by Penny Jordan
She closed her eyes, and tried to visualise Peter behaving as Carter had. Sweeping her into his arms, kissing her with the same strong male passion, turning her body into molten heat, making her want him so much that she began to make soft, sweetly pleading noises beneath his mouth.
Perhaps there was something wrong with her imagination, she decided dispiritedly five minutes later, opening her eyes and bitterly admitting that she just could not visualise Peter and herself in such a situation.
But she did love him. Of course she did. And he loved her, and they were going to be married.
And tomorrow morning she would pretend she had overslept and that way with a bit of luck she wouldn’t have to face Carter again until after he came back from his auction. By that time she was sure she would be in a much more sensible frame of mind. Back to her normal self.
It was only later when she crawled into bed, feeling more confused and unhappy than she could ever remember feeling in her life, that she wondered miserably if she would ever be her old ‘normal’ self again.
A vast chasm seemed to have appeared between the Elspeth with whom she was so familiar and whom she thought she knew so well, and this new one, whom she did not know at all, and whom, she was beginning to discover, that part of the old Elspeth which remained found extremely frightening.
The trouble with this new Elspeth was that she had a whole set of emotions, a whole range of awareness and senses that the old Elspeth had never experienced in her life.
The best thing she could do was to somehow or other banish this new Elspeth before she began to get too much of a hold on her, Elspeth decided tiredly. Yes, that was what she must do. Starting with tomorrow, she must firmly force herself back into her familiar, businesslike mould. This new Elspeth must not be allowed to get a hold on her. She was far too disruptive, far too illogical, far too vulnerable. Far, far too vulnerable.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS the warning burr of her parents’ radio alarm that woke Elspeth from her confused and painful dreams to lie disorientated and unrefreshed while she tried to grapple with why on earth she had ever set the alarm for four-thirty. Reluctantly she had to admit that, if she had to wake up at such an unholy hour, she couldn’t have chosen a better morning on which to do so.
The rising sun shone in through the window from a clear pale blue sky, as she discovered once she had forced herself out of bed. It was, she recognised sleepily, going to be a perfect summer’s day.
Long ago memories of distant summers, of waking early so that she could help with some of the farm chores before setting out for school, came back to her so sharply and nostalgically that for a moment, standing in front of the window, breathing in the country-scented air, she forgot how early it was, and remembered only that she had willingly swapped all this to live in a city.
For years she had told herself stoically that she didn’t miss the country, that she preferred the hectic pace of city life, that those who talked nostalgically and enviously of living in the country were thinking only of a picture-postcard countryside which bore no resemblance whatsoever to reality. In winter, country lanes were ankle-deep in mud, country gardens bleak, dank, empty spaces, country houses damp and cold; and yet there were other mornings, crisp with frost when the air was sharply scented with the promise of snow, autumn days when the gales buffeted the trees and dared human beings to challenge their strength, and days like these when a heat haze already misted the distant hills and the air was already warm and scented.
She wasn’t here to daydream about the weather, though—she was here to work. Last night she had told herself it would be the easiest thing in the world to simply stay in bed this morning and so avoid having to face Carter, but she had resolutely denied herself that escape route.
She was going to show him that no matter how bitterly she might regret what had happened, no matter how self-contemptuous she might feel, she was not afraid to face him. Like a dose of nasty medicine, the sooner it was over with the better, and hopefully they would be so busy working that she wouldn’t have to do anything more than distantly acknowledge his presence.
She showered and then dressed quickly in a pair of ancient denim shorts and a comfortable, loose T-shirt—clothes which she would never have dreamed of wearing in London, nor in the immaculate suburban garden that belonged to Peter’s parents. In fact these clothes belonged to the years before she had left home for London.
Quickly brushing her hair, and applying some protective moisturiser to her face, she pulled on a pair of shabby trainers and opened her bedroom door.
Was Carter still in bed? Resolutely she walked past the closed bedroom door and went downstairs. As she opened the kitchen door she smelled the freshly made coffee and hesitated in the open doorway, but Carter had already heard her. He turned round, not quite masking his surprise, and then frowning as he looked rather piercingly at her.
She withstood his look as steadily as she could, but her voice wasn’t quite as easy to control as she said shakily, ‘You did say you wanted an early start this morning!’
‘Yes, but I didn’t mean that you had to join us.’
‘That’s what I’m here for,’ she told him grimly. If privately she was beginning to realise that three days would never have been sufficient for her parents to educate her in all that needed doing just to keep the business ticking over, she was not going to admit as much to anyone else. And especially not to him.
The parrot, for some obscure reason, was whistling the ‘Marseillaise’, but as she approached the table he stopped to comment admiringly, ‘Nice legs.’
When Elspeth glowered at him, Carter told her smoothly, ‘He’s had a rather chequered career. I believe he was about to become the victim of a broken home when your mother rescued him.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Elspeth retorted scathingly, still glowering at the bird, who was now preening himself. ‘I wouldn’t even be surprised if he was the cause of the broken home.’
‘Coffee?’ Carter invited, indicating the filter jug. ‘I’ve had my breakfast, but if you’d like some toast—’
‘If I want toast I’m perfectly capable of making my own,’ Elspeth told him acidly.
Why didn’t he just go away and leave her alone? He must realise how uncomfortable she felt with him now, how—how mortified and embarrassed. Just because he was behaving as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened it didn’t mean that she found it as easy to put last night out of her mind. She looked at him suspiciously, wondering if he was deliberately baiting her by behaving so perfectly normally, or was there a more sinister reason behind his apparent pleasantness? Was he concerned that because of last night she might insist on his leaving the house, and in doing so make it more difficult for him to sabotage her parents’ work? She had every right to ask him to go, she reflected bitterly, as she poured herself some coffee, taking care to give him as wide a berth as possible as she walked past him.
His behaviour towards her had been atrocious. There was nothing she would like more than for him to leave, but she dared not confront him; she was too frightened that he might retaliate by claiming that she wanted him to go not because he had kissed her against her will, but because she had wanted him to kiss her.
She knew if he made that accusation that there was no way she could deny it. If he had been a gentleman he would have left without her having to say anything, she thought, tight-lipped, but then if he’d been a gentleman he would never have done it in the first place.
Peter would never in a thousand years have behaved in such a way.
She sipped her coffee and then tensed, as she realised in outrage that it was not gratitude for Peter’s reserve that was colouring her thoughts, but a certain rebellious wistfulness that made her frown angrily and curse her own stupidity.
She was just finishing her coffee when a battered van pulled into the yard, sending the dogs into a frenzy of barking and scattering the scratching hens.
‘That will be John and Simon,’
Carter announced. ‘I’ll leave you to finish your breakfast in peace. No need to hurry.’
No need to hurry because he didn’t want her to see what he might be doing, Elspeth reflected darkly as he opened the back door. She was suddenly discovering that she had an unexpectedly vivid imagination, which relayed to her pictures of her mother’s tender baby carrots and peas, with all their careful organic nurturing, suddenly being sprinkled with some hideous compound of chemical fertilisers designed to ruin her parents’ reputation and their business. And it wouldn’t be that difficult—Carter had said something about watering the crops before they picked them.
Ignoring the faint growling noises from her stomach telling her that a piece of toast would be more than welcome, she finished her coffee, grabbed a pair of her mother’s gardening gloves from the basket beside the door and hurried after Carter.
The yard was empty of dogs and men and, having automatically thrown out a couple of handfuls of grain for the hens as she walked past, Elspeth followed them.
As she approached the greenhouses and the long rows of vegetables and salads growing out in the open, she saw that the sprinklers were already at work watering the crops. While Carter opened the greenhouse windows, the other two men were steadily removing the tunnels of protective plastic from younger rows of crops.
Carter saw her arrive, and came out of the greenhouse towards her, standing so close to her that she was immediately aware of the warm male scent of him. His skin also carried the rich smell of the greenhouse tomatoes, and she had a dizzying thought that if she were to touch his skin now with her mouth it might taste of the warm, ripe fruit.
Love-apples, wasn’t that what the Elizabethans had called tomatoes? She felt her skin suddenly flushing hotly at the direction of her thoughts, unaware of the quick, frowning look Carter gave her as she suddenly stepped hurriedly back from him.
His urgent warning made her freeze, but she had already stepped back on to the rake lying behind her and had started to overbalance.
It was only natural that he should reach out and grab hold of her to steady her, an instinctive and automatically protective gesture that anyone might have made, but the minute his fingers closed round the smooth flesh of her arms she was aware of him so intensely and intimately that she could hardly breathe for the choking ache of need that flared through her whole body.
Her violent, ‘Don’t touch me,’ was borne out of her own shocked fear that he would see just how much she ached for exactly the opposite, but he reacted to it immediately, letting go of her arm as though her flesh burned him—or disgusted him, she thought tormentedly.
She felt sick and dizzy, oddly light-headed as though she had been standing out in the sun for too long, filled with unwanted yearnings and needs.
‘Where do you want us to start, Carter?’
Neither of them had heard John approaching, and Elspeth turned away instinctively as Carter looked away from her; she hid her face in the shadows, terrified of what anyone might read in it.
‘Er—I think we’d better start with the carrots, and then there’s the peas.’
‘I’ll do those,’ Elspeth offered quickly. Anything, anything to get away from Carter, to be somewhere where she didn’t have to look at him.
He gave her a brief nod in acceptance of her offer, apparently as reluctant to look at her as she was to look at him.
As she walked away from him, she was conscious of a certain stiffness in her movements, a deep and desperate tension within her body.
Picking peas might not be the most mentally challenging task in the world, but it was certainly therapeutic, she acknowledged ten minutes later, surprised and pleased by how quickly she had discovered the forgotten rhythms of her childhood, the forgotten instructions of her mother, so that she was automatically discarding those pods that were as yet too small, swiftly developing a skill which had her basket soon filled and another started.
As she worked doggedly among the peas, refusing to turn round and look for Carter, she tried to tell herself that what she was experiencing was just some kind of aberration—a form of pre-marital nerves.
Only she wasn’t the nervy type, and she and Peter had still not yet finally set a date for the wedding. So what was wrong with her? Why was she experiencing these unfamiliar longings, these disruptive needs which had never previously featured in her life?
‘Everything OK here?’
She tensed, her hand trembling as she heard Carter’s voice behind her. Resolutely refusing to turn round or to acknowledge the soft, almost caring note in his voice, she kept her back to him and said curtly, ‘Yes.’
She could still feel his presence behind her, as though he was waiting for something. The skin at the back of her neck prickled dangerously. Suddenly sweat broke out on her skin. The heat of the sun, she told herself chokily, even though before Carter’s arrival its early morning warmth had not bothered her at all.
‘Elspeth.’
Her muscles locked. If he touched her now, if he placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her round to face him, if he looked into her eyes, searched her face…if he bent his head until she could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin. He would taste of toothpaste and coffee; his mouth would be warm and male and the taste of it would make her go faint and dizzy with pleasure.
‘Elspeth, are you all right?’
She realised sickly that she was actually swaying towards him, that her body, already visibly aroused by her own thoughts, was yearning towards him as though to the pull of a magnet.
‘You shouldn’t have got up so early. There was no need,’ she heard Carter saying roughly. ‘You aren’t used to this kind of life. I should never…’
It was too much. Something inside her suddenly snapped and she turned on him and said shakily, ‘You should never have kissed me—is that what you were going to say? Well, you’re quite right, you should not, and I wish more than anything else in the world that you had not, but if you think that just because you did kiss me that I’m incapable of doing anything other than swooning at your feet in gratitude then think again. And now, if you wouldn’t mind leaving me alone, perhaps I could get on with what I’m doing.’
She saw that he was staring at her as though he’d never really seen her before, and no wonder, she thought numbly. She was behaving like a virago, like a fool, like a woman in love. A woman in love.
She felt the rush of sensation burn through her, heard the distant sound of a car arriving, heard the bark of the dogs and the confusion of car doors opening, but it all seemed to be happening on another level, in another place. She was incapable of doing anything other than standing transfixed while she tried to grapple with her own confused thoughts. A woman in love. Well, that was what she was, wasn’t she? She was in love with Peter.
Only she and Peter had always said seriously and firmly that they were not ‘in love’; that being ‘in love’ was not a state they desired. They were good friends, they cared deeply for one another, and when they married their marriage would be successful because it was not confused by emotions that might ultimately fade. People in love were people who were suffering a kind of madness.
A kind of madness…was that it—was she going mad? She looked at Carter with bewildered, anguished eyes, but he was already looking away from her and saying quickly, ‘I must go. Someone’s just arrived.’
Someone had, as Elspeth saw—a slender blonde woman was hurrying towards them, her face breaking into a warm smile as she spotted Carter.
‘Carter, how wonderful to see you!’ she called out eagerly. ‘You’re very naughty, you know. You promised to come over for dinner and you still haven’t done. I’m dying to show off my new house to you. I’m glad now that I offered to come over this morning and collect our stuff. Is it ready now or am I too early?’
Elspeth turned back to her peas, not wanting to watch Carter returning the blonde’s comments. Not wanting to see what? Carter taking another woman in his arms, kissing her as he had kissed�
� But no—she wasn’t going to allow her thoughts to stray down that road, not again. It was too painful, too self-revealing, too dangerous.
In the distance she could still hear the woman talking to Carter, her light, flirtatious tones mingling with his deeper, very male voice. She laughed, the sound setting Elspeth’s teeth on edge.
They were coming towards her, she recognised, desperately trying to lose herself at the back of the pea sticks.
‘So you won’t forget. We’re expecting you for dinner just as soon as Kate and Richard get back.’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Carter assured her.
We… Elspeth’s heart thumped. Did that mean the woman was married? If so, what was she doing flirting so outrageously with Carter? she wondered fiercely.
‘Oh, and good luck with the auction this afternoon.’
They were moving away again. Thank goodness. Elspeth didn’t want to see them together, didn’t want to see the other woman’s hand resting possessively on Carter’s tanned arm, didn’t want to see Carter turning towards her, smiling at her.
She bit her lip sharply, trembling with the force of her own emotions. Unwanted emotions, ridiculous emotions, emotions she had no right to feel.
* * *
By eleven o’clock Elspeth was exhausted. She had just watched what Carter had said was the last of their customers drive away, and now the men, apparently as full of energy as they had been at five o’clock, were turning to study the depleted rows of produce, while Carter arranged which seedlings were to be transferred from the nursery beds to form fresh new rows.
‘Why don’t you go in?’ he suggested to her, when the two men had moved away. ‘It’s hot out here, and you aren’t…’