There was a long silence. So long, in fact, that she began to wonder if he had fallen asleep, as worn out as he must be; but presently he spoke, if only on half a breath.
"I'm so totally fucked up."
The rhythm of her stroking didn't change. "Tell me about it."
Another long silence. Then he lifted his head again and laid it back on the pillow opposite hers. Her eyes had adjusted to the low light now, and she could make out the puzzled sorrow in his face. "How do you get to be good at relationships, Holly?"
Ah. "Well, I'm probably not the best person to ask." Her tone was ruefully humorous. They both knew that there had been a Someone, back in the day, but that ultimately ... well, it was all a bit complicated, and best not talked of; and so there was the cottage, and Dickon, and her garden, and her secret and sometimes dangerous work.
"But if there was someone – someone different from all the others – what would you do?" he persisted.
Holly considered. "I suppose that would depend on how I felt about him."
His hand slipped up to cup, almost grip, her jaw. "If I asked you if you loved me, what would you say?"
"Of course I love you," she answered serenely. "If you mean 'am I in love with you', I'd say 'as much as you are with me', which is to say, not in the least."
He began to kiss her. Although it was with passion, she felt that it was not her response he needed, but to understand himself. His proximity, even his weight as he leaned half across her, did not threaten her. She returned his kiss with love, even with humour, but she knew that he would not find in her what he was seeking.
After a while, the passion died and he drew back. He looked a little baffled, a little resigned, and even faintly amused. "I hoped you might have... answers."
"I think we both found the answer to that question a long time ago, love." She stroked his cheek. "There's no point in telling lies when what you need is the truth."
"Ah! The truth! That mystical concept, rarer than the unicorn and about as hard to capture!" He rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling. "What is truth, and how do we separate it from wishful thinking? Is it immutable, or will it fall away like everything else? How do you know?"
It was becoming clearer to her by the moment that his crisis, whatever it actually consisted of, was of a romantic nature. There was one question above all that she longed to ask, but that wasn't in the bargain, and she held her tongue, albeit with some difficulty.
"I think you're pushing it when you're asking me for a definition of truth," she said at last, a little tongue-in-cheek. "But if you define what sort of truth you're talking about, then maybe I might be able to give you some ideas."
There was another long pause.
"If someone ... if someone says they love you, how do you know it ... how do you know what you feel for them, whether it's the same thing, or whether ... whether putting labels on something doesn't just make it too complicated."
She considered, running her fingers lightly across his chest. "I think that if you love someone, or they love you, things are never simple. If people were simple, relationships would be simple – and one thing you most definitely are not, Mal, is 'simple'."
"Sometimes I wish I was," he said in a constricted voice.
"Hey." Instinctively she knew he was going back into his past, into the things he'd done and had done to him that had robbed him of every possibility of simplicity. Some of them had forged his nature as burning heat will forge steel, and some of them had warped him, but still the core of him rang true. It was not only each other's bodies and hearts they knew intimately.
He moved restlessly. The darkness and quiet of the tiny cottage had often been his confessional. "But what if they knew – if they knew the truth..."
"If they were worthy of you, love, if they knew the things that matter about who you are, then they'd love you just the same." Holly kissed the side of his mouth gently.
"But who I was – who I still could be, if the need was there – is that worthy of a good–" He stopped abruptly, and then went on in a lower voice, "of a good man's regard? Of what he – he says he loves me..."
"Then I suppose he means what he says." She shut her mouth before the words 'He's not the sort of man who says anything he doesn't mean' could escape. It was entirely likely that Malcolm suspected she'd know who it was who claimed to be in love with him; after all, the seed of their friendship had germinated in this cottage, watered and warmed by her love for them both. But to force the issue before he was ready to state the fact explicitly was demeaning to his dignity, which he valued, even though his state of bewilderment over his new status was absurdly endearing. And besides – though it was unlikely – she might be wrong.
"He doesn't know me, Holly. How can he possibly love me?"
"He must know you well enough to have developed feelings for you, Mal. I wish you could believe in yourself the way other people believe in you."
In the half-light she saw him level an imaginary phase-pistol at the gold-embossed Blanc Sanglier in its frame on the wall. He squinted along his arm and squeezed off a shot. "If love was as simple as shooting, the boar's bacon," he replied irreverently, twirling the make-believe weapon like a gunslinger, in a way he would certainly never do with the real thing. "Unfortunately for me, in the current situation my sights are off and my barrel's as crooked as a cow's back leg."
His tone struggled for jocularity, but from her he could not conceal the real pain in it. She put her hand on his arm and squeezed. "Mal, what made you come here tonight?"
This time she thought he wasn't going to answer at all.
But finally, out of the utter stillness, he spoke flatly. "I've been visiting a specialist steelmaker's in Cardiff. He..." He sighed. "Jay drove over to meet me. We went to a hotel I know and we had the most amazing sex. He's a bloody brilliant lover, Holly..." He glanced at her a little uncomfortably, clearly wondering if he'd been too frank. "We've been lovers for a while now, but I thought that was all it was, all he wanted from me ... and then after we'd finished he said he loved me.
"Bloody hell." He sighed again. "You could have knocked me down with a kipper. I had no idea. Enterprise's top-of-the-range Tactical Officer, knocked flat on his arse by three words he didn't see coming."
"Mal. JJ would not come to a conclusion about something like that without a heck of a lot of thought. I don't think I've ever heard him mention being in love before." She hesitated. "So ... what did you do?"
A short laugh. "The only thing I could think of to do. Avoided answering, and pretended to go to sleep."
"And panicked," she said ruefully.
"I couldn't have panicked more thoroughly if pineapple had been declared an endangered species."
She laughed, of course, but she heard the sorrow behind the clowning.
"I didn't know where else to go." He turned his head and looked at her. "You always seem able to make me feel better about myself. But when I got here, it just fell on me what a complete fucking idiot I'd been. I didn't ... I'd walked all the way from Redmire and I couldn't make myself come the last three feet to the door."
"So you thought you'd just sit in my woodshed for a couple of hours and freeze to death instead." Her fingers in his hair gripped hard enough to hurt. "Thank God, Dickon knew you were there... Oh, Mal!"
"I'm sorry." Another glance. "For what it's worth, I still was trying to think up some way to confess without making myself look a complete prat, not that there was one of course. I didn't intend to stay there. But what I didn't intend to do and what I probably would have done if you hadn't come to the rescue, might be two completely different things."
He was probably right about that. Outside, the moon shone down on a world where the clear skies had now let the temperatures plummet well below zero. Shuddering at the thought of him frozen stiff out there among the chopped-up logs, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and shook him to drive the point home as she growled, "If you ever, if you ever pull a stupid stunt like that again, I'll... I'll..."
"Leave me there?" He was genuinely contrite, but the suggestion came with puppy-dog eyes. JJ would have forgiven him on the spot, or maybe he'd have just punched his lights out for being an ass in the first place.
Nevertheless, the words were followed almost immediately by a cavernous yawn. If he'd come by public transport from South Wales and walked through the snow for the last few miles, he must be absolutely shattered.
"Holly, what am I going to do?" he mumbled, turning to face her and pulling the quilt tighter about his shoulders – as much a psychological indicator as a physical one, she thought. "I thought ... I thought things were OK, that I was handling it better than – than I've done before.
"I've always been useless with relationships. You know I have. Just lately–" a bitter, self-deprecating shrug– "I preferred it that way. I wanted it that way. When it's just no-strings sex, nobody gets to know the real me."
"But JJ wanted the real you," she said softly.
"He doesn't even know the real me!" The despair was tangible. "He doesn't know the man you know. He doesn't know what I've done, what I've been ... what I am, in the places where you can't undo anything, no matter how hard you wish you could."
She felt the gut-deep sigh go out of him, and thought back to all the times he'd been here – sometimes terrible times, towards the end, when he'd been so badly broken inside he'd been almost beyond healing. At last, very quietly, she said, "I think one thing we haven't covered is what you feel about him."
The silence was so long she thought he'd fallen asleep. Finally, and in the faintest of whispers, "I tried not to care. I tried to think he was just another fuck. But god help me, I couldn't.
"I ... care about him, Holly. I care what he thinks about me. And I think of telling him, think of him finding out and I ... I can't bear the thought of him turning away from me."
The snowlight found the faintest rim of reflection beneath his lowered lashes. Without a word, she put out a hand and found his, which gripped tightly for a second and then released, remorseful of the pressure that had elicited an indrawn breath, for all her resolution. "You always hurt the one you love," he breathed. "You see? I'm a destroyer, Holly. Even when I don't mean to, I destroy people. That's what made me so good at my job in the Section. They said I was a natural."
She was familiar with the necessity to swallow impotent rage. Nevertheless, for all her experience it still took a moment to choke it down so that she could speak calmly. With her other hand she clasped the side of his face, and even shook it slightly as she spaced out every word. "Mal. You are a wonderful man who went to hell and came back again. I know exactly who you are and I love you. I know what you did and I love you. I know what you were and I love you. Ex-Section Operative Jaguar, you are a special person who deserves to be loved by another special person, and I couldn't think of anyone else other than JJ I wouldn't grudge you to."
For a long moment he looked deep into her eyes, and then the smallest smile touched his mouth. "Every time I come here I remember why I love you so much."
"It's because I make your favourite food."
"Well, there had to be some reason."
"And the other reason is that I tell you when it's time for you to get some sleep." She slid up a hand to ruffle his hair, breaking the moment. "And you're exhausted. Snuggle up, love, and let's get some sleep. Things will be better in the morning."
She'd been right about his physical state – she was always right about Mal. He was so worn out he didn't even have the strength left to argue about her optimistic forecast for the morrow. She slept on her right side, so dropping a last, firm kiss on the tip of his nose she turned over, and felt him snuggle obediently up behind her and slip an arm chastely around her waist. He laid his head so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on the back of her neck; at a guess, he found the familiar smell of her hair comforting enough to put up with the tickle of it on his face.
"Goodnight, sweetheart," he murmured.
"G'night, Mal."