Max's Proposal. Jane Donnelly
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I’ve been here now for—’ He paused to work out dates.
She said promptly, ‘Five years and nearly five months.’
‘That’s about right.’
‘That’s dead right. I remember you moving in. Mid-June and blazing hot.’ She could recall it vividly and there was a far-away look in her eyes. ‘We lived at Eddlestone then. I had a horse and I used to ride over the hills and I saw the vans below. I often came this way just to look down at the house.’
‘You did?’ That seemed to surprise him.
She said, ‘Well it’s a fantastic place, isn’t it, with its history and all? Some days when it’s raining or there’s dew on the grass you can imagine the moat’s still there. The buildings can’t have changed much, the towers and the bridge. You are so lucky to be living here.’
‘I was fourteen when I walked over the hills and saw it for the first time,’ he said. ‘And I promised myself that one day I’d have it.’
‘Did you believe you would?’
‘I always keep promises I make to myself.’ He smiled, but even if he used to be dirt poor he must always have felt that nothing was beyond him.
‘How about promises you make to others?’ she teased.
‘Now, that depends.’
They were both smiling now, and she asked him, ‘What were you doing when you were fourteen?’
‘Getting an education in a tough world. What were you doing when you weren’t riding your horse?’
Riding her horse had been part of the pampered life of her teens. ‘Getting an education that wasn’t going to be much use in a tough world,’ she said.
‘You seem to be coping.’
‘Oh, I manage well enough,’ she said airily. ‘I can even get into my bargain shoes.’ She stretched a slim ankle, although her foot felt puffy, and the rhinestone heels glittered.
‘They look good,’ he said.
‘Could be diamonds.’
‘Very flash. The heels alone had to be worth the money.’ For a moment they sat, saying nothing, with an antique French clock ticking softly on a rosewood side table. Then he said, ‘Ten to ten; we’d better get moving.’
The bonfire was lit at ten, followed by the fireworks, and if Max Vella missed the highlight of the evening everybody would be looking for him. As it was most of the company must have heard by now that he and the girl from the Chronicle were carrying on behind a closed door.
Vella pulled back a bolt on the long window and it became a door leading out onto lawns. ‘We can walk round to the courtyard from here,’ he said.
Some of the gardens had lamps burning and coloured lights in the trees, but out here there was only moonlight. There was no one else walking, and this way they would avoid the crowds in the house. The grass was velvet-soft and her thin high heels were digging into the springy turf, so that was one reason for taking off her shoes and going barefoot.
On the fifth of November bonfires dotted the skyline with bright orange beacons, and zooming rockets and scattering stars from other parties lit up the skies. ‘Tonight’s the night for wishing on a star,’ she said.
‘There are enough of them about.’
‘But with so many how would you know which was the right one?’
‘That is the problem. Knowing the right one.’
‘Isn’t it always?’ She sounded wistful. As a child she had wished on shooting stars. Little things had worked sometimes, such as wishing for a fine day for a picnic or a ring with a pink pearl in it. But the big wish that mummy wouldn’t cry any more had never come true so that, even when she had been very young, Sara had stopped believing in magic.
Beyond a row of trees the lawns dipped into a grassy ditch that had once been a stretch of the moat. Coming round the house, they were reaching a gravel path, and as she leaned against a wall to put on her shoes again Max Vella swung her up off her feet into his arms as easily as if she were a child.
Surprise took her breath away. Her instinct was to shriek, but she found she was laughing. ‘This is very obliging,’ she said. ‘Do you do this for all your guests?’
‘Only those who can’t get their shoes on,’ he said.
They were both smiling now, sharing a joke that nobody else could understand. She was getting quite a buzz from that, and the clean, cold smell of his aftershave was intoxicating. She breathed it in, the tip of her nose against his cheek. His skin looked smooth but she could feel a slight prickle where a beard might grow.
She looped one hand round his neck. ‘“Please to remember the Fifth of November”,’ she said gaily, and knew she would never forget this one. In her wildest dreams, or nightmares, she had never envisaged herself being carried away by Max Vella. He wouldn’t stumble. She was relaxed, treating this as a joke, and that was the way it had to be.
Until she had collided, as it were, with Max Vella, tonight had been work. She had been in no mood for partying. But now she was having fun, and when they left the gravel path and he continued to carry her over smoother flagstones, right into the courtyard, she made no move to get down.
Among the crowds they were the star turn so far this evening, and Sara was getting a fit of giggles at all the surprised faces turned towards them. As guests stepped aside for their host and his burden, she kept one arm round his neck and dangled her shoes in the other hand. A woman who owned several exclusive fashion shops right out of Sara’s price range asked, ‘Hurt your foot, dear?’
Sara said brightly, ‘Shoe trouble.’
‘How very convenient.’ The woman gave a sly smirk.
Max said, ‘It was my pleasure.’
‘You might have put that differently,’ Sara whispered in his ear.
‘My very great pleasure,’ he said.
‘They still don’t think that meant what you meant.’
‘Do you care what others think? Would it bother you, getting talked about?’
A few of the guests would be watching the fireworks display from windows, but it was a dry evening and almost everyone had come outside, where a throng of onlookers was circling the high structure of kindling and fuel that would soon blaze into the bonfire. Everybody seemed to be chattering, and the main topic would be that not only had Max Vella had a very private session with what’s-her-name from the local paper but he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her long enough to put her down and let her stand on her own feet.
The bonfire went up with a marvellous whoosh as Max gently put Sara down. Then they stood and watched the wonderful display of fireworks. Some of the time she held onto his arm, sometimes he put an arm around her, but they stayed linked together. The last rocket of all was the most spectacular, throwing out star after star which fell away until the final burst of white light, the biggest and the best, rose in the sky so high it seemed to be vanishing. Then it fell, like a great shooting star, to a chorus of delighted gasps.
Sara turned to Max. ‘That has to be the star for wishing on.’
‘So are you wishing?’
‘Are you?’
‘I don’t do much wishing.’
‘You don’t have much left to wish for.’
‘When I see something I want,’ he said softly, ‘I promise myself.’ Like the Moated House...
With fingertips he brushed her hair back from her forehead out of her eyes and she felt the shock of it like a body blow, because the gesture seemed as intimate as if his hand had been on her breast and he had kissed her full