Woman at Willagong Creek

by Hart, Jessica

‘There’s a possibility.’ Jane hesitated. ‘I’ve tendered for the restoration and rebuilding work at Penbury Manor.’

  ‘What, not the ghastly company that’s going to build all over the rose garden?’

  She scowled. It might be a joke to him, but it wasn’t to her. ‘I didn’t have much choice,’ she said defensively. ‘We’ve got a few small jobs at the moment, but when they’ve finished I’ve got nothing to offer the men. I hate the idea of ruining Penbury Manor, but it would give them steady work, and at least I’d be able to stop worrying about money for a while.’

  Lyall was watching her with an oddly intent expression. ‘So for the time being you’re stuck in Penbury? Still, at least you can’t say that you didn’t have the opportunity to escape, can you?’

  The narrow space between them jostled with memories. ‘Let’s go,’ Lyall had said. ‘We’ll go to London, to America, anywhere. There’s a big world outside Penbury, Jane. We’ll see it together.’ His words echoed as if he had shouted them again. Jane stared desperately at the wet road ahead.

  ‘Perhaps I look on it as not having made a terrible mistake,’ she said.

  ‘Is that how you look at it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jane firmly, not looking at him, and forgetting all the lonely nights when she had imagined the places she might have seen and the things she might have done if she had gone with Lyall when he’d asked her.

  There was a tiny pause. ‘Well, as long as you’re happy, that’s the main thing,’ Lyall said lightly.

  ‘Exactly,’ she said, relieved that he wasn’t going to pursue the subject.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Am I what?’

  ‘Happy.’

  Jane set her teeth. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said tightly, turning a little too sharply down into the village. Lyall probably thought that she had been miserable for the last ten years! ‘I’m very happy. Extremely happy, in fact!’

  ‘Apart from the fact that your firm’s on the brink of ruin?’ To Jane’s fury, that hateful undercurrent of laughter was back in his voice.

  ‘I was thinking personally rather than professionally,’ she said with a cold look.

  ‘So why haven’t you married?’ he asked. ‘I hear there’s been no shortage of suitors. The word in the pub is that you’re going out with some solicitor from Starbridge called Eric or something.’

  ‘Alan,’ Jane corrected him frostily.

  Lyall glanced across at her. ‘Is he the reason you’re so extremely happy?’

  ‘One of them,’ she said, not entirely truthfully. Still, it wouldn’t do Lyall any harm to think that there were plenty of men who made her happier than he ever had.

  ‘Why don’t you marry him if you’re so happy together, then?’

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ she said in an attempt to sound quelling, but it didn’t seem to have much effect on Lyall.

  ‘Still too scared to commit yourself?’ he taunted, and Jane stiffened.

  ‘That’s good coming from you!’

  ‘I choose not to commit myself,’ said Lyall. ‘And I don’t pretend that I ever will. You, on the other hand, used to talk a lot about commitment, but when it came down to it, you couldn’t bring yourself to take the risk, could you?’

  Jane’s face tightened as she remembered just why she hadn’t gone with Lyall when he had asked her. Had he really forgotten Judith and that terrible argument they had had before he left? ‘I had my reasons,’ she reminded him bleakly and he looked coolly back at her.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The trouble is that they were all the wrong ones.’

  It was a relief to reach Penbury at last. A typical Cotswold village, it had a pub facing the green, a poky shop with a post office crammed in one corner, and a fourteenth century church guarded by an enormous yew tree. Around these three focal points clustered the picturesque cottages built of golden-grey stone, while the newer houses were banished to the fringes of the village, trailing out along the lanes.

  Lyall didn’t appear to notice the view. He was still watching Jane’s face. ‘Come and have a drink,’ he said as she drew up outside the pub.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said stiffly. ‘I promised I’d go and see Miss Partridge.’

  ‘Later, then?’ The momentary coolness had vanished. The dark blue eyes were glinting, just as they used to, and his smile was as tantalising as ever.

  Jane steeled herself against it. Lyall had always thought that all he had to do was smile and he would get his own way. It had worked before, but it wasn’t going to work this time. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We said all we had to say to each other ten years ago,’ she said, looking determinedly away from his smile. ‘I think it would be sensible to leave it at that.’ And then she made the mistake of looking at him as he laughed.

  ‘Jane,’ he said. Only he had been able to say her name just that way, rippling with amusement and tender as a caress. ‘Sensible Jane, you haven’t changed at all!’

  Reaching across, he ran a careless finger down her cheek. ‘But thank you for the lift.’

  And then he was gone, the door banging behind him as he ran for the shelter of the pub, and Jane was left staring hopelessly at the rain, her heart awash with memories and her cheek still burning from his touch.

  Has Lyall really changed? And will Jane risk her heart again? Find out at Legally Binding!

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