Strange Are the Ways by Teresa Crane

Author:Teresa Crane
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788633611
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

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In the event she did not visit Jussi, he visited her, three days after the start of his recovery. Those days had been a strange time for Katya, a time of boredom broken only by Tilda’s visits and by her own fiercely-recurring fears; yet there had been one small relief when her monthly period arrived, flooding and uncomfortable but infinitely welcome. It had been overdue, a circumstance which had further deepened her misery and fear, and its arrival lifted at least one worry from her overburdened mind. It was in the dying light of the early afternoon of the third day that she looked up, hearing the key turning in the lock, and saw him there, leaning in the doorway. His tall, always slight frame had shrunk to skin and bone. His right arm was in a sling. His face was thin, his eyes dark-ringed, his shock of pale hair tousled as straw. But the smile, the graceless, mocking smile that had so often infuriated her was the same. And still it infuriated her.

‘Well,’ she said, tartly. ‘The bridegroom. How nice.’

His grin widened, though he winced as he closed the door very quietly behind him and walked cautiously into the room, lowering himself into a sitting position on the bed. ‘As a matter of fact that’s what I’ve come to talk to you about.’

‘What?’

‘The wedding,’ he said, straight-faced. ‘I really think I ought to make an honest woman of you, don’t you?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Furiously she turned away from him. ‘Can’t you ever be serious?’

There was a very short silence, ‘Just for once,’ he said, very quietly, ‘I am.’

The silence that followed was much, much longer. She turned. Studied his face. Almost laughed aloud in sheer disbelief. ‘You mean it,’ she said at last. ‘You – you actually think I’ll marry you!’

‘I don’t think you have any choice.’

It took no time at all for the truth of that to sink in. Katya’s soft mouth tightened angrily.

‘Katya, listen to me.’ All humour had gone; without the smile his face was sunken with pain and tiredness. ‘You must realize the difficulty – the danger – of your situation? Through no fault of your own you know things that could destroy us all. That could have us all arrested, tortured, executed. That could endanger our friends and our families –’

‘But –’

‘I know. It wasn’t through choice. But it happened.’ Jussi put a long, pale hand to his forehead, rubbed it absentmindedly. ‘We have to go on from there. I can’t think of any way to protect you but for us to marry. At least then perhaps I can take responsibility for your silence. But – I have to tell you – even that isn’t guaranteed to work.’ His voice was sombre. ‘There are those, you must know it, who simply think that your knowledge is too dangerous to us for you to live.’

She was white-faced. She watched him with lifted chin and in silence. She would not cry. She would not beg.

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