“No,” said Nina. “And I won’t talk about it anymore. But no.”
Lennox was standing there with his chainsaw.
“You can’t!” she said. “You can’t cut it down now! Look at it!”
“I have to. It’s sick.”
“But it’s beautiful.”
“Nina,” said Lennox. “This tree is dying. It needs to be removed. It’s eaten itself up from the inside. It could fall on the road. It could fall on the tracks. It has to go.”
“But . . .”
He shook his head. “Not everything in the countryside is lovely. Beautiful things can be dangerous, too.”
Nina nodded. “But all the books . . .”
“I swear you think books are alive,” said Lennox.
“Because they are,” said Nina.
Lennox strode forward and grasped her around the waist. He pushed her against the side of the tree and kissed her fiercely and deeply.
“As real as this?” he said.
Nina looked up into his eyes and smiled wickedly.
“In a different way,” she said.
Lennox kissed her again.
“What about now?”
“You know, I think people can love more than one thing.”
Lennox pulled back.
“What did you say?”
Nina realized instantly what she had said. Her hand flew to her mouth and she went bright pink.
“Oh, I didn’t . . .”
Lennox looked at her seriously underneath the book tree.
“Do you mean that?”
Nina felt so embarrassed she could hardly speak.
“I don’t . . . I mean . . .”
He paused.
“I mean . . . could you?”
Nina looked up into his deep blue eyes.
“I . . . I’d like to,” she whispered softly, and he leaned down and kissed her again, and his soul was in it.
Later, she moved away from the tree.
“You’re not going to cut it down now, are you?”
He grinned. “Yes! Do you never listen?”
“I never listen.”
“Okay, well, it’s a good thing I don’t talk much then, isn’t it?”
Nina turned to look at the tree.
“I’ll be in the car. I can’t watch.”
“It’ll burn nicely for us. In the wintertime,” said Lennox. Nina glanced up inquiringly, but he didn’t elaborate.
As the chainsaw roared, she hugged Parsley in the car, rocking him back and forth and occasionally going “oh my God, oh my God” in his ears. She watched Lennox’s broad back as he worked, content to do nothing but look at him, even if her heart was saddened when she saw the beautiful tree come down.
Lennox loaded the Land Rover up with logs as the day faded.
“It looks all bare there now,” she said.
“Yeah, but they’ll have the new one there in a couple of days.”
“The what?”
“The new tree . . . You didn’t think we’d just leave a hole in the earth?”
“I don’t know,” said Nina, whose head felt jumbled up like a washing machine.
“Well, you don’t know much about farming, then. There’ll be a new tree planted, a sapling probably. Or maybe a bit older. Anyway. Something nice that isn’t utterly riddled with disease.”
“Wow.”
“Maybe your idiots can come and stick their books on that.”
“Maybe they will.” Nina smiled.
“You look happy,” said Lennox.
“I am, very,” said Nina, looking at him. “Are you all right?”
Lennox nodded. “I’m happy, too.” Then he said something very surprising. “I was thinking of taking some time off.”
“You?” said Nina in utter surprise.
“Aye. I never do normally. And it hasn’t worked out very well for me.” He looked awkward. “Anyway. Ruaridh can run this place just as well as I can; it’s time he stepped up a bit more. And I was thinking, well. I’ve always wanted to take a look at Orkney.”
Nina shot him a sharp look.
“Or. I mean. Doesn’t have to be Orkney. Just a little trip. But if you were going to be in Orkney, well. I might come up. Because . . . Christ, Nina. I . . . I don’t think I can do without you.”
Nina smiled. “I don’t necessarily have to go.”
He looked at her. “I thought you said you had an offer of work there.”
She shook her head. “I was hoping . . . I was hoping for a last-minute reprieve.”
“But I let Kate take the barn . . . your home.”
“If only there was somewhere else I could live,” said Nina.
He looked at her. “You mean the farmhouse?”
“It’s a bit early . . . I mean, we barely know each other.”
Lennox frowned. “Aye, we do.”
Nina laughed.
As they pulled into the driveway, chickens scattered everywhere. Lennox parked carefully and they both got out of the car.
“What do you think?” he said cautiously.
Parsley jumped down, ran to Nina and then to Lennox. Nina glanced at the van.
“I’d need to bring it down. Park it outside the house.”
Chapter Thirty-six
The winters were colder and darker than Nina could ever have imagined. Out here there were no streetlights, nothing between her and the thick dark blanket of sky that had rolled in during October and showed no signs of going anywhere until the springtime. Some days it barely got light at all; the trees were hung with sharp fingers of frost, the roads thick with snow, impassable to all but the Land Rover; the livestock blew out thick puffs of steam; the storms drove the hail hard against the windows. There was almost nothing to do except hunker down, conserve your energy, wait for the darkest months to pass.
She absolutely loved it.
She lay in front of the wood-burning stove, soup warming on the Aga, thinking happily of Ainslee, who had rushed in to work for an hour that morning, then rushed off again, explaining that she was earning extra money tutoring in her spare time and it paid a lot better than Nina did, which was true. Nina was waiting for Lennox’s tread in the hallway, the careful way he took off his boots.
They had indeed gone to Orkney and had the most wonderful time stuffing themselves with scallops and black pudding and oysters, and sleeping in a creaking fisherman’s cottage and sailing in the great bays and making love through the night. There wasn’t a day when Nina didn’t want to know this quiet, thoughtful man more and more, and when they finally decided to return to the home they both loved so much, it was the easiest thing in the world to move into the lovely austere farmhouse, start to make it cozier and softer, as Kate put the barn on the market. Nina sent Surinder the prospectus every day. Just in case. She was coming up to have a look on the weekend. Just in case.