The Lone Wolfe

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She finally found the kitchen in the back of the house, a huge room now flickering with candlelight. Jacob had brought in several old silver candelabra and positioned them in various points around the room so the space danced with shadows.

‘You made it.’ Jacob turned around and in the dim light Mollie thought she saw his teeth flash white in a smile. ‘I hope you didn’t get lost.’

‘Almost.’ She smiled back. ‘Actually, I just had a good long soak in the tub. It felt amazing.’ She gestured to the clothes she wore. ‘Thank you. This was very thoughtful.’

‘I realised Annabelle’s clothes were undoubtedly musty. They haven’t been worn or even aired in years.’

‘It’s strange,’ Mollie murmured, ‘how forgotten everything is. I haven’t been inside the house in years. I didn’t realise how much had been left.’

Jacob stilled, and Mollie could feel his tension. She knew the exact moment when he released it and simply shrugged. ‘Everyone made their own lives away from here.’

‘I know.’

He reached for two plates, sliding her a sideways glance. ‘Yes, you must know better than anyone, Mollie. You watched it all happen. You were the one who was left last of all, weren’t you?’ He spoke quietly, without mockery, and yet his words stung because she knew how true they were. She’d felt it, year after year, labouring alone.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I was.’

‘Have you stayed here the whole time?’ Jacob asked. He laid the plates on the breakfast bar in the centre of the kitchen. ‘Did you never go anywhere, except for Italy?’

He made it sound as if she’d just been waiting, a prisoner of time and fate. Even if it had felt that way sometimes, to her own shame, she didn’t like Jacob Wolfe remarking on it.

Yes, I was waiting. Waiting for my father to die.

‘I went to university,’ she told him stiffly. ‘To study horticulture.’

‘Of course. But other than that … you waited. You stayed.’ He glanced at her, his eyes dark and fathomless, revealing nothing, but she felt his words like an accusation. A judgement.

‘Yes,’ she said in little more than a whisper. ‘I stayed.’ Even if I didn’t want to. Even if sometimes … She swallowed and looked away. ‘Something smells delicious,’ she said, trying to keep her voice light and bright and airy. Trying desperately to change the subject.

Jacob opened the oven and removed a foil pan. ‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a cook. It’s just an Indian takeaway, but at least the oven runs on gas so it’s warm still.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied, her voice still stiff. ‘It’s very generous of you to share your meal.’ As Jacob pried off the foil lid from the chicken dish, Mollie realised she was starving. She’d been so involved in going through her father’s things that she’d completely forgotten about dinner.

Jacob ladled the fragrant chicken and rice onto the two plates and then gestured to one of the high bar stools. ‘Come and eat.’

Sliding on a stool opposite of him, Mollie was conscious of how intimate this felt. Was. All around them the kitchen flickered and glimmered with candlelight. The house yawned emptily in several acres in every direction; they were completely alone.

She took a bite of chicken. She knew that now was the time to ask Jacob what he’d been doing all these years, why he’d left, if he’d ever spared a single thought for any of the people he’d left behind—all the questions she wanted answers to, deserved answers to, for that supposed clarity and closure. So she could move on from this place, just as all the Wolfes had, just as Jacob would again.

Yet the words stuck in her throat, in her heart. Did she really have a right to ask—and know—such things? She wasn’t even part of the Wolfe family. She might have spent her whole life on the Wolfe estate, in the family’s shadow, but she’d never been one of them. She knew that, had always known that. She’d been an observer, a silent witness, a peeping Tom. Never part of the family, not even remotely close. Her friendship with Annabelle and her father’s faithful service were the only links to the family whose actions had played such havoc with her own life. Why should she have ever expected the Wolfes to feel any sense of obligation or responsibility to her or her father? Annabelle’s offer to let them stay at the cottage had been a kindness, an act of charity that no one else had known about.

And yet Jacob obviously felt responsible; he’d shown her with that cheque. Yet she didn’t want money, even if it was deserved. So just what did she want from Jacob Wolfe?

‘So what have you been doing all this time?’ she asked. Her voice sounded too loud, too bright. Jacob stilled. He was good at that, Mollie thought. She knew she’d caught him off guard only when he became more cautious, more careful, his movements both precise and predatory.

‘Many things.’

‘Such as?’

‘Work.’

‘What kind of work?’

‘This and that.’

Mollie laid down her fork, exasperated by his oblique answers. ‘Why don’t you want to say? Was it something illegal?’

Jacob’s brows snapped together in a dark frown. ‘No, of course not.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, how am I supposed to know? You never sent a letter or left a message. Annabelle waited—’

‘I don’t,’ Jacob told her, his tone turning icy, ‘want to talk about my sister.’

Mollie refused to back down. ‘She’s my friend too.’

‘So I gather from the photographs plastered on her wall.’ Now he sounded mocking, and Mollie flushed. She hated the thought of Jacob seeing those photos, gazing at her in so many awkward and emotional stages.

‘Well, if it’s not something illegal, I don’t know why you can’t tell me,’ she resumed after a second’s pause. Jacob’s eyes flashed blackly.

‘And I don’t know why you’re so curious, Miss Parker,’ he drawled, his tone soft. Yet there was nothing soft about his body or expression; everything was hard. Hard and unrelenting and cold.

Mollie swallowed. Suddenly this had stopped being a conversation. It had become a battle, and one she wasn’t sure she wanted to fight. She had a feeling Jacob would win. She lifted her shoulder in a shrug and lightened her tone. ‘Of course I’m curious. You mentioned yourself how I’m the one who has been here for so many years. How I waited. And I did. I waited and I watched everyone leave, one by one, starting with you. So yes, I’d like to know what started the exodus.’ Somehow, as she’d started speaking, her tone had hardened and darkened. Mollie stopped, her lips still parted in surprise at just how bitter she sounded. She felt a little flicker of shame.

‘So,’ Jacob said after a moment, his voice still sounding soft and yet so very hard, ‘you don’t just want to know what I’ve been doing, but why I went.’

Mollie’s breath escaped in a soft, surprised rush. She might as well see this through. ‘Yes.’

Jacob leaned back, his position relaxed even though his eyes were wary and alert. ‘Why don’t you tell me why you think I left?’ Mollie stared at him, speechless. She hadn’t expected that