‘Your names?’
The taller of the two answered first, ‘James, sir.’
‘Guy.’ A sniff. A wobble in the young voice.
Both were probably on the verge of tears, Carl decided sympathetically, remembering some of the scrapes he had got into as a child and the avuncular trouble he’d landed himself in. They obviously hadn’t broken in with felonious intent. Just two small boys having an adventure.
‘How old are you?’ he asked gently, and two quavering voices answered in unison, ‘Seven, sir.’
‘And where are you from?’
‘Keeper’s Cottage,’ James supplied miserably—no doubt expecting parental wrath, Carl deduced with a flicker of wry amusement followed immediately by an icy feeling, deep inside his heart, which could be translated, when he really thought about it, as a strange sense of loss.
New owners at Keeper’s Cottage, the former home of his uncle’s head gardener and his wife. A dour couple who had brought up their granddaughter, Beth. None of their dourness had rubbed off on her; she had been all light and laughter, a joy to be with.
During his holidays from boarding school they’d spent a lot of time together, getting into all kinds of scrapes. Then, in his teens, he’d often brought a schoolfriend home with him and they hadn’t wanted a girl tagging along. In a funny sort of way he’d missed her company, although he had seen her around the estate and had found himself red-faced and tongue-tied when they’d actually stopped to talk. Her emerging coltish beauty had made him feel uncharacteristically unsure of himself.
All that had changed on the night of the annual end of summer party Marcus had always given for the estate workers and their families. Eight years ago now, Beth had been seventeen and the loveliest thing he had ever set eyes on. He had been nineteen and should have known better.
New owners at Keeper’s Cottage. He would never see her again, never find out what had become of her, and he would never be rid of the memories that had forced themselves into his dreams, where they had no right to be.
Guilt, he decided grittily, and said, ‘I’ll walk you back home. Go carefully down the stairs.’ It was pitch-dark inside the house now, but outside the starlight in the clear, frosty heavens enabled him to see both boys more clearly. Guy was a stocky kid, built a bit like a tank, with floppy blond hair, while James, taller, was wiry, full of grace, with a mop of dark hair. Both seven. Twins, then? Though assuredly not identical.
‘We’ll walk back through the trees,’ he told them as he fetched the torch from his car and flicked on the powerful beam of light. ‘It will be quicker than taking the car round by the road, and your parents will be worried enough as it is.’
And serve them right! he thought starkly. No boy worth the name would pass up the chance to get into mischief. He blamed the parents. If he had seven-year-old sons he would make sure he knew where they were, what they were doing, at all times. Make damn sure they were home before dark! And as it was his house that had been the object of the boys’ mischief he had the right to make his opinions known!
Putting that aside, he shepherded the boys along the narrow track and was assailed by a memory so sharp and clear it hurt.
Walking Beth back to the cottage before dawn on the morning after the party. Deeply ashamed of himself and knowing that saying sorry wasn’t nearly enough. But he’d said it, anyway, and she’d been—been just Beth. Sweet and considerate. Kind. The way she’d put the palm of her hand gently against the side of his face, the way she’d smiled, the warmth in her voice as she’d told him, ‘Don’t be. Please don’t be sorry,’ as if the taking of her virginity hadn’t been his fault but hers.
He hadn’t taken this four-minute walk since then. Soon after that night he’d left for America, as arranged, to take his place at university to study Economics. He’d written to her shortly after he’d arrived in the States, asking her to keep in touch, to tell him if there had been any repercussions from that night.
He’d heard nothing. The possibility of pregnancy had all been in his mind, obviously. And as she hadn’t replied he’d assumed she’d forgotten everything that had happened, put it out of her mind because it hadn’t been important enough to remember.
When he’d finally returned to Bewley, three years later, his marriage to Terrina all planned and ready to take his place in his uncle’s bank, old Frank Hayley had died and his widow, apparently, never mentioned her granddaughter, never mind her whereabouts. But then Ellen Hayley had always been close-lipped, dour and grudging. All he had ever been able to ascertain was the fact that Beth had returned to the village briefly to attend her grandfather’s funeral.
Chiding himself for thoughts that were beginning to seem much too obsessive—Beth Hayley was the past—Carl pushed open the wicket that led into the back garden. There was a light showing at the kitchen window.
‘We can find our way now, sir,’ James said with a staunchness that belied his tender age, then spoiled the effect by quavering, ‘Mum said we were never to go with strangers. Not ever.’
‘Sound reasoning.’ Carl swallowed a spurt of amusement at the way the boy had regressed from burgeoning adulthood to just a baby in a split second and pronounced, ‘As I found you on my premises I simply assumed responsibility for your safe conduct home.’ He allowed them to swallow that mouthful as he ushered them along the path to the kitchen door, adding with spurious cheerfulness, ‘Time to face the music!’
The old solid fuel cooking stove was doing its job just perfectly, Beth thought happily as she removed a batch of cheese scones from the oven and put them on the stout wooden table next to the Christmas cake she and the boys had baked earlier.
Inheriting Keeper’s Cottage had been a real surprise, considering that Gran had wanted as little as possible to do with her for the last eight years. Her original intention had been to sell up, invest the money as a nest-egg for James. But since waking this morning another idea had begun to form.
James had kick-started it when he’d asked at breakfast, ‘Why don’t we live here, Mum? It’s brilliant here. Guy would have to stay in horrid London, but he could come for all his holidays, couldn’t he?’
St John’s Wood didn’t really deserve the appellation of ‘horrid’, far from it, but Beth knew what her son meant. There was precious little freedom there, certainly nothing like the kind of freedom a boy could experience in the countryside. And as for herself, living in someone else’s home, no matter how elegant or how kind her employers were, wasn’t like having the independence of living under her own roof.
Besides, she had the gut feeling that she would find herself unemployed in the not too distant future.
And living so close to Bewley Hall wouldn’t be a problem, she reassured herself as she placed the last of the scones on the cooling tray. Sadly, old Marcus Forsythe had died a few weeks before Gran had succumbed to pneumonia, and she’d learned from Mrs Fraser at the greengrocer’s in the village that the Hall was to be sold at auction early in the New Year.
So there was no danger of her or, more importantly, James bumping into Carl Forsythe.
Turning to the deep stone sink, she filled a kettle and put it on the hotplate. Time for tea. Way past time, she thought, her breath catching and a frown appearing between her thickly lashed green eyes.
The boys had wanted to play in the garden, making a den in the ramshackle shed right down at the bottom. ‘Just for half an hour,’ she’d told them. That had been three o’clock. A glance at her watch told her an hour and a half had passed since she’d watched them scamper down the path between overgrown fruit bushes and rank weeds, then turned back to her baking.
Her anxiety level hitting the roof, Beth cursed herself for being all