"Would you like me to have a look at that?"
Not long ago, he'd have simply said, "Hard luck! Let me see," and reached for her hand. But he was careful now. So was she. Her hand likely didn't need attention, but she'd been slipping past him all day during the fete. All week, really. He hoped to at least enquire how she was feeling.
He expected her to brush off his concern, or slip past him again, but she turned from the sink to face him.
"Yes," she said, as if drawn by some force, and held out her hand.
The recent memory of another meeting assailed him. The two of them, standing right here in the light streaming in the window in the Parish Hall kitchen, frozen in a moment of silent connection. Had she not been a nun, had she only been the delightful colleague and friend he'd come to know over long years of working together, who set his heart thumping like a much younger man's, he might have kissed her then. Or at least let her know he'd like to. Very much .
He hadn't felt anything near to this since Marianne passed away. Hadn't even had his eye caught by any woman, now that he thought back. He couldn't say when this had all shifted. They were together so often, and worked so seamlessly, and one day her thereness was more there than before. And after that he couldn't help noticing when she wasn't there, and he didn't much like it.
Her bright eyes and ready wit had caught his attention from the first day, and her smile with a little curl in it, that turned broad and sunny when she forgot herself. She'd either gotten heart-stoppingly beautiful in the last year, or his grief had eased enough for him to see it. Like the proverbial girl next door from American songs, there she was.
Captured the heart of his little boy, too.
It would be simple, even quite proper, if she wasn't a nun.
But she was a nun.
He hastily focused his attention on her hand instead, cradled in his two larger ones. Poor little thing, still blood-streaked. Should heal cleanly, he thought, but he hated to think of her in any discomfort. Especially from being so good to Tim.
He'd always enjoyed watching her hands. Neatly-made and competent. He didn't have to look up at a delivery to recognize her hands working across from him. She gave him more than practical assistance. Together, they'd eased the way for more than one labouring mother or frightened child, able to relax into the air of confident care they drew around them. They'd saved lives together.
But those quiet, deft movements of hers were trained-in, he knew. Inside, she was just as efficient, but quick and impulsive. A passionate creature with a backbone made of the same stuff as his, trying with all her might to mold herself into a perfect channel of love and service.
How he loved her for it. She was the guiding star of his conscience, if she only knew it, and had shown him the gleaming threads of his old tattered faith that he thought were gone forever after the war.
How he wanted to see her happy in her life. But she wasn't happy now. Eventually, the break would come, whether or not he was the cause. A devastating choice, whatever the outcome. He couldn't let her go. And he couldn't stand between herself and her vows.
Except her eyes said not to let go.
Her hand laid so trustingly in his said so.
At that moment, she was not a nun, but a woman grappling with her emotions. My darling girl. What is your name? I'd say it if I knew.
The moment stretched impossibly, irrevocably taut between holy and human. He bowed over her hand as if moved to reverence, which he was, and hot thrumming desire, which was true, too. He touched her palm with his lips, softly, inhaling the scent of carbolic soap with ground oatmeal in it, the sun-warmed linen sleeve of her habit, and a prickle of clean fresh perspiration from running in the summer heat.
Utterly wrong, but nothing was ever so right.
Here is my heart. If you'll have it. Here in your hand.
She didn't snatch her hand back, didn't make a sound. She merely turned away, her hand still open, as if she knew the weight of what he'd placed in it.
And the moment snapped back into reality.
Oh, God, what had he done?
"I'm sorry," he told her. "That was unforgivable."
The edge in her voice told him of the fight within. "Who decides what is forgivable or unforgivable?"
"I think you know that better than I do," he said quietly.
Then careful, measured Sister Bernadette was back, painfully honest. "At this moment, I only know that I'm not turning my back on you because of you , but because of Him."
She was gentle with him. He could almost wish she was furious. What she had just admitted to him left him gut-punched, breathless.
I love you. I can't.
But she wasn't walking away.
"And if I didn't accept that, I wouldn't deserve to live."
He meant it. He'd forced them into an open acknowledgement, and she was the one with the impossible burden. It wasn't fair to her.
The only saving grace was that, in his own retreat, Sister Bernadette would understand that he was not rejecting her, but leaving her in command of the field.
The Officer to his Sergeant, as always.