The Undoing of Daisy Edwards (A Time for Scandal) (7 page)

‘I’m not going to make you promises I can’t keep,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what will happen. If I thought about it, if I thought about all the things that could go wrong –I have thought about them, actually. But what about the things that could go right?’

He touched my face, forcing me to meet his eyes. The look he gave me then, so raw, so exposed, it made me feel as if I was being squeezed tight from the inside. ‘Daisy, think about these last weeks. They’ve been so good.’

I was crying again, silent tears streaming down my cheeks that I couldn’t stop. ‘Because we didn’t care. That’s the problem. When you care, they see. The gods. The fates. Whatever is up there, if anything is up there, or anyone. They see you care, and that’s when they laugh and they say,
silly Daisy
, and they take it all away.’

‘A few weeks ago, I’d have agreed. A few days ago. But—it would be a lie to say I’ve stopped looking back, but I’ve started looking forwards, too, Daisy. I can see there’s a future for us, and I like the way it looks.’

‘For how long?’

‘I don’t know. It feels like forever. But even if it’s not, wouldn’t you rather have however much it is? We could have walked away so many times. I could have left you in the cell. You could have left me in my bed the next morning. How many times were there, when we could have stopped but we didn’t?’

And it was that. His seeing into my head, his saying my thoughts aloud, that stopped me. Made me listen. We could have stopped, but we never did, not once. I tried to imagine what it would be like without him, and I couldn’t. Without him, I couldn’t lose him—but then what would I be? Not what I am. I could choose to be without him by walking away, or I could take a chance on my future and have him for now—maybe forever. And that—that appealed.

I didn’t say the words. He didn’t say the words. Instead we kissed. He kissed me. I kissed him. It was like it always was, and it was different. Slower. As if we had more time. Not all the time, but more. It was the same when we made love. Slower. Wide-eyed. Watching. Taking our clothes off in front of that big black stove slowly. Our fronts burning. Our backs freezing. Kissing. Touching. As if we never had before. As if we always would. Stroking slowly down. Kneeling on the ancient quilt he pulled from one of the chairs, kissing, touching, stroking. Watching. A slow slide and he was inside me. Rocking. Rocking. And the waves were elemental, rolling over and over and over.

Chapter Seven

Dominic

She didn’t say the words then, but afterwards, as we lay together in front of the stove, she let me hold her, and she let me talk to her of the next week, and the week after.

Three months later, and we’re both still scared. There are times in the ominous hours before dawn when it’s there between us, the terror of loss, the memory of what it can do, and the gnawing sense that this time it would be so much worse. But the difference is, in those ominous hours, we’re there. Together. We hold each other. We don’t lie; we don’t pretend that it’s all going to be fine. After such a war, you can never lose the knowledge that your world really can be blown apart. Nothing will ever be the same. We know that. But we’re learning, Daisy and I, to like the new world.

Tomorrow we sail for New York to see Grace. To meet a producer who wants to put Daisy on Broadway. And to see my mother. To sign the deal with her maverick doctor friend who wants to buy Harrington House. He has some interesting theories about neurosis, and he needs patients.
That
is one thing the war has made sure he’ll have in abundance here in England.

So much has changed since that night I found Daisy in the police cell, I can’t quite believe it. We still haven’t said the words, but they’re there between us every day. And one day soon, I know we will.

Born and educated in Scotland,
Marguerite Kaye
originally qualified as a lawyer but chose not to practice. Instead, she carved out a career in IT and studied history part-time, gaining a first-class honors and a master’s degree. A few decades after winning a children’s national poetry competition, she decided to pursue her lifelong ambition to write, and submitted her first historical romance to Harlequin Mills & Boon. They accepted it, and she’s been writing ever since.

You can contact Marguerite through her website,
www.margueritekaye.com
.

eISBN: 9781460335666

THE UNDOING OF DAISY EDWARDS

Copyright © 2014 by Marguerite Kaye

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