While We're Apart by Ellie Dean Read Free Book Online Page A

laughing. ‘What the divil have you got on your face, Peggy girl?’
    She stiffened with horror as she remembered the face pack, and then tried frantically to smear it away.
    Jim was still laughing as he plucked the cotton wool from her cemented cheeks. ‘Is this green stuff edible?’ he teased. ‘Am I supposed to kiss you, or eat you?’
    Peggy was mortified, but his mirth was catching and she was soon laughing along with him. ‘You weren’t supposed to see me like this,’ she finally spluttered. ‘What must you think?’
    He stilled her hands as she reached to remove the curlers, and pulled her to his heart, devotion in his eyes. ‘I don’t care about the curlers and the cement on your face. I’m just glad to be home with my beautiful girl again.’
    She melted into his embrace as he kissed her thoroughly. She was in the arms of the man she loved, and at peace. It didn’t matter that all her plans for his homecoming were in ruins – or that she looked a fright – for finally, finally, he was here.

Chapter Three
    GIDEON HAD RETIRED to his study to prepare his Sunday sermon, but as Mary washed the dishes and put them away after their very late lunch, she was all too aware of Emmaline’s continuing presence at the kitchen table. Her mother’s very silence spoke of disapproval as she went through the accounts for the numerous charities she supported, but when she occasionally looked up and caught Mary’s eye, it was as if she was looking straight through her.
    Mary sighed with relief as Emmaline finally left the kitchen and went upstairs to her bedroom. The tension had built during that long silent interlude, and it had made Mary clumsy to the point where she’d almost broken a plate as she’d put it away.
    Left alone to get on with things, Mary relaxed, finished the ironing, cleaned the bathroom and swept the hall floor. She would have liked to have gone into the drawing room to practise the Sunday hymns on the piano, but as Emmaline hated to have her afternoon rest disturbed, Mary knew she’d have to wait until morning.
    It was late afternoon and quite dark by the time she brought her soaking-wet bicycle into the kitchen so she could mend the puncture. The tyre was old and getting very threadbare, but as it was almost impossible to acquire a new one, she had to hope that this latest repair would hold long enough at least to get her to the station and back tonight.
    She was slowly turning the tyre in a bowl of water to find the hole when she heard her father come out of his study and into the hall. The creak of the cupboard door opening beneath the stairs, and the rattle of a padlock being unfastened, told her that he was once again delving into the large trunk that had stood there amidst the cobwebs and dust for as long as she could remember.
    What was in the trunk was a complete mystery, for he’d always kept it locked and replied when asked that it was just used as storage for his old parish records. However, Mary had always been intrigued by that trunk, especially when she’d been a small girl, and she’d made up stories of hidden treasures, or secret maps. As she grew she’d begun to wonder romantically if perhaps there were old photographs and letters hidden there. Private letters tied with ribbon that spoke of a lost love he couldn’t quite forget.
    Now, of course, she knew her father was not that sort of man at all, and that the trunk probably really did only contain fusty old ledgers and ancient correspondence that related to the church. Quite why he was so secretive about it was beyond her, but she supposed he liked to keep something to himself for a change.
    She concentrated on mending the puncture as the rain continued to pelt against the window, the wind howled, and the day darkened into premature night. It was a five-mile round trip to the station and back, and in this weather it wouldn’t be at all