The Urchin's Song Part 25

'No?' She didn't quite know how to take that and it must have showed, because he smiled slowly.

'The way you've got on, I suppose I expected . . .' He paused, considering his words. 'Something grander.'

'You are as bad as my agent.' And then she bit hard on her lip as the word brought Oliver into the room as surely as if he had materialised in front of them.

'But you do have a housekeeper.' His tone was flat, harder, and she knew he had sensed the spectre too.

'Mrs Wilde is a friend,' Josie returned steadily, 'and with the hours I work and the amount of time I spend away each year touring the provinces and so on, it's good to have someone here taking care of things.' And then she forced herself to say, and as casually as if he was an ordinary visitor, 'Won't you sit down?'

'I don't want to sit down.' It was abrupt, almost hostile.

She blinked but then her back straightened as she thought, How dare he! How dare he turn up here after all this time and act as though he has a right to behave however he likes. And if he had intended a criticism regarding her employment of a housekeeper then he could jolly well mind his own business. And it was a follow-on to this thought when she said, 'Are you visiting the capital alone or have you brought a . . . friend with you?'

She'd allowed just the merest of deliberate pauses before the word 'friend', but the tightness in her chest which always accompanied thoughts of Barney with another woman must have come over in her voice despite all her efforts to the contrary, because he said, his voice suddenly very quiet, 'My friends bother you?'

She tried to sound airy as she said, 'Bother me? Of course not.'

'Because most of them were only that - friends.'

Most of them.

'Do you still blame me?'

'Blame you?' Her brow wrinkled.

'Because he died and I'm still alive.'

'Oh, Barney.' She stared at him, utterly aghast. Had he been thinking that, all these years? 'I've never blamed you, never,' she protested quickly. 'It wasn't like that.'

'Then what was it like, Josie? You were grieving and I could understand that - contrary to what you might think I do have some finer feelings - but you were ruthless in removing me from even the perimeter of your life. And now you're planning to go across to the other side of the world without even saying goodbye.'

'But . . .' She stared at him, too taken aback to try to hide her feelings. 'I didn't think you'd care.'

'You didn't think I'd--' He was shouting, and he must have become aware of it because he stopped abruptly, walking over to her and taking her forearms in his hands whereupon he shook her slightly. 'There hasn't been a day in the last seven years when you haven't filled my mind and my heart,' he said roughly, the harsh tone of his voice belying the content of his words. 'What do you think those other women were about, if not to forget you? But it didn't work, nothing worked, how could it? You're locked into the essence of my bones, don't you know that? You're the air I breathe and the food I eat, and the last couple of years I haven't even bothered seeing anyone because there was no point.'

When Oliver had asked her to marry him he had called her his beautiful angel and told her he adored her. She had thought then that Barney would never pay those sorts of compliments to a woman; that his love would express itself in more earthy ways, but she had been wrong. She had been wrong about all sorts of things. She had been so lonely the last years surrounded by people all the time, feted, adored - it had meant nothing without this man who had just paid her the most beautiful compliments in her life whilst glaring at her the whole time.

'Do you understand what I am saying to you, Josie?' His voice had changed; it was calmer, quieter. 'I'm not putting it very well because I'm so worked up I don't know if I'm on foot or horseback, and I know you've got your career and your life in the theatre but I had to tell you. I had to say how I felt or else there'd have always been a part of me that wondered if you would have stayed in England if I'd spoken. You looked at me once, oh years ago now. You wouldn't remember it . . .'

'At Vera's. When you came about your da.' Her voice was very soft.

He was perfectly still now, his eyes unblinking, and his voice was even softer than Josie's had been when he said, 'You looked at me as though you loved me then.'

'I did - I do love you,' she whispered. 'I've always loved you but there was Pearl, and then when you were free . . .'

'There was Oliver.' He touched her face gently, his voice still low. 'We didn't plan things very well, did we?'

She shook her head, utterly unable to speak.

'And now you are going to move across the other side of the world.' It was a statement but there was a question in the green eyes, and she answered it with, 'I . . . I don't have to go. I don't really want to. I was going to do a tour of New York and Was.h.i.+ngton but I always intended to come back to England.'

'You did?' His brow wrinkled. 'But Vera spoke as if you were planning to settle in America for good.'

Oh thank you, Vera. Thank you. Wise old Vera.

She opened her mouth to speak, but her voice was cut off as he pulled her in to him, his mouth falling on hers with a pa.s.sion that was beyond anything she had ever known before. Even Oliver, with all his experience and at the height of his lovemaking had never kissed her like this, and it was wonderful, intoxicating, heady . . .

'Stay with me.' His voice was husky against her mouth.

'Don't go on the tour; marry me instead. And soon. Special licence soon. I can't wait another week or month or year.'

'Neither can I.' She heard herself murmur the words with a little dart of surprise at her forwardness but then, as his mouth closed over hers again, she let herself melt into the kiss.

Her head spinning, she returned his kisses with a hunger that matched Barney's. Timothy wouldn't like it when she said she was pulling out of the tour and not going to New York, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but this man holding her so tightly she could hear his heartbeat.

'Follow your heart,' Vera had said. 'Life's too short for regrets.' If she went to New York she would be miserable. Timothy would soon get someone else to take her place; who wouldn't want a chance like that - and with the added inducement of travelling on the t.i.tanic? She would never let herself be separated from Barney again, not ever. Her old life was behind her and the new was just beginning, and in the new life there would be no crowds and performances and applause, but there would be songs.

Songs in the night, songs for babies' ears, and for her love. Songs enough to last them a lifetime.

end.