Post of Honour Read Online Free PDF Page B

you!’
    ‘Because of me? But I only get up here once in a blue moon!’
    ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘that’s zo but when I’m yer youm always along o’ me in a manner o’ speakin’. Do ’ee mind that, now?’
    He minded it well enough and it filled him with a tenderness that no words, in or out of the brogue, could convey. He put his arm round her and drew her close so that they sat there with their backs to the shelving wall, her head on his breast as he stroked her tumbling mass of hair. They sat thus for so long that he thought she was asleep and presently the candle guttered and went out but as though to replace it a sliver of moonlight crept into the cave. Time passed and neither of them moved but when, shifting slightly to glance at his luminous watch, he saw that it was already long past dinner-time, she stirred and said, plaintively, ‘Youm tumble mumpish tonight, Ikey! Dornee want me no more?’ and he took her face between his hands and said, ‘I’ll always want you, Hazel, wherever I am and I’ll always come back to you, don’t ever forget that! I’ll always come back!’ It seemed to satisfy her for she brightened up at once, saying cheerfully, ‘Well then yer us be an’ tomorrow you’ll be outalong zo tiz no use frettin’, be it? Us best make the most of it, Ikey-boy!’
    Her philosophy, thus expressed, boosted his spirits for he thought, ‘They all call her “mazed” but she’s more sense than any one of us! She doesn’t live by the week or the day but by the hour, so that’s how I’ll think of her, always!’ and he pulled her down and would have taken possession of her with the impatience he usually displayed when time was short, but tonight a subtle difference entered into their relationship; after the first moment or so it was she who led, as though she realised he was the one standing in need of comfort.
    It was after ten o’clock when he kissed her for the last time and, taking his lantern, went out along the track to the north end of the mere and home by the long but less overgrown route, approaching Shallowford from the east. He slipped in by the yard door and up the backstairs to change his clothes and when he came down to the library he found Paul and Claire waiting up but they did not ask him where he had been, or why he was so late, remembering that he was almost twenty-one and might well have some private good-byes to say in the Valley. In fact they had laid a wager on the subject, over dinner, Paul betting that Ikey was mildly interested in the eldest Eveleigh girl, Claire wagering that Deborah Eveleigh was not Ikey’s type and suggesting that his fancy had strayed over the county border during his summer furlough and fixed on the daughter of a retired cavalry major called Ella Stokes, who lived at Brandon Chase or the next village on.
    ‘It’s a damned long walk in the dark,’ Paul said, when ten o’clock struck, ‘so you’ve lost your money, old girl!’
    ‘Not so long at his age, and with the prospect of three years pig-sticking and polo playing in the company of men,’ she said. ‘In any case, don’t you dare question him unless he volunteers information!’
    ‘Not me,’ he told her chuckling, ‘I know that much about Ikey!’
    He apologised for missing dinner when he came at last but he did not explain where he had been, except to say, off-handedly, that he had lost track of time. Claire, kissing him good night, noticed that he still looked a little wan and decided that the bet would be null and void, for he had almost certainly been mooching around in his own company all evening and this did not surprise her. If she had been exchanging Shallowford for India it was what she might have done.

Chapter Two

    I
    K eith Horsey’s wooing of Rachel Eveleigh was progressing but at such a pedestrian pace that sometimes Rachel would lie awake for hours wondering how to bring him to the boil. It was almost two years since she had correctly assessed the worth of Sydney