by Penny Jordan
‘Not at all,’ he told her. ‘However, Mr Hewitson’s legal advisers have been in touch with me with an offer for the purchase of the land and the cottage, which, as they point out, should the new motorway extension be diverted to the secondary proposed route, would be very generous indeed.’
He paused, and Melanie swallowed again. ‘I see. So, are you recommending me to accept this offer?’
‘Well, without the benefit of the new motorway extension to boost local land values, the offer is indeed a good one, more than you could hope to realise from an auction of the cottage and the land as they stand. However, should the extension go ahead the offer comes nowhere near the true value that the land would then have.
‘I cannot advise you as to your decision, my dear. That must be yours and yours alone.’
Melanie hesitated. If she sold out to David Hewitson now he would tear down the cottage; he would cover the land with small, box-like houses without character or beauty, and a home which had been in her benefactor’s family for many generations would be gone forever. She had already been told by the solicitor that her benefactor had consistently refused to sell out to the builder. Even if by doing so she could make more money for charity, she felt obligated to take into consideration her benefactor’s views and feelings. The mere fact that he had refused during his own lifetime to sell out to the builder told its own story.
She paused and then said huskily, ‘I can’t agree to sell to Mr Hewitson. I—I don’t feel it would be what Mr Burrows would have wanted. I think he would have preferred to see someone…a family living here in the cottage. After all, it was his home for so long.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ the solicitor agreed. ‘But you must realise, my dear, that whoever you eventually sell to might not share that view, and could quite easily decide to dispose of the property by selling it to Mr Hewitson.’
It was a possibility that had not occurred to her before, but now that it was pointed out to her she realised how naïve she had been.
She wondered frantically if there was any way in which she could stipulate that any purchaser could not destroy the cottage, and then told herself shakily that she was being overly sentimental and could not have her cake and eat it.
After all, the only real way to ensure that the cottage stayed intact was to live in it herself, but in order to do that she would have to break the promise she had made to herself and to her unknown benefactor that his gift to her would be used to benefit others and not just herself.
‘Would you like some time to think things over?’ the solicitor asked her kindly.
Immediately Melanie shook her head and then, realising that he couldn’t see her, said quickly, ‘No…no…I don’t need any time. I—I’m not going to accept any offer Mr Hewitson makes.’ Inwardly she was acknowledging that the only real way of protecting the cottage, short of making it her permanent home, which she could not do, would be to pray that the powers that be changed their collective minds and adopted the second choice for the route of the new motorway extension; that way the cottage would be safe from men like Hewitson.
‘Very well, then, I’ll convey your decision to Mr Hewitson’s legal advisers.’
There was a small pause, and then he added cautioningly, ‘I should perhaps warn you that Mr Hewitson is a very aggressive and hot-tempered man, a man who isn’t used to not getting his own way.’
As she thanked her solicitor for his warning and replaced the receiver, Melanie wondered tiredly why she was being subjected to so much misfortune. She would, she decided wearily, have a hot bath and an early night.
After all, what was there to stay up for? She was growing weary of her own company, of spending evening after evening despairingly reliving every second, every heartbeat of the brief space of time she had spent with Luke. And to what purpose? All she was doing was simply torturing herself, causing herself additional pain and misery.
At nine o’clock she locked the doors and went upstairs to bed, but it seemed that the day wasn’t finished with her yet and had still one more trial in store for her.
As she climbed into bed there was an ominous cracking sound and even as her body tensed the bed suddenly tilted to one side, causing her to roll on to the floor.
Grimly inspecting the damage, she discovered that her brand new bed must have had a weakness in the frame, and that the too soft cheap wood had given way beneath the strain of the mattress.
Even to her inexperienced eyes it was obvious that there was no way it could be repaired, never mind made usable for the rest of the night.
Which left her with two options. Either she could use the new bed Louise had so kindly given her and sleep in the bedroom which she and Luke had decorated together and suffer the consequences of doing so, or, alternatively, she could sleep in the bed which had originally belonged to John Burrows. As she bit her lip she acknowledged that she was probably being overly sensitive, but she still could not bring herself to sleep in that particular bed.
Which meant it would have to be the newly decorated spare room, where she would probably spend the night tormented by memories and dreams of Luke.
As she miserably gathered her things together, telling herself that for tonight she would simply have to use her pillow and wrap herself in her quilt since she had no suitable double-bed-sized sheets or bedding, she prayed that the fates would quickly grow tired of tormenting someone who could surely only provide them with minimal sport, and leave her on her own to deal with her unhappiness and despair as best she could.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN THE morning it seemed as though Melanie’s prayers had been answered, for not only had she slept deeply and well but the sun was shining, which meant that she would be able to get out of the house and into the garden.
Even so, she felt wearily lethargic as she washed and dressed, reluctant to face the day, reluctant to face life, she acknowledged as she sipped unenthusiastically at her coffee and pushed a piece of untasted toast around her plate.
The last thing she felt like doing was eating, but only this morning as she had climbed out of bed she had experienced a return of the warning dizziness which had been such an unpleasant feature of her bout of flu. Her doctor had warned her then not to overdo things, to eat properly and to rest as much as she could, and she was guiltily aware that over the last few days she had not merely completely ignored this advice but had done exactly the opposite, neglecting to eat and finding it impossible to rest.
This morning, however, that slight dizziness and the breathlessness which had accompanied it as she’d come downstairs had reminded her of how ill she had been.
A morning spent working outside in the fresh air would do her good, she told herself sturdily. It would restore her appetite and, if she was lucky, make her feel so tired that she simply would not have the energy to think about Luke.
As soon as she had cleared away her breakfast things, she went back upstairs and changed into the practical pair of cotton overalls she had bought in Knutsford. Not only were they made from serviceable and sensible cotton, but they were an attractive shade of soft green. It was true that they were rather large for her small frame but, once the legs were tucked securely into her wellington boots, she felt that she presented a very workwomanlike appearance indeed.
Outside the grass was still very wet from the previous day’s rain, the ground inclined to be muddy and slippery.
Melanie headed straight for the vegetable patch she was trying to reclaim, biting her lip hard as she had to walk past the spot where Luke had kissed her and caressed her so intimately, so tenderly—so lovingly, she had stupidly thought—until he had turned away from her and she had realised that she was simply deluding herself, that what he felt for her was nothing more than mere male desire, impersonal and fleeting.
Stop it, she warned herself as her thoughts threatened to get out of hand. There was little point in deliberately causing herself more misery.
The garage had revealed a good supply of garden tools and if th
ey were inclined to be rather heavy for her, well, at least they were saving her money.
Even so, as she busied herself in trying to remove the stubborn weeds from the ground she found herself wishing she had a fork that was a little less unwieldy, something designed for a woman to use and not for a man.
The patch of ground she was trying to clear must at some stage have produced summer salad vegetables, because as she dug she was unearthing the remains of what would have once been metal cloches and the soil was full of splintered pieces of glass.
Melanie knew from her reading that modern gardeners used polythene instead of glass, and had already decided that when the time was right and provided she had cleared enough space she would try her hand at producing her own lettuces; but now that day seemed a long way off, and she grimaced in disgust as her fork hit yet another buried obstacle. This time the piece of glass she unearthed was quite large, but jaggedly and dangerously broken.
As she placed it cautiously in the old-fashioned wheelbarrow she had found in the garage, she was glad of the gardening gloves she had extravagantly bought.
After an hour of strenuous digging, during which she had covered little more than a few yards, Melanie was forced to acknowledge that the task of clearing the vegetable-bed was going to prove much harder than she had envisaged. Her daydreams of beautiful, healthy green rows of growing crops had slowly faded, disappearing beneath the hard reality of the clogging soil sticking so determinedly to her fork, and the mass of broken glass which lay beneath the surface.
It would take a team of dedicated, hard-working men weeks to clear this one small patch, she thought despairingly. Already her back was aching, her muscles tightening in rebellious dislike of the work she was enforcing on them.
There was a hollow sickly feeling inside her stomach which warned her that it was time she had something to eat, but a stubborn grittiness she must have inherited from one of her unknown antecedents forced her to keep going, even though her body was trying its best to tell her that she needed to eat and rest.
Forced to pause in her exertions, she lifted a tired hand to her hair, pushing it out of the way. As she did so she saw Luke walking down the garden towards her.
Shock and panic exploded inside her. She had a foolhardy impulse to throw down the fork and run away from him, but she managed to quell it, managed to force her trembling mouth to form a weak imitation of a coolly polite smile—the kind of smile she would have given a stranger.
As he came nearer, she could see that he was frowning. Now that she was over the first stomach-churning shock of disbelief that he was actually here, her heart was beating shallowly and rapidly, her whole body registering the effect his presence was having on her.
She could feel her skin starting to burn; could feel the trembling start low down in her body and gradually creep through her muscles, so that she was obliged to turn away from him and start digging again to prevent him from seeing what was happening to her.
Totally unable to concentrate on what she was doing, she struck the fork blindly into the soil, using far too much force, so that when it struck sharply against something just beneath the surface she was putting so much weight on the shaft of the fork that she lost her balance, her feet sliding forward in the sticky mud.
As she fell she heard Luke’s warning shout, but it was already too late: she couldn’t do a thing to save herself.
She saw the wickedly dangerous piece of glass protruding from the earth, had a sickening foreknowledge of what was going to happen, and yet could do nothing to protect herself as she fell against it and felt the sharp broken point of it tear through her overalls and rip against the vulnerable flesh of her thigh.
As she cried out she was vaguely aware of Luke reaching for her, lifting her, cursing under his breath as he picked her up bodily and set off towards the house.
As he balanced her against his body while he opened the kitchen door, she heard him saying grimly, ‘I just hope to God you’ve had the sense to keep your tetanus injections up to date.’
As she tried to tell him that she had, she made the mistake of looking down at her leg. The green fabric of her overalls was jaggedly torn, but what caused her to tremble and close her eyes was not the sight of her ripped clothes, but the quickly growing bright scarlet stain dyeing the fabric as blood flowed from the cut in her thigh.
Melanie had never considered herself particularly squeamish, but suddenly the sight of so much blood—her own blood—made her feel acutely nauseous and for some reason very cold.
She heard Luke demanding roughly, as he carried her towards the stairs, ‘Tetanus injections, Melanie; are they up to date?’ and just managed to nod her head in confirmation that they were before the coldness engulfing her became mind-numbing, stealing her consciousness away.
* * *
SHE CAME ROUND briefly to discover that she was lying half-naked on the bathroom floor, that Luke had raided her medicine cupboard to find a pair of scissors with which he had ruthlessly cut away her overalls, and that he was now leaning over her, carefully cleaning the wound in her leg.
She still felt terribly cold, and her leg was beginning to ache and throb. She started to protest at what Luke was doing, trying to tell him that she could manage for herself even while common sense told her that she could not; but, as she struggled to sit up and command his attention, he told her grimly, without turning his head, ‘Don’t move, Melanie. I’m not sure how deep this damned thing is. I don’t think it’s too bad, although it’s still bleeding heavily.’
As she gave a wrenching shudder, he turned to look at her and told her bluntly, ‘You’re damned lucky you didn’t sever an artery. What possessed you to go on digging there, when you must have seen that it was littered with broken glass?’
The shock—or was it the loss of blood?—was making her feel quite light-headed. Indignantly she told him, ‘I was quite safe until you appeared.’
‘So, it’s my fault, is it?’
She knew that her accusation was probably unjust, but she was too proud and too stubborn to take the words back. For what seemed like a long time they simply looked at one another. He looked different, somehow, Melanie realised: older…tireder…harder in some indefinable way.
‘There’s really no need for you to do this—’ she began to tell him, but he stopped her and said curtly,
‘I need to check that there isn’t any glass embedded in your skin. I don’t think there is… This will probably hurt,’ he warned her as he turned his back on her and, after disinfecting his hands, started to probe the jagged flesh.
It did hurt, so much so that she had to bite down hard on her bottom lip to stop herself from crying out.
As she felt the weakness inside her start to spread, she told herself that she was not going to faint again, that she was going to stay conscious and tell Luke to go, that she didn’t need any help from him, and somehow or other she managed to stay conscious while he meticulously inspected the wound and then, having pronounced himself satisfied that it was free of any splinters of broken glass, started to clean it all over again.
The cut was still bleeding freely, but, even though Melanie knew it would be wiser not to look at what Luke was doing and to either turn her head away or close her eyes, the contained, deft movement of his hands, his skin alien and male against the pale softness of her own thigh, had such a mesmeric effect upon her that she simply could not stop herself from following their every movement.
Perhaps it was the fluid with which he was cleaning the wound that made the blood seem to flow so freely and so copiously; perhaps it was the fact that she hadn’t been eating properly that made her feel so light-headed and dizzy; perhaps it was because she was lying on the bathroom floor wearing nothing other than her bra, panties and socks that was making her feel so cold; she had no idea. What she did know was that the combination of cold, weakness and nausea was swiftly making it harder and harder for her to hang on to full consciousness and that, as hard as she battled to hold
on to it, she was no match for the insidious, swiftly running, numbing tide of cold that was sweeping up through her body.
When she couldn’t fight it any longer, she made a small sound of despair that caused Luke to turn his head and look briefly at her.
It was probably just as well that she had fainted, he reflected tiredly. The cut was deep and she had been very lucky indeed not to sustain as far more serious injury, but once her thigh was securely bandaged the bleeding would slow down and stop. He suddenly felt very old—very drained. His mouth compressed.
Although she was vaguely conscious of what Luke was doing, it wasn’t until he had picked her up and carried her first into the bedroom she had been using and then into the newly decorated one into which she had moved the previous night that she actually came round properly.
She tried to demur as he pushed back the duvet and placed her on the bed, but Luke was ignoring her, carefully wrapping the quilt round her before telling her tersely, ‘I’m going downstairs now to make you something to drink and something to eat. What on earth have you been doing to yourself? And don’t, for God’s sake, tell me that you don’t eat because you can’t afford to.’
Helplessly Melanie stared after him as he strode towards the door. The cutting voice in which he had delivered that final comment had hurt, and when she closed her eyes in mute despair she wasn’t sure if it was the pain in her thigh or the pain in her heart that caused the tears she was desperately trying to suppress.
All she really wanted now was for Luke to go and leave her in peace. How could she have been so stupid as to have had that accident? If Luke had not been there to help her… She shuddered inwardly. It was no use telling herself that if Luke hadn’t been there the accident would not have occurred in the first place. She could not be sure enough of that to convince herself it was the truth, even if she had hurled just such an accusation at Luke.