Taking her sturdy rubber torch, she opened the back door. The sound was clearer now, coming from somewhere near the gate. She went up the path and shone her torch into the lane. There, cowering in a miserable heap, was Sheba, muddied and dirty, her large ears hanging dejectedly.
“Sheba!” Poppy cried, opening the gate and walking towards the puppy. “What on earth are you doing here? Guy will be mad with worry.”
The puppy wriggled towards Poppy, looking up sheepishly, as if downright ashamed. She needed little encouragement to bounce up and give Poppy a friendly lick on the face, however.
“You’d better come inside. I’ll let them know where you are.”
It was not Guy who answered the phone, nor even Nerissa, but the cheerful Dora Knight.
“Hello, Poppy. Are you feeling better, my dear?”
“Much, thank you, Dora. I phoned because I’ve got Sheba here…”
“Sheba? But she was with… I’ll let Mr. Devereau know. Thanks for ringing.”
Suddenly, it seemed, Dora couldn’t wait to get off the phone. Was she suddenly persona non grata with everyone at the Hall? She had hardly had time to give Sheba a drink and clean up her coat when she heard the Range Rover outside.
“Here’s your master,” she said. “He’ll be glad to have you back. Come along.”
She opened the door at the sound of heavy footsteps on the path. It wasn’t Guy, however, but Ken Knight, walking up her path.
“Here’s the little truant,” Poppy said cheerfully, ushering Sheba out.
She walked towards Ken, wagging her tail.
“He’ll be right glad to have her back,” he said, fondling the puppy. “I don’t think any of us realized she was missing. Thanks for looking after her, Poppy. You feeling better now?”
“Heaps better, thanks.”
“I’ll get her back. Times we all want to run out, but it won’t do,” he told Sheba darkly, leaving Poppy wondering what he meant.
On whom would Ken ever want to run out? Surely not Dora—a nicer person no man could have for a wife. Guy, perhaps, in one of his darker moods?
What business was it of hers, anyway? She returned to the sink to finish the dishes, empty with disappointment.
Whatever she might have decided to do, or not to do, she realized she was acutely disappointed that it had been Ken Knight who had picked up the puppy, and not Guy. She recalled once more the sight of him walking away earlier on, his arm round Nerissa. They had obviously been too engrossed in each other to realize poor Sheba had gone missing, which left Poppy right out in the cold.
Chapter Ten
The following Monday Dave Hadden turned up.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any sweaters for you,” Poppy apologized, as soon as she had opened the door.
“Come off it! It’s nearly Christmas! I got orders to fulfil.”
“Orders?” she queried. He began to look rather shifty. “We had no arrangement like that. You bought my surplus sweaters—that’s all. I’m afraid I’ve been ill, and now I have orders of my own to complete, from old clients. I’m sorry, Mr. Hadden. I just don’t have anything for you today. Perhaps in the New Year…”
“A fat lot of good, that is,” he said angrily, looking and sounding belligerent. “I need a dozen or so right now, before Christmas.”
“I’d no idea you took orders from your market stall,” she snapped back, beginning to be annoyed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Oh no, you don’t. You’ve got a pile of sweaters on the table right there. I’ll take them. You owe me…”
He tried to push past her into the house.
“Stay right where you are!” came the stentorian tones of a very angry Guy Devereau.
“You keep out of this, mister. This is between the lady and me.”
With which he slipped past her into the kitchen. Guy followed, and as Dave Hadden turned uncertainly, Guy threw something on the table beside the neatly packaged sweaters. To Poppy’s surprise, it was another one—pale pink patterned with cabbage roses in a tapestry design. It was one of the very ones Dave Hadden had “taken off her hands” on an earlier occasion.
“Where did you get that, Guy?” she asked.
“South Molton Street, in the West End,” he told her, “where they’re selling for ten times what he pays you!”
So this was the reason Guy wanted to see Dave Hadden! The latter turned a fiery red, but quickly recovered.
“Well, I’m damned. It’s amazing what some of my customers get up to. Fancy ’er selling it on like that!”
“There’s no ‘her’ about it,” Guy went on with quiet fury. “The man who sold this and others to the boutique in question fitted your description exactly. You’ve been swindling this lady from the start! Saying they were for your market stall!”
“Is this true, Dave?” Poppy asked quietly.
“We’ve all got a living to make,” he protested, no longer bothering to deny anything.
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this! You said you couldn’t afford my usual price to sell on your stall! Then you go off to London and take far more profit than my bona fide retailers!”
“That’s enterprise, ini’?”
“I’ve been selling them to you practically at a loss!”
“My ’eart bleeds.”
“It very probably will,” Guy told him with soft menace. Until now he had remained silent, listening to the exchange with interest. Now he seized Hadden by the collar and marched him towards the door. “Now just you get the hell out of here and don’t ever come back.”
He pushed him through the doorway, but not hard enough. The moment he was free, Hadden took a step backwards and lashed out with his elbow, catching Guy unawares in the solar plexus. He doubled up in pain and Hadden took advantage of this to make a grab for the sweaters on the table.
Guy straightened up in time to see what was happening, whereupon Hadden snatched up as many as he could and headed for the door—but Guy was quicker this time. Seizing the other man’s shoulder, he twisted him round and slammed a fist into his face. The younger man recoiled, stunned but as yet unbeaten. He staggered out of the door, groaning and cursing, but still clutching his booty.
“I’ll kill him,” Guy muttered, after him like a shot.
“Guy, don’t. Please! He’s not worth it.”
Her words were to no avail. Guy’s hands clamped on Hadden’s jacket shoulders and shook him in a bid to force him to let go. One by one the cellophane packets slipped from his grasp. With a roar of fury, he bent to retrieve them.
“Oh no, you don’t!” shouted Guy.
But when Hadden straightened up, he was holding the loose piece of crazy paving in his fist. Lifting it high above his head and ignoring Poppy’s screamed “No!”, he dashed it down, catching Guy’s temple. Guy slumped to the ground, unconscious.
“You’ve killed him! My God, you’ve killed him!” Poppy wept hysterically.
“It was self-defence,” came the immediate disclaimer, but the words were tinged with fear. “You ’eard ’im. ’E threatened to kill me.”
“He didn’t mean it—you know he didn’t!”
A groan came from the still form on the path.
“’E’s all right, see? I’ll be getting along. I guess you wouldn’t consider a new deal, Poppy?”
“I don’t ever want to set eyes on you again, Mr. Hadden.”
“Suit yourself.”
She turned her attention to Guy, kneeling to cradle his head in her lap, and running her fingers over his handsome, beloved face.
“Oh Guy, I thought he’d killed you,” she murmured, her own cheeks wet with tears. “Let’s try and get you up, and I’ll help you indoors?”
His reply was a series of groans and mutters, but she had soon helped him to his feet to lean on her as he staggered inside. The
re he sat down, head in hands, elbows on the kitchen table.
“I’d better call a doctor,” she said swiftly.
He raised his head and scowled at her, barely restrained anger on his face. How unfair, when she had begged him not to get involved, was her first thought.
“Tell him to come to the Hall,” he ordered coldly.
“Very well,” she agreed, bewildered by his attitude, but doing as he asked.
When she returned to the kitchen he was on his feet—just.
“I’ll drive you there,” she told him.
“No need. I can walk—the same way I arrived.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Guy—you may be concussed and, after two bouts of unconsciousness in so short a space of time…”
“So tell me about it,” he said grimly, as if he would rather not know.
“I’m driving you back,” she insisted.
“If you must, then.”
Not a word was spoken all the way there. She pulled up at the portico steps, where he slowly got out and staggered up the steps. Was Nerissa watching this strange scene from a window? she wondered.
She had hardly turned off the engine outside her cottage when Robin drove past. He tooted his horn and shot off up the lane, obviously as concerned as she.
By why was Guy acting so strangely? He really was a moody man, she decided, as she retrieved the fallen packets of sweaters still strewn all over her path. After all, it really was not her fault what had happened, yet he had looked at her with positive hatred.
With her orders up to date, she felt momentarily at a loss, till she remembered that she had been so busy lately she had hardly had time to do more than flick a duster round the cottage. She would clean the place up for Christmas.
She set to with a will, Hoovering and sweeping, dusting and polishing, till every surface was clean as a new pin. Only she herself felt grimy, but she remedied this by running a bath and immersing herself in it for the next half hour, finishing by washing her hair and standing under the shower till she felt clean and fresh all over.
It grew dark early these days, and all she had planned was a quiet evening, with supper on a tray in front of the television. There was little point in getting dressed, so she belted a robe over a simple cotton nightdress and went down to make some supper.
She had barely begun, fighting down thoughts of Nerissa’s cool, elegant hands soothing Guy’s fevered brow, when there was a loud knocking on the door. Surely Dave Hadden hadn’t waited till after dark to come back, she thought apprehensively.
“Open this door, Poppy,” demanded a familiar voice.
Guy! Oh, why couldn’t he leave her alone? She didn’t know where she was with him any more. Renewed pounding on the oak panels of her kitchen door reminded her he was still there. If she didn’t let him in, it sounded as though he was prepared to break the door down. Reluctantly she slid back the bolt and lifted the latch.
“What do you want, Guy?” she greeted him cautiously.
“To talk to you, of course. What the hell do you think?”
Yet earlier, he hadn’t been able to get away fast enough!
“I don’t see what we can possibly have to say to each other.”
She planted herself firmly in the gap between door and jamb.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
So saying, he moved her aside, walked in and closed the door.
“Guy, why can’t you just leave me alone?” she asked, voicing her earlier thoughts.
“You really don’t know the answer to that?” She looked at him warily. “Come through here, my girl, we have things to discuss.”
Turning her with gentle firmness towards her sitting room, he urged her through the door, and almost pushed her down onto the soft cushions of the sofa. He followed her down, seizing her by the shoulders and towering over her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded, giving her a shake.
“Tell you what?” she asked guardedly.
“You’re carrying my child, and you can ask me that?”
“Who told you?” she asked dully.
The only person she had confided in had been Tess. Had she told Robin who the father was, and had he then informed Guy? Oh, how could they?
“Nobody had to tell me. I told Robin and he thought I was probably right. But there’s no probably about it. I’ve remembered everything, Poppy. It seems Hadden did me a favour, reversing the amnesia with that second blow. How could you not tell me? I even told you of my attitude to fatherhood, yet you still kept your precious secret. Why?”
“You know why, Guy—you’re engaged to someone else—that’s why!”
He looked amazed.
“You’d put the happiness of another woman before the security of your own child?”
“That’s not how I see it, Guy.”
Child or no child, she wanted no connection with a man who was in love with another woman, and who was not in love with her.
“Perhaps you’d like to explain just how you do see it.”
“No, I wouldn’t! Go away, Guy.”
“That I’ll never do, Poppy.” He moved closer as if to prove the point. “You belong to me—you and our child. I’ll never let you go.”
“And what’s Nerissa going to think of that?”
“Nerissa’s out of the picture. I sent her packing last Thursday.”
“Last Thurs…you mean after you left here with her, last…”
“Thursday, as I said. This is getting awfully repetitive, Poppy.”
“But I thought you’d gone off to talk weddings.”
“You thought wrong! I told Nerissa there was no future for us. We have absolutely nothing in common.”
“How did she take that?”
“She threw hysterics! She ranted and screamed and threw things.”
“Including the ring?”
“Strangely enough, no,” he replied ironically, with the first hint of a smile. “Anyway, Dora came to ask how many for supper and caught the full force of Nerissa’s quite shocking temper. I went off to apologize to my gem of a housekeeper, and, while my back was turned, Nerissa spitefully turned on Sheba and kicked her out through the French windows…”
“Poor Sheba—so that’s what happened!”
“I didn’t realize she was missing in that dreadful atmosphere. When you phoned, that was the first intimation any of us had of it. Dora replaced the receiver before you could hear the verbal abuse in the background for yourself.”
Now she understood both that and Ken Knight’s comments!
“Is she all right now?”
“I neither know nor care!”
Poppy frowned, puzzled. “I meant Sheba,” she said eventually.
“Oh!” He grinned then. “Yes, she’s fine—dogs are very forgiving.”
“And Nerissa’s gone?”
“She went that evening—thank God!”
“Did you propose to her, Guy?”
“No, I did not! I thought it rather odd—I certainly never saw her as wife material in Australia. And, in case you’re wondering, no, I haven’t slept with her, either.”
That cheered Poppy up no end: she giggled.
“And I’ve been imagining you and her all lovey-dovey together up there!”
“You have thought about me, then?”
Poppy coloured, realizing what she had admitted.
“Occasionally.”
“I’ve thought about you all the time, wondering what you were up to, and suddenly, would you believe it, shy about coming down to see you.”
“You? Shy?”
“That’s what I said. I had to wait for an excuse—Hadden’s visit—before I could pluck up the courage! When all the time,” he went on angrily, “I had every reason in the world to spend my every waking—and sleeping—momen
t with you!”
“Not necessarily, Guy. Just because of one incident…”
“How can you say that? Oh, Poppy,” he groaned, “you gave yourself to me so sweetly, that night. You crawled into my bed…”
“I did nothing of the kind! You dragged me there in a fit of delirium…”
“You stayed,” he reminded her, “and I took your innocence. I’m sorry; it must have been awful for you…”
“It wasn’t!” she said too quickly.
“Whatever—I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I want to marry you, as quickly as possible…”
“No!”
“What do you mean—no?”
“You didn’t mean to make me pregnant that night, did you?”
“Of course I damn well didn’t!”
“Well, then. The fact that you did doesn’t oblige you to marry me.”
She had long since decided that if and when she did marry, it would be to someone she loved, and who loved her in return. There was no doubt Guy fancied her, but that was not enough for Poppy. It had to be love, or nothing.
“Why do you think I got rid of Nerissa?”
“Because you didn’t love her, I suppose. That’s no reason why I should fill the void she’s obviously left—even though I inadvertently became pregnant—with your child.”
“There’s every reason…”
The phone would choose that moment to ring! Poppy freed herself from Guy’s restricting embrace to answer it.
“Robin!”
What on earth could he want right now?
“Are you all right?”
“Of course. Why?”
“I—er—I stayed for ages talking to Guy, calming him down. It seems his memory’s returned, and I’m afraid your secret’s a secret no longer…”
“I know.”
“Anyway, he was hell-bent on coming straight back to see you, but I thought I’d talked him out of it—till he’d had longer to think. He was in a right old fury! I eventually left, but I’d hardly got halfway down the lane when I saw his Jaguar tearing down behind me, stopping at your place in a shower of dust.”
Guy came to stand behind her. He lifted her silken mane of hair and began to inflict a series of kisses on the tender flesh of her nape. She squirmed away, but he caught her to him from behind, his lips tracing the outline of one shell-like earlobe.
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