by Penny Jordan
It was half an hour before she got through to the farmer. He was just as truculent with her on this occasion as he had been the last time she saw him, but eventually Charlotte managed to make arrangements to go out and see him.
‘He must have changed his mind and realised that the only way he’ll get a good price is by selling the semis together. Oh, and while I remember, I’ve promised to do an inventory for a catalogue for auctioning some of Mrs Birtles’ furniture. I’m going to take Sophy with me…give her an idea of how to do an inventory.’
‘Was the house lovely?’Sheila asked wistfully.
‘Beautiful,’ Charlotte told her. ‘The kind of place everyone dreams of owning. I only hope we can find a buyer for it who will appreciate it.’
A frown furrowed her forehead. Oliver had been right when he’d said their first duty was to their client. Perhaps it was idealistic of her to hope that they could find a sole buyer for the house able to meet its price…someone who wanted to live in the house and not destroy or develop it.
‘Something wrong?’ Sheila asked sympathetically.
Charlotte shook her head. She knew that, had her father been alive, he would have agreed with every word Oliver had said. Her father had often accused her of being too sentimental.
‘No, not really. I was just wondering if I ought to leave a bit early. Oliver is moving in tonight, and the kitchen people started today.’
Sheila laughed. ‘Yes, I think you should. What about your car, though?’
‘I’ve rung the garage to order the two new ones, and they’ve promised me a loan car until they can provide them. I’m still not sure about that bright red,’ she teased Sheila. ‘Isn’t that supposed to be a dangerous colour?’
‘So what?’ Sheila retaliated. ‘At my age, I think I’m entitled to live a little dangerously.’
Was that what was happening to her? Charlotte wondered an hour later as she drove home in her loaned Volvo. Was this stupid infatuation she seemed to have developed for Oliver Tennant nature’s way of rebelling against the cautious, defensive way she lived her life? She hoped so…just as she hoped that these dangerous and unwelcome feelings of hers would fade quickly and quietly once they were confronted with the reality of sharing her home with him. There was nothing like a touch of realism for destroying idealistic daydreams, she told herself firmly as she turned into her drive.
The sun had gone in; the overgrown rhododendrons cast dark shadows over the drive, turning it into a secret, almost brooding place, so that she shivered momentarily, and then derided herself. She was letting Sheila’s mother-henning get to her. She had driven up and down this drive a thousand times without even giving it a second thought…
The workmen were on the point of leaving as she arrived, the chaos in the kitchen making her gulp and bravely swallow the dismayed words springing to her lips. Was it really possible for the pretty, warm kitchen she had visualised from the drawings Mr Burns had done for her to actually materialise from this mess of plaster, wood, exposed wires and heaven alone knew what else?
‘We’ve managed to turn the electricity back on for you,’ Mr Burns told her. ‘And your cooker’s fixed up in the pantry, like you asked. Seems like we’re going to have a problem with the plumbing, though. Lead pipes,’ he added succinctly, as though that explained everything.
Charlotte blinked and waited for enlightenment.
‘Not safe…not these days,’ he told her warningly. ‘They’ll have to be replaced.’
In her mind’s eye, Charlotte saw another nought being added to his original estimate and suppressed a faint sigh. ‘How long do you think it will be before you’re finished?’ she asked him fatalistically.
‘Well, provided we don’t come up with any more set-backs…should be all done middle of next week or so.’
Smiling weakly, Charlotte stepped over what she guessed were her old kitchen units and what now looked like a pile of firewood, and headed for the door into the hallway.
Mrs Higham should have been today. To Charlotte’s surprise she had been quite approving when Charlotte informed her about Oliver. Mrs Higham sometimes had a rather unconventional attitude towards her work, preferring to choose for herself which tasks she would and would not do, rather than be directed, and because Charlotte knew how difficult it would be to replace her she had put up with her eccentricities. She had already asked her to clean through the rooms which were going to be Oliver’s and make up the bed, but it might be as well to check that she had.
Charlotte heard the workmen driving away as she opened the room into the bedroom which her father had used as his study. The window was open, allowing the newly rehung curtains to move gently in the breeze. Her father’s old desk stood under the window to catch the best of the light. The house still retained its original bedroom fireplaces, thanks to her father’s refusal to entertain any modernisation, and Charlotte saw with a small start of surprise that Mrs Higham had left a fire laid in the grate, and filled a basket of logs.
Oliver was certainly getting star treatment, she acknowledged wryly as she saw the trouble the cleaner had gone to. She had certainly never left a fire laid in her bedroom, Charlotte reflected as she opened the door into the bedroom.
The bedroom still contained the heavy dark furniture that had originally belonged to her grandparents. Her father had never seen the necessity of replacing the cumbersome wardrobes with something more modern, even fitted. The darkness of the furniture, combined with the dark green carpet, gave the room an austere male aura, Charlotte thought, a frown furrowing her forehead as she moved towards the bed and saw that it wasn’t made up.
That meant that she would have to do it. Her father had not been a mean man precisely, but he had always hated waste, which was why Charlotte was still using the heavy linen sheets which again had come from her grandparents’ home. Since it was impossible to launder these at home in the way her father insisted upon, a weekly laundry service collected and delivered these items, and Charlotte prayed that she would find sufficient clean and aired linen in the airing cupboard to make up the bed.
It was her own fault, of course; she should have checked on these things instead of leaving it to Mrs Higham.
To her relief she found what she wanted in the airing cupboard. Carrying the sheets and bedding through into the bedroom, she put them down on the bed. Before she did anything else, she would make herself something to eat and have a cup of coffee. That was, if she could find the coffee.
It was impossible for her to eat in the kitchen, of course, and so she took her omelette and coffee through into the small sitting-room on the side of the house. From here she could look out into the back garden with its tangle of overgrown lawns and flowerbeds.
It had rained just after she had come in, a short, heavy shower, and now the late spring flowers drooped sadly under the weight of the raindrops. On impulse, after she had finished her meal, she opened the french windows and stepped outside. Half an hour later, her arms full of flowers she had had no intention of picking, she went into the pantry and deftly arranged them in two large jugs. She left one jug in the sitting-room, and took the other upstairs with her.
Until she had actually set it down on the polished desk, she had had no idea why she had picked the flowers, and now, standing back from the bright warmth of them, she felt her skin burn with self-knowledge. She was just about to snatch the jug back and remove it when she heard Oliver’s car.
The bed still wasn’t made, and, ignoring the flowers, she went quickly into the bedroom, hurriedly covering the bed in the crisp linen sheets.
She heard the car stop just as she finished, and, giving the rooms one last assessing glance, she hurried downstairs to welcome her new lodger.
‘I’ll take you upstairs,’ she told him as she opened the door to him, wondering if he would register her nervousness and guess at the cause of it, and then telling herself not to be so stupid. The way she was acting, she was practically begging him to guess how she felt. ‘Then I’ll l
eave you to get settled in, if you’ve got an early start in the morning.’
They were halfway upstairs, and she paused and added uncertainly, wondering if he would expect a meal, ‘The kitchen is in chaos. I’m using the pantry to cook in.’
‘It’s all right. I ate before I left the Bull.’
Charlotte opened the door to the study and walked in, waiting for Oliver to follow her. She saw the way he looked at the made-up fire and from it to the flowers on the desk.
‘It all looks very welcoming,’ he told her softly, walking over to the desk. ‘I don’t think I’ve enjoyed having garden flowers in my room since I left home. There’s something very evocative of a real home about garden-cut flowers rather than bought ones, don’t you think?’
‘Mrs Higham put them there,’ Charlotte lied, wishing she could do something about the frantic race of her heart. When he reached out and touched one of the tell-tale wet petals of one flower, she was glad he wasn’t looking at her to see the rich tide of colour burning her skin.
‘I’ll leave you to get settled in,’ she reiterated, and then fled to the door before she could make even more of a fool of herself.
Why on earth had she lied to him like that? It would have been simple enough to say that she had brought the flowers in to save them being battered by further rain, but no…she had had to go and behave like a love-crazed adolescent.
For a moment, making up the bed, she had actually lifted one of the linen-covered pillows to her face, imagining how it would feel against her skin if it carried his scent. The sharp twisting sensation that had coiled through her stomach had alerted her to what she was doing…what she was thinking. She hadn’t thought about a man in such sexually explicit terms since…since she had left her teenage years behind; and it shamed her now that her body should react so swiftly and so wantonly to the mental image of Oliver’s naked body.
* * *
While Oliver made several journeys up and down the stairs with his possessions, Charlotte worked diligently on some paperwork she had brought home with her, determined to keep out of his way and not to embarrass either herself or him by trying to put their relationship on anything other than a business footing.
When he had finished, he rapped briefly on the sitting-room door and then came in.
‘That’s finished. I was wondering if you’d like to go out for a drink somewhere…to celebrate our joint appointment this afternoon.’
Charlotte felt her heart leap, but almost immediately she shook her head. ‘No, thank you,’ she told him dampeningly.
He was just being polite, she told herself, trying to ignore the possibility of a more sinister purpose in his invitation. She was almost sure that Vanessa was wrong…almost sure. His offer of a drink was simply a polite gesture, which she was pretty sure he expected her to refuse.
Certainly he didn’t look particularly disappointed when she did.
‘Well, perhaps another time,’ was all he said, and then he cheerfully excused himself, going back upstairs, leaving her to wish that she weren’t the sort of person she was and that she had the kind of self-confidence so evident in women like Vanessa. That she was the kind of woman who knew that no man would ever ask her out simply out of compassion or good manners, but because he was attracted to her and found her desirable.
The thought of Oliver finding her desirable sent such a charge of sensation through her that her body tensed against it. How was it possible for him to make her feel like this? Desire…it was something she had comfortably assumed would never dominate her life. She had thought that, if she didn’t inspire sensual need in men, than at least she had the advantage of being free from experiencing it herself, but now she was discovering that all her comfortable and safe beliefs about herself were being swept aside…that she could indeed experience desire, and that it was a sharp, raking, painful sensation which made her body ache restlessly and her mind fill with such wanton mental images that she could feel the heat they generated crawling up under her skin.
It was a relief when she was finally able to go to bed, but sleep didn’t come easily. She was far too conscious of Oliver sleeping so close to her.
So close physically, maybe, but so very far away emotionally and mentally.
She had to get a grip on herself before it was too late, she warned herself. But too late for what? She wasn’t merely in love with Oliver Tennant—she loved him, which was infinitely worse. She sat bolt upright in bed as the truth burst upon her—irrefutable and inescapable. She loved him!
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE moment she opened her eyes, Charlotte was aware of a heavy sense of despair. Outside her bedroom window the sun was shining, but inside her heart everything was shadowed and dulled by the pain of knowing that she loved Oliver.
Oliver… Instinctively she glanced at her bedside clock. The house was silent, so presumably he had already left. It was extraordinary that, even knowing the folly of her emotions, even knowing that she was safer when he was absent, that every second spent in his company increased the intensity of her feelings, and the danger that she might somehow betray them, she should still feel this total sense of desolation in the knowledge that he wasn’t there.
She shivered under the bedclothes, not because she was cold, but because of the feelings prickling her skin.
God knew, she didn’t want to feel like this—had never imagined she could feel like this—and, if anyone other than herself should discover what she did feel, she thought she would die from the humiliation of it.
Restlessly she pushed back the bedclothes and got up. Her father’s old rooms had their own bathroom which had been installed when he had become too ill to walk very far.
Her bathroom was a couple of doors down the corridor; knowing she had the house to herself, she didn’t hesitate to open her bedroom door and walk on to the landing wearing the faded soft cotton pyjama jacket which was her preferred nightwear. She had several of them, all of them washed to a similar state of faded softness. Frilly nightdresses were not for her, and when she had returned from London she had eschewed the chain-store-bought nightshirts she had worn then in favour of the discarded top halves of pyjamas she suspected had originally belonged to her father, and which she had found abandoned in one of the house’s many chests of drawers.
Now, absently noticing how thin the cotton was wearing, she acknowledged ruefully that she would soon have to replace them, but with what? She had grown accustomed to the softness of a quality of cotton no longer cheaply available.
Automatically, having walked out on to the landing, she followed her normal routine of making her way downstairs to make some coffee. This was her morning ritual, to make the freshly brewed coffee she enjoyed so much, despite its heavy caffeine content, and then go upstairs to shower and dress so that the fragrant brew was waiting for her when she came back down.
The kitchen floor felt cold beneath her bare feet, her toes curling instinctively at the chilly contact. Beyond the kitchen window, she could see the dew-dampened outline of the lawns and flowerbeds, softened into mystical beauty by their covering of moisture. She paused for a moment to admire the miracle of nature, admitting how much she would miss these simple pleasures of living in the countryside if she were ever forced to return to city living.
Grimacing a little at the state of the kitchen, she hurried into the pantry, and started to fill the filter machine’s jug with cold water. It was while she was doing so, her back to the door, that she felt the unmistakable chilliness of cold fresh air, as though a door had been opened.
Immediately she tensed, swinging round, her eyes rounding in dismayed shock as she saw Oliver standing in the open doorway. Unlike her, he was fully dressed in an immaculate business suit and a crisp white shirt.
‘I thought you’d gone.’
The words left her throat in a husky whisper that sounded more like an apology than the accusation she had intended it to be.
‘I’m just on my way. Unfortunately I couldn’t resist walking
round the garden before I left.’ He grimaced as he looked down at his very wet shoes. ‘I’d forgotten how wet dew can be. I was just on my way upstairs to change my shoes when I heard you in here.’
‘I came down to put the coffee on,’ Charlotte told him awkwardly, suddenly conscious of how she must look, her hair uncombed, her face unwashed, dressed in an oversized and worn pyjama jacket that was surely the opposite kind of nightwear someone like Vanessa would choose to sleep in.
She stepped forward awkwardly and stopped, blinking in the full beam of the sunlight shining in through the window to momentarily blind her. She heard Oliver catch his breath, almost as though in shock, and her own nerve-endings responded automatically to the sound so that she froze where she was.
‘I’d better go and change these shoes,’ she heard him saying in a harsh, rasping voice that for some reason made her throat ache.
She wanted him to take her in his arms, to hold her, to kiss her. Angry with herself, she blinked in the strong light, and watched the movements of his tall, lithe body, wondering bleakly at the unfairness of nature. Why couldn’t it have been content with simply giving him his overpowering physical maleness? Why had it had to add the kind of personality she felt so in tune with that she was helpless to defend herself against the impact of his emotional and physical effect on her.
She heard him go upstairs, and stayed where she was until she heard him come down again to leave via the front door, bleakly wondering why it hurt so much that he hadn’t come back into the pantry to say goodbye to her.
Ten minutes later, when she walked into her bathroom, she thought she knew the answer, or at least part of it, and her face turned deep pink with embarrassment. Sunshine flooded her bathroom as it had done in the pantry, but here in the bathroom she had the advantage of seeing in the mirrors that lined its walls the effect that sunlight had.
The soft cotton of her pyjama jacket, so warm and bulky to her touch, had turned virtually transparent in the strong sunshine, so that when she stood bathed in its light the entire shape of her body, every one of its contours and curves, could be seen quite clearly delineated beneath the jacket, right down to the soft shadowing between her thighs and the deep rose areola of her breasts.