Trisha Ashley - Twelve Days of Christmas

His hands on my shoulders tightened their grip and, seeing his intent, I said hastily, ‘Too close for kissing.’

‘Have you never heard of kissing cousins?’ he said, raising one eyebrow and giving me that brief, intimate and spine-sapping smile.

‘I don’t think the saying means that kind of kissing,’ I said, resolutely releasing myself and stepping back. ‘We’re still too close for that, even if our connection is illegitimate — and anyway, I’m not going to go the way of my grandmother, falling for a Martland!’

‘But I’m not remotely like my Uncle Ned!’ he said, looking slightly hurt. ‘And I don’t think the relationship is close enough to matter — if we don’t want it to.’

‘Look, Jude, there may be a bit of physical attraction between us, but you’re really not my type, and I’m certainly not yours, so how closely related we are isn’t ever going to be an issue. And no-one else needs to know about this: in a couple of days I’ll be gone as if I was never here.’

‘Yes they do — Noël needs to know,’ he said stubbornly. ‘He’ll be delighted and so will Tilda and Becca, not to mention Jess, because they’re fond of you already. I don’t think you’ll manage to escape us so easily, after that.’

‘You’re not really going to tell him!’

‘Just watch me!’ he said, then looked down at me thoughtfully and asked quietly: ‘Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about, Holly. . in confidence?’

‘No, nothing at all!’ I snapped and he seemed strangely disappointed.

What on earth else can he have expected me to confess to? Being the lost heir of the Romanovs, perhaps?

I escaped to bed after that, where I tried to distract myself from the scene in the kitchen by reading a bit more of the journal, though I wasn’t expecting any more revelations: I knew the outcome.

Granny seemed to have stoically thrown herself into the role of minister’s wife and if there was some talk in the congregation about the sudden wedding and the disparity in their ages, they seemed to have accepted it.

I was just nodding over another long, long passage about Gran’s undeserved good fortune and the mercy of God when I heard a loud yell from Michael’s room next door, followed by a loud crash and a more feminine scream and exclamations.

I leapt out of bed and rushed onto the landing and then paused with my hand on the doorknob to his room, suddenly wondering if I was interrupting something I shouldn’t be!

Jude, who was closest, arrived from the other direction and I could see from his expression he’d got the same idea — and that he thought I was coming out of Michael’s room, not going in!

‘Sorry,’ he said abruptly. ‘I thought I heard a scream.’

‘You did, but it wasn’t me.’

Michael’s door swung open and Coco stormed out, the near-transparent folds of her negligee clutched around her.

‘Forget it!’ she said viciously over one shoulder.

‘Coco?’ I heard Michael say, before she slammed the door behind her, cutting him off.

‘What?’ she said, catching sight of us. ‘Look, I was sleepwalking, all right?’ And she brushed past Jude and vanished.

He gave me one of his more unfathomable looks and followed her.

When Jude came down this morning he didn’t mention the Coco episode — and neither did I. I was hoping that, on reflection, he would keep his discovery about who I really was to himself, too.

When he came back in from the stables I was just making a stuffing for the pike, to an old English recipe I’d found in one of my books. I’d never cooked one before, but waste not, want not. I’d run out of sausage meat for the stuffing, but had defrosted some of the last of the excellent pork sausages from the freezer and removed the contents, which would do just as well.

Jude must have been warm from mucking out, because he pulled his jumper off and the T-shirt underneath came with it. . I was still staring at him, slightly mesmerised by the play of muscles across his broad back, when he turned and caught me.

‘The thaw seems to have well and truly set in,’ I said quickly, concentrating my attention back on what I was doing, though when I risked another glance up he was giving me that intent look from his deep-set eyes under a furrowed brow again, the slightly suspicious one that should have been dispelled now he knew about Gran.

‘Holly, I hope you’ll remember what I said last night: if you want to confide in someone, you can trust me.’

‘Mmm. .’ I said, totally puzzled. Confide what , exactly? He already knew all my secrets — even, now, that I fancied him!

‘What on earth is that you’re stuffing?’ he asked in a totally different voice.

‘It’s a pike Becca caught last year and shoved into the bottom of your freezer. I strongly believe that if you kill living creatures, then you should eat them. So we are.’

‘I didn’t even know it was in there!’

‘That’s because you never delve deeper than the surface layer of convenience foods.’

‘True. By the way, I’ll be back for lunch today,’ he said, which was a surprise. Perhaps inspiration had flagged?

After breakfast I went out in the snow again with Guy, Jess and Michael, because as Jess pointed out, it might not be around much longer. She was right, too, because it was now subsiding faster than an exuberant soufflé that had overreached itself.

Coco had come down late and in a mood of silent sulkiness, which I put down to a combination of post-performance boredom and the result of whatever happened — or didn’t happen — between her and Michael last night. She was certainly giving him the cold shoulder.

Michael snatched a moment to unburden himself while we were climbing to the top of the paddock with the sledges. ‘Coco came to my room last night!’

‘Yes, I know — and so does Jude. We both heard the screams and yells and came out onto the landing. She said she was sleepwalking!’

‘Sleepwalking nothing!’ he replied. ‘One minute I was fast asleep, and the next she’d tossed the duvet off and jumped on me, stark naked!’

‘No!’ I gasped. ‘That was pretty brazen.’

‘So I yelled — as you do, if someone jumps on you when you’re asleep — and automatically threw her off. She landed on the floor and screamed. . and that really woke me up so I realised what was happening and tried to calm her down.’

‘I don’t think it worked, Michael!’

‘No, especially when she came on to me again and I made it clear I didn’t fancy her in the least,’ he said ruefully.

‘I expect that would make her angry,’ I agreed. ‘Not many men would have turned her down!’

‘Perhaps not. .’ He paused and glanced at me, ‘but the thing is, Holly — well, I’m gay,’ he confessed. ‘That’s really why my marriage broke up.’

‘Really? Yes, I suppose that would make a bit of an irreconcilable difficulty,’ I said, surprised, and he laughed.

We’d reached the top of the paddock now and I put down my sledge. ‘But if you don’t mind my asking, Michael, why did you get married in the first place?’

‘Debbie knew I was gay because she was my best friend and we shared a flat — but then she suddenly changed and thought she could change me, too. I wanted a family, so I think I let her persuade me it would work and we got married and had our little girl.’ He smiled sadly. ‘For a while I thought we might be able to make a go of it. But then she fell for someone else — and so did I. And I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ he added, sounding surprised. ‘My being gay is still a bit of a secret.’