by Rosalie Ash
'What's wrong with you?' she burst out angrily. 'What are you so frightened of? Do you think I've got some ulterior motive for asking about your family, about yourself? Hasn't it even occurred to you I might be just trying to make polite conversation?'
Matt dragged his eyes from her furious glare, and stared across the fields, a muscle twitching slightly in his jaw. She watched him helplessly, somehow aware that he was repressing his emotions tightly inside him, and full of conflicting responses, wanting to hit him or to wrap her arms round him and hug him. She balled her trembling hands into fists instead, and tried to slow her breathing down.
Two combine harvesters were methodically carving deep furrows through the golden corn, and Matt nodded to one of them.
'Would that be your father up there?'
'One of them, yes, I think so. Jessica said he was anxious to finish the harvest this weekend. I expect he's giving Tom a hand.'
'Did you bring a key?'
'A key?' Victoria laughed. 'The farmhouse won't be locked. What a city dweller you are, aren't you! I suppose the idea of leaving doors wide open all day shocks you!'
'I'm absolutely appalled,'Matt agreed mildly, 'Particularly if the place is packed with valuable objets d'art, as I've been led to expect!'
The tension between them seemed to be relaxing again.
'Don't worry, the farmhands wouldn't know a valuable antique from a disc-harrow!'
'Then we'd be quits,' said Matt, with a rare grin. 'I wouldn't know a disc-harrow if I tripped over one.'
'A disc-harrow,' Victoria informed him knowledgeably, trying not to let her delight at making him smile show too much in her face, 'Is a thing that breaks the soil down. Ready for seeds, a bit like a garden rake does. It's attached to the tractor after ploughing.'
'Thank you.' Matt nodded solemnly, and Victoria stepped ahead of him to lead the way up to the house.
Roundwell Farm was an impressive mixture. It had started out as the rectory, in the sixteenth century, but had then become a manor house, randomly added on to over the next couple of hundred years until its Grade II listing put a stop to further changes. The back of the house, where most people came in through the kitchen, was chaotic, rambling and far more farmhouse-like than the front. The bits of extension that had been added on over the centuries had resulted in a big rear farmyard, enclosed by brick-built east and west wings, a row of farmworkers’ cottages, plus several barns alongside the cowsheds beyond. There were rows of stables, too, now unused. As were the forlorn and empty greenhouses and neglected polytunnels, where Mum’s once thriving herb and flower nursery business had been run.
The front, behind its sweeping driveway, had a much grander, almost monastic appearance, with its neat rows of sash windows and double entrance door set into mellow grey limestone, and all embellished with arched, intricate stone carvings, similar to the carvings on the church nearby.
Backed by woods of ancient oak and ash trees, and ringed by rolling fields, it was a fairytale place to Victoria.
'Lovely, isn’t it?’ She looked at Matt, then back at the house, ‘Jessica, Megan and I had such a brilliant time growing up here.’
‘Megan?’
‘Megan, my middle sister. She lives in Northumberland.’ She didn’t feel like explaining the whole story of Megan to Matt. She had enough difficulty explaining it to herself.
In the mellow autumn sunshine the soft stone glowed invitingly, and the sash windows glittered in a deceptively shiny way. Before Mum had died, the house really had gleamed with polish, but Victoria knew the interior now told a different story.
Victoria ushered Matt round the side of the house to the back door, and into the cool, stone-flagged kitchen, looking round the shambles with a sigh of despair.
'I don't know about valuable antiques,' she said, with a short laugh, eyeing the row of empty whisky bottles lined up behind the flip-top bin in the corner, and the fly-covered stack of dirty dishes on the table. An ancient club armchair by the old stone sink was covered in polythene and newspapers, and Rough, the old Border Collie, jumped stiffly down with a rumble of warning deep in his throat. 'I doubt if you'll find anything worth more than a fiver,' she said, squatting down to pat the dog. 'It's OK, Rough, Matt is a friend?' She glanced up at him with a slightly taunting grin, and then, straightening, looked round with enquiring efficiency.
'Right, where do you want to start? What did you see yesterday when Dad showed you round?'
'He took me on a tour of the house, but so quickly it was difficult to take it all in,'Matt admitted, surveying the scene with a hint of amused distaste. 'I think I'd interrupted his milking routine. I saw plenty of old oak, some of it Charles I, but presumably none of you wants the actual furniture hauled off to auction. I gathered your father was hoping some small, easily removable item might prove worth a fortune. Which is always possible, of course.'
He walked over to the door, leading into the passage up to the front of the house, and hesitated. The doorway was narrow, the passage sloping with age.
'Maybe if I start by checking the paintings and china cabinets.'
'Follow me.' Victoria led the way along the uneven passageway, dark with its seventeenth-century oak panelling, and ushered him into the seldom used drawing-room with a dramatic flourish.
'The silver's in that sideboard. China over there, at least the bits Mother obviously prized are. The rest of it, a few jugs, dishes, and so on, are either in the sideboard there or in the cupboards in the kitchen, I should think.'
She paused, watching Matt swiftly assessing the contents of the room with obvious expertise.
'Of course, there are hundreds of pictures.' She gestured to the walls, plastered and whitewashed and dimming with age, and the yellowing evidence of pipe smoke. There were pictures everywhere, every shape and size, in sets of four or six, in carved gold frames and plain wooden ones.
'It's the same in every room,' she added, grinning. Matt nodded, his expression businesslike, and she left him to it while she went back to the kitchen to tackle the mess. Mrs Bunting, Father's housekeeper, was no doubt suffering with 'her leg' again, thought Victoria, making a mental note to persuade Dad to replace her with someone more reliable. Maybe Jessica’s Mira might like some extra work. Since Mum's death, the farmhouse was more and more resembling a pigsty. Unless in his morose determination to be left alone he preferred living in this squalor to having some efficient person fussing around him. That was probably the explanation.
She was lost in thought, sleeves rolled up, with a navy-blue and white spotted apron of her mother’s enveloping her, thinking sadly how spotless the farmhouse had always looked when Mum was alive, when Matt came back into the kitchen. He held a patterned jug.
'Any luck?'
He shrugged, his dark face unreadable. 'There's an interesting Mildred Butler watercolour, which should fetch several thousand.'
Her jaw dropped, and she pulled off the apron impatiently.
'Several thousand? For a watercolour? Which one do you mean?'
'The garden, with the cat on the path. It's in good condition, for 1898; the colours are still unfaded. It hasn't been hung in direct sunlight. And the Irish school is very popular at the moment, with the Americans particularly,' he said concisely, then, seeing her disbelieving expression, added, 'Art is my speciality. I do know what I'm talking about.'
'Oh, yes. Jessica told me you draw or paint yourself. What kind of thing do you do?'
'Not very much, these days,' he said dismissively, holding up the small jug in his hand, shaped like an eighteenth-century coffee-pot but made of china. 'I'm also interested in this. Is there any more of it around?'
Victoria went to examine the jug. 'I'm not sure. I seem to remember seeing some more like this, but I can't remember where. It doesn't look terribly special, does it!' She pulled a face at the chipped spout, and another chunk missing from the lid. 'There could be an old vase like this in the chest on the landing. I'll show you.'
She led Matt up
the creaking oak stairs to the first-floor landing. The floorboards on the landing were uncarpeted, and usually highly polished, but Mrs Bunting's recent absence was in evidence everywhere, however, and a layer of dust dulled the shine.
Kneeling down by the intricately carved wooden chest, her long red curls tumbled over her face, Victoria lifted the lid. The interior revealed a motley assortment of ornaments, vases, some with crumbling bits of green oasis spilling out, and pieces of heavily tarnished brass and copper someone had tired of cleaning. But she had obviously been mistaken about the bird-patterned china.
'Is there anywhere else worth looking?'
Victoria frowned, shaking her head slowly. 'I can't think of anywhere. We could ask Dad, of course. Don't tell me that tatty thing is worth anything?'
'On its own, probably a four-figure sum, I should think,' Matt said casually, ignoring her shocked gasp, turning the jug over in his lean, brown hands. 'It's cream ware, made in the Derby area at a place called Cockpit Hill.' He pointed to the flowers and birds on it. 'Hand-painted, about mid 1700s. If your mother had a set, and we could find any more, you could be talking about a considerable sum at auction.'
'I can't believe it. The strangest things seem to be valuable. That nondescript watercolour, now this chipped little jug.' She dimpled up at Matt. 'You know you said yesterday you had no love of the past. But you do love antiques, otherwise you wouldn't do what you do.' She frowned at him, consideringly, then said, 'But antiques aren't the same as people, I suppose, are they? Objects, not people.' She watched how he held the jug, with care and respect, and laughed suddenly. 'Put it down quickly, before you drop it!'
Matt stood it carefully back on a chest of drawers opposite, and met her eyes with a rare glimmer of laughter. Victoria felt the same breathless suspension of motion again, as if Matt's smile somehow drew her into another dimension, where present activities and present time were meaningless, there was only his smile, and her own chaotic jumble of emotions in response to it.
He broke away from her eyes, and looked past into a room beyond. Glancing over her shoulder, she laughed shakily.
'My old bedroom,' she confessed, straightening up, and pushing the door wider open. 'Come and meet Grunt, since you're the expert on antiques.'
An enormous, stern-looking teddy with a very long nose sat in splendour on her pillow, the felt pads coming loose at feet and paws, revealing stuffing, his luxuriant fur now patchy. He wore a red and white spotted tie and nothing else.
Victoria picked him up, and Matt raised an eyebrow in sardonic amusement.
'This has to be Grunt.'
'Yes, it is. Listen.' She tipped him backwards, then forwards again. The bear uttered a gruff, comical sound, a cross between a groan and a growl. Victoria beamed at Matt. 'See? Isn't he adorable?'
'Very impressive,' said Matt absently, taking Grunt from her and turning him over thoughtfully, fingering a large hump at the nape of his neck, and then parting the fur on one ear to reveal a small black stud. 'And also very valuable.'
'Grunt, valuable? He's falling to pieces!'
Matt shook his head. 'He must be over eighty years old. Turn of the century. Bears like this are collectors' items. Did he belong to your grandparents?'
She nodded. 'My mother's mother,' she agreed. 'But if Grunt is valuable, I don't want to know how much he's worth! And for God's sake, don't tell my father either. I couldn't part with him!'
She smiled at Matt as she took the teddy from him, and sat him back on her pillow. 'I've always thought that one day I'll pass him on to my own children.'
She trailed off, and Matt didn't say anything. The silence unfolded between them again. A shaft of sun was aiming its light at them through the open window, and dust motes shimmered in the air. It was suddenly very quiet in and around the old house, a rare lull in the endless clatter of activity on the farm. Apart from the distant, far-off whirring of the combine harvesters, audible across the fields in the clear air, only the slight, settling sounds of the ancient timbers of the house broke the silence. Victoria was aware of Matt, aware of the warmth of his body as he stood close to her by the bed, the slight fan of his breath on her cheek, and aware that the fragile tension of yesterday was returning with a new urgent expectancy. The world around her faded into a void, a world apart from this fierce, fluttering compulsion inside her, and the strong emotion she felt sure was mirrored in Matt's grey eyes.
'Matt,can I…'
'I think we should be…'
They had both begun speaking at once, and stopped again, Victoria laughing slightly, Matt remote and still. With a slight sigh, almost a sob of frustration, she threw her hair back from her forehead and took a determined step closer.
'Will you think I'm crazy if I tell you that you have the strangest effect on me?' she whispered huskily. She could hardly believe she had spoken the words. She stared up at his face, catching the merest flicker of emotion in the steel-grey eyes before he seemed to freeze, motionless, in front of her.
'Matt, will you do something for me?' she breathed, almost involuntarily, her voice feather-soft, a mere whisper on an out-breath. 'Will you kiss me?'
She stood her ground, her body rigid with tension, every nerve straining towards him yet almost unaware of it, not even fully aware of the taut frailty of her feelings or her unthinkable vulnerability.
The charged silence seemed to go on for ever. With a slight shrug, a mocking half-smile as if he had decided to humour a child, he bent his head and kissed her, very lightly, on the lips.
Chapter Six
She closed her eyes. Matt's mouth felt cool and hard, and the kiss was casual, but somehow she was drowning in sensation. Ripples of reaction from the chaste touch of their lips spread through every inch of her body, weakening and melting her and bringing a rush of response so intense it made her feel dizzy.
Matt began to draw away, but she involuntarily reached her hands up and buried her fingers in the clean, silky feel of his hair, moaning softly as she pressed herself instinctively closer to him. Matt's whole body seemed to become tense, and with a muffled exclamation he thrust her away from him slightly, and through dazed, half-closed eyes she saw an expression of such cynical contempt it brought her to her senses with a sharp shock. But before she could retreat, he slid his fingers into her hair, just above her ears, and ran his thumbs down her cheeks to tilt her chin ruthlessly upwards, and still with that sardonic, icy distaste in his eyes he brought her hard against him, raking a hand down her spine to mould her hips to his powerful thighs.
Heat flooded through her, and she gave a frantic wriggle to escape, but then his mouth crushed hers, forcing her lips apart, his tongue invading the inner recesses of her mouth with powerful urgency.
Her struggles had little effect, in fact they seemed to inflame things even more, and then the pressure subtly altered, from punishment to caress, from rough assault to an intoxicating, mindless pleasure, alluring, consuming her in its heat, promising a world of sensuous exploration just waiting for her to enter.
Matt released her brusquely, almost pushing her away from him so that she stumbled, and sat back on the bed, staring up at him furiously. She was panting as if she had run a race.
She drew a ragged breath, and summoned every ounce of self-control to give a shaky but commendably flippant laugh.
'Well! I suppose that's known as getting what you ask for.'
With a hand that was not quite steady, she touched her mouth, and when she looked at her fingers she saw blood.
Matt swore fiercely under his breath, and dug into his pocket. He produced a clean, dazzlingly white, pressed handkerchief, shaking it open and handing it to her sombrely.
'Victoria. I'm sorry.'
'Please don't apologise,' she said politely, eyeing the tiny crimson spots on the fresh white linen with a kind of interested horror. 'I should apologise. Imagine being so silly as to imagine I've fallen in love with a man who finds me physically repulsive!' The moment she had said it, she wished the floor
would open and swallow her up. Matt's broad shoulders visibly stiffened.
There was an insistent, irritating stinging in her eyes, and she angrily brushed the back of her hand across her eyes.
'Victoria, please don't cry.'
Matt sounded distant, his voice remote as though he wished himself elsewhere, preferably miles away, she thought miserably.
'I'm not crying,' she retorted fiercely, beginning also to wish herself a hundred miles away.
To her consternation, Matt suddenly seemed to break free of the frozen, rigid stance he had adopted, and he moved to sit beside her on the bed. The hard lines of his face were still unreadable, his expression mask-like, but at least his voice was slightly more gentle when he spoke.
'Victoria, listen to me. You're not in love with me. And I don't find you physically repulsive. Quite the opposite.'