Katie’s Hero (11 page)

Michael tackled his paperwork with renewed energy. Normally the thought of several hours of farm administration would have filled him with gloom, but today, he felt as if he had a spring in his step — or at least in his fountain pen.

He paid half a dozen overdue bills, writing out large checks as if he were a great philanthropist. He canceled his subscription to the tennis club and made his apologies to the Young Farmers Association, all without the usual surge of anger and resentment that accompanied thinking about people who were fit and well and didn’t have to spend their lives sitting down.

She’s delightful, he thought. Very pretty, and very sweet — but oh so emotional. Her kiss stirred sensations he had only dreamed of feeling again. He leaned back in his chair and for the first time since the accident, he thought about the future and making plans for the farm — that is, when he could stop himself from daydreaming about that amazing kiss.

He was just writing an apology to the coal man for the delay in settling his account when he heard her footsteps on the path outside his window. He’d know the sound of her light, determined step anywhere. He looked up and was stunned to see her suitcase in hand.

Michael didn’t need to think. Quick as a flash, he wheeled the chair around and headed back through his own rooms to the ramp that led to the front garden. His hands worked the wheels of the chair faster than ever, but by the time he arrived at the front of the house, Katie was already walking down the drive, heading purposefully toward the gates.

“Katie!”

Her reddish brown curls blew back in the wind, and she seemed to falter, but she pretended not to hear him. He noticed that in her haste to get out of his house, she hadn’t even put on her hat, though she was usually very correct about that sort of thing.

“Katie!”

He worked the wheels faster, thanking God that he hadn’t been able to get new gravel for the drive. He could get the chair scudding along at a fast clip in the dirt, and the drive’s downward slope helped tremendously. He must look ridiculous in hot pursuit of a pretty girl in a bloody wheelchair, but his fear of losing her was greater than his pride.

“Katie! Katie! Stop and turn around this minute!” Michael shouted. He had felt happy this morning, in a way he had never expected to feel happy again. Happy, on a day when he had resigned himself to the bloody chair. Happy, because of this little Irish wench. This extraordinary girl who provoked him and challenged him and made him feel alive again. He wasn’t about to let her slip through his fingers.

“There isn’t a train for two hours at least,” he lied. He was encouraged to see that slowed Katie a little.

She was nearly at the gatehouse when he caught up with her. He was rather out of breath from working the wheels so hard, and the chair was spattered with mud.

“Oh, sir,” she sighed, turning to face him, with a look of hurt resignation in her eyes.

“What’s all this?” he demanded, gesturing imperiously at the offending brown suitcase.

She glanced down at it, and looked guilty. “It’s better that I leave.”

“Better for whom?” he said. “Me? The children? Jessop, maybe? She’s probably the only one who won’t be sorry to see the back of you, Irish troublemaker that you are.”

Katie clenched her teeth and didn’t reply.

“Where on earth will you go?”

“I can’t bear it now,” she said. “I can’t keep working for you with all of this inside my head, and my heart.”

“Your heart?” he said, and he looked up at her with a hint of a smile. “Surely, you’re not afraid you might fall in love with me?”

She flashed him a sudden guilty look while a scarlet blush flamed on her cheeks. “I’ll not let that happen to me again.”

He grinned. His money and his looks had often given him the confidence to be candid. It amused him to see the effect his startling remarks had on people, and it had often paid off.
She had as good as admitted it!

He was triumphant, but he spoke gently to her. “Katie, look at me.”

She did so, reluctantly.

“Do you have any idea what it means to me,” he said, “that you could even imagine yourself in love with me as I am now?”

“No,” she said, simply. “But I can surely imagine how it will all end, sir.”

She surprised him. He had spent a pleasant morning trying to consider where it might lead. Apparently her thoughts were not quite along the same lines, for she was close to tears, he realized.

“I must go,” she said.

“Katie,” he said softly, and tried to take her hand. She shied away, but he could see her softening, regretting, weakening in her resolve to leave him. The suitcase fell from her hand and toppled over flat in the driveway. She let it lie where it fell, and stood there brushing away the tears from her eyes with her other hand.

“You can’t leave the children, can you?” Michael said, trying to give her an honorable reason to stay.

She shook her head. “It would be irresponsible.”

“It would,” he said, fervently.

Just then, the heavens opened. The big, heavy raindrops that had been threatening all morning fell on the drive, on the suitcase, on Michael and on the polished wooden arms of the chair.

Yet Katie didn’t even seem to notice that it was raining. “But all this between us makes it impossible.”

For a moment, it looked as if she were about to pick up the bloody suitcase and take to the road again. So Michael forced himself to lie. “It was only a kiss, Katie. It was nothing. We can pretend it didn’t happen, if you like,” he said. He was pleased that his voice sounded reasonable, rational even.

“Can we?” she said.

“Yes,” he said, with easy confidence, hoping she’d believe him. “Good heavens, Katie, do you think I haven’t kissed the help before?”

He hadn’t, as it happened. There had been plenty of spoiled, rich girls at tennis parties, of course, and horsy young women from good county families, and then his fiancée, Connie. He’d never been remotely interested in a servant until he saw Katie, but this was not the moment to take her into his confidence.

She scowled at him, but he remained calm, biding his time as his clothes soaked to his skin in the downpour.

“Katie, the war makes us behave a little oddly at times. You and I have been thrown together, and it’s awkward. But the war will be over soon and you’ll go off and meet some chap and … ”

“Don’t! I don’t like thinking of the future.”

“Then think about today. Think about your duty here, your war work.” God, Michael thought to himself, he was beginning to sound just like Marjory Mallory.

Katie glanced at him, with a guilty, sheepish look. “I suppose it would be wrong to walk out and leave the children to get used to someone new,” she said at last.

Michael smiled. “Yes. Now, pick up that suitcase, before it goes soggy. I bet it’s one of those awful cardboard ones, isn’t it?”

“Probably,” she said. “I’ve never given it a thought.”

“Most inferior,” he replied.

Then he cursed himself for being tactless with her yet again. Fine sets of leather suitcases were undoubtedly beyond Katie Rafferty’s experience. “Let’s talk it all over back at the house.”
Darling
. He would have liked to have added that word but it was more pragmatic not to. He must ease her in gently, like a nervous young mare. “I’ll carry the suitcase, if you like.”

She laid it across his knees to keep his hands free to wheel the chair. He shook it and almost laughed.

“It’s a bit light, Katie. Were you in such a hurry to escape me that you forgot to pack?”

“Maybe,” she admitted.

• • •

The house felt chilly to the two of them in their wet clothes, and he asked Katie to strike a match and light the fire that was laid in the grate. She knew well how to coax a fire into life, breathing on it to help the kindling take, then holding a sheet of newspaper over the grate to draw the flames. After a few moments, the fire began to take a hold and give out the first signs of warmth.

“It’ll soon warm up,” she said, as she took off her wet jacket and rubbed her hands in front of the gathering warmth of the logs burning in the grate. “Let me take your jacket, sir, and hang it by the fire. I’ll fetch you another one. We don’t want you catching a chill.”

“You’re worried about me, Katie, and that’s very sweet.”

“You wouldn’t have got soaking wet in the first place, if you hadn’t been running after me.”

He smiled. “I
ran
after you?” he said, and raised an eyebrow.

“In a manner of speaking, sir.”

He said nothing, but reflected upon the fact that she could have outrun him, had she been determined to. He felt a little surge of happiness and excitement, because there was only one conclusion to be made.

She wanted to be caught.

Katie approached the village hall on Arthur Perkins’ arm. The music was already blaring into the street. The girl taking the money at the door held the blackout curtain out of the way, and they went inside.

“This is very jolly, isn’t it?” Arthur seemed extremely pleased with himself.

“Yes!” Katie gazed up at the crepe paper streamers, all fanning out from a central point in the middle of the ceiling.

“Shall I fetch you a drink?”

Katie nodded and hoped desperately that Arthur wasn’t getting the wrong idea. Perhaps it would have been better to have rejected all the invitations. But she couldn’t help being a little curious about the last and the liveliest part of the May Day celebrations in Market Farrenden. It was world famous, if you believed the locals.

France may have fallen, and the Allies ousted from Dunkirk, but Hitler wasn’t going to stop the village dance. Now that she was here, Katie was glad. The convivial atmosphere lifted the weight of responsibility from her shoulders. The hall was rather brightly lit and lots of people, young and old alike, chatted animatedly getting into the spirit of the evening. Some of the keenest dancers were already trying out their best moves.

Arthur headed for the corner where punch was served, weaving through the crowd greeting people as he went. And over on the far side, closely guarded by Mrs. Mallory and other stalwarts from the Women’s Institute, was a long table covered with a red checkered cloth. Those refreshments — the big draw for some of the people here — would be savored later.

Katie scarcely had time to sip her drink when Arthur begged her for a dance. And she was amazed to find that when she wasn’t dancing with Arthur, she was in hot demand with the other villagers, too. There was Harry Hammond, of course, who offended his own date to haul Katie into an energetic rumba. One by one, the butcher’s boy, the bank clerk with the bad leg and several young men in uniform approached her. Katie danced all night, and when she wasn’t dancing, she had to accept the drinks they offered, just to get a chance to catch her breath.

• • •

Michael waited for her in the darkness, idly running the wheelchair across the marble tiles in the hall. He stopped when he thought heard her footsteps, but it was a false alarm.

He fumed, thinking of the reasons why she was out so late, cursing himself for not taking her to the dance himself. He couldn’t think of a worse punishment than watching her forming an attachment to some oaf from the village.

Finally he heard her light step on the stone terrace. He wheeled himself backwards a few inches and lurked in the shadows until she came indoors. He saw her skirts swirl as she closed the door. He heard her high-heeled shoes clattering across the floor, the very sound of a happy, carefree woman.

“Did you have a pleasant evening?”

She gave a gasp of surprise. “You gave me a start, sir!”

Michael rolled out of the shadows, and looked up at her. “I was just asking about the dance.”

“It was fun, yes.”

She looked lovely, he thought as he admired her curvaceous little figure and her red, red lips. She must have been the belle of the ball. “Did Hammond drop you off?”

“No, I wasn’t risking a drive at night with him,” she said, with a slightly tipsy laugh. “Heaven knows where I would have ended up.”

“So who dropped you off? I heard a car. I thought you went with Constable Perkins, and he’s only got a bicycle.”

“You are very well informed about my social arrangements, I see.” Katie’s tone was colder now.

It was none of his business, Michael knew that, but he was determined to get it out of her. “Who dropped you off?”

“If you must know, it was Marjory Mallory. She borrowed the van from the grocer and took it upon herself to take nine of us home. I was the last one, since I live all the way out here with you.”

There was a long pause while Michael digested this information.

“Does that satisfy you?”

“I suppose so.” He said, fuming inwardly. What right did she have to talk to him about satisfaction? “Did you dance with lots of men, Katie?”

“No, not really. Many of them are away at the war. Apparently there were lots of wallflowers.”

“I don’t believe you were one of them,” he said, in what he knew was an acid tone of voice. “Did you kiss anyone?”

“Sir! You said that what happened between us was nothing, and that I was free to do as I pleased.”

“God, you did! Who was he? Surely it wasn’t Perkins?”

“The only kiss I got tonight was a peck on the cheek from the vicar,” she insisted. But when he studied her, a flush colored her cheeks — he could see it even across the gloom in this room.

“I’m not sure I believe you, Katie.”

She sighed, and gave a short impatient glance upwards. “If you wanted to keep an eye on me, sir, why didn’t you come to the dance?”

“I hate dance music. You know that.”

“You listened to it here, with me and the children, just the other day.”

He paused, knowing what he wanted to say, knowing it was unwise. He gave in to the temptation all the same. “Would you have gone to the dance with me, if I’d asked you, Katie?”

“I wouldn’t have had much choice.”

It was not the answer he wanted to hear. He gave a huff of despair and released the brakes on the chair. He made it pivot smartly, and turned away from her. He wheeled himself away down the corridor, moving swiftly along to his rooms, hoping she wouldn’t follow.