It was an expression she hadn’t heard before, and she wondered fleetingly if Jay wanted to warm his heart on her, or merely his hands. ‘I can’t answer your question, because I don’t know myself,’ she finally confessed. ‘I suppose, having grown up with five brothers, boys were never quite as fascinating a subject to me as they were to my friends. And any dates I did have were very much aware of those brothers if they stepped out of line.’
Jay laughed. ‘Yes, I can see they’d be a definite deterrent to the local lads. But what about when you were at university? There must have been more men than women on your course, and they wouldn’t know you had five hulking brothers standing guard.’
‘I was working too damned hard for those kind of distractions. And of course the last couple of years I’ve been busy with Nick.’ Her eyes flicked to his face and away again. ‘Or perhaps it was because I’d never met a man who—who made me feel…’ She stumbled to a halt.
‘Who made you feel like I do when I kiss you?’ Jay suggested softly, and once again Mirry experienced the feeling of her whole body melting. He laughed softly. ‘You can’t deny it, Mirry. We both know the attraction’s there, and has been ever since we first met. If it makes you feel any better about it, then I’ll tell you it’s never happened like this for me before, either.’
It surprised her into looking up at him, wide brown eyes meeting clear grey ones. ‘H-hasn’t it, Jay?’ she whispered.
He shook his head. ‘No, never.’
Her smile was so blindingly happy that he blinked, and his cutlery rattled against his plate. And when he said, ‘I should have gone down to the cellar to see if there’s some wine,’ his voice sounded as if he didn’t quite have control of it.
‘Oh, there’s racks of it down there,’ Mirry told him happily. ‘Your father laid down some rather good stuff when you were born, and I know there’s some champagne that was meant for your twenty-first birthday.’
Jay looked so shaken, she was concerned.
‘Are you all right?’ He didn’t answer and her hand crept over the table to touch his.
He gripped it hard. ‘Ever since we met you’ve been telling me my father did care, yet it takes a silly little thing like knowing he laid wine down for me to really bring it home.’
‘Oh, Jay…’ Tears pricked her eyes as, her hand still in his, she slid out of her chair and came round the corner of the table, resting her free hand on his shoulder. ‘He cared very much, and he never stopped caring. Why, even the history of Wenlow I helped him research was done for you, and that was after—’ She broke off, hesitating to remind him it was at his own wish that he had broken all association with his father.
Jay was not so squeamish. ‘After I turned my back on him,’ he supplied sombrely. ‘I really relished that, you know, rejecting him the way I thought he’d always rejected me. God, what a self-righteous little prig I was!’
The tears welled up in Mirry’s eyes. With a groan he thrust his chair back, gathering her into his arms and kissing the moisture away. Her response began as a compassionate urge to comfort, but quickly flared into something much deeper and more demanding. Jay’s kiss seemed to be searching for the very essence of her, as if he would draw it from her body into his. And she gave it willingly, vividly aware of his arousal and clinging to him as her only salvation as she launched herself into the uncharted seas of sexual love.
At first she thought the noise was the sound of her heart beating erratically, but as Jay finally drew away she realised it was the plopping of the coffee percolator. He didn’t release her at once, but the nature of his embrace changed as he deliberately banked down the fires he had lit.
‘I was going to suggest we took our coffee into the library,’ he said, to Mirry’s inexperienced eyes perfectly composed while she was still trembling. ‘But I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’
Mirry took a deep breath and tried to reason herself out of the let-down feeling. ‘Maybe I should go home now,’ she said shakily.
‘Hey, you don’t have to be afraid of me.’ His hands slid down her arms to clasp her hands. ‘I think I’ve learned enough self-control over the years. We’ll go into the library and you can show me this history you and my father drew up.’
Mirry went happily, too shy to tell him fear wasn’t at all the emotion he aroused in her.
Over the next three weeks Mirry saw a lot of Jay. He had to spend some of his time in London, but back in Wenlow after each trip he immediately sought her out. She talked to him about his father, painting vivid word pictures for the son who had barely known him; she took him around the estate and surrounding countryside, introducing him to everyone, not only tenants on the estate and in the tiny village, but the owners of some of the larger nearby houses. Yet the only comment he had made on her plans for the conversion had been that the way she had solved some of the problems was ingenious. Several times Mirry was on the point of asking if he meant to go ahead; only the fear that he might think she was angling for the job held her back.
But, if Mirry was diffident of probing Jay’s thinking, that galvanic attraction still sizzled between them, though he was much better at banking it down then she was. In fact he never asked her to dine alone with him at the Hall again, but always made sure there were others present. Night after night she would lie alone in her bed, unbearably aroused by his kisses, sometimes feeling angry with him for his control, yet knowing in her heart of hearts that he was exercising it for her protection. And, if her parents were beginning to look perturbed at the amount of time Mirry and Jay were spending together, Mirry herself was far too absorbed in all these new emotions to notice.
And then one day Mirry returned from a session at the riding stables with the handicapped children to be greeted by her mother with, ‘Jay rang. He’s had to rush off to Birmingham and wants you to look after some people he’s expecting at the house.’
In the process of shrugging off her coat, Mirry immediately pulled it back on again and would have rushed straight over to the Hall if her mother hadn’t said drily, ‘They’re not arriving till after lunch so you do have time to eat.’
‘I’ll have to change too,’ Mirry said, glancing down at her worn jeans and baggy sweater. ‘I wonder who these people are?’
Watching her daughter’s vivid face, Cathy Grey’s uneasiness grew, but even as she opened her mouth to voice her fears Mirry had whisked out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
The morning had been cloudy and cool, but by early afternoon the sky had cleared and the sun made a nimbus of light in Mirry’s reddish-brown curls as she stood in the library window. The cotton dress she had changed into was almost the exact pink of the ‘candles’ on the chestnut trees around the little church, but Mirry was too busy wondering about the expected guests to notice. Jay hadn’t mentioned them last night when they had dined with the Mintos, so she guessed it must have been a last-minute arrangement and was pleased and flattered that he had asked her to stand in for him.
At last she saw a car turn in at the gate and hurried to the front door. The car was not one she recognised, and the middle-aged man climbing out of the driver’s seat was a stranger too. Mirry started down the steps then stopped, staring at the young woman emerging from the other side of the car. ‘Kate! Kate Redding!’ she exclaimed. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Mirry!’ Kate mirrored her surprise. ‘I was about to ask you the same thing. I thought this was the house Jay recently inherited.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Mirry laughed. ‘He had to dash off to Birmingham and asked me to be here to welcome you. I wish he’d told me it was you I was waiting for, though.’ She turned apologetically to the man who had been listening to their exchange, and missed Kate’s raised eyebrows.
‘This is Clive Summers, Mirry.’
Before Kate could finish the introduction, the man said peevishly, ‘We’ll never get back to London tonight at this rate,’ and reached into the car to take out a large sketch-block.
Taken aback b
y his lack of courtesy, Mirry still managed a politely apologetic, ‘I’m sorry, but I really don’t know when Jay will be back.’
He dismissed her with, ‘No matter. I prefer to do the initial survey alone,’ and marched straight past her into the house.
‘You mustn’t mind Clive,’ Kate said as Mirry stared after him. ‘He thinks his genius absolves him from common politeness. And he is a genius, though it grieves me to admit it.’
Even more at sea, Mirry asked, ‘A genius at what?’
‘His job, of course. He’s a director of Wren Interiors and I’m supposed to be his assistant, though half the time he insists he works better alone.’ Kate grimaced. ‘I think he only brought me along to read the map.’
Mirry had forgotten that Kate worked for the interior design firm and a cold, hollow feeling was developing in the pit of her stomach. ‘You’d better come in, Kate.’ She led the way through the echoing hall, waiting until they reached the library to ask, ‘But what has he come here to do?’
‘Hasn’t Jay told you? He’s had this idea of converting part of the house into luxury flats and has asked us to do a preliminary survey.’ Kate looked concerned as Mirry sat down rather suddenly. ‘I say, are you all right?’
Mirry hardly heard her. At least her worst fear wasn’t to be realised. Jay wasn’t intending to turn the house over to Alpha Hotels before disappearing back to London. But, if he was going ahead with the flats scheme, why had he brought in someone else? He’d already told her she had solved some of the problems ingeniously. It could only mean that he didn’t think she was capable of seeing the job through. That hurt, but what hurt even more was that he hadn’t told her what he was planning. Over the last few weeks she had thought they’d grown really close, yet he had gone behind her back and then let her learn the truth in a way that was almost callous.
‘Mirry…’ Kate’s voice finally penetrated. ‘I’ve upset you, haven’t I? I don’t know how, but I can see—’
‘Not you, Kate.’ Mirry pulled herself together and even managed a wan smile. ‘It was just rather a shock…’
Kate frowned. ‘Jay’s plans for the house, you mean?’
‘Not exactly. I knew about those before Jay ever inherited Wenlow, because I drew them up myself.’
‘You did?’ Kate’s eyes rounded.
‘Well, it was Aunt Georgie—Lady Jayston’s idea. She realised that once death duties were paid, the estate wouldn’t bring in enough for the upkeep of the house. The flats were her idea to make the house self-supporting. And when I showed the plans to Jay he seemed to like them.’
She broke off as she saw the expression on Kate’s face, a mixture of scepticism and embarrassment.
‘Oh, Kate, I’m not accusing you of stealing the job from me, don’t think that. If I’m honest, I can’t blame Jay for calling in the professionals. Just two years of a seven-year architecture course hardly gives me the qualifications or the expertise of a firm like yours.’ Her voice wavered, betraying her hurt. ‘But he could have told me, not left me to find out like this.’
‘Indeed he should!’ Kate agreed, privately wondering just how deeply the little redhead had got herself involved. ‘But the fact that he didn’t doesn’t surprise me, Mirry.’ She hesitated, then went on awkwardly, ‘There’s a great deal to admire in Jay, but his least endearing characteristic is his blind spot where the feelings of others are concerned. It’s as if he’s never learned to consider how any action of his might affect someone else, which isn’t really surprising when nobody’s ever cared a damn for him—except possibly my mother-in-law. And Steven, my husband. They first became friends at prep school. Mirry, you wouldn’t believe some of the horror stories Steven told me about Jay’s childhood, abandoned by his father and ignored by his mother.’
‘His father didn’t abandon him!’ Mirry leapt at once to David’s defence. ‘Believe me, if he’d had the slightest inkling of the real state of affairs, he’d have got custody somehow.’
Kate flushed uncomfortably. ‘Oh, crumbs! I’d forgotten you knew him.’
‘Even Jay’s convinced now that he was wrong about his father all these years,’ Mirry declared.
‘Well, if that’s so, I can only be glad about it.’ Kate sighed. ‘But don’t you see, it doesn’t really change the effect the absence of love and affection had on the formation of Jay’s personality, making him the man he is today?’
Mirry was silenced because she could see the truth of that, and when Kate, even more ill at ease, went on to say, ‘Jay would be a dangerous man for any woman to fall in love with,’ she knew the other girl was warning her.
She knew, too, that the warning was too late. She was already fathoms deep in love with him; even the way he had hurt her today didn’t change that. If someone had warned her right at the beginning, she wasn’t sure it would have made any difference, because something in Jay called to something in her, something above and beyond the strong physical attraction.
‘Don’t you think it’s time someone did begin to teach him about love?’ she suggested quietly. But Kate only shook her head, more in pity than in denial.
And then Kate said briskly, ‘Will you show me round the house, Mirry? I mean all of it, not just the wings.’
Mirry agreed promptly, glad to get away from the subject of her relationship with Jay.
‘It’s not often you find a house of this age still furnished as it was originally,’ Kate said appreciatively as Mirry showed her the formal drawing-room. ‘I gather you know this house well. How do you feel about it being split up?’
‘I think it’s a great idea,’ Mirry said at once. ‘Several big houses around here have been completely split up into several units, but Aunt Georgie didn’t want that. By only converting the wings, Jay’s still left with a good-sized house to live in himself.’
‘Jay is intending to live here, then?’ Kate looked sceptical. ‘Rather a long way from London, I’d have thought.’
‘Well, as you said yourself, he plays his cards close to his chest, but we are convenient for motorways here, and Jay’s already installed a computer which keeps him in touch with his office.’
‘Hmm, I noticed it.’ Kate dropped the subject, only talking about the house and its decor as they continued the tour.
‘You’re not making any notes,’ Mirry commented curiously. ‘And surely one afternoon isn’t long enough for your boss to take all the necessary measurements.’
‘Oh, this is only a preliminary visit, just to get the feel of the place. Clive at least will have to spend some time here later, and perhaps he’ll want me along too. Though, as you know, I hate having to leave my kids.’
‘If you do come, why don’t you stay at the Dower House with us?’ Mirry suggested diffidently. ‘It’s only a short walk through the grounds. Then you could bring the twins with you.’
Kate’s mouth dropped open. ‘Do you really mean that?’
‘Of course. Mum and I would love to look after them while you’re working. And if it coincides with Simon’s leave,’ she added with sly mischief, ‘we could get him down here, too.’
Colour flared in Kate’s cheeks. ‘I suppose you know I’ve been seeing him?’
‘He did mention it,’ Mirry grinned.
‘Well, many thanks for the offer, but we’ll have to see, won’t we?’ Kate was doing her best to sound casual, but Mirry noticed her eyes were very bright.
They had reached the principal bedrooms by now, and Kate lingered beside one of the four-poster beds, fingering the hangings. ‘You know, I’ve never seen such a collection of Jacobean needlework, and all in perfect condition, too.’
Mirry had noticed Kate taking a particular interest in the embroideries throughout the tour. ‘They are now,’ she laughed, ‘but you should have seen them a few years ago, before Aunt Georgie and I started restoring them.’
‘You did work like this?’ Kate stared at her. ‘But where did you learn to do it?’
‘By trial and error,’ Mirry admitted. �
�We just copied the patterns and practised until we felt competent enough to actually work on the originals. It’s taken us ten years, and there are still two small chairs waiting for attention.’
‘Ten years? But that makes you an expert,’ Kate said excitedly. She indicated the bed curtains. ‘How much of this is your repair work?’
‘A fair bit. This one had perished along the folds, which is why we left the curtains hanging down instead of looping them back,’ Mirry explained.
‘But can you show me which is your work and which is original?’
Mirry looked doubtful. ‘Not without taking off the lining.’ And when Kate looked incredulous, she went on, ‘It really wasn’t difficult, once we’d found someone to dye the yarns the exact shades, because the patterns here were still mostly complete. One of the other beds had one curtain that was showing very little pattern, and the sofa I finished just before Jay came here had no pattern at all. I had to start from scratch and design my own.’
‘You do upholstery, too? You really are a dark horse!’ Mirry shook her head, laughing. ‘Mirry, haven’t you any idea how impossible it is to find people with your knowledge and skills? I’ll tell you now, Graham Wren would offer you a job with us on the strength of that alone, and look on your knowledge of architecture as a bonus.’
Mirry was astonished, regarding her deftness with a needle as a very minor talent. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Indeed I am.’ Kate hesitated. ‘Look, I don’t know whether you were intending to go back to architecture, but if you’re interested in switching to interior design, I’m quite certain Graham would jump at the chance of taking you on.’
Mirry was speechless, her mind whirling. Here was just the exciting career opportunity she’d been looking for, so why was she hesitating? Because it would mean leaving Wenlow, of course. No, why not be completely honest? Because it would mean leaving Jay and whatever it was that had been growing between them.
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