by Lucy Gillen
Pouring out second cups of coffee, Melodie looked
across at John and felt a twinge of impatience for his
continued ill temper. It was a new side to his character that she had not come into contact with before, and not one she liked very much. It seemed incredible that after such short acquaintance he could be acting the way he was because he was jealous, and yet there seemed no other explanation. If that was the reason she must do something about it as soon as she possibly could, for as far as she was concerned their relationship had not yet reached the stage where he had either cause or right to be jealous of anyone.
‘I can’t imagine why you’re making such a big thing about this,’ she told him as she stirred her own coffee. Elbows resting on the table, she looked across at him, her own blue eyes showing the impatience she could not hide for much longer. ‘I’ve told you that Neil doesn’t hold you to blame for whatever happened to Tarquin.’
‘That’s big of him! ‘ He took a gulping mouthful of hot coffee and held the cup between both hands, much more tightly than he needed to. ‘I don’t know why you felt the need to put in a plea for me in any case, Melodie —damn it, the horse fell, he’d know that as well as anyone ! ‘
‘I just tried to help, that’s all.’
‘And then to go riding off with you like—like he was the lord of the manor with every right to carry you off! I could have kicked him—more, I could have taken a poke at him and I darned near did! ‘
‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t, it would have been pointless and rather childish, and it wouldn’t have served any useful purpose at all in the circumstances.’
‘It would have made me feel better! ‘
‘And what about me?’ The impatience she felt was evident in her voice at last, and she thought he took
warning from it, for he leaned across the table and curled his fingers over her hand.
`Melodie, I’m sorry!’ His brown eyes were anxious and questioning and it was very hard not to be affected by them. He shrugged uneasily and shook his head, pulling a wry face at her. ‘I guess that guy gets me into such a lather I can’t think straight!’
It was something that he was backing down and showed signs of recovering his usual affability, but she was troubled by his sudden and open dislike of Neil. Looking down at their entwined hands on the table, she pressed her fingers to his, her voice quiet but undisguisedly curious.
‘I thought you liked Neil, John. You gave me that impression when you spoke to me about him on the day I arrived.’
John’s smile was rueful, making it clear that he was about to confirm her suspicions. ‘But that was before I got so worked up about you, honey. Now I can’t help seeing him as the other man in a triangle situation—and from that angle he doesn’t seem so easy to like.’
It was difficult, much more difficult than she had anticipated, and she did not look at him, but continued to study their clasped hands instead. ‘I wish you wouldn’t see him in that light, John, there’s really no cause for it.’
Her heart was hammering hard suddenly and she could not imagine how this episode was going to end. Neil McDowell had done nothing to encourage her to think of him in any other way than as her rather unwilling host, except for one unexpected kiss—and she had been kissed before.
`No cause?’
John was watching her closely and she shook her
head as firmly as possible to convince him. ‘I can’t imagine why you think there’s anything—like that.’
He watched her for a moment longer, then shook his head slowly, a small tight smile on his mouth. ‘Maybe something about the way he looked at you out there this morning.’ He turned his hand to enfold hers even more tightly, and his brown eyes were narrowed when he looked across at her, lacking their usual warmth and laughter. ‘And maybe because you took so long telling me about that last ride you took—with him.’
‘John, I told you—’
‘Yeah, yeah, you told me!’
He held her hand tightly, then raised it to his lips suddenly and pressed his mouth to her palm, watching all the time as if he sought her reaction. She did nothing, but simply tried to still the urgent beating of her heart. She didn’t, want to get serious about anyone at the moment, and especially a man she had known only a few weeks, but it was gratifying to have him apparently so deeply attached to ‘her, and she could not help feeling a certain satisfaction.
Looking across at him, she scanned his ruggedly attractive face for a second or two. ‘I don’t know what you think has—happened, John, but—’
‘No, don’t!’ He raised himself from his chair and. leaned across the table to kiss her mouth, then laughed shortly and rather unsteadily. ‘Don’t give me any explanations, honey. I don’t want to hear them and I don’t have the right to explanations. Most of all I don’t want to quarrel with you, not about McDowell or anybody else. I guess you could say I’m prepared to sign an armistice on any terms, just so you don’t throw me out on my ear ! ‘
‘Oh, John, I wouldn’t do that!’
She was shaking her head, won over without ever being quite sure what the quarrel had been about, or even if they had quarrelled, and John held both her hands in his. His smile looked less tense and the familiar warmth was back in his eyes again as he looked across at her.
‘Promise?’ he asked, and she nodded.
‘Promise.’
CHAPTER FIVE
IT was hard to believe that a month had passed since Melodie first came to Ben Ross; since John Stirling had driven her in his car to meet the man who he said had a reputation for being dour, and who soon hoped to be owner of Ben Ross instead of just its manager.
She looked at the one completed canvas she had done since her arrival and studied it critically. The work was good, and yet somehow she felt she had failed to catch the essential character of the landscape, and it displeased her. Those elusive soft greens and blues, and the mellowness of the countryside, made it exclusive, she felt, and quite unlike anywhere else she had seen, and she had hoped so much to capture it, but not quite succeeded.
For some reason she had more than once felt the temptation to show the completed picture to Neil and seek his opinion of it. He would, she felt, be better able to judge whether or not she had captured the character of the country as well as she had hoped, but an unfamiliar shyness had held her back so far.
With the picture in her hands she studied it with her head on one side and a small frown drawing her brows together. She was never a very good judge of her own work, but the distant view of Glen Ross village from the terrace steps was fair enough, she thought, and the little houses, squat and palely honey-coloured, looked as they did in the reality of the summer sun. The road straggled upwards in the near foreground, hidden for the most part by rowan trees that in autumn, when she was gone, would add the bright red of their berries to the softer hues of the hills and glens.
`Melodie?’
She looked up hastily and put down the canvas she had been studying as she brought herself hastily back to earth. She had heard no sign of anyone approaching—neither the unmistakable crunch of hooves on the gravel drive nor the light knock on the open cottage door, and she stared at the newcomer for a moment with the dazed look of absence still in her eyes.
A pale blue cotton top hung loose above a pair of well worn jeans, and her black hair showed that she had run her hands through it over and over while she tried to form a judgment of her work, and Neil took it all in in one searching survey as he stood in the doorway watching her.
‘I’m sorry.’ Melodie shook her head to dismiss the last remnants of preoccupation and looked across at him curiously. ‘Please come in, Neil, if you don’t mind it being rather untidy.’
He smiled, and it was the same almost miraculous transformation of that rugged face that it always was. ‘Is that not the privilege of the artistic temperament?’ he asked, and Melodie pulled a face.
‘I don’t know about that,’ she demurred, ‘but it’s a
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fact in my case, I’m afraid, I’m not as domesticated as I could be. Though I can cook rather well,’ she added with a hint of mock defiance.
‘Can you now?’ His eyes were warm with laughter. ‘Then I’ll mebbe call on you when Jessie is away visiting her sister! ‘
‘Any time! ‘ It was odd how shy she felt suddenly, and the realisation brought a flush of colour to her cheeks and made her hastily avoid his eyes. ‘Was it to ask me to help out that you came to see me?’
Neil shook his head, serious once more. ‘I brought a letter for you that the postman left at the house by mistake, but I was coming this way, so I’d not to make a special journey.’
As if he feared she might think he had put himself out for her, Melodie thought ruefully, and took the envelope from him, noting absently that it carried an Australian stamp and had been addressed by one of her brothers. ‘Thank you—it’s yet another letter from the family.’
‘You’ll hear from them quite often, I imagine?’ ‘Often enough ‘
It was so difficult to think clearly when he was with her, and even the most commonplace remarks seemed significant when he said them. It was quite easy to see how he might have acquired a reputation for being dour, for he was mostly so serious, and there was an air of reserve about him that did not encourage confidences, yet only seconds before the grey eyes had been warm with laughter, and even now it was obvious that his interest was genuine.
‘They worry about you, no doubt?’ he suggested, and she hesitated to deny it.
‘I don’t think they exactly worry about me,’ she explained, ‘it’s more that they don’t trust me to eat as much as they think I should, or remember to buy things in—as I did when I arrived. You know what families are.’
He nodded solemnly, as if he knew exactly what she meant; although as far as she had heard he had no family ‘Catriona mentioned in the letter you brought with you that you’d not been away from home before and that your family were a little concerned about how you would fare on your own.’
The information was such a surprise to her that Melodie stared at him for several seconds, scarcely able to believe him. ‘You mean—you mean they told—’
‘They apparently suggested to Catriona that if someone this end could see to it that you settled in all —right and looked after yourself while you were on your own, they would be grateful.’
The implication was unmistakable and his matter-of-fact acceptance of it even more surprising. She felt incredibly small suddenly, and rather humiliated, though that was a rather too dramatic reaction, she realised. Just the ·same she felt angry to think that someone like Neil McDowell had been more or less assigned to see to her well-being. A quiet, reserved man who would find the request much more difficult to comply with than someone with a more extrovert nature would have done.
‘I’m—I’m sorry, Neil.’
It was clear that her apology puzzled him, for he was frowning. ‘For what?’
She shrugged, feeling helpless and slightly silly, when she thought of what his reaction must have been in the first instance. ‘It’s rather a nerve to ask a complete stranger to—to act as nursemaid to a grown woman,’ she
said, ‘and I wish Catriona hadn’t passed on the request. It was a quite unnecessary chore to land you with, and I’m sorry.’
A glimmer of that earlier warmth showed for a moment in his eyes, and he was shaking his head slowly at her. ‘I’ve not found it such a chore,’ he denied. ‘You’ve proved well capable of looking after your own interests so far.’
‘Well, of course I am!’
Once more he scanned her flushed face with a slow searching gaze that she found infinitely disturbing. ‘You don’t like to think of me keeping an eye on you, mebbe?’ he suggested.
‘I don’t like to think of anyone keeping an eye on me!’
His wide mouth hinted at a smile once more, and he shook his head as if to admonish her. ‘Nevertheless, I think I’ll not relinquish my role yet awhile—if you don’t mind.’ The rejoinder suggested a sarcasm that she would not have expected of him, and she frowned.
‘I really don’t need looking after, Neil, and I’m sure it isn’t a job you relish!’
There was something in the way he looked at her that brought an unexpected flutter of response from her pulse, and she hastily looked away, even before he spoke. ‘I’ve not found it a particularly arduous chore so far,’ he assured her in his quiet and softly accented voice.
‘Just the same I wouldn’t have thought it was a job you would take to very willingly.’ Her voice was unsteady and a little breathless, and she avoided his eyes at all costs, though it wasn’t easy. ‘You’re not the type to —I mean,’ she hastily corrected herself, ‘you don’t seem to me to be the sort of man who would take on
such a chore with very much enthusiasm.’
Once more she was made aware of a short, significant pause, as if he was watching her, waiting for her to look at him. ‘I think perhaps you’ve been labouring under a delusion concerning me, Melodic,’ he told her. ‘Maybe more than one.’
‘I—I don’t think so.’
‘You claim to know an awful lot about me, it seems ! ‘
‘Oh, but I didn’t mean—I mean I don’t claim to know, you at all well, it’s just that ‘ She shrugged uneasily, her hands spread in a curiously touching gesture of helplessness.
There was a curious air of tension in the little room that she could not account for at all, and she wondered vaguely if Neil was as aware of it as she was herself. She wished, not so much that he would leave her, but rather that the subject might be changed for one that was a little less personal to her. At the same time she could believe that if Neil had set his mind on following something up, her own feelings in the matter were unlikely to be taken into account.
Black Knight, tethered outside the cottage, could hear their voices and shifted restlessly, reminding them of his presence, and to Melodic the reminder brought other occasions to mind. Like the time when she had returned home riding pillion behind Neil, while John trailed them reluctantly on Rusty, leading his injured horse. And later, John’s undisguised jealousy—his suspicion that there was something more between her and Neil than she was prepared to admit.
Neil had perched himself on the edge of the table with one booted foot swinging, and he seemed perfectly at ease, though she was far from being so herself. ‘I seem to remember that at one time you suggested I
cared more for horses than for people, did you not?’
‘And you agreed! ‘ Her response was defensive, almost defiantly so, and she tried, a little dazedly, to remember how they had become involved in such a discomfiting exchange.
‘I believe I told you that I found them more reliable than most people,’ he corrected her with confidence, and she nodded.
‘It—it Was something like that.’
The grey eyes assessed her response and her seeming nervousness for a moment in silence. ‘You assured me then that you understood my reasons perfectly,’ he reminded her. ‘Isn’t that so, Melodie?’
She was rather taken aback to realise that he had quoted her word for word as far as she could recall, and at the time he had implied the necessity to explain her words at some future time. This, she felt, was going to be the moment, and she spread her hands in a curiously helpless gesture of appeal.
‘I might have done,’ she agreed.
How on earth could she tell him what she had learned from John? That she knew about his love for the woman he worked for and had lost to another man. It wasn’t something she could put into words, and she looked at him with an appeal in her blue eyes that besought him not to pursue the subject.
‘You’ve mebbe been—hearing things?’ The soft voice persisted, but she simply nodded and looked down at her feet. Then a long finger slid beneath her chin suddenly and lifted her face, the touch of his hand bringing a tingling flick of excitement to her senses. ‘What tales have you been listening to, Melodie? Something John
Stirling told you?’
‘Not John!’
‘Quick in his defence ! He spoke as quietly as ever, but she detected an unmistakable touch of hardness in his voice. ‘That tells me what I need to know, Melodic! What have you been hearing?’
‘Nothing, I
‘I’d rather you didn’t lie to me ! The finger on her chin gave a short flick upwards and she caught her breath.
She could sense it again—that strangely taut atmosphere that filled the little room like a charge of electricity, and for several seconds Neil sat holding her with her chin supported on his finger while he looked down into her flushed face, dwelling longest on the soft, vulnerable tremor of her mouth.
‘What have you heard about me, Melodie?’
It was incredibly hard not to tell him what John had told her, but she held her impulsive instincts firmly in check. There were enough uneasy meetings between him and John lately, without her making more cause for dissent, so she shook her head as well as she was able.
‘Nothing I didn’t know or—or guess before,’ she insisted, and raised her eyes briefly to see if she was believed.
‘I see.’
He quite possibly did see, all too clearly, Melodie thought, and wished she need not have been the cause of raising such uneasy memories. To Neil the intrusion of strangers into his private affairs would be a more deeply affecting thing than it would to someone less reserved, and she hated to think of herself as an intruder.
He stood up suddenly and for a moment looked down at her in silence, so that she felt herself trembling
like a leaf because of his nearness—the light touch of his arm that barely brushed hers when he moved. ‘Since you already know so much about me,’ he told her in a tight, clipped voice, ‘you’ll maybe already know what it was I came down here to tell you, so I needn’t bother myself!’
‘Oh, Neil, please!’ She cared more that he was angry for the moment than about whatever it was he had to tell her, and she looked at him appealingly with a hand on his arm, its fingers pressed tightly into the firm brown flesh in her anxiety to convince him. Almost without being conscious of doing so, she used her wide blue eyes to persuade him. ‘I promise I haven’t been discussing your private affairs with anyone, please believe me, Neil.’