by Penny Jordan
‘It’s all right…nothing’s actually broken,’ Daniel Hayward was telling her reassuringly. ‘But that was a nasty blow you took, and there’s bound to be some very considerable bruising. Look,’ he offered quietly, ‘why don’t you let me take you home? I’ve got my car outside. Mrs Gillingham has sent someone to fetch the doctor, but I think you’ll feel much more comfortable lying on your own bed than lying here…’
He was so understanding, so concerned, so gentle in the way that he touched her, gently helping her to her feet. She couldn’t ever remember a man treating her like this before, nor herself wanting one to. Almost instinctively she leaned against him, letting him take her slender weight as he guided her towards the door, politely refusing the offers of help showered on them both.
‘I suspect the police will probably want to interview you later,’ he told her gently as he settled her in the passenger seat of an immaculate and brand new Daimler saloon. Her father always drove a Daimler, and she was aware of a certain, unexpected nostalgic yearning for her parents’ presence as he set the car in motion.
The last time she had seen them had been Christmas, when she had paid a reluctant duty visit to her old home. She had been on edge and nervous the whole time she was there—not so much because of her old fear of London’s crowds and anonymity, she had recognised in some surprise, but because of her deep-rooted guilt, and fear that somehow or other her parents would succeed in gently pressuring her into returning to her old life…a life she knew she could no longer tolerate because of the restrictions it placed upon her.
Although the gulf between them saddened her, although she was still consumed with guilt in knowing that she had let them down, she still found her new life immensely fulfilling—immensely satisfying and pleasing in an entirely personal and difficult-to-explain way, other than to say it was as though she had now found a piece of herself which had previously been missing, and that in doing so she had completed her personality, making it whole.
‘Which house is it?’ Daniel Hayward asked her. ‘Mrs G said it was along here somewhere…’
She gathered her thoughts and indicated which house was hers, conscious of the discreet twitching of curtains as he stopped the Daimler outside and then got out.
Her neighbours were elderly and very kind, and would doubtless be all agog with curiosity and shock once they heard what had happened.
It had been idiotic of her to react like that. The man had obviously not been much of a threat after all, but she had panicked remembering…
‘I think I’d better carry you inside,’ Daniel told her easily. ‘You still look pretty groggy.’
She wanted to protest, but she felt too weak, her body fluid and amorphous as he swung her up into his arms. It was only a short distance to her front door, but long enough for her to feel the measured beat of his heart and to register the strength in the arms which held her.
Such intimacy with another human being was alien and unfamiliar to her, and yet beneath the rapid thudding of her pulse, beneath the dregs of fear induced by the attempted robbery, and beneath even the instinctive, defensive coiling of her muscles as they locked in protest against the sensation of being so completely within the physical power of someone else, ran another feeling, slow, golden, like a full and lazy river warmed by a summer’s heat, its flow so deceptively slow that one wasn’t aware of the relentlessness of its strength until it was too late to swim against it.
Her heart seemed to miss a beat and then another; her fingers curled into the roughness of his sweater, and, as though he sensed what was running through her mind and the enormity of her struggle to comprehend the bewildering range of the conflicting emotions she was suffering, he looked at her, the golden eyes calm and gentle, almost as though he knew her fear and was reassuring her.
As he unlocked the door to her house and carried her inside she had the crazy feeling that an intimacy had been born between them that cut through the normal barriers of convention and defensiveness which held the sexes apart. It was as though at some very deep level they had reached out and communicated wordlessly with one another, and that that communication held a silent promise for both their futures. What futures? She was alone, independent, by preference, by choice.
It was odd to hear him ask her quite mundanely, ‘Shall I help you upstairs, or…?’
She shook her head.
‘No…The sofa in the kitchen will be just as comfortable as my bed,’ she told him quickly. ‘It’s through that door.’
He put her down and then announced that he intended to stay with her until the doctor arrived to check her over, softening his statement with a warm smile. In repose his face possessed a hard purposefulness which in other circumstances would have repelled her. It made him look too much like the fiercely competitive and power-hungry men who moved in her parents’ social circle.
The thought disconcerted her, and as he released her he frowned and asked curtly, ‘What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?’
The words seemed to echo warningly inside her, making her shiver with the knowledge of how easily this man could hurt her, and then she looked up at him and saw only the concern softening the harshness of his face, and the anxiety shadowing the clear golden warmth of his eyes.
She shook her head, half marvelling at how at ease she felt with him, almost as though he were an old and valued friend.
But he was a stranger—outwardly at least—and she was perhaps reading more into his kindness than she ought, taking up more of his time than she ought, allowing him far more into her life than she ought.
As she struggled to thank him and offer him an opportunity to leave, he stunned her by taking hold of her hands and holding them firmly within the grip of his own.
‘I’m staying,’ he told her evenly.
His palms were slightly calloused, the strength in his grip reminding her of his maleness. Comforting her. In reality the last thing she wanted was to be left alone to relive the horror of that other time…to remember the choking, destructive horror of the fear she had experienced then. That must be why she felt almost like clinging to him, why she wanted to be with him.
While they were waiting for the doctor he made them both a cup of tea, nodding approvingly when he saw the squat canisters with their differing blends of leaves so much more flavorsome than the dull uniformity of mass-produced tea-bags.
The one he chose, Russian Caravan, was one of her own favourites, drunk piping hot, its taste sharpened with a slice of lemon.
He let her sip hers in silence and then said, complimenting her, ‘I like this room. It’s comfortable…lived in. It has the kind of ambiance I want for my own place.’
Jessica laughed, amused that this obviously wealthy man whose house, even in its present state of dereliction, was far grander than her own small cottage should admire her simple décor.
‘I should have thought for a house like yours you’d have wanted to get in interior designers,’ she commented.
To her surprise he shook his head.
‘No. The house is going to be my home, not a set piece that looks like a photograph out of a glossy magazine. Mind you, I’m a long way from the decorating and furnishing stage as yet. As I discovered this morning, there’s some pretty bad damp damage, and an awful lot of restoration work to be done, simply to bring the fabric of the building up to scratch. At the moment I’m virtually camped out in a couple of rooms.’ He grimaced wryly. ‘I was hoping to get the worst of the repairs over before Christmas, that’s why I’m so damned annoyed with this builder.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been more sensible to stay in London at least until the house is habitable?’ Jessica asked him, curiosity about him overcoming the dull ache in her arm.
‘Sensible, perhaps,’ he agreed. ‘But there comes a time when living and working at the hectic pace demanded by city life begins to pall. My business necessitates my working in the City, but I don’t have to live there. Once I’d made the choice to move out…’ He shrugged meaningfully, and
Jessica guessed that he was a man who, once he had made a decision, seldom changed his mind.
‘Your business…?’ she asked and then hesitated, wondering if her questions were too intrusive. She had never felt anything to match the fierce need she was now experiencing to know everything there was to know about this man. He filled her senses, absorbing her attention to the exclusion of everything else, and these sensations were a phenomenon to her. She found it hard to understand how she, normally so cautious in her dealings with others, could feel so at ease with this stranger, and yet at the same time so keyed up, so buoyed up by his presence that everything in her life now seemed to be coloured by her reactions to him.
She sensed his hesitation in answering her question and flushed uncomfortably. Was she being too pushy, too inquisitive? After all, she had no previous experience to go on—no past relationships in her life to show her how to deal with the sensations he was arousing inside her.
But at last he answered her, his voice oddly sombre as he told her almost reluctantly, ‘I’m an economist. I work in the City.’
An economist. She guessed vaguely that he was probably involved in some way with the stock market, and, knowing how secretive people involved in the sales of stocks and shares sometimes had to be, she felt she could understand his reticence and quickly changed the subject.
‘Quite a few City people have moved out this way recently, although we are a bit off the beaten track. It isn’t unknown for the village to be snowed in in a bad winter,’ she warned him, but he laughed and seemed unconcerned by the threat of not being able to reach the City.
‘What about you?’ he challenged her. ‘I’ve already heard all about your tapestries. In fact, I suspect that the marvellous creation I recently admired hanging on a friend’s wall was designed and made by you, but surely from a selling point of view you’d do better living somewhere, if not central to London, then, say, like Bath, where there’s a thriving interior decoration industry.’
‘I don’t like cities…or crowds,’ she told him shortly. The ache in her shoulder was nagging painfully. ‘I prefer to live somewhere quiet.’
‘And isolated?’ he probed skilfully, the golden eyes watching her as she looked at him in startled defensiveness. ‘It wasn’t so difficult to deduce,’ he told her gently, as though answering her unspoken question. ‘A very attractive and clever young woman living alone in a tiny rural village; a young woman whom it is obvious was not born and bred here, and whose skills have a much wider field of demand than her environs suggest. What happened?’ he asked gently.
Tears clogged her throat. This was the first time anyone had asked her about the past; the first time anyone had seen past her defences and guessed that there was more to her desire to live so quietly than merely a love of the Avon countryside. She wanted to tell him, and yet conversely was afraid to do so. Why? In case he dismissed her fears as trivial and foolish as her parents had done? In case he was embarrassed by them as her London friends had been? Or just in case he simply did not understand the trauma of what she had endured and how it had affected her?
Panic suddenly overwhelmed her, followed by the old dread of talking to anyone about what she had endured—a fear which her doctor told her probably sprang from an atavistic belief that, in somehow refusing to talk about her ordeal, she was succeeding in shutting herself off from it, and that her reluctance to talk about it sprang from a deep-rooted dread that, once she did, her old terror would mushroom and overwhelm her, growing beyond her control to the point where it dragged her down and consumed her.
Her throat muscles locked, her body suddenly tense as she sat crouched on the sofa, defensive and inarticulate, the half of her brain that could still reason knowing that he must be wondering what on earth he had said to spark off such a reaction, and dreading him withdrawing from her.
A sound beyond the room distracted him. He lifted his head, frowning, and then said quietly, ‘I think the doctor has probably arrived. I’ll go and let him in.’
Tactfully he offered to leave her alone with the doctor, but she shook her head, wanting his presence, feeling protected and comforted by it, and yet at the same time feeling guilty, because she was imposing on him.
When she tried to say as much he shook his head and then took hold of both her hands, saying quietly, ‘No, never…I want to stay.’
And then he smiled at her, and in the warmth of his eyes she saw a promise that dazzled and awed her. He shared her awareness of that instant and shocking recognition, that sensation of feeling inexplicably attuned to one another. She had heard of people falling in love at first sight. Was this what had happened to them?
But falling in love was an ephemeral, laughable thing that only happened to the reckless and impulsive, and she was neither of those. There was nothing shallow about the way she felt about him. No. This was more than a sense of recognition, of knowing that here was a man who seemed to understand, as though by instinct, everything there was to know about her—about her fears and apprehensions, about her weaknesses and strengths. Indeed, it was almost as though he possessed some deep inner knowledge of her that enabled him to recognise her every emotion and feeling.
He deliberately busied himself clearing away their china mugs and emptying the teapot while the doctor asked her to remove her sweater and examined her injured shoulder and arm.
Already both were painfully swollen, showing evidence of the bruising that was yet to come.
‘Mm…Nothing’s broken, but you’re going to find that arm painful and stiff for a few days, I’m afraid. I think it might be as well to rest it in a sling at least for the next forty-eight hours.’
It would have to be her right arm, Jessica reflected wryly as the doctor rummaged in his bag for an antiseptic pack containing the requisite sling.
‘I can leave you some pain-killers,’ he suggested, eyeing her thoughtfully. ‘Generally speaking, when a patient suffers extreme shock as you have done I can prescribe a mild sleeping tablet…’
Jessica shuddered and shook her head. She remembered the drugs she had been prescribed before, supposedly to help her sleep, but which in reality had doped and numbed her to such an extent that they had actually intensified her struggle to come to terms with her residual fear once she was without the crutch they offered.
‘Sensible girl,’ the doctor approved. ‘A mild sedative isn’t necessarily addictive, but I don’t like prescribing them unless it’s absolutely essential. If you want my advice, perhaps a good tot of brandy in your bedtime cocoa is just as effective.’
And equally addictive, Jessica thought to herself, but he was an old-fashioned doctor, with his patients’ welfare very much at heart.
He closed his bag and turned to leave, pausing by the door to frown and ask, ‘You live here alone, don’t you?’
Jessica nodded, a cold finger of ice touching her spine, and she asked quickly, ‘What’s wrong? The man didn’t escape, did he? I thought…’
‘No, nothing like that,’ he was quick to reassure her. ‘It’s just that with that arm you might be better having someone staying here overnight with you. Just in case you’re tempted to dispense with the sling and overstrain the muscle. I could have a word with Mrs G—’
‘There’s no need,’ Daniel intervened unexpectedly. ‘I shall be staying here tonight.’
Jessica gasped, but the small sound was lost as the doctor nodded his approval and opened the door saying, ‘No…No, there’s no need to see me out. Nasty business altogether. Who’d have thought, in a small village like this…? Lucky thing you acted so promptly, young man…’
His voice faded away as Daniel ignored his protests and escorted him to the door. Jessica waited tensely as the door closed and she heard Daniel walking back to the kitchen.
‘Yes. I know,’ he said calmly as he came in. ‘I jumped in there without consulting you, but I thought you’d prefer my presence to that of Mrs G, good neighbour though she is. If I was wrong…’
Jessica shook her head
. He wasn’t wrong at all, but they hardly knew one another. Until a few short hours ago they had been strangers, and, despite the fact that she felt drawn to him in a way she had never before experienced, the habits of a lifetime could not be so easily overthrown. She plucked nervously at her sweater with fingers that trembled a little, unable to bring herself to look at him in case she saw mockery in those too perceptive gold eyes.
‘You’re worried about what people might say about my staying here, is that it?’ he asked her quietly.
Instantly her head shot up, her eyes blazing with pride and anger.
‘Certainly not,’ she told him curtly. ‘I’m not so narrow-minded nor insular. I prefer to set my own standards for the way I live my life, not pay lip-service to other people’s.’
‘Then what are you afraid of?’ he asked her gently, dropping down on to the sofa beside her, sitting so close to her that she could feel the heat passing from his body to her own, an unnerving, vibrant male heat that made her body quicken and her muscles tense—in expectation, not fear. ‘Not me, surely?’
How could she tell him it was herself she feared, and her out-of-character reactions to him?
‘I’m just not used to sharing my home with anyone,’ she told him evasively.
‘I’m invading your privacy, and you’re not sure how you feel about it, is that it? Well, I can understand that. Like you I, too, prize my solitude. Like you I’ve always preferred to live alone. However, there comes a time…’
His voice had slowed and deepened. Without looking at him she sensed that he had moved closer to her, felt it in the warm vibration of his breath against her temple, and quivered in silent reaction to it.
When he reached for her hand she let him take it, even though she knew what her trembling would reveal to him.
With his other hand he cupped her face and turned it so that he could look at her. The warm grasp of his hand was somehow reassuring, as though he knew what she was feeling.
‘If I’m presuming too much…if I’m letting my own feelings and reactions blind me into believing that what’s happening between us is mutual, then tell me so, Jessica.’