by Penny Jordan
‘Crop dusting,’ Luke remarked as she clumsily restored her clothes to order. ‘Probably just as well,’ he added wryly, and then, turning to her, he looked right into her eyes and added softly, ‘I don’t know what it is about you, but you have the effect of making me forget everything and everyone else. I think now I can understand…’
When he suddenly stopped speaking, the smile in his eyes wiped away so that they looked coldly bleak, Melanie shivered, feeling chilled and rejected, as though he had withdrawn from her.
‘Come on, let’s get you inside; you’re getting cold.’
His voice was terse, hostile almost. Was that because of her…because of the way she had behaved? Was he shocked, disgusted even, by her wantonness? Was he?
Bleakly she walked towards the house. It seemed impossible to believe now that less than five minutes ago she had been in his arms and that he…
She shivered again.
This was not the way to establish an enduring, committed relationship. This was not the way she had ever envisaged herself behaving. It was alien to her, against all she believed in, against the way she had always lived her life, but when Luke touched her, when he kissed her and held her she seemed to become incapable of using logic and reason; she seemed to become a totally different woman; a woman she herself could barely recognise.
As they walked upstairs together, she paused on the small landing to stare out of the window and into the garden.
Standing behind her, Luke asked her quietly, ‘What ultimately do you intend to do with this place? Hang on until all the excitement over the new motorway proposals reach fever pitch and then sell out to the highest bidder?’
Somehow his words had a cynical undertone to them, a bitterness almost that made her frown and turn to face him.
There was so much she felt unable to say to him, so much she must…could not bring herself to explain. She was afraid that if she told him what she had in mind, he would scoff at her, or even worse deride her; she knew that even Louise would think she was being unworldly and perhaps foolish in her determination to give away her inheritance. Only someone who had suffered as she had, who had lived as she had could truly understand this need she had within herself to pass on to others the gift she had so unexpectedly received.
For her it was enough that she would have this time here; this sense of belonging, of being at one with her environment which came to her so strongly here in the cottage for all its discomfort and lack of modern amenities, but all the time she was conscious of only having the cottage on loan, of holding it in trust for the needs of others, and she had an obligation to those others to see that the cottage and the land realised as much as they could.
There was no real reason why she should not explain all of this to Luke and yet she felt hesitant about doing so, shy almost, so that it was easier somehow to endure the faint condemnation she could see in his eyes, to allow him to think as he so obviously did, that she was being almost over-shrewd; that she was perhaps too money-conscious.
All she could do, then, was to say hesitantly, but honestly, ‘A part of me doesn’t want to sell. I like living here—in the cottage, I mean, but…’
‘But what?’ Luke probed.
Melanie looked up at him. She could almost feel the tension emanating from him. He was watching her closely, making her feel acutely self-conscious, almost as though his question was immensely important.
She shrugged the thought aside. He was a detective; asking questions was an important part of his job, which was probably why she felt this awareness of an almost angry urgency behind his question.
But still she couldn’t answer it…couldn’t explain to him how she felt…couldn’t bare her soul to him…was still afraid of his rejection, his contempt.
Even though she had willingly and wantonly bared her body?
She shivered convulsively, shaking her head and turning away from him, saying only, ‘I have to sell,’ and hoping that Luke would stop questioning her.
* * *
‘WELL, what do you think of it, now that we’re almost finished?’
‘We’re almost finished?’ Melanie grinned across at Luke and said apologetically, ‘You’re the one who’s done all the work. I can’t thank you enough, Luke. It looks wonderful. I had no idea it could even begin to look like this.’
The pleasure in her eyes, the way she gestured in helpless admiration and pleasure to the walls surrounding her all betrayed her genuine delight and amazement at the transformation he had wrought.
When Luke had first described to her what he had intended to do, she had only formed a very hazy impression of the finished room, but now that it was finished—or virtually—she couldn’t help imagining how dull her own meagre efforts would have appeared compared with not just the professionalism of the work Luke had done, but also with his suggestion for changing the entire look of the room.
If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, Melanie would never have dreamed that something so simple as wallpaper could so drastically alter a room.
The pretty floral paper she had chosen now ran from halfway up the walls, over the ceiling and down the opposite walls where it met the white-painted, newly installed dado rail. Beneath the rail Luke had used a plain toning paper, picking out from her wallpaper the warm peach of the flowers themselves so that now the room did not merely look clean and fresh, but had a very special country charm about it that made her long to press him for his suggestions for the rest of the rooms, and not just for that.
If she was honest with herself she would be forced to admit that the idea of selling the cottage was definitely becoming more and more unappealing to her.
‘Something wrong?’ Luke asked her, watching the way she touched the wall behind her with her fingertips, slowly, lingeringly, almost as though she was feeling sadness and regret, almost as though… Angrily he clamped down on his own weakness and said almost brusquely, ‘What you need in here now is a carpet.’
‘A carpet.’ Wrenched out of her daydream—of furnishing this pretty feminine room with some carefully chosen furniture, of a bed covered in a soft padded quilt in the same pattern as the paper, of matching curtains hanging at the windows, with perhaps pastel bedside lamps and the carpet Luke had just mentioned—she stared at him for a moment, knowing how impossible the fulfilment of such daydreams was.
She would have Louise’s furniture, and as for bedding… Well perhaps she might allow herself the luxury of buying several yards of fabric and making a very simple quilt cover. Not the pretty padded and trimmed variety she would actually have liked—that would be far too extravagant…and as for carpets…she could perhaps make do with staining the floorboards, and maybe if she could find a cheap rug…
The smile she gave Luke was faintly haunted and sad.
‘No…no, I don’t think so.’
‘My decorating’s not good enough to warrant that kind of expense, is that it?’
Luke had intended the comment to be light-hearted and teasing, but instead it sounded bitter, contemptuous almost.
Melanie’s eyes widened, her face flushing as she heard the condemnation in his voice.
The last thing she had wanted to do was to sound self-pitying by letting him know that a new carpet was a luxury she simply could not afford, but she couldn’t bear him to think that she wasn’t appreciative of all that he had done.
‘Oh, no!’ she contradicted immediately. ‘Luke, your decorating is wonderful…marvellous…I can’t get over the difference it’s made to this room. I would never have dreamed…’ She looked at him shyly and confided, ‘It’s all so professional and beautiful that it does deserve a new carpet to show it off, but I just can’t—’ She bit her lip, reluctant even now, even after the time they had spent together, the kisses they had shared, to admit her poverty to him.
The trouble was that although they had shared physical intimacy, although over the last few days they had laughed together, worked together and eaten together, despite the fact that Luk
e had kept her amused with various stories about his work, despite the fact that he had revealed to her a very astute mind, and an awareness of worldwide issues which pointed to a man who concerned himself very deeply with everything that went on about him, a man of strong views and feelings, a man who was in no way merely the flirtatious lightweight she had first supposed, but someone who was truly concerned for the welfare of his fellow men, she still felt hesitant about confiding fully in him; still felt as though there was some unseen barrier between them, as though, in telling him so much about herself, her thoughts, her feelings, her plans, she was assuming an intimacy, a commitment between them which did not really exist.
He had not, after all, kissed her, or indeed in any way encouraged any intimacy between them since those moments in the garden, and she was beginning to believe that, despite what he had said to her on that occasion, she had over-reacted to him, had imbued his words to her with a seriousness he had never intended and that he, sensing that her emotions were more involved than he would have wanted, had deliberately withdrawn from her and that, as she had originally perceived, all he really wanted from her was a few days’ light-hearted flirtation.
‘You can’t what?’ Luke prompted her now. ‘You can’t afford it?’
Although he said the words lightly, Melanie had an awareness that his tone was in some way assumed to cover a deeper, more intense emotion.
He was avoiding looking at her, Melanie noticed, his body held tensely as though to ward off a physical blow; as though he was waiting for something…but for what? She swallowed painfully. Surely he couldn’t think that she expected him to offer to buy the carpet for her? But no; the very suggestion was so preposterous, so diametrically opposed to everything she believed in that she could hardly assimilate the fear that he might actually have made such an assumption.
It was pride; pride and a fear that she might inadvertently have given him exactly such an impression that made her shrug and retort lightly, ‘No, it isn’t that. It’s just that it seems such a waste, when the place is going to be sold anyway.’
‘Really? And yet you didn’t seem to think that decorating would equally be a waste?’
Again she shrugged, desperately hoping that she was concealing from him how shocked and distressed she was by the antagonism which seemed to have sprung up between them, virtually out of nowhere.
‘Originally all I had intended to do was to make the place look a bit cleaner, a bit brighter. I had no intentions of going to the lengths that you—’
‘I see. Well, I’m sorry if my interference has led you into unnecessary expense,’ she heard him saying acidly. ‘You should have said.’
Melanie felt her skin scald with hot colour.
Please stop! she wanted to cry… I don’t want this to happen. I don’t want to quarrel with you; but it was like stepping on an unsuspected patch of ice—she was on it, she found she was sliding, helpless and totally without any form of control, into very great danger indeed, as though she was someone in a waking nightmare.
She heard herself responding equally coldly and angrily, ‘I tried to do so, but you wouldn’t listen. After all, it’s pointless wasting time on a house that—’
‘I quite agree,’ Luke interrupted her curtly. ‘Oh, and I forgot to tell you, by the way. They came to install my phone late yesterday afternoon, so I shan’t need to trouble you for the use of yours from now on.’
While she blinked frantically to hold at bay the weak tears threatening to flood her eyes, and her throat thickened with pain and misery, Melanie heard him adding something about clearing everything away and leaving her in peace.
Peace? Oh, God, didn’t he realise what he had done to her and that she would never, ever again know that state of mind? That for the rest of her life she would ache and yearn for him, would need and want him…would love him?
And yet somehow she managed to keep everything that she was feeling locked away within herself until at last he was gone and she was free to give vent to her emotions, to fling herself headlong on her bed and sob despairingly into her pillow until she had no tears left to cry, until she felt as dry and empty as it was possible for a human being to feel.
CHAPTER SIX
AFTER the way they had parted, Melanie was not totally surprised not to see Luke the following day, nor the one after that; but when three days had gone by without his getting in touch with her she knew that her first assessment of him had been the right one after all, and that for all his tenderness, all his passion, all his whispered words of praise he had only wanted her as a momentary diversion.
At least she had had her bedroom decorated, she told herself cynically, but the truth was that she couldn’t even bear to walk inside the room which had initially, if briefly, given her so much pleasure.
She was afraid that just by opening the door and seeing the place where she had spent so much time with Luke she would invite even more heartache than she was already having to endure. And so the bedroom door remained closed, although every time she had to walk past it her heart gave a funny little double beat and the unhappiness engulfing her deepened.
She tried telling herself that it was all for the best; that it was better that their quarrel had precipitated what would inevitably have happened anyway, but, much as her brain was convinced by this logic, her heart refused to listen.
At night she could not sleep, even though she was adopting a deliberate policy of working so hard physically during the daytime that she ought to have fallen deeply asleep the moment her head touched the pillow. Ought to have done, but could not, despite the fact that she had scrubbed the house from top to bottom, had moved what pieces of furniture she had, heavy as they were, had meticulously scrubbed out ancient wooden drawers and set them to dry, had scrupulously re-lined those same drawers with odd rolls of wallpaper she had bought at the same time as she had bought some cans of sunny yellow paint with which she intended to brighten up the kitchen, a task which still remained to be tackled since every time she approached those same cans of paint she was reminded unbearably of Luke.
Hot tears would start to sting her eyes, her throat would burn and ache, and such an intensity of pain and anguish would engulf her that she could not bear to start work upon a task which would remind her so poignantly of the time they had spent together.
And so instead she busied herself with other things, with, for instance, on those days when the heavy spring showers kept her inside and out of the garden, cleaning each and every window the house possessed, wiping down the old damaged woodwork, and tried, while she occupied herself with these tasks, to exercise and fill her mind with schemes for redecorating the rooms had she had the ability and the money to do so; and yet, no matter what she did, no matter how hard she strived, it was not just her heart that betrayed her but her mind as well, sneakily causing her to wonder, as she planned a colour scheme or mentally refurnished a room, what Luke’s opinion of her plans would be, or what Luke would think of what she was doing, or what advice Luke would give her, were he there to help her.
Only Luke wasn’t there, and the sooner she accepted that fact and taught herself to forget him and everything he had come to mean to her the faster she would learn to come to terms with her heartache.
Because coming to terms with it, accepting that the burden of her love for Luke was something she would carry with her for the remainder of her life, was going to be the best she could manage to do.
There was no question of her ever truly getting over him, of her ever being able to cast him right out of her heart, of her being able to forget that he had ever existed.
In time, surely, the sharpness of her present pain would dim; in time she might find that just to recall a specific turn of his head, a note in his voice, the way he had smiled at her would not cause such a red-hot pain to knife so sharply through her that she found she could scarcely breathe for the intensity of it. In time.
But for now all she could do was to endure and go on enduring—something she w
as surely accomplished in doing. The acceptance of emotional pain was something she had learned a long time ago, something that was as much a part of her personality as her honesty and her vulnerability.
On fine days Melanie worked out in the garden, not on the patch near the roses which she had originally been clearing. She had found she could scarcely even bear to walk past that small area. She had not even been able to clear away the weeds she had pulled out and found that when she did have to walk past the spot where Luke had kissed her, had touched her, she had to avert her face in case she became rooted to the spot, unable to move away, unable to do anything other than stand there while tears of pain and rejection poured down her face.
Instead she was working on what had once been a vegetable plot. On its periphery were the remnants of gooseberry and redcurrant bushes, and she had accidentally unearthed a couple of clumps of rhubarb, amazingly growing healthily despite their choking cloak of weeds.
She had promised herself that she would pick that same rhubarb and make an excellent pie, but in spite of this the rhubarb remained unpicked, perhaps because the thought of going to all that trouble just for herself seemed pointless, or perhaps because her appetite had decreased so sharply, so much so that the unexpected sight of herself in an old-fashioned pier-glass in one of the spare bedrooms shocked her into realising how much weight she must have lost.
Was that really her, she wondered uncertainly, that drawn, wan creature with the pale face and huge eyes, clad in jeans which looked as though they were at least a couple of sizes too big?
Halfway through the week she was brought forcibly into an awareness of just how damaging her brief relationship with Luke had been when Louise’s husband, Simon, called with the furniture Louise had promised her.