But it wasn’t enough—he knew it wasn’t enough, and he knew he would be lost without her.
He shifted a little on the bed’s edge so that he could pull the blanket more firmly over his wife’s shoulders. Even through his thick wool jumper he could feel the chill creeping into the boat. The narrowboat’s only heat came from the stove in the main cabin, but he dared not add more wood this late in the evening. He stored a supply on top of the boat, both for their own use and to sell to other boaters, and with the Christmastime slowdown in odd jobs, he couldn’t afford to burn their only source of cash. Nor would he be able to forage easily for more wood with snow on the ground—if the cold snap lasted more than a few days, they would be in real trouble.
Rowan’s eyelids had begun to droop again. “You sleep now, do you hear?” he whispered. “I’ll take care of everything.” And he would, too—it was just that it was becoming harder and harder to see how he was going to manage it.
Rowan was asleep, her breathing shallow but regular, and from next door the children’s voices had faded from drowsy whispers to silence. Giving his wife’s shoulder a squeeze, he moved quietly through the children’s cabin and into the stern.
He stood for a moment, gazing at the remains of the stew he’d s
made for dinner, still standing on the hob; at the laceware and brasses decorating the polished wood of the cabin walls; at the bright detail of the castle scene Rowan had painted on the underside of the drop table. The children had strung tinsel and a red-and-green paper chain over the windows and Marie had tacked up a drawing she’d made of Father Christmas wearing a pointed red hat.
Only embers glowed in the stove. With sudden decision, Gabe took a log from the basket and fed it into the fire. It was Christmas Eve, and he’d be damned if they’d spend it freezing. Maybe tomorrow the weather would break. Maybe he’d find a carpentry job before the New Year. He had contacts here—it was the only thing that had brought him back to the Nantwich stretch of the Cut.
Right, he thought, with the wave of bitterness that swamped him all too often these days. Maybe Father Christmas would come.
Maybe the boat’s makeshift loo would work properly for once. And maybe his wife would miraculously get better, instead of more frail by the moment.
Tears stung his eyes and he blinked furiously, stabbing at the fi re with the poker until the heat scorched his face. She was slipping away from him and he couldn’t bear it, not after everything they’d been through.
There was only one option that he could see. He could sell the boat. There were always collectors sniffing around the Cut, looking for traditional working narrowboats built before the s, the less altered, the better. Willing to pay a handsome price to do without plumbing or central heating, they would restore the boats to their original state and show them off at boat shows. Never mind that entire families had lived in seven- by-eight-foot cabins and babies had played on top of the sheeted coal or cocoa in the cargo space—
that only added to the romance.
Gabe snorted in disgust. They were fools, playing at being boatmen, and he’d not give up the Daphne to the likes of them. He’d
been born on this boat, as had his father, and now his family was one of the last still clinging to the old way of life.
And selling the boat would only be a stopgap mea sure at best—
he knew that. Where would they go? What would they do? They knew nothing else, and there was nowhere else they would be safe.
He thought of the face from the past that had appeared so unexpectedly today. The woman had been maneuvering her boat round the angle where the Middlewich fed into the main branch of the canal at Barbridge; skillfully, he thought, for a woman alone. Then she had looked up.
It had taken him a moment to place her in the strange context, and then he’d felt the old, familiar lurch of fear. She had recognized them as well, and had spoken to Rowan and the children in a friendly way, but he didn’t trust her. Why should he, even after what she had done for them?
She and her kind, no matter how well-meaning, meant nothing but trouble—had never meant anything but trouble for him or his people. He’ d been the fool to think they could run away from it for-ever.
Moving slowly back into the children’s cabin, he stared down at their sleeping forms. The light reflecting off the snow came through the small window more brightly than a full moon. He knelt, touching his daughter’s curls with his large, calloused hand, and a fi erce resolve rose in him.
He knew one thing, and it was enough. He would do whatever it took to keep what remained of his family from harm.
Chapter Four
From the moment he had looked up and found her watching him from the stairs, Kit thought that Lally Newcombe was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He was afraid to look at her, afraid his face would betray him, yet he hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away. Around him, the commotion of dogs and greetings faded to an incomprehensible babble, and when Tess leapt from his arms, he’d felt as if he’d been stripped naked, defenseless before the dark-haired girl’s remote and considering gaze.
The entrance of Jack the sheepdog and the group exodus from the hall gave him a respite, but even then he’d been aware of Lally’s movements, as if he’d developed remote sensors on every inch of his skin. He trailed after the others, feeling as if his hands and feet had suddenly become enormous, awkward appendages more suited to a giant.
Once in the kitchen, he tried to ignore Lally, tried to look at anything other than her face and the slice of bare skin showing in the gap between her shirt and her jeans. When Rosemary spoke to him, he forced himself to focus, and to answer, pushing his voice past the lump in his throat and keeping it level.
Rosemary—his grandmother, he reminded himself. He still couldn’t quite get his head round it, even though he’d met her once before, at his mum’s funeral. Although he hadn’t known then that she bore any relation to him, she had been kind to him, and had stood up to Eugenia. It had been the one bright spot in that horrible day.
Eugenia, his other grandmother, his mother’s mother. Would he ever be able to hear “grandmother” without thinking of her? She was the only grandmother he had known until now, and his mother’s dad, Bob, the only grandfather.
As he helped Rosemary carry the tea things to the table, he glanced up at Hugh, his new grandfather, with curiosity. Hugh Kincaid was a tall man, with a lean, beaky sort of face, and a comfortable aura of the outdoors about him. But there was a bookishness, too, a hint of the faraway about his eyes, and Kit thought he might be the sort of person who held long conversations with himself.
Just now, however, he was laughing and joking with the younger boys, and Kit’s face flamed with envy. In that moment he hated Toby, hated the easy way he made friends so easily. Then he fl ushed again with shame, hating himself for the thought, hating himself for being so cruel to the smaller boy earlier that day.
He didn’t know what had got into him lately. Sometimes it seemed as if something alien lived between his brain and his mouth, out of control, just waiting to take over whenever he spoke. And then there were the dreams. He’d had them the first few months after his mother died, and now they had come back, worse than ever. He woke from them sick and sweating, afraid to go back to sleep, and afterwards he carried a lingering queasiness with him all through the day. Maybe he would be all right here, away from home, away from school.