Free Daughter of Dark River Farm by Terri Nixon

Sweet, but just a child. Even when Evie told me what had happened to you, who we thought did it, and I wanted to rip Drewe’s driver limb from limb, I was feeling it as the shock of someone hurting my family. The anger blinded me to everything else. At first.’
    ‘And what of your devotion to Evie?’ I couldn’t help saying. ‘Did she feel like family too?’
    A flush touched his neck. ‘I thought I loved her. Perhaps I did, and perhaps I still do, but not in that way.’ His voice dropped, became urgent. ‘Kitty, that time I came to find you at the hotel, and I saw you concentrating so hard on your gloves, you looked so intense, but so sad. It hit me harder than I’ve ever thought possible, but I couldn’t accept it. It felt wrong, and I thought I’d frighten you if I told you how I felt—I know you’ve always looked on me as a brother. I’d have hated more than anything to lose your trust.’ He sighed and rubbed his face with both hands, pressing his fingers to his closed eyes. ‘That’s why I lied, and arranged for someone else to bring you back when Uncle Jack asked me. It’s why I let you come back alone, when all I wanted to do was take hold of you and never let you out of my sight again.’ He dropped his hands away from his face and fixed his eyes on mine again. ‘I have never felt so…
fiercely
, about anyone, the way I feel about you. Now I’ve accepted it, and let it in, it actually hurts.’
    ‘It does, doesn’t it?’ I whispered, without meaning to. I couldn’t look away, but my eyes burned.
    Archie searched my face, and finally asked, in almost a whisper, ‘Do you think you could ever feel the same way about me?’
    I couldn’t speak. Didn’t he realise? Didn’t it blaze from my eyes, the way I felt it in every part of me? He caught my hands in his, and I was too startled to pull away.
    ‘Will you wait for me, when all this is over?’ He let out a ragged breath. ‘Kitty Maitland, will you marry me?’
    I could have wept for all the years I’d longed to hear him say it, and more than anything I wanted selfishly to entrust myself to those familiar arms which, I knew without a doubt now, would keep me safe for ever. But I never could, and I couldn’t even tell him why; he would only persuade me I was wrong, and that would ruin him because I would believe him. His trembling uncertainty of my love for him formed the words I heard falling into the tense silence.
    ‘I’m sorry, but no.’
    The pain on his face was echoed in my heart, and I hated myself for putting it there. Almost more, I hated the fact that it was not a surprised pain; his face just paled, and his eyes closed briefly, and the resigned look that drew his brows together told of someone hearing what they’d already braced themselves to hear.
    ‘I understand,’ he said in a low voice, but he didn’t let go of my hands. I wanted to tell him he didn’t understand, not at all, not if he believed it was because my feelings were not every bit as fierce, and every bit as hopeless.
    ‘We’ll still be friends though, aye?’ he said, and his mouth flickered into a smile, although his eyes remained shadowed.
    ‘I hope so,’ I said in a small voice. He touched my cheek, and while I fought every instinct I possessed not to lean into his hand, I told myself this was the right thing to do. He deserved someone unspoilt and respectable, someone he could be proud of, someone bright and lively who could make him laugh… God knows he needed that, after all he’d seen. Yes, I was doing the right thing.
    I wondered when I’d start to believe it.
    Dark River Farm, June 1917
    ‘What’s that?’ Belinda stubbed out her freshly lit cigarette on the floor of the barn, and I turned to the door, my mind racing; if Mrs Adams caught us drinking and smoking we’d be given vile jobs to do tomorrow, but even worse, for me at least, would be her disapproval.
    ‘Is someone out there?’ I hissed.
    A light cough confirmed it, and Bel went