. I caught a glimpse of you, through the carriage window. You were waving.’
‘You didn’t wave back.’
‘I did. But clearly you didn’t see.’
‘No.’
‘You looked as though you were crying. But then I thought, no, not Georgie. Nothing makes her cry. She’s too brave. But funnily enough, it helped me to think you might almost be on the verge of tears. Because it meant that you were going to miss me as much as I was going to miss you.’
She shook her head in disbelief. ‘But you didn’t miss me. You forgot all about me the moment you left Bartlesham.’
‘You are wrong. I missed you very much indeed. And I was hurt, very hurt, when you appeared to break your promise to me.’
‘What promise?’
‘To write to me.’
‘What? But I did! That is, I didn’t!’ She groaned inwardly at her clumsiness of speech. ‘Why are you trying to twist everything round?’ she hissed furiously. ‘I kept my promise. You were the one who didn’t write to me.’
‘Oh, I wrote to you,’ he said. ‘Every week. Even when I received no reply I kept on, in the hope that your letters were delayed by...bad weather, or something.’
‘What?’
He carried on speaking though his mouth twisted with bitterness. ‘Then I began to think you must just be too busy out riding, or swimming, or fishing, to want to sit down and write. I struggled to forgive you. I reminded myself you’d never been much of a one for sitting down and applying yourself to anything of the sort. Surely, I kept telling myself, she will at least send me greetings for Christmas. But Christmas came and went, and there was nothing from you, and I ate my solitary Christmas dinner, far from everything I’d known, wondering how you could be so...’ he drew in a sharp, pained breath ‘...so cruel.’
‘But I wasn’t. Edmund, I did write.’
‘And then it was my birthday.’ He carried on as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘And still no word from you. And I was halfway through my weekly letter to you, when I saw that it was more or less an inventory of the wildlife I was discovering on the island and it struck me that it was probably so boring, that all my letters had been so boring, that it was no wonder you hadn’t written back. That you probably didn’t know how to reply without revealing what a bore I was. Not when you’d never had it in you to dissemble.’
‘No,’ she grated, horror struck. ‘I would never have found any letter from you boring, Edmund. And I had never found you a bore. Surely you must have known that? Why, you were so clever. Noticing things that nobody else