The White Dove by Rosie Thomas

Author:Rosie Thomas [Thomas, Rosie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-11-12T17:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

In the same instant, Nick looked up and saw her. A girl with dark red hair cut short around a thinner, paler face than he remembered. The blue-green eyes were the same, watching him, unstartled.

Nick put down his watering-can and half-straightened, on the point of greeting her like a friend. As he moved, one of the greenfinches fluttered noisily from the fronds of the tallest palm and began to peck at the scatter of crumbs that he brought in every day for them. No one but the gardeners ever came to the orangery, and he had welcomed the birds’ company. Now the sound reminded him of where he was. He turned the warm flash of recognition into a distant nod, and stooped to his work once more. Amy went to him, brushing the glossy leaves aside impatiently. She stood beside him, forcing him by her closeness to look up and acknowledge her again.

‘Hello,’ she said quietly. ‘Don’t you remember me?’

He remembered her. He remembered her with perfect clarity from the soft silence of her house in Bruton Street, and since he had come to Chance he had glimpsed her again, even watching for her with a kind of perverse fascination. He had seen her walking slowly on the terraces with her father, and once riding a big brown horse, her hair in a net under her peaked cap. He had seen her last Christmas, when he had brought a barrowload of red-berried holly up to decorate the hall for the servants’ party. She had been kneeling under the half-dressed tree, holding up a silver star. The last time had been on Boxing Day, standing in the middle of a knot of wheeling horses whose breath clouded the air. A man in white breeches with a top hat shading his handsome face had leaned down from his saddle to kiss her on the mouth. Nick had turned sharply away into the emptiness of his Christmas holiday.

‘You look different,’ he said defensively.

‘I look better than I did.’ Suddenly she was grinning at him. ‘I’ve been ill. I’ve been sent home to recuperate. I don’t quite know what to do with myself, actually.’

After the surprise of seeing her Nick was in possession of himself again. He was standing politely waiting for her to finish, the picture of a deferential servant. Amy heard as clearly as if he had said it aloud his ironic Will that be all, ma’am? She felt a slow, red flush spreading over her cheeks. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, to cover herself.

‘Working.’

The single word held all the weight of difference between them. The work he had needed so desperately, and she had held in the palm of her hand. The need to go on at it, whatever came, while Amy rested and recovered. The difference, again.

‘Do you like it here?’ she asked. She sounded like Royalty visiting a hospital, she thought, or her mother gracing a local church fête.

‘I like the flowers.’

Amy turned round in surprise. Nick was

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