by Penny Jordan
They had made good time on the motorway; Piers was an excellent driver and Georgia knew that, had the circumstances been different, right now she would have been awed and thrilled by the views outside the car windows as they drove through the Yorkshire Dales, with their vast sweeps of hillside and sky. The last village they had driven through had been small and pretty, with its stone cottages clinging to the banks of a crystal-clear river.
Piers had offered to stop, suggesting that Georgia might want to have something to eat and stretch her legs, but she had shaken her head, despite the fact that the only food she had had all day had been the piece of toast she had managed to force down at breakfast. She just wasn’t hungry. Anxiety gnawed at her stomach with sharply painful teeth, and the rolling hills of the Dales, bare apart from their flocks of sheep, which at any other time would have excited her admiration, right now only reinforced how empty and vast the area was, and how ill equipped a town-reared, pampered dog like Ben was to survive in such rugged terrain.
Despite Piers’s skilled driving it was almost four hours after they had left before they were bumping down the narrow lane that led to the Bowleses’ farm.
Anxiously Georgia scanned the skyline, hoping against hope to see Ben, and her first words as Piers stopped his godmother’s car in the yard and Mrs Bowles came hurrying out to greet them were, ‘Has Ben—? Have you—?’
‘No sight of him, I’m afraid,’ Mary Bowles told Georgia, adding to Piers, ‘If you wouldn’t mind parking your car in the empty barn at the bottom of the yard? That will leave room for Harry to turn the tractor when he comes in.
‘Come on inside,’ she invited Georgia, who had stopped to talk to the farm collie, who, much to Mary Bowles’s surprise, had actually allowed Georgia to stroke her.
‘You’re honoured,’ she told Georgia as she ushered her into the kitchen. ‘Meg doesn’t normally take to strangers.’
Jack, the mixed breed, extricated himself from his basket beside the old-fashioned Aga as they walked in. He was stiff and rheumatic and Georgia automatically checked his swollen joints as she stroked him.
‘Habit,’ she told Mary Bowles, who was watching her, and explained how she earned her living.
‘Best not tell Harry that,’ Mary counselled her with a laugh. ‘He’ll have you out on the hill looking at his precious sheep before you can turn round if you do!’
‘The police said that your husband thought Ben had been worrying his flock,’ Georgia responded unhappily.
‘Well, something has been at the lambs. It might have been the dog, but it could as easily have been a fox,’ Mary told her calmly.
‘He won’t... He wouldn’t...’ Georgia began huskily, unable to put into words her dread that Ben might be shot as a sheep-worrier before they could find him. But before she could vocalise her fears Piers came into the kitchen.
‘We thought, with your husband’s permission, that we’d go out ourselves and look for Ben,’ Piers informed Mary Bowles after he had accepted her offer of a cup of tea. ‘He’ll recognise both our voices, but especially Georgia’s, and if he is here the sound of a familiar voice might persuade him to come out of hiding.’
‘Oh, he certainly was here,’ Mary insisted. ‘I saw him myself...fed him... Nice-looking dog...
‘Yes, that’s definitely the dog I saw,’ she confirmed as Piers produced a photograph of Ben which Georgia realised he must have found amongst his godmother’s belongings.
‘Well, you won’t be the only ones looking for him,’ she told Georgia and Piers with a chuckle. ‘They’ve been giving it out on the radio all day that there’s a reward for his safe return.’
‘Good. The more people looking for him the better,’ Piers replied.
‘I thought he might have come down off the hill when I fed Meg and Jack again,’ Mary Bowles admitted. ‘I even left an extra bowl of food out just in case, but there was no sign of him.’
They had to wait half an hour for Harry Bowles to come in so that he could take them up on to the hill to show them just where he had seen Ben.
Cupping her hands together, Georgia called his name, the sound bouncing back to her and sending some nearby sheep scurrying fleet-footedly away. A narrow sheep track wound up across the hill, disappearing into the distance.
‘Perhaps if we follow the track calling his name?’ Piers suggested.
Nodding in acquiescence, Georgia fell into step beside him, leaving Harry Bowles to return to his farming duties.
‘Why didn’t he just stay at the farm?’ Georgia almost wept an hour later as she crested yet another hill without any sight of Ben.
‘Ben...’ she shouted. ‘Ben...’
‘We’ll have to start making tracks back to the farm,’ Piers warned her. ‘The light’s already starting to fade.’
Georgia wanted to protest, but her common sense warned her that he was right.
Back in the farmhouse kitchen Georgia wearily accepted the fresh cup of tea Mary Bowles offered her. She was beginning to feel the effects of the previous night’s loss of sleep, her body heavy and tired, but her thoughts, her mind, were almost too alert, as though they had gone into overdrive. Over and over again she kept visualising Ben on his own on the hillside and all the dangers he would be exposed to. Her eyelids felt so heavy; perhaps if she just closed her eyes for a moment...
‘We’re going to need to stay overnight,’ Piers told Mary Bowles softly. ‘Is there somewhere locally you could recommend?’
‘As I mentioned over the phone earlier, you’re more than welcome to stay here,’ Mary returned promptly.
She shook her head when Piers protested that they didn’t want to cause her any trouble, informing him firmly, ‘It will be no trouble at all. We sometimes get walkers asking for a room, and there’s a spare bed already made up. You and your wife would be more than welcome to it.’
You and your wife! Piers opened his mouth to inform Mary that he and Georgia weren’t even a couple, never mind man and wife, and that there was no way Georgia would want to share a bed with him, but before he could say anything Mary was looking indulgently towards Georgia, who had fallen asleep in her chair.
She said softly, ‘Poor girl, she’s worn out. I’ll take you up and show you the room. We don’t keep late hours as Harry likes to be up at dawn.’
As Piers followed Mary Bowles up the narrow, winding flight of stairs that led to the farm’s upper storey, he told himself that there was no point in complicating the issue at this stage by informing her that he and Georgia weren’t married. It was gone ten in the evening, and by the time he had woken Georgia up and they had driven back to the small market town they had passed on the way to the farm it would be close on midnight before they found anywhere to stay—if they could find anywhere! Far easier simply to accept Mary’s offer.
The room Mary showed him wasn’t particularly large, but it was spotlessly clean and comfortably furnished and it had its own shower room.
‘We had that put in when our daughter was growing up. Teenage girls like to spend a lot of time in the bathroom, and her dad got that impatient with her. She’s at university now.’ She gave a small sigh, and Piers could see from her face that she missed her daughter.
As they walked back into the kitchen Georgia woke up and said anxiously to Piers, ‘We need to sort out somewhere to stay.’
‘It’s all arranged,’ Piers told her. ‘Mrs Bowles has offered to put us up here.’
Georgia’s expression betrayed her relief, and Piers suspected that she was as loath as he had been himself to drive back into the nearest town to find somewhere to stay. He would have to wait until they were on their own to explain Mary Bowles’s incorrect assumption that they were married, and to assure Georgia that the fact that they were having to share a room and a bed did not mean that she need have any fear that he would attempt to take advantage of their imaginary status.
‘Oh, that is kind of you,’ Georgia told the farmer’s wife, confirming Piers’s thought as she continued, ‘I m
ust admit I wasn’t looking forward to having to get back in the car. I thought I was a good walker, but these hills have really tired me out.’
‘They’re steeper than they look,’ Mary Bowles agreed with a smile, continuing, ‘I’ll make us all a spot of supper, and then Harry and I will be off to our bed.
‘Try not to worry about the dog,’ she told Georgia gently. ‘Brian—that’s my brother—is in the police, and he’s promised to let us know the moment they hear anything.’
* * *
‘We’ll say goodnight, then,’ Mary Bowles told Georgia after the two of them had finished clearing up from the hearty supper she had given them.
As they heard the couple’s footsteps on the stairs Georgia smothered a yawn and looked tiredly at Piers.
‘I think I’ll go up as well,’ she told him. ‘Which room?’
‘I’ll come with you and show you,’ Piers offered.
Nodding, Georgia followed him as he led the way towards the stairs.
Piers waited until they were both in the room with the door safely closed before breaking the news to her.
‘We’re what?’ Georgia demanded, shaking her head as she told him fiercely, ‘Oh, no; no way am I sharing a room, never mind a bed with you.’
‘Shush. Keep your voice down,’ Piers warned her. ‘Mary Bowles thinks we’re a married couple. That’s why she’s put us both in here.’
‘Why didn’t you tell her that we aren’t?’ Georgia demanded angrily.
‘I intended to at first, but then I realised she probably only had one room ready for guests. She’s a farmer’s wife, Georgia; I doubt she’s got enough spare time to start making up another guest bedroom. You heard her this evening when she was talking about her life; when she isn’t rearing orphan lambs and feeding hens and ducks, she’s working in her vegetable garden or making jams and chutneys. By the sound of it she never has a second to spare. What was I supposed to do—wake you up and drag you on a long drive into the nearest town and then trail you round its streets whilst we searched for somewhere to stay?’
Georgia grimaced, a fresh wave of tiredness hitting her.
‘Look, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll sleep in the chair or on the floor,’ Piers offered grimly.
Georgia looked at the small nursing chair and then at the floor. There was no way she would have wanted to sleep on either of them.
‘You should have told her,’ was all she could bring herself to say as she looked away from Piers. The stress of the last twenty-four hours was beginning to take its toll; her eyes felt gritty with exhaustion. She was too tired to argue with Piers. All she wanted to do was go to bed and sleep. No, she corrected herself wearily, all she really wanted to do was to find Ben. At least if they stayed here at the farm they would be on the spot to make a fresh search for him first thing in the morning.
‘There’s a shower room through there,’ Piers told her, sensing her mood. ‘You can use it first.’
‘My bag with my overnight things is still in the car,’ Georgia reminded him.
‘Yes, so’s mine,’ Piers agreed. ‘I’ll go down and get them.’
Whilst he was gone Georgia showered quickly, wrapping her damp body in one of the plain clean towels Mary Bowles had provided.
From the bedroom window she could look down into the farmyard, and she paused in the act of closing the curtains. Where was Ben? Could he see the farm...could he see the yard...had he heard them calling but perhaps been too afraid to show himself to them?
Anxiously she stared out into the darkness, not hearing and unaware of Piers’s return until his brief touch on her arm made her spin round in shock.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised as he saw her startled expression. ‘I thought you’d heard me come in.’
‘I was thinking about Ben,’ Georgia told him in a stifled voice. He was standing far too close to her—so close that she almost felt imprisoned between him and the wall—but it wasn’t fear of that imprisonment that was making her heart start to pound so heavily and her body start to tremble, nor were the thoughts or the images which were filling her mind now of the dog. The heaviness which was filling her body now had nothing whatsoever to do with tiredness or a need for sleep. Far from it. The need pounding through her as swiftly as sand in a timer sprang from a far more dangerous source.
Piers could feel his body reacting to Georgia’s closeness. She looked so unbearably desirable, so heart-wrenchingly lovable, he wanted to take her in his arms right there and...
Unable to stem the words, he began urgently, ‘Georgia, about last night...’
This was it; Piers was going to tell her not to read the wrong message into what had happened between them last night.
Frantically she shook her head. There were some things she just didn’t want to hear, some truths she couldn’t bear to endure. Not now.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she told Piers fiercely. ‘Where have you put my things?’
‘Your bag is over there,’ Piers told her, gesturing towards the foot of the bed. As he turned his head Georgia squeezed past him, scarcely daring to breathe in case in doing so she inadvertently allowed her body to touch his; her starving loving senses could only endure so much!
Seeing the look of intensity on her face as she squeezed past him, as though loathing the very thought of touching him, Piers felt the pain of her rejection as sharply as though she had knifed him through his heart. In bed last night he had warned himself against reading anything into her responsiveness to him, but it seemed he had not listened to his own advice. Not daring to allow himself to look at her again, he strode towards the shower room.
Even with her back to him Georgia was acutely aware of him, waiting until she had heard the shower-room door close behind him before reaching into her holdall and hastily removing her damp towel to scramble into the cotton nightdress she had brought with her whilst Piers was safely out of the way.
That done, she clambered quickly into the old-fashioned high-framed bed, determinedly closing her eyes and pulling the covers up high around her ears, willing herself to fall asleep before Piers came back into the bedroom.
She almost was, and in fact she was sure that she would have been if Piers hadn’t lingered so long in the shower room that she grew tense and wakeful listening for him.
* * *
Surely Georgia must be asleep by now? Piers decided as he cautiously opened the shower-room door and walked towards the bed. Georgia was lying facing away from the centre of the bed, her body completely still.
A little ruefully Piers looked at her, and then at his own robe-clad body. He hadn’t worn pyjamas since he had left home to go to university and didn’t, in fact, possess a pair, but he could well imagine Georgia’s likely reaction if he were to go to bed nude, which meant that he would have to sleep in his robe or risk her condemnation. The bedroom was low-ceilinged and warm, even with the window open, but, tempted though he was to dispense with the unwanted insulation of his heavy towelling robe, he judged that it would not be a good idea to do so.
Sighing faintly, he pushed back the bedclothes and got into bed.
* * *
Piers was in bed with her. A delicious shiver ran right through Georgia’s body, bringing her out in a rash of sensually sensitive goosebumps.
A delicious shiver? Sternly she warned her thoughts not to even think about tempting her or tormenting her with the silken web of alluring sensuality they were attempting to weave around her, shadowy images of Piers, his body nakedly warm and welcoming, enticing her fingers to explore its every line and plane, his arms wrapping tightly around her, his throat stretching with the urgency of the low groan he made as his need for her overwhelmed him.
Frantically Georgia squeezed her eyes as tightly closed as she could, reminding herself of just how tired she was and of exactly why they were here. It was Ben that she ought to be concentrating on. Where was he? How was he? Ben... Determinedly she forced herself to visualise the dog. Ben...
* * *
Ben sniffed the night air. Out there in the small, protected valley enclosed by the hills he could smell his evening meal. He licked his lips, anticipating the rich taste of fresh meat. A river ran through the valley, which was why he had come here in the first place, thirsty after his day spent searching for food.
He had been watching his quarry for several hours now. Had seen them arrive and had known that he would have to be patient, waiting until he could do what he knew he had to do under the cover of darkness.
It was dark now, his quarry merely unmoving shapes against the darkness of the hillside.
Stealthily Ben made his way down towards them, crouching on his belly, ears and eyes stretched for any sound that would warn him that they had sensed him coming.
But nothing moved.
Ben knew exactly where he had to go. He had not spent the afternoon watching the Cub Scouts making camp for nothing. He knew exactly which tent housed those delicious-looking and even more delicious-smelling sausages he had seen being unpacked. Ben loved sausages. Mrs Latham’s butcher made his own, and she often allowed Ben one for a Sunday morning treat.
‘This is our secret, Ben,’ she’d often told him. Sausages! Ben could smell them now. Breathing deeply, he sniffed the air appreciatively.
Until he had seen the Cubs making camp he had thought that he would have to go back to the farm and run the gauntlet not just of the farmer’s gun but of the collie’s hostility into the bargain. The bark and growl she had given him had made it perfectly clear that she did not consider him to be a welcome visitor.
Glancing over his shoulder, Ben checked that nothing and no one was watching him before sneaking into the tent where the scout master had carefully stored his troop’s food. This was an annual trip to this secluded camping spot, and one which the younger boys always thoroughly enjoyed.
The sausages were in the Calor gas fridge, but the fridge was no deterrent to Ben, who had long ago worked out how such things could be opened. Deftly he opened this one...
CHAPTER NINE