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Harry decided it was time for that meal and turned to walk back the dozen steps that would connect him with the main street and lead him to his guesthouse, but both men chose to look around at that moment. Harry didn’t want to risk being seen and ducked into a doorway to wait while James fumbled in his coat pocket, probably for keys, Harry decided, but he blinked in astonishment to see the two men chuckle, then embrace. It was fleeting but the hug looked less like friends or brothers and more like . . . well, more romantic, given the way the gloved hands of the stranger tugged at James’s ear in a playful manner when they stepped apart.

And then they were gone, swallowed into the dark of the home’s threshold, talking animatedly. He heard the door close and the light on the porch was switched off from inside. The street felt as though it had been tipped into an inkpot it became so black. Once again Harry turned to walk away but was startled still as a light snapped on upstairs in the house. The shape of a man – it was James’s lanky frame – moved to the window, reaching for one side of the curtains. Harry, now desperate to be gone, nevertheless remained a dark, embarrassed statue, preferring to wait until the waiter left the window and he could walk away without being seen. But before James could tug the curtain across, Harry watched arms snake around his waist and James turned into that embrace to enjoy a passionate kiss with his friend and lover.

There was no denying the shock but Harry wasn’t repulsed; he liked to think it was his maturing age that had given him a solid perspective on life’s oddities but at the rim of his mind he knew the truth was more that it was years of relentless war that had taught him life’s great lessons. He’d long ago accepted that if someone’s actions weren’t directly affecting him, then their decisions were their own. War had taught him to let go of laying judgement on others; he had accepted that the man in the trench opposite had no private beef with him and that their need to kill one another was not personal. That James was homosexual was James’s business alone and Harry wasn’t about to make it his business; the penalty was harsh if James were discovered. Men had been hanged for their homosexuality, prison was certain, and then there were the cruel treatments he’d heard about that some underwent in the name of a cure. Harry could imagine that the waiter had spent enough of his life already denying his tendencies, hiding his true self for fear of discovery, living with relentless worry that he might be found out by the not-so-forgiving members of the public who would react with disgust rather than tolerance.

Harry suspected he wasn’t even close to being as shocked as he might have been had he not spent years living far too closely to men in desperately tight conditions in trenches. In the trench there was nowhere to hide . . . not from death if it wanted to find you and definitely not from your fellow soldiers who stood shoulder to shoulder against you. Harry hadn’t seen a lot of homosexuality but he’d come across clandestine relationships on a few occasions, and understood that the love between men could run as deep as any love between a man and a woman.

Harry was reminded of a couple, both of them loyal, brave men, who would clamber over the top of a trench’s parapet without hesitation upon his order. He remembered the older man, Bernard, had such a dry humour, Harry often wanted to clear his throat while laughing at his sarcastic remarks. He recalled now with sorrow how Bernard, wounded and bleeding badly, had carried his fatally injured lover over a distance that must have felt interminable, determined not to leave him behind in no-man’s-land. Poor, funny, loyal Bernard had finally collapsed and with tears making tracks in the mud spatter on his cheeks, refused to be parted from Ernest, a freckled, generous young man whom Bernard loved more than life, it seemed, because he chose to die alongside his bleeding lover rather than crawl on to help. It took Bernard two days to die in the wilderness of no-man’s-land but his groans were only for his dead Ernest, not for his own suffering. That had taught Harry plenty about the loyalty that existed between two people – irrespective of gender – and the depth of feeling that couldn’t be batted away with the righteous sweep of a disgusted hand.

He looked back as James stepped away from the embrace to close the curtain and Harry caught a square-on view of the lover, illuminated by the room’s lamplight, as he gazed out of the window. The man was sandy-haired, with handsome enough features that were neat, symmetrical, with a disarming smile. He was significantly shorter than James. In those few seconds, standing in the damp darkness, Harry observed the lover, in what looked to be an expensive three-piece suit, pull out a pipe and tap the unused tobacco into a cupped palm. And then the drapes drew across and James’s secret life was closed to Harry.

Harry blinked into the night and decided to forget about James and focus on his own love affair that he needed to make sense of . . . and yet somehow, as he walked away from the house of secrets, he had the oddest sensation that, like a wraith, it was creeping behind him and reaching to touch his shoulder.

18

Alex knew she shouldn’t be this happy to be meeting another man but with Harry it constantly seemed as though there was an arc of electricity, like a lightning strike flashing between them. She’d never experienced that with Matthew; she’d not felt its dangerous joy since a teenage crush on one of her father’s colleagues.

She was watching the passengers arrive and emerge through the red-brick station building and felt the tension building in her belly. Who was she kidding with the suggestion of a picnic? It was freezing, and while taking a drive and remaining huddled in the car to eat sandwiches was a fun thought, she imagined food was the last need on their minds right now.

‘Where are you, Harry?’ she murmured into the thick silence of the car and, as if he’d heard her plea, she watched his familiar figure duck out of the shadows of the railway station. Alex had read in books how women’s hearts had ‘leapt’ in response at seeing their loves. That feeling had eluded her and she’d found it amusing to listen to other women use the phrase but here it was, now happening to her. If not for ribs, she was sure her heart might explode out of her chest from pleasure and excitement to see him again. The clandestine nature of their meeting only made it more thrilling.

She leaned across and wound down the window to wave, call to him if necessary, but he’d spotted her, lifted a hand, and she noted her body responding in that cliché of being helplessly attracted to someone and feeling her heart beating faster. Until now, she’d thought it a fanciful notion, dreamed up by poets, but it was true . . . as was the painful realisation that Matthew could not do this to her. She regarded Harry’s soulful looks, the wide forehead that was balanced by a V-shaped face and a perfectly centred nose that was neither too wide nor narrow. Lips were defined; his mouth when not smiling was neat, and thick eyebrows that gave her the impression they wanted to pull together lent him a serious disposition in direct contrast to her husband. But where Matthew seemed always in a state of amusement, Harry was looking to laugh and when he did he was open and generous with his pleasure, whereas Matthew was ever-guarded. But it was Harry’s direct, clear-eyed gaze from beneath his brow that captured her attention. He rarely looked away, even when embarrassed, and his stare felt impenetrable – a colour that was neither grey nor green but somewhere in between, cool and appraising. He took off his hat as he arrived and the wind blew his dark nut-brown hair slightly across his forehead. He’d let it grow out from his army style; it needed a cut but all she wanted was to slip her fingers through it. She cleared her throat as he slid into the seat next to her, leaned over and kissed her cheek. ‘Good morning,’ he murmured, and she felt an invisible wave of desire surge through her.

‘It’s a bit cold for a picnic,’ she said, pressing close so she could kiss him right back but she didn’t linger.

‘Tea rooms?’ he offered, but at her dismissive look, he frowned and raised a single eyebrow. ‘Hotel?’ He sounded entirely unsure.

Alex grinned: yes, they were both definitely thinking the same way and while she knew she should be ashamed, excitement shoved guilt aside. ‘Listen, I have a great friend who lives near here.’

His frown deepened and she watched those dark brows she admired leap towards each other with concern. ‘And?’

‘I rang her last night after speaking with you. She’s happy for me to spend some time at her place. Charlotte’s a brick, no questions asked. It’s a cottage; she . . . er, well, she lives alone.’

Harry blinked, clearly digesting what she was offering.

‘Charlotte was desperately in love with a splendid fellow. He didn’t make it back from Flanders. Now she can’t bear to be with anyone so her parents gave her use of the stone cottage – it’s part of their holdings. She’s using the time away from the big house to come to terms with her loss. She and William were meant to live not far from Nidderdale . . . exquisitely beautiful.’ She was blathering and aware of it. It didn’t help that he simply nodded and refrained from any comment. ‘Anyway,’ she continued brightly, ‘she’s visiting his parents today at Middlesmoor.’ Alex knew she was giving him far too much detail. ‘She left the fire on,’ she added, as a final, slightly forlorn-sounding push.

‘Does she think you’re going to be there with Matthew?’

‘I don’t know what she thinks about my visit. Neither do I care, to be honest. We aren’t friends who see each other all the time but we do go back many years. She knows I’m not happy and has the grace not to ask more than I’m prepared to tell.’ She shrugged. ‘A real friend, in other words. I’d do the same for Charlotte.’

‘Well . . . we can’t leave that fire burning untended,’ he admitted.

She cut him a glance and he grinned back as she eased the car away from the town.

Harry’s face sent spangles through her and she adjusted her notion that the excitement that existed between them was nothing like lightning. No, it was more like the northern lights that she’d shared with her father on the annual summer holiday to Scotland when she was seven years old. They’d left the family house in Argyll and taken the ferry to one of the islands and rented a tiny cottage on a hill. There they’d sat up most of one night, rugged together beneath a thick blanket, sharing a flask of hot, sweetened cocoa – Rowntree’s Elect, of course – because the locals had assured them they’d likely see the aurora borealis that week. And, as if the angels had listened in and obliged, the skies had suddenly lit dramatically in the distance.

They’d leapt to their feet, exclaiming their delight, instantly impervious to the rush of cold that hurried to maul them as overhead became a restless sea of impossibly luminous green light. It swirled above them, rushing over their heads in a pulsing throb that seemed to be alive.

‘The merry dancers, Daddy,’ Alex recalled uttering in an awed whisper.

Her father’s voice was heavy with identical awe. ‘They say, Kitten, that this is the Valkyrie, riding across the heavens.’

‘Valkyrie?’ she’d repeated, stumbling over the word.

‘Women riders, supernatural beings who cross the skies to choose which men die and which survive on the battlefields.’

‘Which battle, Dad?’