Free Some Old Lover's Ghost by Judith Lennox Page B

this. The afternoon seemed to him suddenly irrational and senseless. He wished she’d come to the point – offer him a labouring job, or whatever it was that she intended to do.
    Yet when he glanced round at her, he understood, and his heart hammered in his chest. Her great brown eyes burned as she looked up at him. He couldn’t think how it had happened, but Daragh Canavan knew that Joscelin de Paveley was in love with him.
    He had meant to do it properly, the proposal. Tilda managed to escape the old witch of an aunt, and when Daragh met her in Ely he gave her the single red rose he’d nicked from the garden of the inn, and told her that he’d booked a table in a restaurant. He’d had a bit of luck at cards a few nights past. Tilda looked startled and asked whether it was his birthday, and Daragh shook his head and planted a kiss on her lips. ‘Just a treat for you, darlin’.’ She fussed a bit about her old dress, but he told her what he knewto be true: that she’d be the most beautiful woman there. So she twisted her long hair into a knot on top of her head (just the movement of her wrists made him ache with longing for her), and then she walked with him to the restaurant.
    Daragh caught the waiter glancing at the patched sleeves of his jacket, but he slipped the fellow a half-crown and they were shown to a decent table. Daragh ordered oysters and dressed crab. Tilda had never eaten oysters before, so Daragh showed her how to lift the shell to her lips and let them slide down. ‘At home,’ he said ‘we just pick them out of the rock pools and prise them open with a knife. They’re a rare treat.’
    Tilda’s eyes were enormous. ‘Alive ?
    ‘Still kicking,’ said Daragh.
    The waiter had served the crab when Daragh told Tilda about the conversation he’d had with the priest. ‘He said you could start taking instruction straight away. It’ll take a few months, that’s all.’
    Tilda looked up from trying to pick the meat out of a crab leg. ‘Take instruction?’
    ‘So we can get married.’ He realized what he had done, and cursed himself. So he pushed back his chair, and knelt on the floor in front of her. ‘Will you marry me, Tilda?’
    She laughed. He thought, much later, that it would all have been different if she had not laughed. If the other diners, staring, had not also heard her laugh. She took his hand and tried to raise him to his feet, and said, ‘Daragh – please – they’ll throw us out of here.’
    ‘I’m asking you to marry me, Tilda.’ The heat, his frustration, even the unsettling afternoon he’d spent with that peculiar woman, all conspired to shorten his temper. Daragh sat down again. ‘We’ll marry, won’t we, Tilda?’
    ‘Daragh—’
    He grasped her hand tightly. ‘You’ll not say no, will you, sweetheart?’
    Her face had become rather pale and rather still. He could feel her distancing herself from him, cutting him off in theimperious way she had. All his doubts had slipped away, and he wanted nothing more at that moment than to be the husband of Tilda Greenlees. He felt for the first time a flare of anger that this girl, this child , should choose to keep him at arm’s length.
    She said, ‘You’re hurting me, Daragh,’ and, shamed, he let go of her hand. Then she said, ‘You were joking, weren’t you?’ and his anger returned, doubled.
    ‘Why should I be joking?’ Daragh’s voice was dangerously low. ‘Am I not good enough for you?’
    The waiter fussed around the table, refilling their glasses, picking up Daragh’s fallen napkin. When he had gone, Daragh said softly, ‘You’re no better than me, after all, Tilda – less, if anything. At least my granda owned the fields I ploughed.’
    Her eyes flashed with anger. ‘The man’s no better and no worse than the master,’ she hissed. ‘Aunt Sarah taught me that years ago!’
    They glared at each other across the table. Anger suited her, brightening her eyes, marking patches of pink on her