Mistletoe Marriage

His presence might make things easier for Melissa, too. Sophie was very conscious of how guilty her sister felt about the situation. Perhaps if Melissa thought that she had found happiness with Bram she would be able to relax and enjoy being married to Nick.

And Nick? How would he feel? Would he be glad to think that Sophie had found someone else and was finally over him?

No prizes for guessing how her mother would feel if she and Bram announced their engagement. Harriet would be delighted. Not only would she get the family Christmas she had planned, but she would have another wedding to plan in the New Year. It would be the best Christmas present Sophie could possibly give her.

Her father would be pleased, too, to have both his daughters at his seventieth birthday party.

Yes, it would be easier for everyone if she said that she was marrying Bram.

But could she marry him just to make her family happy?

Sophie turned the mug of tea between her hands.

Could it work? What would it be like to marry Bram? She had never thought of him as anything other than a friend before. What would he be like a husband? As a lover?

She studied him from under her lashes. His mouth was firm, cool, quiet. How would it feel against her own? What would his kiss be like? And those square, capable farmer’s hands. She had seen them gently easing a lamb into the world, running assessingly down the flank of a heifer, fixing an engine with deft fingers. She had never felt them smoothing over her skin. What would that be like?

The very thought made her uncomfortable.

‘This is crazy,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘I can’t believe we’re seriously talking about getting married just to save a bit of awkwardness at the Christmas dinner table!’

‘I was thinking more about saving awkwardness in life generally,’ said Bram lightly, sensing that the moment had gone.

‘We could never go through with it,’ Sophie said, still torn.

‘Couldn’t we?’

‘No.’ Her tentative smile faded. ‘No, we couldn’t. It’s not that I can’t see the advantages, Bram. I don’t really want to go through life on my own, watching from the sidelines and wasting my time feeling bitter. Of course I don’t. But it wouldn’t be fair. I care about you too much to marry you knowing how I still feel about Nick. You deserve better than that.’

‘Better in what way?’ he asked wryly, surprised at the strength of his disappointment.

It was funny. An hour ago the thought of marrying Sophie would never have crossed his mind, but now that it had it seemed like one of the best ideas he had ever had.

‘You deserve more than second best, Bram,’ said Sophie in a gentle voice. ‘You deserve someone who believes in you and loves you completely for yourself, and I know that you’ll meet her sooner or later. She’ll be real and warm and kind, and you’ll wonder how you could ever have loved anyone else. You’ll be her rock, and she’ll be your star, and you’ll be so happy together that you’ll wake every morning with her and be grateful to me for not marrying you now.’

Getting up, she moved round the table until she could put her arms around him from behind and bend to kiss his cheek. ‘You’re my best friend,’ she whispered in his ear, and Bram closed his eyes briefly, shocked at the jolt of awareness he felt at her nearness and her warmth.

‘I know you’re just trying to find a way out for me, but you’ve got to think of yourself too. I just wish things could be different for both of us.’

Bram put his hand up to cover hers, where they were linked on his chest, and wished that his throat didn’t suddenly feel so tight and uncomfortable.

‘So do I,’ he said.

CHAPTER THREE

HARRIET BECKWITH came out of the kitchen the moment she heard Sophie let herself in at the front door. In spite of wearing an apron and actually holding a rolling pin, she managed to look the antithesis of the clichéd farmer’s wife. No buxom figure or floury hands for Sophie’s mother. Instead she was a handsome, well-groomed woman, with every hair perfectly in place and an air of brisk competence.

‘Look at the state of you, Sophie!’ She tutted as Sophie took off her jacket. ‘You’re absolutely covered in mud! And as for your hair…’ She trailed off in despair. ‘I suppose you’ve been up at Haw Gill?’

As always, she managed to make Sophie feel like a scrubby, rather exasperating schoolgirl. Sophie tried not to feel sullen and defensive in response, but it was hard sometimes to remember that she was thirty-one and not fourteen.

‘I thought I’d go and see Bram,’ she said placatingly.

‘I don’t know what on earth you two find to talk about,’ said Harriet, shaking her head.

What would her mother say if she knew they had been talking about marriage? Sophie watched Harriet pick up the jacket she had just slung carelessly over the chair and brush it down fussily.

Knowing her mother, she’d probably just sigh and say, Not with your hair like that, surely, Sophie?

‘Oh, you know—this and that,’ she answered vaguely.

Harriet was still brushing fastidiously. ‘Where have you been in this jacket? It’s covered in dog hairs and leaves!’

‘That’ll be from the Land Rover,’ said Sophie. ‘Bram drove me home.’

They had talked easily enough once they had dropped the bizarre marriage idea. Bram hadn’t tried to persuade her to change her mind, and Sophie thought that it was just as well. She had been perilously close to taking him up on his offer at one point, and, even though she was sure that she had made the right decision, she had a nasty feeling that it wouldn’t have taken much for her to give in.

It was all just the same as ever. Or almost. Sophie had been aware of a faint constraint on the drive down to Glebe Farm. ‘I’ll maybe see you at Christmas, then,’ was all Bram had said when he dropped her off. He hadn’t asked her to think about marrying him, to take her time and maybe reconsider.

So that was that.

‘I’m glad to hear that Bram didn’t let you go wandering around in the dark,’ sniffed Harriet. ‘At least he’s got some sense.’

Bram was always sensible, always practical. Which made it all the more amazing that he would come up with that idea of getting married. He had even managed to make it sound like the obvious solution.

‘It’s only half past six,’ Sophie protested, following her mother into the kitchen as she tried to shake the whole thought of that strange proposal from her mind.

The kitchen at Glebe Farm could not have been more different from the one at Haw Gill. In place of comfortable, shabby chairs and cluttered dressers there were gleaming steel surfaces, installed when Harriet’s catering business had begun to take off. That had now been expanded into a specially designed outbuilding, where Sophie’s mother controlled the five women from the village who helped there with the ruthless efficiency of a Harvard MBA graduate. Talk about the iron fist in the oven glove.

‘How is Bram getting on, anyway?’ her mother asked as she went back to rolling pastry. When Sophie tried to make pastry she got flour everywhere, but Harriet’s apron was pristine. ‘It must be difficult for him now Molly’s gone.’

Sophie clambered awkwardly onto one of the modern stools at the breakfast bar. ‘He’s managing.’

‘He needs to find himself a wife.’ Intent on her pastry, Harriet didn’t notice Sophie’s instinctive start. What was this? A conspiracy? ‘I heard that Rachel took herself off to York,’ she went on, before Sophie had a chance to reply. ‘I didn’t think she’d last long.’

‘Mum, you hardly knew her!’

‘You didn’t need to know her. You just needed to look at her.’ Harriet clicked her tongue against her teeth. ‘I could have told Bram that he was wasting his time a long time ago. A city girl like that is no good to him. He needs someone who can help him make a go of that farm. There’s good land up there. He could do so much more with it.’

Harriet was a great believer in diversification. ‘You can’t get by on farming alone nowadays,’ she would tell anyone who would listen. ‘You’ve got to try something different.’ She herself had an excellent business brain, and Sophie had often suspected that she had been bored as a farmer’s wife until yet another agricultural crisis had prompted her to set up her own catering company.

It had been such a success that Harriet was always encouraging farmers like Bram to follow her example and branch out. She thought he should convert his steadings into holiday cottages, offer shooting weekends, or turn his lower fields into a par three golf course. She seemed frustrated that Bram was apparently content to stick with farming sheep and cattle at Haw Gill, as generations of Thoresbys had done before him.

‘I’m very fond of Bram,’ Harriet often said, tutting, ‘but he’s got no ambition. He’s not going anywhere.’

But it seemed to Sophie that Bram was already exactly where he wanted to be. He had no need to go anywhere at all.

‘It’s just as well Melissa didn’t marry Bram,’ Harriet said now. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to offer her the kind of life she’s used to. Look at Haw Gill. That farmhouse has hardly changed in fifty years!’