by Penny Jordan
'Something like that,' he agreed, but there was a gleam in his eyes which made Sorrel suspect that she had said something which amused him, although she couldn't think what it was.
'Come on,' he told her, pushing her gently off his knee and getting up. 'We'd better get back to the house.'
As she stood up and started to walk away, he checked her and asked quietly, 'Do you love him, Sorrel?'
Immediately Sorrel's mood changed, and she remembered how vulnerable she was to him.
'That's none of your business,' she told him, her head held high.
Behind her, Val muttered something she didn't quite catch, but she knew the words had a derogatory, almost bitter inflection that made her skin burn.
It was all his fault, she told herself angrily. All of it. He had burst into her life and turned it completely upside-down, and she hated him. Hated him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
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Sorrel hadn't intended going with the others to the dinner dance. She had decided that she would refuse to join them politely but firmly. She would remind them and herself that she was engaged to Andrew and that there were a dozen or more things she could do to fill in her time, which did not include being in Val's company. But on impulse on Friday morning she offered to drive into Ludlow to do her mother's shopping. It would give her the opportunity to pop into the bookshop and acquaint Andrew with the happenings of the last few days, something she was reluctant to do with Jane and his mother as an interested audience. As Sorrel knew from previous experience, once Andrew's mother had her victims firmly in her grasp, she was reluctant to let them go. Sorrel doubted that she and Andrew would be granted so much as five minutes alone on Sunday.
She parked her car on the piece of rough land just outside the town that was used as one of its main car parks, and then set out for the shops.
They were busy, and it took her rather longer than she had anticipated to get everything on her mother's list. On her way to the greengrocers, she passed a dress shop with its window arranged for spring. An evening dress in brilliant blue silk caught her eye and she paused to admire it. It was a colour that particularly suited her; the dress was simplicity itself and stunningly effective. She sighed faintly as she looked at it. No doubt it would be horrendously expensive, and besides, Andrew liked her to wear plain, neat clothes rather like those favoured by his mother, and she had gradually discarded the vivid colours she had worn before their engagement.
It was almost lunchtime before she had all her shopping stowed away in the boot of her car. Andrew's bookshop was in the old part of the town, and she was breathless after the steep climb to reach it.
The shop was empty when she walked in, but she could hear muted voices from the rear stockroom, and without stopping to think she pushed aside the curtain and walked in.
Jane and Andrew were standing close together, poring over the book that Andrew was holding.
Jane saw her first and looked up, her eyes widening and her face colouring uncomfortably.
'Sorrel, what on earth are you doing here?' Andrew exclaimed.
His question was more critical than lover-like, Sorrel recognised as she fought to suppress her own feelings of anger and humiliation to say brightly, 'Oh, Mother asked me to come in and do her shopping, and I thought I'd call round and see if I could coax you out to lunch, if Jane doesn't mind,' she added pointedly.
Instantly Jane flushed vividly and crept closer to Andrew's side… like a little mouse being terrorised by a large cat, Sorrel thought viciously, knowing which role had been cast for her. She saw Andrew frown as he looked at her, the frown softening as he smiled at Jane.
'Jane's come over here specially to help me this afternoon so that we can leave early,' he reproved Sorrel. 'I can hardly leave her here on her own. Besides,' he added awkwardly, 'I'd already invited Jane out to lunch. You're welcome to join us…'
As welcome as an outbreak of the Black Death, Sorrel thought bitterly as she gave them both a tight smile and explained that she had changed her mind, and that perhaps she would not bother with lunch at all.
Andrew walked with her to the door and said uncertainly, 'You will be at Mother's on Sunday, won't you?'
What for? Sorrel longed to say. So that I can play gooseberry?
She couldn't deceive herself any longer. Andrew had as little desire for her as she did for him, and the thought of them actually getting married was a complete farce.
Furious with herself and the rest of the world, and in particular one disruptive and Australian member of it, she hurried back to her car.
On her way she had to pass the dress-shop, and on some impulse she refused to name she went inside and asked the assistant if they had the dress in her size.
They had, and it fitted her as though designed for her. Heaven alone knew what folly was driving her, but she knew she was going to buy it, and moreover that she was going to wear it tonight when Val took them all out.
Rebelliously she wrote out the cheque for a heart-shakingly large amount, but it would be worth it when Val…
When Val what? she asked herself bleakly as she walked listlessly back to her car, her mood of angry euphoria deserting her, leaving her feeling cold and miserable as she was forced to confront the truth.
She couldn't hide behind the protection of her engagement to Andrew any longer. Oh, she would have lunch with his mother on Sunday, and then after a discreetly suitable interval, probably during one of their Friday evening dinners, once Val was safely off the scene, she would tell him that she thought they had made a mistake. He would argue with her, of course, but in the end he would not quite be able to hide his relief. Then one day she would hear from mutual friends that he and Jane were getting married.
She sighed faintly, wishing she could feel more real sorrow, more intense emotion, but she couldn't. Andrew didn't arouse her to one fraction of the intensity of feeling that Val could conjure up simply by being Val. He had been right about her engagement, but she wasn't going to let him know it. She couldn't bear to see the look in his eyes, to know… to know what?
In order to distract herself, she tried to imagine what she would have felt like if Val had been her fiancé, and she had found him with Jane… both of them so engrossed in one another, so obviously right for one another…
She stood still in the street as the pain hit her, clutching her dress-box in her arms, oblivious to the angry glower of the woman who almost walked into her, her eyes wild with anguish.
She loved him. She loved Val. She loved him, and if he asked it of her she would throw all her caution and her fear to the four winds, and give him whatever he should desire from her.
But he wouldn't ask. To him, she was simply a brief diversion to amuse him for a moment out of time. She tried not to think of the beautiful girls in Australia who must flock round him… tried not to allow herself to imagine how dull he must find her in comparison.
Not so dull that he hadn't desired her.
The world spun full circle and then stood still—and Sorrel spun with it, a slow heat burning through her body. Yes, he had desired her, and for a heartbeat of time in his arms she had teetered on the brink of overcoming her teenage fears and abandoning herself to the same fate as the rest of her sex. But sanity had intruded in time.
Val wasn't just a stranger who would pass out of her life, he was a member of her family, albeit a distant one, and he wouldn't want the complication of taking her as his lover. But if he did…
She stopped again, shivering in a fit of sensation that had nothing to do with the icy breeze. Now, when it was far, far too late, it wasn't fear she felt when she contemplated her memories of those two unknown and uninhibited lovers; it was envy. Envy for the pleasure that woman had known, envy for their freedom to express their desire, envy and the mature realisation that it had been her fear of the potential strength of her own desires that had frightened her.
Wearily, she got back into her car and started the engine, skidding over the loose mud and debris-covered su
rface of the derelict land.
Every now and again there would be a spate of letters of complaint in the local papers saying that it ought to be properly levelled and tarmacked, but nothing ever seemed to happen. It was full of potholes and deep ruts and her car bounded protestingly as she sank down into one of them.
She managed to get her dress to her room without anyone seeing her. It left her shoulders bare and she hoped the hotel would be well-heated.
It hadn't been open very long; a small country house which had been taken over by a young couple who had turned it into a small hotel. There had been a rave write-up on it in the local papers. The bedrooms had been revamped in authentic period detail, apart from the addition of modern bathrooms, the dining-room was small and intimate, the menu out of this world—and those who had sampled its delights were full of praise for everything that had been done.
The Friday evening dinner dances were a new departure, and Sorrel wondered what it would be like. Even her father had been persuaded to go, complaining that he should by rights be with his ewes and that if he had known he was going to have to wear his dinner-suit there was no way he would have allowed himself to be persuaded to go.
But underneath his gruff exterior her father loved her mother very deeply, Sorrel knew, and she was so excited at the thought of the treat that Sorrel suspected nothing would have stopped her father from taking her.
The hotel was ten miles away and, mindful of the drink-driving laws, Simon had suggested they travel in two taxis.
Sorrel, who had had second thoughts at the last minute about the wisdom of appearing in a new dress, bearing in mind Simon's possible teasing, had put it on one side and dressed instead in the only other thing she had which was suitable: a plain black dress which she had bought in a mood of desperation because she had nothing to wear for Andrew's mother's traditional New Year's Eve party.
The dress hadn't been cheap, but it did very little for her, although black was normally a colour she could wear quite well. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that this one was a full size too large, and really too plain to qualify for an evening dress.
It was more of a Jane dress than a Sorrel one, she acknowledged, looking at her reflection and seeing in her mirror an almost waif-like, dull creature who no man in his right mind would call attractive.
Angrily she tugged the dress off and reached for her new one. It left her arms and shoulders bare, the rich colour giving her skin an almost iridescent glow.
The silk shaped the curves of her body, giving them an alluring femininity that drew attention to her tiny waist and long legs.
She checked her make-up. Her eyes seemed more slumbrously green, and she frowned, wondering at the unusual fullness of her lips, almost as though they had just been kissed, or wanted to be kissed.
'Sorrel, taxis are here,' Simon called outside her room, and it was too late to change her mind and go back to her dull black.
She picked up the evening jacket she had knitted for herself almost four years ago in soft white mohair. It had a hood for extra warmth, and satin appliqué on the shoulders.
She had designed it herself, and after wearing it had been besieged with orders for others. It was still one of her best-selling designs, and only the previous winter she had been commissioned to turn it into a full-length cloak for a bride to wear over her dress.
'Come on,' Simon roared, and grabbing her evening bag Sorrel hurried to the door.
'You'd better travel with Val,' Simon told her, almost pushing her outside and into one of the waiting taxis before she could think of a practical excuse.
The door slammed behind her as she sat down, conscious of Val in the darkness of the car in a way that made her senses prickle warily.
Her heart almost stopped beating as the taxi moved and the interior was illuminated briefly by the farm's outside lights. If she had been very aware of Val's maleness in his jeans and woollen shirt, she was even more aware of it now, seeing him dressed elegantly in a dinner-suit that could never have been bought off the peg, and a white dress-shirt that made a breathtaking contrast to his tan.
Andrew frequently wore a dinner-suit, but he had never looked one tenth as suavely male in it as did Val.
'Something wrong?' he asked her solicitously, a disembodied voice from the opposite corner of the seat as they were plunged into darkness.
'No.'
'Mm… Seen Andrew yet?'
Her scalp prickled atavistically. Had he guessed that she had been to see Andrew, or was he simply making polite conversation?
'Just briefly this morning.'
'To get his permission to come out with me tonight?'
His taunt took her breath away.
'Of course not,' she told him when she had got it back, adding grittily, 'For one thing, I don't need anyone's permission. And for another… for another, I'm not going out with you, but with my family.'
'Ah, is that how you see it?' he murmured wickedly. 'Now, I have a very different perception of tonight. For me, taking your family out to dinner is a very welcome opportunity for me to hold you in my arms while I'm dancing with you. To…'
Sorrel prayed that the taxi driver couldn't hear him.
'Stop it, Val,' she demanded huskily. 'You know very well that you're just making that up. That…'
'Do I?' he muttered ironically.
Her heart pounded fiercely, but she ignored it. He was teasing her, that was all. It was his way of trying to jolt her out of her complacent rut and make her face what he considered to be reality. She believed now that his behaviour was well-intentioned, and of course he had no idea that she had been crazy enough to fall in love with him.
Fall in love with him? She bit down hard on her bottom lip to stop the frantic verbal outburst of denial she almost gave voice to.
It wasn't true! She couldn't let it be true, but of course she could not stop it, she acknowledged miserably, moments later. Why else was she reacting like… like a gauche teenager whenever he came near her? Why else was she suddenly finding fault with everything Andrew said and did—with her whole relationship with him? She had been happy enough before Val had stormed into her life, she reflected bitterly. Happy and content… and now she was neither. Now she was desperately in love with a man to whom she would never be anything other than his rather dull English relative.
'Tell me a bit more about this god-daughter of Andrew's mother's,' he demanded suddenly.
The question startled her, and she wondered nervously if he had, in that far too perceptive way of his, guessed the plans that Andrew's mother had for her son and Jane.
'Why?' she asked him, hiding her tension. 'Do you think she might be your type?'
He gave her a brief appraising look and then said softly, 'You're not that much of a fool, Sorrel, but it was a nice try.'
The car cornered sharply, throwing her helplessly against him. The impact of his hard body sent the breath rushing out of hers in a soft whoosh.
His hands steadied her, dark against the white of her jacket.
'You're not looking forward to this lunch on Sunday, are you? Why? Frightened he might ask too many awkward questions?'
'Such as?' she challenged him.
'Such as wanting to know how we spent those three days and nights up at the farmhouse, especially in view of the fact that it has only one bed, albeit a very large and comfortable double bed,' he added provocatively.
In the darkness, her face flamed with hectic colour, and she sent a brief helpless glance in the direction of the stoical driver. If he was listening to their conversation, he gave no sign of it.
'Andrew doesn't know about that,' she hissed softly. 'He hasn't been up to the farm since Uncle Giles left.'
'And you're not going to tell him, is that it? You're going to quietly pretend that nothing happened.'
'Nothing did happen,' Sorrel told him frantically, wondering if it was possible for him to hear the noisy thud of her heart. She certainly could, its erratic beat bearing all the
tell-tale marks of her reaction to him.
'Like hell it didn't,' he told her inelegantly, stunning her with the biting force of his comment.
She could almost feel the emotional temperature between them rising, and her senses urged her to bring it down to normal before it became impossible.
'You never said how long you'd be able to stay,' she murmured, pulling away from him. 'Your business in London…'
'Can wait,' he told her succinctly. 'What's wrong, Sorrel? Frightened that I might not behave like a gentleman, that I might just tell that fiancé of yours…?'
'No,' she interrupted him shakily. 'No, Val, you can't do that.'
She almost told him that he was right and that she knew now that she couldn't marry Andrew, but pride held her back—pride and a certain deep-rooted vein of self-protection. If she admitted to him that she knew she couldn't marry Andrew, there was no saying what kind of questions he might start asking her.
She could see he was about to say something, but the taxi was turning off the road and the hotel was in front of them. She diverted his attention to it, and then filled the short ride down the drive with a stream of hectic chatter, determined not to let him get back on to the subject of her engagement.
'Oh, my goodness, isn't this wonderful!' Amy Llewellyn was exclaiming when Sorrel emerged from the cloakroom to join the rest of the family in the reception area.
It was. No expense had been spared to return to the house the ambiance of an elegant country home.
The reception area was pleasantly large, with a log fire burning in the huge fireplace and attractive groups of tables and chairs close to it.
'The dining-room's this way,' a smiling waiter told them, indicating a door off to one side of the room.
During the daytime it must have wonderful views over the gardens, Sorrel reflected as they were shown to their table, but now the rich damask curtains were drawn against the chilly March night, and a fire just as welcoming as the one outside burned in an enormous Adam grate.
The dining-room was comfortably full, the low hum of people's conversation swirling enticingly around them as they all sat down. The tables were round, the linen white and immaculately starched. The dining-room was decorated in deep crimson with bold touches of dark greens and blues. None of them, it seemed, required an appetiser, although Sorrel did notice Val saying something to the wine waiter.