Silver

by Penny Jordan

  Spoil it… He looked up at the cracked plaster ceiling of the long gallery and suppressed his bitterness. But he knew what she meant, and was touched by her sensitivity.

  It must be hell for her, living with a woman like Gloria, but now that he knew the terms of Harold Pilling’s will he suspected that, no matter how much she might resent her presence, Gloria would not allow her her freedom.

  ‘You must hate seeing it like this,’ she said gently when they had finished the tour.

  Jake shrugged.

  ‘Yes and no… It was decaying all the time we were growing up… I never expected to inherit it. Justin was the elder… I was always destined for the army…’

  She gave him a round-eyed, disconcerted look.

  ‘You’re in the army?’

  ‘Not any more,’ he told her quite truthfully, and then added, less truthfully, ‘I’m a civil servant…’

  So he was… if one could describe an undercover agent as such. Certainly his salary was paid by the government.

  He thought briefly of the work he and his colleagues had undertaken in South America, working alongside the CIA in trying to suppress the spread of drug trafficking.

  He doubted that they would hold back the tide for very long. With poverty so endemic in so many South American countries, anyone who provided them with a more comfortable way of living was almost guaranteed to be supported by the peasant populations of those countries.

  There were South American countries with governments that strove to rise above corruption, but they didn’t survive for very long. The drug barons saw to that, spreading their net of human misery until it engulfed everyone who came in contact with them.

  There were rumours that certain illegal arms deals were being financed by drug trafficking. He frowned.

  ‘It’s getting late… I ought to get back… Mother’s having dinner with her solicitors tonight and she wants me to be there,’ she told him awkwardly.

  His hand on her arm stayed her.

  ‘Couldn’t you telephone her and say you were having dinner with me?’

  Her body stiffened, her eyes huge with panic as she stared at him.

  ‘No… no… I couldn’t tell her that. She’d be angry if she thought I was with you.’

  For a moment he didn’t understand and thought she was trying to tell him that her mother would fear for her in his company, and then he realised what she was actually saying.

  ‘Not many men turn her down, you see,’ she was almost whispering the words. ‘And I expect… well, I know…’

  ‘That she propositioned me,’ he said gently for her, torn between raw pity and anger against himself for his unwanted reactions to her as he looked down at her downbent head and flushed face.

  ‘She didn’t. Your mother’s astute enough to know when she’s wasting her time,’ he added drily. ‘But I think I can see your point. You think she’ll resent the fact that I find you… attractive, because I wasn’t attracted to her.’

  ‘You think I’m attractive?’ She flushed deeply. Astonished pleasure blazed out of her eyes. Her mouth trembled over the words, making him ache to reach out and touch it, with his fingertips, with his own mouth.

  He wondered how far he dared go, how much he dared say, and acknowledged that he was terrified of frightening her away. She was like a small, delicate bird that had to be reassured into giving her trust.

  ‘I think you’re very attractive,’ he assured her gravely, and then picked up her left hand and held it against his mouth.

  He had only meant to kiss it lightly, as compensation for denying himself the pleasure of kissing her mouth, but the palm of her hand was unbearably soft and vulnerable, and he could feel the quivers of reaction she was too inexperienced to hide and couldn’t stop himself from nipping softly against her skin, from teasing his tongue between her fingers in a deliberately rhythmic movement.

  Beneath his thumb he could feel the frantic race of her pulse, and when he released her hand he saw the twin points of her nipples pushing against the thick fabric of her sweatshirt.

  She knew he was looking at her, and her face flamed scarlet, but she made no move to turn away or conceal herself. Her mouth was trembling again. The sight of it made him dizzy with aching frustration.

  ‘Stay with me,’ he asked her.

  She shook her head and then bit her lip. ‘I can’t, but if you’re still here tomorrow…’

  ‘You’ll what—escape from Mama’s watchful eye and spend half an hour with me?’ he scoffed. ‘You’re a woman, an adult, and I want—–’ He broke off, cursing himself for pushing her, forcing himself to relax. It took longer than he expected, and all the time she stood there, poised for flight, looking so hurt and confused that it made him sigh. What the hell was he trying to do?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised, and then added bluntly, ‘I want to make love to you, and I’m having a hard time trying to behave rationally.’

  Her flush deepened. She looked disbelieving… and pleased. ‘You want to make love to me?’

  She sounded dazed, as though she couldn’t believe it.

  ‘I most certainly do,’ he agreed, watching her. ‘But I appreciate that we both need time. I’m leaving the day after tomorrow, but I’d like to keep in touch…’

  What on earth was he saying… doing? There wasn’t room in his life for that kind of commitment.

  ‘You do?’ She was staring at him as though unable to believe what she was hearing.

  ‘Yes. I’ve got to go away on business for a while, but I’ll be here in the New Year… less than four months away. We could write…’

  ‘But if you write to me, Mother will see the letters…’

  She was whispering again, gazing at him with huge, round eyes that openly adored him.

  ‘I could send them to my solicitor…’

  God, what on earth was he doing? This was madness… lunacy. She was the last kind of complication he needed in his life.

  ‘You’d better go now,’ he told her gently. ‘Will you come and see me tomorrow? There are some drawings in the library, sketches of the original house and gardens when it was remodelled by Inigo Jones. And we could have lunch…’

  ‘Yes… yes, I’d like that.’

  His gaze fastened on her mouth, and he watched her tremble in response to him. If he touched her now he’d never let her go. She hesitated, and he could almost see the thought running through her mind.

  ‘Come on. Time to go,’ he told her, adding sardonically, ‘Mustn’t keep Mother waiting.’

  Instantly she withdrew from him, confused and hurt. He ought to have felt exasperation, irritation even, but what he did feel was an awesome mingling of protective love. She aroused feelings in him similar to those he had once felt for Justin, but these were deeper, more intense. These were sexual and not fraternal.

  As he walked with her to her car, she said breathlessly, ‘I could be here about ten… or is that too early?’

  ‘I get up at six,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

  Her car was an expensive Mercedes sports, which she explained belonged to her mother. She paused as though waiting for him to kiss her and then got hurriedly into the car. He wanted to tell her that he dared not touch her, but the feelings were still too new to him himself.

  She drove away with surprising skill and speed. He went back to the house, telling himself he was behaving like a complete fool.

  When Jake woke up in the morning he half expected to find that his feelings had changed completely, and that he had simply been suffering from some sort of emotional daydream, but the mere thought of the girl called Beth brought an instant hardening of his body, an instant tug of need.

  It took every ounce of self-discipline he possessed to follow his normal routine: a run, a brisk shower, breakfast. All the time he was thinking about her.

  At nine o’clock he got in his car and drove to the local market town. He had promised her lunch in lieu of the dinner they had not had last night, and i
t was only when he found himself lingering over impossibly expensive bottles of champagne and handmade chocolates that he realised that he had fallen in love.

  He waited for the surge of rejection and dismay he half expected to feel as he allowed himself to admit the truth, but they weren’t there. In their place he felt a warmth, a breathtaking, dizzying sense of well-being and completeness combined with the feeling that if he wasn’t careful he would find himself floating over the heads of the other shoppers.

  He was in love, and it was like no other sensation he had ever experienced.

  On the way home he found himself wondering if Justin had felt like this about his lover, the one who had run away after grandfather had found them. If so, he could well understand why his brother had shot the old man. He felt he could kill anyone who tried to take Beth away from him.

  It was a ridiculous sensation. He was twenty-seven years old; the idea of making a commitment to another human being was something he had thought himself years away from.

  His commitment was to his work… there was no room in his life for a girl like Beth. A girl who needed gentle handling, cherishing… protecting. And yet at the same time he knew that he was going to make room; that he would sacrifice anything and everything without compunction to make that room.

  She liked him; he had seen it in her eyes, felt it in her shy response to him. His heartbeat quickened, his body tense with expectation.

  He was back at Fitton Park for nine forty-five. At a quarter past ten, when she still hadn’t arrived, he wondered if she had changed her mind. Fitton Park had no telephone installed now. The nearest one was in the village, but if he left and she arrived and found him absent…

  It was just gone eleven when the pale blue Mercedes convertible pulled up in front of the house.

  Jake watched her getting out of it, half expecting even now that she might disappear. She looked flushed and worried.

  He went out to meet her.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m so late. Mother wanted me to type some letters for her.’

  ‘She makes you type her correspondence?’

  Beth shrugged. ‘She thinks it’s a way of making me pay for my keep. Anyway, I’m not very good and she gets impatient. She’s all wound up about buying Fitton Park. I think she’s worried that you might pull out at the last minute.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he told her drily. ‘Money is owed to all quarters on Fitton Park. It’s become too much of a burden to keep on.’

  She was wearing the same jeans she had worn yesterday, with a different but equally bulky sweatshirt. It was a warm September day, and he was wearing a thin T-shirt. When he took her arm to lead her into the house, he noticed the contrast in their skin-tones, hers as pale as milk, his tanned, darker; his flesh clinging firmly to his muscles while hers covered the fragility of her bones with softness.

  He pushed up the sleeve of her sweatshirt and ran his fingertips along her skin. The tiny blonde hairs on her arm stood up on end, a rash of goose-bumps breaking out under his touch. He was tempted to ask her if she was cold, but he couldn’t bring himself to tease her.

  ‘I thought we’d have a picnic lunch in the park,’ he told her. ‘We can take the original garden plans with us, if you like.’

  She nodded, a silky wing of dark hair obscuring her face. He reached out and tucked it behind her ear, and the fresh, mingled scent of clean skin and perfumed hair reached him. ‘You’ve just washed your hair.’

  She moved back from him as though his touch burned. ‘I wash it every day,’ she told him defensively. ‘It wasn’t…’ She stopped, and the familiar hot colour burned her skin.

  ‘It wasn’t what?’ he prompted gently. ‘Because you were seeing me?’

  She looked away from him, scuffing her toes as she had done the previous day, and a wave of mingled pain and pleasure swept over him. She was so young… so naïve… so desperately precious to him already; and despite the fact that there were only nine years between them he felt as though he were a couple of decades her senior.

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting that it was,’ he told her gently. ‘I just wanted to tell you that it smells and feels good.’

  ‘Mother thinks I should have it cut and permed.’

  It was thick and silky-straight, the simple style almost schoolgirlish, but the thought of her having it tortured into the fashionable styles he saw other girls wearing made him grimace.

  ‘It suits you as it is.’

  ‘It needs trimming,’ she told him, side-stepping his compliment. ‘I used to go to a place near the house in Knightsbridge, but Mother says it’s idiotic to pay all that money for a hairstyle like mine.’

  Gloria Pilling was clearly a mother who delighted in undermining her daughter’s self-confidence, in making her both feel and look plain and dull. Jake had met mothers like that before, but never one capable of such relentless cruelty. With most women it was unconscious, a bid to hold on to their youth by denying their growing daughters their burgeoning femininity. He doubted if Gloria Pilling had ever made an unconscious move in her life; she knew exactly what she was doing.

  ‘Wait here,’ he told her. ‘I’ll get the food and the plans.’

  He had everything ready. When he returned, she was standing in the courtyard where he had left her, looking forlorn and hot in her thick sweatshirt.

  ‘Couldn’t I carry those for you?’ she offered, indicating the plans.

  He handed them over to her, watching pleasure glow in her face as though he had bestowed some wonderful gift on her.

  He was used to being outdoors, to walking, and had been even before he’d joined the army, but he was careful to match his pace to hers. He knew exactly where they were going. There was a small lake set in one of the most heavily wooded parts of the park. It was surrounded by rhododendrons planted by his great-grandfather, straggly and unkempt now, but still a blazing glory of rich colour in the spring.

  It was slightly cooler under the shadows of the trees. Some were already beginning to shed their leaves; the earth path was dry and packed firm, the odd tree-root the only hazard.

  Their progress put up a pair of partridges. Jake pointed them out to Beth, watching the pleasure lighten her eyes.

  ‘I grew up in the country,’ she told him. ‘I loved it. I’m not a city person at all…’

  ‘You’ll be happy at Fitton, then.’

  ‘Yes,’ she told him simply. ‘I’ll be able to think about your growing up here.’

  The look he gave her made her face burn, and she stumbled a little as she stepped out of the shadowy darkness into the brilliance of the sunlit pool.

  Jake reached out a hand to steady her. She was trembling slightly. He knew she was just as aware of the sexual tension stretching between them as he was himself.

  Part of him wanted to say, ‘Look, let’s get it over with. Let’s make love and then we can both relax,’ but another part of him knew it was too soon, his approach too blunt.

  There was a stone seat at the end of the pond, but Jake ignored it, instead spreading out the blanket he had brought with him.

  He watched as Beth sat gingerly on the edge of it, and then removed the champagne from the hamper he had found in one of the old-fashioned stone pantries.

  He put it in the pond, weighing it down to keep it under the water and then, calmly seating himself in the middle of the blanket, started to unroll the plans.

  ‘This is how the garden looked before Inigo Jones’s remodelling of the house,’ he told her. ‘Come and have a look.’

  He was holding the plans so that she had to sit next to him to see them. The soft fabric of her sweatshirt brushed his bare arm.

  ‘Aren’t you hot in that?’ he asked her, frowning as he looked at it. It didn’t flatter her. The colour was wrong for her pale skin, robbing her of what little colour she had, turning her brown eyes as flat as pebbles when he knew they could sparkle with the same deep warmth as a good sherry.

  ‘It’s… I didn’t bring many clothes to Chester with
me.’

  She turned her head away from him, but not before he saw the chagrin in her eyes.

  While she studied the plans, he drew her out skilfully, coaxing her to relax and eventually laugh. She touched his emotions in a thousand ways he couldn’t begin to name. The physical desire he felt for her was only one aspect of how he felt about her.

  They ate the lunch he had provided and drank the champagne, she sparingly because she would be driving back to Chester.

  As he lay on the blanket, watching her, he wondered what she would do if he reached out for her now, rolled her underneath him, kissed her soft red mouth the way he was aching to kiss it.

  As though she picked up on his thoughts, she was suddenly nervous.

  ‘Isn’t it time we were getting back?’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  He was pushing her, pressuring her, even though he despised himself for doing so. He saw her eyes cloud and cursed himself under his breath, but he had so little time. Tomorrow he would be gone, and she hadn’t even promised to write to him.

  ‘Have dinner with me tonight,’ he said abruptly. ‘Not here… I’ll come to Chester… Take you out…’

  ‘I… Mother’s having dinner with some people she met recently. I suppose I could…’ Her face flamed and she bit her lip. ‘But not in Chester… we might… she might…’

  ‘See us? Would that really be so dreadful?’

  He saw from her face that it would.

  ‘Not good enough for you, is that it?’

  ‘No!’ she said with surprising ferocity. ‘No, it isn’t that at all. She wants me to be married… she wants to get rid of me, but she wouldn’t like me going out with you. Before she met you, I think she was hoping…’

  ‘What?’ he derided softly. ‘That I’d want to take her to bed?’

  ‘She’s very beautiful,’ she defended. ‘Lots of men—–’

  ‘She isn’t beautiful,’ he contradicted harshly. ‘She’s ugly… inside and out. You’re beautiful…’

  And before he could stop himself he had taken her in his arms and was tasting the soft tremulousness of her mouth with the famished fierce hunger that had been building up inside him.