After our battle, I felt like nothing more than a sandbag with a hole in it, all of the anger and desire to hurt pouring out in a steady stream onto the floor. I felt like crying, too, like taking the same method of release James was, but instead I just lay there feeling empty and watching the shadows of evening creeping across the ceiling.

"You smell of herbs," I whispered.

"I was in the greenhouses," he said, pulling air through his nose in a wet sniff. 

I never wanted to get up again. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with my feet in the cobwebs under the sofa, and James quietly sobbing next to me.  

I didn't want to have to bury another Cloud Hill man. I didn't want to attempt again and again to leverage jobs out of unwilling employers. I didn't want to have to manage several businesses, an estate, a farm, a manor house and the needs of fifty odd men who were reluctant to venture outside of the safe, secure world I'd created for them while I fought wolves away from the door.  

Was it really so safe, so secure, this world I'd created?  Was I attempting the impossible, and Montgomery had been the proof? 

I didn't know, and all I wanted to do was shut my eyes and never move again. 

"Was he so special to you?" James whispered in the spreading darkness.

"He was a poor unfortunate who washed up on my doorstep. I was responsible for him. Of course he was special to me."

"I mean-"

"I know what you mean." 

He didn't say anything more, but I could hear him struggling to normalise his breathing. 

"I. . .I haven't had work for almost two years. You asked me before, had I been working? Not for two years. Not real work anyway. I don't know if that's important now." 

He paused. 

I ran the tips of my fingers over the rug again and again in the same pattern, knowing what was coming. Confessions, emotions, realisations. The floodgates were opening, but I wasn't sure I was ready for it just then. 

"Olivia . . . I don't know what happened. I came back. Everything was fine. Then, then . . . I got angry. For no reason. Just, out of the blue. I lost my position, in a factory. For getting into a fight with another bloke. I don't even remember what it was about now. Probably nothing. Me mum was crying all the time, saying she didn't know me anymore. Was this what the war had done to me? she kept asking. What could I say? So I left home and went to London. Diversion, you know? Thought if I had something else to put my mind on, I'd not get those rages. Didn't work."  

"Stress," I said. "The bombs you were always expecting to hit you never did. In the trenches, you could hang on because you had to. Alone, in normal situations, the fear and anger you pushed down for so long began to work its way to the surface." 

I felt as if I was reciting from a book, I'd said those words so many times.  

"I can't remember a lot. There are days and weeks I just can't remember. In the trenches, yeah? Like they never happened. Nothing. The only constant thing, the only thing I knew where it came from was that scarf you gave me. The red one. It was always there when I started knowing where I was again."

He paused, and drew a few deep breaths. Did I really want to hear what I was sure was coming next? 

"I could've put an end to it all easily enough, sure. Just hop out of the trench and it'd be lights out and pain forgotten. But it kept me going, that scarf. Convinced me there were a lot worse things in the world than some smart arses sending you out to die, and for what?"  

"So it is the same one." That wasn't really a question. 

"You remember?"

"Vividly. It was the only time I'd ever given a Cloud Hill scarf to a man in the nude. "

I could feel him looking at me, sizing me up. 

"I thought I'd been clear with you, James, I honestly did. I thought you understood that once you went back--

"Oh, but you were. You were, Olivia." His voice was soft, only a little above a whisper.  "I knew very well there could never been anything lasting between us. That's why it got all twisted up in my mind. I could never be anything to you and I certainly wasn't anything to the Army. I felt like a thing to be used and discarded. By everyone. It just got all twisted up. "

I opened my eyes and turned to where he was lying. I could only make out his shadow in the dark.  "You knew that? Then why did you give me that valiant, little speech about good people and how I'd --"

"So you'd feel as bad as I did. I've been yelling at you --and myself and everyone else -- in my head for years trying to sort it all out. And suddenly, there you were, sitting next to me, making me feel all the same feelings just like before. 

Don't you realise? It hurt seeing you again! It hurt that you didn't recognise me there on the street, that you thought I was a beggar. It hurt that you showed you still had enough interest in me to chase me down and harass me into coming here, because that told me. . . . It hurt. . ." he broke off, his breathing coming in rapid drags and sighs, "that there was no other way I could ever be near you except as one of your needy charges. Damaged. Weak. Certainly not a man you'd want. Not anymore." 

"I do understand. Better than you might think. But you are very silly, indeed, if you think I wouldn't have chased you down no matter what state you were in, good or bad. A Cloud Hill man is a Cloud Hill man, and one of my former lovers is one of my former lovers. And there aren't many of those in the world, I'll have you know."

"I know."

"Do you? Wonderful. Then I'll thank you to stop treating me like a common whore. It really isn't fair."  I didn't say that cruelly, but James drew in a sharp breath nonetheless and I knew I'd hit a soft spot. 

"It's just . . . I thought everybody and everything was out to harm me for so bloody long. The war, the army, even me mum and me old school mate back home who couldn't stop staring at me missing leg. None of them knew how to talk to me anymore. It was easier to lump you in with the rest and convince myself that you'd abandoned me than face the truth that we never could have had anything solid." 

Yes, it probably had been.  

"I'm not out to hurt you, James. Not at all. I never was, and nobody here is. Seriously hurt you, that is."

"No, probably not seriously. But I could still be transferred to Hard Candy if I don't watch it, right?" 

"Or discover snails in your socks, yes." 

James snorted in mild amusement, then said, "We need to get up off this floor before someone comes. Can you stand?"

"Probably, but I have no desire to.  The whole world can just shove off. I apologise, but that includes you and this conversation. I'm not going to deal with it anymore today."  

James made a strange sound, half way between panting and choking. It took me a more than a few seconds to realise he was laughing. 

"What's so funny, Davis?"

He didn't answer; he simply crawled his way to the door and opened it, letting the pale light from the gas lamps in the corridor weakly illuminate our patch of the room. Propping himself up with his back to the the doorframe, he said, "You throw a decent punch." 

"Want to go another round?" 

There was that noise again. 

"Stop laughing," I said. "I'm perfectly capable of belting you one again. Even from here." 

"I do not doubt that." 

On a whim, I said, "You like that, don't you? You enjoy it immensely when I get my feathers ruffled." 

"You strike me most agreeably, you always have. And I'm quite pleased to know that you could kick a donkey to death. Reassures me to no end."

He laughed again. "Ow, oh, me ribs." 

My own floodgate opened in that moment and words I never thought I'd speak aloud came rushing out.

"I can't put up with this anymore, James. It's too much. I need help. I don't need a man to take it out of my hands and do it for me! Get that idea out of your head this very instant! But I need loads more cooperation than I've been getting. I can't fight for every last man here when they won't fight for themselves. I'm too tired and I'm simply fed up. I've had enough. "

"I know," James said, "You were overburdened during the war and it's simply got much worse. That was obvious to me almost from the moment I arrived back here. That's why I'd hoped. . .but you aren't about to let anyone else be in charge here, are you? No steward, or what have you.  It's Miss Altringham's estate now." 

"You're damned right it is."

"How many suitors have you turned down, then? There must have been a few, you're far too good of a catch. Were none of them good enough for you? Or would they just have been in the way?"

"How's your pusher in London? I bet she's missing you." 

James fell silent. Perhaps I shouldn't have said that so aggressively, or perhaps I shouldn't have said it at all. 

"There's no one else, Olivia," he replied after a while. "I said that. . .  I said that to not look bad in front of the others. A chap with his own girl can't be at the end of his rope. I never thought it would reach your ears."

"Everything reaches my ears. It's my estate, remember? But don't tell me you haven't had female company since the war ended. That I won't believe."

James sighed. "A couple of paid times when I had a bit of cash. There's a few widows who don't mind . . . us wounded. "

I had nothing to say to that and so I didn't say anything.

 "Olivia."

"Yes?"

"I don't want to be this angry anymore. Not with you, not with myself, not with the world. Do you think that's possible? "

I thought for a little while, my fingers still tracing the same pattern over the carpet. 

"Why don't you give it to me?" I said, finally. "I think I've suffered in silence for too long. A jolly good dose of rage is exactly what I might need. And if I'm running about using up all your anger, there can't possibly be any left for you, now can there be?  You'll be left sitting in a wing chair, doting on the daisies and practicing your water colouring skills. "

"Sounds wonderful," said James, and began to crawl stiffly towards the sofa to fetch his crutches. "You can have the damned thing with my blessing."

It did sound wonderful, and ideas began to swarm about in my head like mad fireflies. An absolutely enraged Olivia. How would that look? Did I have an appropriate hat to match? 

Things were going to have to be different; we couldn't keep going on this track any longer. I couldn't keep going. I'd seen where I'd gone wrong, with the men and with the Hutch, and it was time to rip the steering wheel round and head in the right direction.  

I crossed my fingers that I had it in me, and sat up, wincing as I did. 

But before the future could begin, I had to write to Montgomery's parents that they no longer had a son.