A Time to Dream

by Penny Jordan

  ‘You could have told me the truth. You should have told me the truth,’ Melanie told him tonelessly.

  ‘I wanted to, but the longer I waited the harder it became. Equally,’ he gave her a twisted smile, ‘equally you could have told me the truth—or at least you could have told me why you didn’t want to touch John’s money. But you obviously didn’t feel that you could; didn’t trust me enough. We both kept certain truths hidden from one another, didn’t we?’

  It was an accusation she couldn’t refute.

  ‘There is something else,’ Luke continued. ‘Something my mother reminded me about. I wanted to discuss it with you but—’

  ‘Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear about it,’ Melanie cut in wearily.

  She didn’t think she could stand any more explanations right now. She was finding it increasingly hard to preserve an outward show of calm, to stop herself from breaking down in front of him.

  ‘Please go, Luke.’ Her voice was flat, devoid of all emotion, but her eyes betrayed the truth to him. He took a step towards her and then, as she shrank back from him, he stopped, his mouth hardening with compression.

  ‘All right, Melanie,’ he told her. ‘I’ll go, but I promise you this: I’ll be back, and when I do come back I intend to make you understand that, no matter what has gone wrong between us, you and I have a future together…a good future. I’m not about to repeat with you the mistakes I made with John. I’m not going to let a quarrel, a grievance—no matter how justified—come between us. I love you, and that’s something I’ve never said to any woman before. I love you and I want you in my life. Now and forever.’

  After he had gone, Melanie wondered wearily why his last words to her had sounded more like a threat than a promise; why they rang, doom-laden, through her mind like a funereal bell.

  She loved him. She couldn’t deny that, but she could no more accept and encourage that love than she could actually have done as he had initially assumed—callously set out to deprive an old man of his wealth.

  She didn’t have the emotional stamina for a relationship in which she could not be sure of her partner’s true feelings, of his true commitment to her; so, no matter how much she might love Luke, no matter how much he might claim he loved her, she dared not allow herself to believe that their love could possibly have a future.

  Later, as she prepared for bed, she promised herself tiredly that first thing in the morning she was going to carry through her intention of putting the cottage up for sale. Only when she was free of its burden would she be able to physically escape from the emotional pressure she suspected Luke’s continued presence would put upon her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SO IT was done. The cottage was now in the hands of an estate agent, who had promised her that he expected to achieve a sale within a very reasonable period of time, even with the stipulations she had made as to the resale of the property.

  Knutsford was busy with shoppers and traffic, but people were the last thing she wanted at the moment. Unexpectedly she discovered that what she craved was the solitude, the protective privacy of the cottage.

  Rather than sleep in the bed she had shared with Luke, she had spent the night curled up in front of the sitting-room fire, wrapped in her duvet, as a result of which she now felt stiff all over and very tired.

  When she had driven back to the cottage she parked her car and climbed out. She doubted if there’d been a second since his departure last night when she had stopped thinking about Luke. She had tried not to, tried to insist to herself that all she was doing was making it worse for herself, increasing her pain. Over and over again she could hear his voice telling her he loved her. The harder she struggled to hold on to the fact that he had deceived her, the louder those words seemed to become until now they were threatening to drown out the reality of the situation completely.

  Just as she was about to head for the cottage, she heard a car coming down the lane.

  Instinctively she hurried to the gate and opened it, stepping out into the lane to see who was approaching.

  It wasn’t Luke, not unless he had borrowed the large BMW belonging to David Hewitson, who once again was driving far too fast down what was after all only a very narrow lane. Where was he going? she wondered curiously, on the point of turning round to go back into the garden.

  Later she was never quite sure what had happened; whether she had inadvertently stepped out into the lane; whether David Hewitson’s sudden increase in speed, like his swerve in to her side of the road, had been deliberate or accidental. All she did know was that she had turned round to discover that the BMW seemed to be heading straight for her, and that, as fast as she had tried to move out of its way, she could not move quite fast enough.

  She had felt the impact of the car’s heavy metal frame against the side of her body, a sickening, jarring agony that had made her cry out in pain as the impact sent her headlong into the undergrowth which separated her garden from the lane.

  She discovered later that it was two walkers who had discovered her inert body, and had gone for help, quite naturally, to the only other house they had passed, which just happened to be Luke’s rented cottage.

  It was Luke apparently who had summoned an ambulance and insisted on riding in it with her when they took her to hospital; Luke who had waited by her bedside until he’d been quite sure that she had suffered no permanent damage; Luke who had questioned the walkers but could not discover from them just what had happened to her, and it was also Luke who was still sitting at her bedside in the hospital when she eventually came round to find Luke’s face haggard with shock and anxiety.

  ‘Luke.’

  The moment she said his name, he was reaching out towards her, lifting her hand off the bed and holding it tenderly between his own.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked him anxiously. ‘What am I doing here?’

  ‘That’s what we’d all like to know,’ he told her grimly. ‘You were found unconscious at the roadside by a pair of walkers. How you got there…’

  The fog was starting to clear from round her brain.

  ‘It was David Hewitson,’ she told him dully, shuddering as she explained what had happened.

  ‘He ran you down deliberately?’ Luke was frowning at her, but not sounding as disbelieving as she had expected.

  ‘I…I don’t know. I’m not sure. He seemed…’ she licked her dry lips ‘…he seemed to increase his speed to head right for me. I tried to get out of the way, but I couldn’t move fast enough. My leg…’

  ‘This will have to be reported to the police,’ Luke told her gravely. ‘The man’s a maniac.’

  Immediately Melanie caught hold of his sleeve. ‘No, Luke, please don’t! I don’t think I could stand all the fuss… I suppose he was angry with me because I wouldn’t sell to him. I don’t think he planned to hurt me, he just—’

  ‘Saw his opportunity and took it. Melanie, he could have killed you!’

  ‘But he didn’t,’ she told him tiredly. ‘Please promise me you’ll just let it go, Luke. After all, even I can’t be sure that he did intend to hurt me.’

  ‘You may not be,’ Luke told her grimly. ‘Others won’t be so generous; certainly I shan’t. The man’s notorious for his temper.’ He saw her face and said quietly, ‘All right, if it’s what you want. You’ve put the cottage up for sale, then?’ he asked her, abruptly changing the subject.

  Melanie nodded.

  ‘Yes. Yes. I felt it was for the best.’

  ‘Mm. They’ve told me that they don’t think it’s necessary to keep you in here overnight. They need the bed apparently,’ he added drily. ‘Once the doctor’s been to check you over, they’ll be sending you home—back to the cottage.’

  Although she said nothing, Melanie felt like bursting into tears. Suddenly she was very afraid…very much aware of being alone. Right now the last thing she wanted was to go back to the solitude of the cottage but not because she was afraid that David Hewitson might try to harm her: she was t
horoughly convinced that if he had tried deliberately to hurt her, it had been a momentary impulse, a burst of aggression and temper, not something which had been premeditated, for all the threats he had previously made against her.

  Within half an hour, as Luke had predicted, the doctor had been round to check her over and, having pronounced her undamaged apart from some bruises, had told her that he was sending her home.

  ‘Is there someone who could come and collect you—?’ he started to enquire, but Luke did not allow him to finish, saying firmly,

  ‘I’m taking her home,’ and, before Melanie could object, he said quietly. ‘I’ve got the car here anyway. Don’t waste your breath arguing about it, Melanie.’

  In truth, arguing with him was quite beyond her at the moment. As the doctor had warned her, she was still very much in a state of shock; a state in which it seemed far easier to let other people take control of her and her life, rather than to force herself into the kind of mental and physical effort she simply did not think she was capable of sustaining.

  She didn’t even object when, once they were outside the hospital, Luke insisted on picking her up and carrying her over to his car. Her sore leg was aching badly since she had apparently fallen heavily on it, causing it to start bleeding again.

  Having ensured that she was fastened securely into the passenger seat, Luke walked round to the driver’s side and got in beside her.

  ‘Go to sleep if that’s what you feel like doing,’ he advised her, turning towards her to adjust the headrest and the seat so that she could do just that.

  Perhaps because of her state of shock, she didn’t know, but, whatever the reason, she seemed intensely aware of him physically as he leaned over her. Not just of the strength and height of him, but of the scent of his body, the measure of his breathing, and if she closed her eyes she could even remember the shape and texture of his body beneath his clothes, the sensation of his flesh beneath her fingertips, the living, breathing warmth of him.

  She shivered violently, causing him to stop what he was doing and touch her face in swift alarm.

  ‘Melanie, are you OK?’

  Bitter tears gathered in her throat. How could she tell him the truth: that the only way she would ever be ‘OK’ again would be if he took her in his arms and somehow made her forget everything that lay between them.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she lied, turning her face away from him and staring blindly out of the window.

  She felt thoroughly disorientated by her accident. It seemed impossible to believe that it was still only early in the afternoon. She felt as though she had lived through several traumatic lifetimes in the last few days, all her mental and physical reserves so totally depleted that she simply had nothing left to fall back on.

  Once they were back at the cottage, Luke refused to let her get out of the car unaided, carrying her, as he had done from the hospital, to the door, and from there upstairs and into the bedroom he had decorated for her, gently depositing her on the bed, before she could open her mouth to object.

  And what, after all, could she say? she wondered bitterly. That she couldn’t sleep in this bed because he had shared it with her? What a self-betrayal that would be.

  ‘I’m going to have to leave you for a while,’ he told her as he secured the duvet around her. ‘But I’ll be back just as soon as I can—’

  ‘Back? But, Luke, there’s no need for that.’

  ‘No need! If you think for one moment I’m going to let you sleep here alone…’

  Her heart was beating frantically fast.

  ‘But you can’t stay here,’ she protested. ‘There’s nowhere for you to sleep. The other bed’s broken, and Mr Burrows—’

  ‘I’ll sleep downstairs,’ he told her flatly. ‘I’m not leaving you on your own, Melanie.’

  She was too weak to continue arguing with him. He insisted on making her a cup of tea, but she had fallen asleep before she could drink it, worn out with shock and pain.

  When he came upstairs and found her fast asleep, Luke stared down at her for a long time, and then very gently touched her face with his fingertips.

  In her sleep she sighed and turned towards his hand so that her lips were touching his skin. His body tensed as love and desire flooded through him. No matter how long it took, somehow he would find a way to convince her. To make her see that what they felt for one another was too precious, too important to be jeopardised by any kind of misunderstanding.

  But right now he had things to do, enquiries to set in motion—a thought which had occurred to him the previous evening when he had listened to her sad little voice telling him how John must surely have picked her name at random.

  That did not accord with the man he knew. John Burrows had never acted on impulse and certainly not on that kind of impulse. He was a man to whom family had been all important. Family. That was the key to this whole mystery, Luke was sure of it.

  He had another matter to attend to as well, something which he hoped would go some way to proving to Melanie how much she meant to him. It was pointless cursing the fate now which had ever led him into making that idiotic and betraying comment to Lucinda Hewitson. He had sensed from the moment he met her that Melanie could never have been the type of woman to deceive and seduce a lonely old man. Had known it, but had fought against it, just as he had tried to fight against loving her until he had realised that what he was trying to deny himself was one of the greatest gifts that life could offer. But by then it had been too late; by then Lucinda had been at work, spreading her poison.

  He sighed as he gently and tenderly kissed Melanie’s half-parted lips. Somehow he would find a way to break through the barriers she was erecting against him. Somehow there must be a way. There had to be a way.

  * * *

  ‘I HAD A telephone call this morning. The estate agents have a buyer for the house. He’s prepared to pay the full asking price, and to abide by the conditions I’ve laid down.’

  ‘You still intend to sell, then?’

  It was three days later, and this morning, for the first time since Melanie’s accident, Luke had actually allowed her to get out of bed and come downstairs.

  It was bright and sunny outside but with a cold wind, so Luke had insisted that she was to stay inside in front of the fire he had made up for her.

  He had been out first thing and had returned with a pile of extravagant and expensive glossy magazines for her, a couple of new books she had mentioned that she would like to read, and a selection of carefully chosen fresh fruit.

  He was cosseting her dreadfully and she, fool that she was, instead of insisting on his leaving, was allowing him to do so, outwardly denying what she knew inwardly to be the truth: that she was secretly saving up every tiny memory, that no matter how foolish it might be she hadn’t been able to stop loving him at all, that in fact…

  That in fact her love for him was actually growing stronger, deepening, widening, until it was beginning to encompass every facet of her life.

  ‘Yes, I still intend to sell,’ she agreed, and then gave a tiny sigh. ‘That means I’m going to have to go up into the attic and sort out all that stuff up there.’

  ‘Stuff…what stuff?’ Luke asked sharply.

  ‘I don’t know. Boxes of papers; all sorts of things. The solicitor told me that Mr Burrows hoarded everything and that all the documents and papers they found after his death were collected together and stored away in the attic. Since they had no instructions as to what they ought to do with them, they left them there for me. I just haven’t been able to bring myself to touch them.’ She gave him an uncertain look. ‘I suppose morally, since he was your second cousin, if they belong to anyone then they belong to you.’

  ‘In that case, would you mind if I took a look up there?’ He smiled grimly at her. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not expecting to find a new will revoking his bequest to you.’

  It was still a very sore subject and now Melanie flushed uncomfortably and said stiffly, ‘It never occurre
d to me that you were.’

  Only last night he had pleaded with her, ‘Just give me another chance, Mel. I promise you, you won’t regret it.’

  ‘Take you on trust, you mean?’ she had demanded bitterly and had seen the hope, the passion, die out of his eyes to be replaced by a flat despair.

  She wanted to do as he suggested: ached to do so, in fact, but the trauma of her life prevented her from doing so. There was still buried somewhere deep inside her the illogical childhood belief that for some reason her parents, in dying, had deliberately chosen to desert her.

  As an adult she knew that that was not the case; knew that their deaths had been accidental; knew that it was not their fault that she was left alone; but that feeling, that fear of being betrayed, of being rejected, was still there.

  Perhaps the fault was hers in that she demanded too much; needed too much.

  She started to tremble, moving agitatedly in her chair. No matter how much she protested to Luke that there was really no need for him to stay, he refused to leave her, and didn’t she, not so very deep inside her heart, really want him to stay?

  ‘So, you’ve no objection to my going up into the attic and having a look round?’ Luke asked her.

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘None at all.’

  ‘I’m not going to give up, you know,’ he told her softly.

  She looked at him and flushed. ‘Luke…’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about. I’m not giving up on us, Melanie. I love you. I want to marry you.’

  If he heard her betraying indrawn breath, he didn’t show it.

  ‘And I don’t care what it takes or how long it takes. Somehow I’m going to find a way of convincing you that we could have something good together, something worthwhile, something very rare and special.’