by Penny Jordan
‘Aren’t what?’ she demanded fiercely, her eyes daring him to suggest that her strength was less than his.
‘Aren’t used to working outside in this kind of heat,’ he told her calmly. ‘At the very least you ought to be wearing a hat of some sort.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Look, I’ve got to be at this auction at two. Why don’t we stop now and have an early lunch? You could come with me if you like.’
Go with him. Elspeth stared at him, wondering what on earth had prompted such an invitation. ‘I can’t,’ she told him stiffly. ‘I…I promised I’d ring Peter.’
It wasn’t true and there was no way he could know that she was lying, and yet the way he looked at her made her feel that somehow he did.
‘Besides,’ she added feverishly, ‘you said you’d be gone for most of the afternoon and everything will need watering, especially with this heat.’
‘Not until later.’
She turned back to her self-imposed task of checking the growth of the new rows of peas, and said as casually as she could, ‘You go on ahead. I’m not hungry yet.’
It was a lie—her stomach had been noisily reminding her for the last hour that she hadn’t had any breakfast, but the last thing she felt capable of enduring right now was an intimate lunch with Carter.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw his mouth tighten as though he was contemplating arguing with her, and then to her relief he turned on his heel and walked away from her.
He had been gone less than half an hour when she was forced to acknowledge that he had been right and that the combination of no breakfast, hard physical work, and a very hot sun had produced not only a poundingly sick headache, but also a weak, shivery feeling that she very much feared heralded the onset of heat-stroke. But much as she longed to go back to the house and lie down in the coolness of a shaded bedroom, her pride would not allow her to return while Carter was still about.
The auction didn’t start until two. That meant he probably didn’t need to leave until one. It was eleven-forty-five now, and the sun was getting hotter and stronger by the minute.
She glanced across to where the two men were busily engaged in planting out new rows of carrots and lettuce, their steady, purposeful movements indicative of experience and skill. The low murmur of their voices seemed to buzz disorientatingly in her ears. There was nothing she wanted more than to lie down somewhere cool—yes, there was, she acknowledged thirstily. She wanted a drink…ice-cold, clear water… The more she thought about it, the greater her thirst became. All she needed to do was to stop work and to walk the short distance back to the house. That was all she needed to do.
But if she did that Carter would see her, and for some obscure reason it had become extremely important to her that she stayed here until he had gone.
But how could she? The minutes seemed to crawl by, and she felt more and more peculiar with every one of them, and then unbelievably, as though in answer to a silent prayer, she suddenly heard the kitchen door open, and turned round just in time to see Carter getting into her mother’s small red car which he then backed out of the yard.
He had gone. She could go back to the house. For several seconds she stood where she was, watching the lane, holding her breath, half expecting to see him come driving back. But when five and then ten minutes had passed without him doing so, she expelled a shaky breath, and as slowly and carefully as though her body were made of fragile glass she headed back to the house.
Once inside the kitchen she turned on the cold water tap, and leaned heavily against the sink unit while she waited for it to run icy cold. She felt vaguely sick now, shivery as well, and the pain in her head had intensified to the point where she could scarcely see. Her hand shook as she filled a glass with water. She drank it greedily and then drank another. What she needed was to go and lie down for half an hour. But first she had to find something to ease this headache.
She found some tablets in her mother’s bathroom and took two of them and then for good measure another two, before stripping off her clothes and going to lie down on the blessedly cool eiderdown.
It was bliss not to move, and even more bliss not to have the full heat of the sun pounding down on her unprotected head. Dizzily she acknowledged that she ought to have made herself some lunch, but the thought of food was now totally nauseating. All she needed was a couple of hours’ sleep—that would soon make her feel better. She wasn’t used to getting up at five o’clock in the morning any more. In London there was no need for such early country rising. She turned restlessly on the large bed. The bed in her flat was a small single. For some reason her parents’ bed seemed to intensify that nagging ache of aloneness, of isolation, which seemed to shadow her constantly these days.
As she drifted off to sleep she reflected that it would be nice to have someone to share a large double bed with, someone solid and masculine, someone with tanned, muscled forearms, and warm, teasing amber eyes…
Someone like Carter. No, not Carter, she corrected herself drowsily, but it was already too late—her imagination had furnished his image so clearly for her that when she turned on her side with a sleepy smile it was Carter she was mentally visualising next to her and not Peter, the man it ought to have been.
She woke up with a start, conscious of cramp in her shoulder muscles, a dull ache in her temples and the inevitable soreness and stiffness of muscles unused to so much outside physical activity.
Moving reluctantly, she glanced at her watch. Five o’clock. Without knowing how she knew, something about the quality of the house’s stillness told her that Carter hadn’t returned.
She had no idea how much property was being auctioned and had not thought to ask him when he would return, and as she cautiously climbed off the bed, wincing as her sore muscles protested, she told herself that it was a relief to have the house to herself, that she would be more than glad if he chose not to return at all.
She had a bath rather than a shower, hoping the warmth of the water and a generous handful of her mother’s bath salts might do something to release the ache from her body.
She still felt physically drained, and very hungry. The dogs would need feeding, she reminded herself as she dressed in a clean T-shirt and her jeans, and so would the rest of the livestock. Since Carter had not seen fit to tell her when he was returning, she suspected she would have to undertake these tasks herself.
It was only when she had finished feeding the goats and checked their tethers that she noticed the newly planted rows of vegetables wilting under the still hot sun. Frowningly she studied them. They needed watering. Carter had told her he would attend to this chore when he got back, but she wasn’t a helpless Victorian clinging-vine, incapable of doing anything for herself. She would show him that she was just as capable of doing this task as he. Purposefully she hurried over to the greenhouse, fixing the hosepipe to the outdoor tap and carrying the reel as far as the newly planted beds, where she fastened a sprinkler bar to the pipe and set it firmly in the middle of the area she wanted to water.
Returning to the tap she turned it on and watched with some satisfaction as cooling jets of water, glittering like diamonds in the still-strong sunshine, fell on the thirsty plants. She stayed for a few minutes to check that the sprinkler was working properly and then went back indoors.
There was still no sign of Carter, and she was far too hungry to wait and see if he returned before having something to eat. Besides, why should she wait for him after all? He meant nothing to her, nor she to him. Maybe he had asked her to go with him this afternoon, but he must have had an ulterior motive—he couldn’t possibly have wanted her company. Not when he had women like this morning’s blonde breathlessly hanging on his every word, she reflected sourly.
She took some eggs from the larder, and broke them into a bowl, discovering as she beat them that she was doing so with a lot more gusto than the task required. Scrambled eggs on toast, a cup of coffee and some fruit. Wonderful.
As she made the scrambled eggs, she
acknowledged wryly that Peter would have shown scant enthusiasm for such fare. If Peter had a vice it was that he liked to be seen wining and dining in the right places, and by ‘right places’ Peter meant the kind of places where he could make the right kind of prestigious business contacts. Sometimes she winced a little to hear him boasting of having dined at the next table to such and such a person, although she had noticed that when he related these incidents to his parents his mother always smiled approvingly, quite plainly delighting in what she was being told. Was it only her perhaps too-critical ear that caught the note of almost pompous self-conceit with which Peter related the over-rich menus, the variety of wines and the highly inflated prices that went with them? She herself much preferred simple food. There were even occasions when she actually invented excuses to prevent her from accompanying Peter on some of his many business dinners, she acknowledged guiltily as she spooned the eggs on to her warm toast and carried the plate over to the table.
Her head was still aching threateningly, and although the sky was clear outside she hadn’t forgotten that Carter had said thunderstorms were forecast.
If and when it came she hoped it was at night, when she could safely bury her head under the bedclothes and cower there unseen. It wasn’t so much the thunder that terrified her but the lightning. Peter had told her very caustically what he thought of this childish fear, refusing to even listen when she had tried to explain that it was an uncontrollable as it was irrational.
Her parents were far more understanding, and she knew that her father tended to blame himself for it because he had had to leave her alone in that long-ago storm when the lightning had struck and destroyed the oak tree, while he’d rescued a cow which had got herself caught on some barbed wire.
Her meal eaten, she washed up and poured herself a second cup of coffee. She still felt drained and drowsy, her head tightly banded with tension. She wanted to rest, but her thoughts wouldn’t let her, driving her to pace the kitchen, stopping constantly to stare out of the window, almost as though she was willing her mother’s car to suddenly materialise in the yard with Carter at the wheel.
Which was ridiculous. All she had wanted from the moment she’d arrived and found him here was for him to leave. And now that he had done, albeit only temporarily, she was so restless and edgy that anyone would think she actually missed him.
She had just finished her second cup of coffee and was reluctantly beginning to think that Carter wasn’t going to return until later when she heard the sound of a car and saw the bright red bodywork of her mother’s convertible coming down the lane.
For some obscure reason, instead of staying where she was in the kitchen she hurried upstairs. She didn’t want to give Carter the impression that she was hanging around waiting for him, she told herself firmly. Because, of course, she wasn’t doing that. It was just that she had become so used to him being around that she was conscious of his absence.
She heard the car stop and then seconds later the kitchen door open, but when she heard Carter bellowing her name like an enraged bull she stared at the closed bedroom door as though unable to believe her ears.
It wasn’t until she heard him pounding upstairs that she actually moved, opening the bedroom door at the same moment as he banged impatiently on it.
‘Oh, there you are,’ he said unnecessarily. He was breathing hard and he looked absolutely furiously angry, she recognised.
‘Oh, dear. Didn’t you get the farm?’ she asked him, immediately suspecting the cause of his fury, but to her surprise he gritted,
‘Yes, I got it. What the devil are you playing at, Elspeth? I presume it was you who put that sprinkler on, wasn’t it?’
Elspeth stared at him, totally confused both by his anger and his question. ‘Of course it was me,’ she assured him. ‘I went out, saw that those poor plants were wilting in the full heat of the sun and naturally I put on the sprinkler. You did say that you would be back in time to do the watering, but—’
‘I am back in time,’ he told her gratingly, and then burst out as though completely unable to stop himself, ‘My God, don’t you know anything—and you a farmer’s daughter? You never—repeat—never water anything when it’s in full sunlight.’
Elspeth stared at him, the words of rejection burning on her tongue until suddenly too late, from out of the past, she heard her mother’s soft voice explaining gently to her as a child why plants should only be watered when they were in the shade.
It was a novice’s mistake, inexcusable in someone of her upbringing, and the thought of the potential damage she could have caused made the colour leave her face. ‘I’ll go and turn it off,’ she muttered, too shocked to attempt to defend herself, but Carter stopped her, putting his arm across the open doorway to bar the exit.
‘Oh, no, you don’t. That will only compound your stupidity,’ he told her acidly. ‘The sun’s still on those beds, and if you turn off the water now… The best thing we can do is to leave it on until the sun’s gone and then pray—and I do mean pray—that no harm’s been done. Turn off the water now and we’ll lose the whole lot with leaf-burn.’
He was furious with her, scornfully, acidly, bitterly angry, and she couldn’t really blame him and yet…and yet…had she been this morning’s pretty, flirtatious blonde, she doubted that he would have spoken to her so contemptuously. He was right, though, she ought to have remembered, to have known better, and she dreaded to think what she would have cost her parents if the new crops were damaged. As Carter said, they would just have to pray that no harm had been done.
‘I’m going out to put on the sprinklers in the greenhouses,’ Carter told her shortly.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said awkwardly, suddenly anxious to make amends, to prove that she wasn’t totally useless, and it hurt her far more than she could have believed possible when he turned in the doorway and told her scathingly,
‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
She discovered when he had gone that she was perilously close to tears and that, moreover, her headache had come back with a vengeance. As she went dispiritedly downstairs, somewhere in the distance she heard the first warning rumble of thunder.
That was all she needed, she thought bitterly as she strained her ears, hoping against hope that she had just imagined it. Altogether it had been a horrendous day, and she was only too thankful that it would soon be over. At least if she took herself off to bed with something to read, no more disasters could overtake her, she decided miserably, going into the sitting-room to look along the bookshelves for a suitably soporific novel.
But as she was looking the telephone rang. She picked up the receiver automatically, surprised to hear Peter’s voice on the other end of the line.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he told her, sounding almost nervous. ‘I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to make it this weekend after all.’
CHAPTER NINE
ELSPETH stared disbelievingly at the receiver. ‘But Peter, we arranged—’
‘Look, I know what we arranged.’ He sounded harassed, petulant almost, as though he was both irritated by her and nearly afraid of her. ‘But something else has come up. Mother rang me last night. An old friend of the family, my godmother in actual fact, is coming down from Scotland for the weekend and naturally Mother wants me there. She’s bringing her daughter with her and, as Mother said, it would almost be an insult to them both if I weren’t there, and of course it would hopelessly upset Mother’s dinner-table numbers. She’s invited the Brigadier round to partner my godmother, and—’
‘And you of course will be partnering her daughter,’ Elspeth supplied for him, her voice suddenly acid. ‘I see. And this, of course, is far more important than being here with me, despite the fact that we arranged this weekend weeks ago, despite the fact that I need you here.’
Silence. She bit down hard on her lip, realising shockingly and furiously that she had been betrayed, that as far as Peter was concerned his mother’s wishes, his mother’s needs, were
far more important than her own, that his loyalty and for all she knew his love lay not with her, but with his mother. It was a galling and extremely unpleasant realisation.
Swallowing her anger, she said as calmly as she could, ‘Peter, please, I need you here. I’m sure if you explained to your mother… After all, we are virtually on the point of being married—surely my claims on your time, on your—’
She broke off. She could almost see him twitching, uncomfortably guiltily, shifting almost furtively in the chair by his desk.
‘It’s only one weekend, Elspeth. You know I’m not a country person. Quite honestly I don’t see why you needed to go rushing off to Cheshire in the first place, especially since your parents didn’t even have the decency to delay their departure until your arrival. If you ask me, that stepcousin of yours or whatever he is has them completely under his thumb. If they lose the entire business it will be their own fault. I tried to warn your father over the phone…’
Elspeth stiffened. This was news to her. ‘You did what?’ she asked dangerously.
‘I’ve just told you. I tried to warn them, but of course your father wouldn’t listen.’
‘Peter, we agreed that nothing would be said about that until we had some concrete proof. We agreed.’
‘It was for their own benefit, Elspeth. And look, about this weekend—there’s really nothing to stop you from coming down to the south coast with me. I’m sure Mother would be delighted.’
‘Really? When my presence would put her dinner-table numbers out still further?’ Elspeth enquired with acid sweetness. ‘Peter, I’ve never asked you to do anything for me, but I’m asking you now. Please, please come up to Cheshire this weekend as we arranged.’
She told herself that she wasn’t testing him or their relationship, that this had nothing to do with Carter or that kiss, nor with the deficiencies she was suddenly seeing in her relationship with Peter… It was simply a matter of knowing where she stood with the man she was going to marry. It was not that she wanted to be more important to him than his mother, it was just—it was just that suddenly and sharply she ached for a little less practicality and a lot more passion.