Beyond Compare

by Penny Jordan

  We. How good that sounded, compared with Howard's lack of interest in her career.

  A thought struck her. 'Does… Does Rosamund work?' she asked diffidently. She was beginning to loathe the sound of the other woman's name, and not solely because of Howard. She hated mentioning her, because she hated hurting Drew, hated reminding him of what had happened.

  'Hardly,' Drew replied drily. 'She doesn't really have time, what with the visits to the villa in Spain and the trips on the yacht. Besides…'

  Holly bit her lip. Poor Drew, and yet he sounded more contemptuous than distressed.

  'Come on,' Drew announced abruptly, taking hold of her arm.

  'Where are we going?'

  'I thought we'd have afternoon tea at the Grosvenor. Take the weight off our feet for a few minutes. All this walking around is exhausting.'

  Holly laughed at him.

  'How can you say that?' she accused. 'And you a farmer.'

  'Ah, but there's a difference between walking through fields and pounding hard pavements.'

  The Grosvenor was pleasantly busy, most of the tables occupied by groups of smartly dressed women, expensive glossy carrier bags beside them denoting the nature of their shopping, although, as the waiter showed them to a table for two, Holly noticed that there were several other couples there, including one very young pair who, to judge from the way they were both studying the small diamond ring on the girl's slender finger, were just celebrating their engagement.

  After consulting Holly as to her preferences, Drew gave their order. The service was excellent, Holly noted, as she sipped the fragrant and piping hot tea she had just poured. Drew had also ordered sandwiches, and, although she hadn't initially felt hungry, the sight of them tempted her to taste one.

  When Drew urged her to have another, she protested half-heartedly that she was already guilty of being greedy, and that if she ate any more she would be putting on weight.

  She was just hesitating between the salmon and the chicken when Rosamund's mother suddenly appeared beside them.

  'Drew! I thought it was you. And… Polly, isn't it? My dear!' she exclaimed with false concern. 'How very brave you are. Sandwiches…' She gave a tiny shudder. 'I'm afraid I simply daren't. I have to watch my figure.' As she spoke, she smoothed one well-manicured hand over the slender line of her skirt. 'And of course it's so much worse when one's small, isn't it? One daren't allow oneself to get above an eight at the most. I suppose you must be a size twelve at least, Polly.'

  Holly put down the sandwich and said quietly, 'A ten, actually,' but it was too late. Rosamund's mother had already made her feel uncomfortably conscious of the soft roundness of her figure. She wasn't plump, and indeed her ribcage and waist were very narrow, but she certainly didn't have the bone-thin slenderness of Rosamund and her family.

  'So what are you doing in Chester, then?'

  Her hard blue eyes stared at Holly's bare engagement finger, and Holly had to suppress a daunting urge to conceal her hand. She left Drew to answer, only just controlling her surprise when he said calmly, 'We've been to have lunch with my mother.'

  Mrs Jensen looked rather taken aback, but she recovered swiftly and asked sweetly, 'Oh, and how are dear Louise and James? I must get in touch with them. Ah, I think my friends are ready to leave. Goodbye, Andrew.' She gave Holly a dismissive smile and hurried away to join the group of women waiting by the exit.

  Her appetite totally gone, Holly stared down at her plate, her sight blurred by mortified tears. She suspected that Mrs Jensen would far rather have Drew as a son-in-law than Howard, and with her on his side she didn't see how Drew could possibly fail to win Rosamund back. Which would, of course, surely mean that Howard would turn to her, which was exactly what she wanted. Or was it?

  'I take it you're not going to eat that?' Drew asked extremely drily, recalling her thoughts and making her take a deep, steadying breath. The very last thing Drew would want would be her bursting into tears all over him because Rosamund's mother had hurt her feelings.

  'I was full up, anyway,' she told him lightly, her voice only trembling the tiniest little bit.

  'So, what now?' Drew asked when they were outside once more. 'More groundwork, or home?'

  Home. How blissful it sounded; and oddly enough the farm had become home to her. Even the farm dogs had stopped barking at her, as though readily accepting her right to be there. Of course, that was probably just because they were well trained, she reflected wryly, answering Drew's question with a quiet, 'Home, I think. I'd really like to get a few things down on paper, so that I can report back properly to Jan.'

  'Well, don't lose heart yet,' Drew advised her. 'We've still got Knutsford and Nantwich to see. I can't take any more time off until Thursday, but if you like we could go into Knutsford then and have a look round.'

  'Well, if my car comes back tomorrow, I can go by myself,' Holly pointed out.

  'Well, of course, if that's what you'd prefer to do.'

  Was that really a cool note of stiffness in Drew's voice, as though she had in some way offended him? Holly pushed the thought aside. Of course, it couldn't be. He was probably only too relieved to be freed from the necessity of accompanying her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  « ^ »

  'I've brought your car back, miss. Everything's fine now…'

  'Oh, thank you. I'm sorry you had to send for the spare. I suppose really I should have asked Drew to take it to a local dealer, but I just never gave it a thought.'

  'Send for a spare? But…'

  'Thanks, Jack. I take it everything's in order?'

  Holly hadn't heard Drew arrive in the yard, and whatever the garage mechanic had been about to say was lost as he chatted to Drew and handed her car keys over to Holly.

  After he had gone, Holly remarked, 'That's odd. He doesn't seem to have left me a bill. Perhaps he'll send it in the post.'

  'It's all been taken care of,' Drew told her briefly, and it took Holly several seconds to realise what he meant.

  'Drew, you haven't paid it!' she exclaimed in distress. 'Oh, you mustn't do that. Please give me the bill.'

  'If you insist,' he said quietly, obviously a little taken aback by her insistence.

  Holly followed him into his office, where he handed the bill over to her.

  'What's the panic, Holly?' he asked her, 'Does it offend you that I paid it?'

  'No. No… nothing like that,' Holly assured him. If she was honest with herself, she had rather liked the sensation of being cosseted and taken care of; indeed, she could very easily get all too used to it. Drew's manners were of the old-fashioned variety, but he was no domineering chauvinist, and Holly could quite see that he would think it no more than his duty to pay for the repairs, simply because he had been responsible for taking the car to the garage.

  'You've already done so much for me, Drew. Carry on like this and you'll be turning me into a helpless female parasite.'

  'Not you,' he assured her, and his words warmed her heart.

  She had half hoped he would insist on her waiting until Thursday to visit Knutsford so that he could go with her, but he had done no such thing, and so as soon as Drew had assured herself that her car had been properly repaired she set out for the pretty market town.

  Parts of Knutsford owed a great deal to the Italian influence of a certain architect, and when Holly had parked her car and was wandering around the small town, familiarising herself with its layout, she smiled a little to see the Italianate buildings in their late autumnal Cheshire setting.

  Of course, the town also had its traditional half-timbered coaching house, and the narrow thoroughfare that was the town's main shopping street was lined with a jumble of Tudor and Georgian buildings, interspersed here and there with something more modern.

  The estate agent she visited first was pleasant but dismissive: a man in his late fifties, who plainly was not prepared to take her seriously, and Holly longed to have Drew at her side. Drew was the kind of man who would instantly co
mmand respect and attention from other members of his sex, she recognised, and yet he treated everyone with courtesy, not like Howard, who sometimes made her cringe with his high-handed and sometimes unpleasant attitude towards others.

  As though by some magical process, her thoughts conjured him up, for, as she turned a corner, Holly almost ran into Howard himself.

  Rosamund wasn't with him, and he frowned a little as he saw Holly.

  She didn't miss the way he stepped off the narrow pavement as though he was almost frightened of coming into contact with her. Instead of hurting her, the gesture made her angry and contemptuous.

  'What's wrong, Howard?' she demanded bitterly. 'Frightened that someone might see us together and report you to Rosamund?'

  His skin mottled unpleasantly. 'Don't be so ridiculous, Holly,' he snapped at her, but Holly noticed that he was quick to edge them both completely round the corner into the quiet side street. 'What are you doing here anyway?' he demanded brusquely. 'I thought you'd have gone back to London by now.'

  What he meant was that he wanted her to go back to London.

  It was like having blinkers ripped from her eyes, Holly acknowledged sadly, suddenly seeing him without the rosy warmth of her love. The Howard she had loved had just been an illusion, she recognised painfully, a creature of myth and fantasy, and not a real human being at all. The reality appalled her. The man standing in front of her now wasn't even someone she could like, never mind love.

  'Drew asked me to stay,' she told him absently, trying to come to terms with her own abrupt recognition of the truth.

  She didn't love Howard any more. She looked at him, and marvelled to discover that she felt nothing… nothing at all.

  As though something in her cool, straight glance discomposed him, Howard flushed uncomfortably. 'Be careful, Holly,' he jeered at her. 'You know what they say about love on the rebound. What are you doing here in Knutsford, anyway?'

  'Nothing that's any of your business, Howard, and now if you'll excuse me…'

  As she walked away without a backward glance, Holly felt the most glorious sense of relief and freedom. Her spirits soared. She wanted to burst out into song, to laugh and dance down the street. She looked up at the sky and realised it was the most marvellous shade of blue. The sun was warm and gentle, the trees beautiful in their autumn dress, in fact the whole world, and this corner of it in particular, was the most wonderful, marvellous place there was.

  She was smiling when she walked into the second estate agent's. He was a little more helpful than the first, and when she left the small market town a couple of hours later she felt a good deal more hopeful than she had done when she and Drew left Chester.

  She drove home in high spirits, bursting to tell Drew about her day. Only, Drew wasn't there.

  Peter, the taciturn cowman, who was the oldest of Drew's four employees and who lived in one of the pair of tied cottages owned by the farm, told her dourly that Drew had gone to a meeting.

  'Said to tell you not to wait dinner,' he informed her. 'Said he wouldn't be back until late.'

  Feeling deflated, Holly headed for the house. It was surprising how empty it felt without Drew. She wandered round the kitchen, trying to concentrate on the units. Her paintbrushes and other equipment had arrived that morning, and she ought by rights to use what was left of the day to start work on preparing a stencil. Something pretty, but not too pretty. Something appropriate for the room and the farm.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the large chestnut tree beyond the window, its turning leaves ruffled by a gusting wind that seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere.

  Some of the leaves whirled upwards in a scatter of golden brown. Chestnut leaves… chestnut candles in the spring, rich spears of pink and white flowers. Yes, that could be her theme, the white of the candle flowers, the green of the spring leaves and young boughs, the golden yellow of the searing autumn leaves.

  Her fingers almost itched to start work, and she hurried upstairs to her room to collect her equipment. She had no easel, but the kitchen table would do for a drawing-board.

  Within half an hour, Holly was totally absorbed in what she was doing, swiftly sketching outlines for the components which would eventually make up her stencil.

  Not wholly satisfied with her drawings, she got up impatiently and walked to the kitchen window. What she needed was a handful of leaves; hers didn't look right at all, she decided despondently.

  It was still light outside, and the chestnut tree was only a matter of two or three fields away at most.

  Deciding against wasting time by changing into jeans and Wellingtons, she went outside as she was. For her trip to Knutsford, she had worn her pleated skirt and toning sweater, and she was glad of their warmth when she realised how chilly the wind was. Luckily it was dry underfoot, and the gate to the first field yielded easily as she swung it open and then took care to close it behind her, even though she knew that Drew had no stock in it.

  The small milk herd he kept had now been brought in for the winter, and she presumed that he had done likewise with the beef stock.

  Beyond the immediate environs of the farmhouse and its well-established garden was a long line of modern cattle sheds which she knew Drew had had built in the last few years. There was a good deal more to farming, she was beginning to realise, than simply owning land and animals.

  The chestnut tree was further away than she had thought, and her calves were aching a little by the time she had crossed the second field.

  The wind, blowing unchecked from the Welsh hills, buffeted her, tangling her hair and blinding her with it, but at last she reached her destination and started to gather up some of the fallen leaves.

  Engrossed in her task, it was several seconds before she realised that she and the tree weren't the sole occupants of the field. Standing less than ten yards away, watching her, was Drew's prize bull.

  Scrambling unsteadily to her feet, she stared at it in horror. For a second neither of them moved, and then it made a brief charge toward her.

  Holly screamed and dropped the leaves, running as fast as she could for the gate and safety, acting on instinct alone and nothing else. Why, oh, why hadn't she checked the field before she opened the gate? Behind her she could hear the thunder of the bull's hoofs as it pursued her:

  Panic made her heart pound, adrenalin pumping frantically through her veins, so that she forgot everything other than her need to escape.

  The gate was ahead of her. Open. Open?

  'Holly!'

  She heard Drew call her name and she screamed out thankfully to him through her tortured lungs. Her scream took her last reserve of energy, and as he came running toward her she flung herself thankfully into his arms, only somehow her foot slipped and she felt herself falling, her unprotected body hitting the hard earth with a blow that drove every bit of oxygen from her lungs.

  The bull's hoofbeats shook the earth. Frantically she tried to get up, dimly aware of Drew's soothing voice and helping hands, and then mercifully everything blacked out.

  When she came round she was lying safely on the other side of the gate, on Drew's Barbour. As she looked anxiously at the gate, Drew squatted down beside her.

  'Holly, does anything hurt?'

  'No,' she told him quaveringly, testing her limbs uncertainly, but when she struggled to sit up he pressed her back gently.

  'You took quite a tumble,' he told her quietly. 'Just lie there for a minute until you come round properly. What happened?'

  'I wanted some leaves… I was doing my stencil. I thought the field was empty.' Her bottom lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears of shock and relief. 'I thought the bull was locked up.'

  'The bull?' Drew turned his head, and Holly shuddered as she saw the animal on the other side of the gate, pawing at the ground and watching her balefully.

  'Oh, Septimus. Yes… Yes, I see.'

  Had she not been feeling quite so dreadful, she would have seen the distinct twinkle in Drew's eye,
but she had closed her eyes to ward off the peculiar feeling of light-headedness engulfing her.

  Beyond the gate, the bullock, that Drew's cowman's wife had raised by hand after he'd lost his mother, bellowed mournfully, feeling unfairly deprived of his human companion and potential playmate, and Drew turned his attention back to the woebegone figure at his feet.

  'Don't get up,' he told Holly comfortingly. 'I'll carry you back to the house. You've had a nasty shock. Oh, and don't worry about your skirt, it should clean up all right.'

  'My skirt? Oh, yes, the mud when I fell.'

  'Not mud, exactly,' Drew announced carefully.

  Holly's eyes flew open. She touched the sticky mess adhering to the skirt tentatively, and winced as the smell told its own story.

  'Oh, Drew! And I'm lying on your jacket!'

  'Not to worry. Besides,' he added, 'it's only the front of you that—er—took the brunt of things.'

  Ignoring Holly's despairing wails, he picked her up and carried her back to the house. No one else seemed to have witnessed what had happened, and Holly shuddered to think what the outcome would have been if Drew had not appeared.

  She said as much, and, when he remained silent, added curiously, 'But what are you doing back? Peter said you wouldn't be until later.'

  'The meeting of the church council I was due to attend has been cancelled. The vicar's been called to see the bishop on some urgent matter, and couldn't get a message through to us in time to stop us from turning up.'

  'How long have you been on the council?' Holly asked him.

  'Just over a year. The popular consensus of opinion was that it needed an infusion of young… well, relatively young blood. I was asked if I'd like to take on the job. We don't have any world-shaking decisions to make, but I find it very interesting.

  'I think we'd better strip off your skirt and sweater in the kitchen, and then upstairs for a warm, reviving bath. Are you sure you don't want me to call out the doctor to check you over? That was quite a nasty tumble you took.'

  'No, nothing's damaged. Bruised, maybe,' Holly admitted ruefully, 'but not damaged.'