by Lynne Graham
‘You got a good, roasting blaze going, I’ll give you that!’ he grated in a driven undertone. ‘I warned you about the wiring—it must be fifty years old.’
‘You got me out,’ she grasped, eager to take him off the subject. ‘You risked your own—’
His eyes were fierce. ‘There was nothing heroic about it. I don’t remember getting out of the car. I don’t remember kicking in the window. The only thing I remember is thinking that I’d pulled out a dead body.’
A shudder slivered through her. ‘You shouted at me.’
‘It may surprise you, but the prospect of life without you didn’t enthrall me,’ he bit out jerkily. ‘And the shouting came later, after you had revived. I didn’t realise you were sick until you folded on me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said tightly.
Silence dragged. He sighed. ‘I’m not. I’ve got you under my roof.’
He settled down on the edge of the bed and pulled her confidently into his arms. With a shaky little sigh she subsided against him, having no objections to reassurance when it was forced on her. She rested her chin on a broad shoulder sheathed in fine wool. A feathery strand of black hair brushed her cheek. The familiar scent of his body, deliciously clean, gloriously familiar, enclosed her. She had a stark recollection of him shaking against her last night and her lips wanted to turn inwards to his cheek.
If she hadn’t been downstairs, he would have tried to go upstairs to find her. She knew that as instinctively as she knew that the sun would rise every morning. He wouldn’t have counted the possible cost to himself. For perhaps the first time she attempted to equate the fact that he would risk his life for her with that terrible rejection he had dealt her in the past. And it was like trying to bring two sides of a triangle together. Or match two radically different personalities. She wondered in frustration if there really could be some less obvious explanation for the way he had treated her, something he might have told her if she hadn’t stopped him in his tracks.
She parted her dry lips on a very leading question. ‘Is having me under your roof…important to you?’
He was so quiet, so very quiet, she stiffened. ‘It’s an absolute necessity for a husband and wife,’ he drawled just above her head.
She had a crazed mental image of her ears shooting out on stalks. ‘A husband and wife?’ she parroted.
‘You said you’d marry me.’
‘Did I?’ she muttered in a stupor.
‘Yes. You did. I knew you would.’ As he made the confirmation he held her back from him. Black lashes were narrowed over piercing dark eyes. ‘And you’re going through with it. I didn’t spend all of yesterday making wedding arrangements just so that you could decide to change your mind last minute.’
‘Wedding arrangements?’ she gulped. ‘Yesterday?’
The faintest colour highlighted his angular cheekbones. ‘I didn’t see any reason to hang around. You ought to be lying down.’ He settled her back against the pillows as if she were a rag doll and tucked the duvet round her slight frame. ‘What was your typewriter doing in your car?’ he shot at her abruptly.
‘How would I know? I don’t know what I was doing last night…yesterday!’ For some reason tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks in embarrassing rivulets as she turned her head away in desperation from him. ‘I wasn’t feeling well; I wasn’t myself.’
‘You were probably more yourself than you’ve been in a long time. You kept on smiling at me. Who am I to complain if it takes a temperature of a hundred and two to do it?’ Long fingers smoothly massaged the knotted tension from her spine. He told her that she was suffering from shock, that tears were quite normal, but she wasn’t listening. The fire preoccupied her jumbled thoughts less than the bombshell he had calmly dropped on her unprepared head.
Had she said she would marry him? Somewhere in that poppy field where there was no shadow of the past, no Grant to bulldoze her dreams back into the dust? Without Jake tomorrow and the next day and the day after that would be empty. She faced an inescapable truth that deprived her of choice and made decision superfluous. The prospect of those empty tomorrows stretching endlessly before her was too terrifying to contemplate.
‘Dr Cates, the family GP, checked you over last night. I assumed that you wouldn’t want to go to hospital unless it was strictly necessary. The Press would’ve been on to the story immediately,’ he pointed out.
She sighed. ‘News of the fire is bound to escape.’
He strolled over to the low, deep-silled window. ‘That’s possible, but there’s no real story to be had. Merrill’s husband, John, arrived at Lower Ridge before the police. At my request he drove your car over here, and the car was the only proof that you were, in fact, in the house at the time of the fire. You haven’t been bothered by the authorities because, as far as they’re concerned, you’d already gone off somewhere for a few days.’
His speedy response to the threat of media interest in the chaos of the previous night astonished her. ‘They think I went off and left a fire burning?’
An expressive brow arched. ‘Stranger things have happened. In any case, the police lost interest once they were satisfied that there was nothing suspicious about the fire. But for the cover-up this house would be besieged by reporters, clamouring for an interview with you after your ordeal.’ He sent her a grim smile. ‘You might have enjoyed the attention, but I wouldn’t have. I don’t intend to get married on Wednesday with a pack of reporters on the church steps.’
Her lashes swept up on startled violet eyes. ‘Wednesday?’ she cried. ‘That’s only three days away!’
Her disbelief had no visible impression on him. He looked steadily back at her. ‘You have something better to do on Wednesday?’
‘Be serious,’ she urged weakly, certain he was teasing her. ‘When you said wedding arrangements, I never dreamt that you…’
‘Meant so soon?’ His sensual mouth twisted. ‘My uncle is a bishop. I saw him yesterday and I explained the situation. He completely understood our need for a quiet, quick ceremony. We’ve been granted a special licence.’
‘But Wednesday…’ she repeated helplessly.
‘At the village church at eleven. I don’t see the problem.’
She was not impervious to the warning edge of his intonation or the poised stillness of his stance. ‘I didn’t expect it to be so soon,’ she muttered.
‘We have only ourselves to please…don’t we? Unless you’re still keen to keep your options open…’
She glanced up, not mistaking his meaning, and her cheeks stained with colour. She was entrapped by the dark, unyielding force of his challenging appraisal and held by it to become equally sensitised to the electric sexuality he possessed. Her skin heated afresh, her pulse raced and rationality evaporated at a similar speed. Her head was starting to spin. He was so businesslike about it all. His no-frills-attached proposal had had a similar daunting practicality, but there was nothing cool about the leashed hunger of his stare.
‘I should be getting up now,’ she muttered, pushing back the duvet and finding herself unexpectedly plunged into sick dizziness as she sat up.
‘Doctor’s orders. You’re not fit to get up yet.’ Jake settled her back again, rearranging the bedclothes impatiently. ‘You’re underweight and you haven’t been looking after yourself very well. You’re not going to bounce back as quickly as Tina did.’
It was too much effort to argue. Jessie bustled in with a tray and Kitty did her best to eat the omelette that had been prepared for her. Afterwards she must have slept because when she wakened, drenched in perspiration from a nightmare, it was dark.
‘Are you all right?’ A finger of light left a path from the ajar door, silhouetting Jake.
‘I had a dream…’ Incredibly relaxed by his presence, she rested back again.
‘I know. You were shouting at the top of your voice.’ Amusement threaded his voice as he settled beside her. ‘Do you want me to get you a drink?’
‘No,’ she mumbled sleepily, reaching out a hand to find a lean thigh. ‘I didn’t know where you were.’
‘You’ll feel better in the morning.’
Drowsily she smiled and snuggled up against him. ‘I feel better now.’
He woke her up with a cup of tea. He was fully dressed, his dark hair still damp from a shower. He smoothed the pillow indented with the evidence that she had not slept alone and grinned, looking suddenly very young. ‘Jessie is not a liberated woman.’
‘But we didn’t…’
He captured her parted lips with drowning sweetness, driving out all coherent thought and straightened again. ‘Merrill’s coming over to see that you take it easy.’
‘Oh.’ She swallowed, fingering the elaborate lace bodice of the nightdress she had not until now had the presence of mind to examine. ‘Is this hers?’
‘It’s Sophie’s.’
Kitty stiffened. ‘Have you told her?’ she demanded abruptly.
‘Merrill?’
‘Your mother,’ she murmured.
His narrowed eyes glittered down at her troubled face. ‘Why? Do you think I needed to ask for permission? I made the announcement the day before yesterday when I was in York,’ he drawled with an ironic smile.
‘She must have been…shocked.’
‘If she was, she didn’t say so.’ A chilling aspect had tautened his dark, compelling features. ‘You don’t need to worry about Sophie. After all, she won’t be living here and that certainly won’t be a sacrifice for her.’
‘Are you trying to find a nice way to tell me that she won’t accept me at all?’ she prompted tightly.
His jawline squared. ‘What I’m telling you is that it’s a matter of supreme indifference to me whether she does or does not.’
‘But I don’t want to cause trouble between you,’ she persisted.
He walked back to the door. ‘I have to go out. I’ll see you later.’
He had ignored her uneasy comments. Kitty had no pleasant memories of Sophie Tarrant, but she had never doubted the strength of Sophie’s attachment to her only son. Jake’s sudden decision to remarry, not to mention his choice of bride, would naturally have shocked and concerned his mother. Plainly Mrs Tarrant’s attitude to her hadn’t changed. What had changed to a quite astonishing degree was Jake’s attitude to his mother. He made no allowances for the older woman’s feelings and that surprised Kitty. Yet should it surprise her?
The forceful, aggressive side of Jake’s powerful personality had grown infinitely more dominant over the past years. Had Liz done that to him? Endowed him with that core of angry, dark bitterness that Kitty had sensed in him more than once? Made him coldly, even callously indifferent towards his mother’s feelings? Or had Sophie done that for herself? Kitty reminded herself that there had been conflict between mother and son over Liz long before she had come on the scene.
She got out of bed, still feeling ridiculously weak and shaky. She found the bathroom across the landing and, although the effort exhausted her, she took a quick shower. She was combing her hair in the bedroom when a plump blonde entered, carrying a tray. ‘Gosh, I thought you’d still be in bed!’
The almost schoolgirlish exclamation made Kitty laugh. ‘Merrill?’
Brown eyes twinkled ruefully at her. ‘Don’t say it. I’ve put on some weight since we last met. People have walked past me in the street without recognising me,’ she confided. ‘I can’t stick to diets.’
Her easy warmth was a pleasant surprise to Kitty. As a child, Jake’s sister had slavishly copied her mother in treating Kitty as someone quite beneath her notice. ‘You shouldn’t be running after me,’ she said gently as Merrill smoothed a self-conscious hand over her pregnant stomach.
‘You’re very pale,’ Merrill remarked. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Not quite normal yet,’ Kitty confided ruefully and accepted the tray.
Merrill took a seat on the blanket chest by the wall. ‘You should be better in time for the wedding,’ she quipped.
Kitty glanced up uncertainly. ‘How do you feel about that? You can be frank.’
Merrill grimaced. ‘Lord, when we were children, I must have been even more hideous to you than I remember for you to ask that. Whatever makes Jake happy makes me happy.’
‘But you must be surprised…’
Merrill grinned. ‘No, I have to say that I’m not. That’s probably because when we were younger I always expected you and Jake to end up together…’ Faltering badly as she realised what she’d said, she flushed uncomfortably and groaned, ‘How to put your foot in your mouth in one easy lesson. Let me put it another way. If you’re prepared to marry my brother and live up here, you must really care about him. It’s hardly what you’ve been used to. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it? You went out and found fame and fortune and the Tarrants fell on hard times.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘There’s probably a moral there somewhere.’
‘It was bad luck.’
Merrill sighed. ‘Not really. If Jake hadn’t been so determined that the rest of us came out of it all with some cash, he could have kept the Grange. It would’ve been a struggle for him then, but the bank still had faith in him,’ she disclosed. ‘If you ask me, it was his bad luck that he had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. At the time we certainly weren’t grateful to him. We wanted the house and the lifestyle we’d always had and he knew that we couldn’t have both.’
Made grossly uncomfortable by Merrill’s frank confidences, Kitty said in desperation. ‘Do you work?’
‘Not now, but I did work for John’s father as a secretary.’ Suddenly she grinned. ‘How can you be so calm? Aren’t you frantic about what you’re going to wear on Wednesday? Every stitch you own has gone up in smoke!’
Kitty smiled at the younger woman’s drama. ‘The majority of my clothes are still in London. If I phone the housekeeper, she’ll have them sent up.’
‘But that could take days!’ Merrill dismissed.
‘No, I’ll ring her now. She’ll send them immediately.’ Kitty hesitated, unwilling to say that for the right price the carrier would be eager to provide instant service.
‘But you’ll have to wear something special on Wednesday,’ Merrill pressed. ‘Actually there’s something suitable right here under this roof. Jane had our great-grandmother’s gown professionally restored for her wedding two years ago. She had to starve herself into it. The waist is absolutely tiny but I think it would fit you.’
‘A wedding dress?’ Kitty queried. ‘I don’t think Jake’s expecting…’
Merrill laughed. ‘I wasn’t supposed to tell you, but it was his idea. I’d completely forgotten that it was here. I’ll look it out later.’
If there was a dress available, the suggestion was only practical. Kitty smiled to herself. She refused even to think about how their marriage would affect her father and her future mother-in-law. When she had to, she would face those problems, but not now. Nothing would be allowed to spoil the next few days, she promised herself.
Since there was a phone by the bed, she called Mrs Stuart and made her request for her clothes. No sooner had she put the phone down than she was impulsively planning a second call, subdued excitement brimming in her thoughtful gaze. Merrill brought her some magazines and Jessie came upstairs with a pair of fuchsia-pink trousers and a sweatshirt.
‘Jane left these behind the last time she was here, but you’re not to be even thinking of getting up before lunch,’ Jessie told her bossily.
As soon as Kitty was alone again, she lifted the phone. Mr Barker, who ran Colwell Holdings, was initially quite disconcerted to receive a personal call from her. He asked anxiously how he might be of assistance. Kitty breathed in deep and proceeded to tell him. She wanted a surveyor to go over the Grange and list the renovations and repairs required to put the house in order.
‘I must warn you that you’re talking about a considerable amount of costly work, Miss Colgan,’ he said carefully.
‘I don’t expec
t the entire cost to be carried by the estate. I’ll contact my accountant. There’ll be no shortage of funds,’ she asserted, and then added, ‘By the way, I’m keen for the work to be started as soon as possible.’
She dozed a little, wakening to feel shamefully idle. Tina bounced into her room just as she had finished getting dressed. ‘Jessie’s putting your lunch on a tray,’ she announced. ‘You’re s’posed to be in bed.’
‘Where have you been all morning?’
‘Playgroup,’ Tina said dolefully, sliding a hand into Kitty’s on the stairs. ‘Daddy said I had to go.’
‘You’re home now,’ Kitty pointed out cheerfully.
Tina brightened and asked if she wanted to see her kitten. Jessie appeared from the kitchen, irate that Kitty had left her bed.
‘Jessie, if I lie in that bed any longer, I’ll take root there.’
The older woman frowned. ‘You should still be resting.’
Jake walked in, dark hair tousled by the breeze, and Kitty had an almost irresistible urge to fling herself into his arms. Embarrassed by the force of that prompting, she gave him a truculent smile. ‘I’m not going back to bed.’
‘Fine.’ A lazy smile formed his sensual mouth. ‘I’m free for the rest of the day.’
Warmth surged through her. Tina chattered constantly through the meal and, under the dark onslaught of Jake’s unremittingly steady scrutiny, Kitty dizzily cleared her plate without even realising what she was eating. Jessie insisted on bringing them coffee in the lounge. Kitty sat down on a comfortable chesterfield and looked around herself with interest. She couldn’t help picturing the contents restored to the more gracious setting of the Grange.
Guilty pink marked her complexion. She was being a little premature. ‘Did you sell all the surplus furniture when you came here?’
‘Yes. Sophie wanted to store it but I persuaded her that an auction would be wiser. The proceeds endowed her with a decent private income, without which frankly she couldn’t have managed,’ he said quietly. ‘The family portraits are in the loft. Liz talked me into keeping them, but there’s no room for them here. Sentiment’s rarely practical.’
