by Lucy Gillen
The rest of the staff worked longer, but Tarin worked only a five-day week and she made the most of her free time. Sometimes she felt rather as if she was on holiday, although she worked so hard, and there always seemed to be new places to discover and new things to do. She had even toyed with the idea of learning to ride so that she could get further afield, but so far she had done nothing more constructive than think about it.
She shopped at week-ends in Gillespie, the nearest town, and some time, of course, was spent doing household chores, for her uncle was not the most domesticated of men and willingly left it all to her. She was an excellent cook and they lived well, for her uncle had a small but thriving engineering business in Gillespie, so there was no financial strain.
As she had done each Saturday since her arrival, while her uncle was at the office she cleaned the whole house through ready for the week-end, but attempting to do that and at the same time keep an eye on a fruit cake she had made for Sunday tea was bound to prove disastrous. And so it was, though not quite in a way she could have anticipated.
She had decided to give the fruit cake another minute or so, so she left it to go and finish some dusting in the small sitting-room at the back of the house. It was several minutes before she looked at her watch again and she had just decided that disaster was imminent if she didn’t go at once, when the door bell rang.
With her hair tied back with a spotted blue scarf and her slim figure enveloped in a huge yellow apron that had once belonged to Aunt Margaret, she clucked her annoyance at the interruption as she went to answer the summons. There was a hint of flour from her baking on the tops of her bare arms too, although heaven knew how it had got there, and she brushed at it absently as she went to the door.
Finding Darrel Bruce there was a distinct shock and she stared at him for a moment with wide, disbelieving eyes, her lips parted in surprise. For a moment the brown eyes looked at her, a hint of disbelief in their depths, then he smiled and Tarin felt her heart start up a clamour in her breast, though she condemned herself for a fool for allowing him to affect her so violently, simply by smiling.
A pale blue shirt showed off that mahogany dark tan to advantage and was open far enough down from the neck to show the smooth dark shadow of his chest. Dark blue trousers hugged his lean hips and clung to the long muscular legs, his feet planted firmly apart on the red-tiled porch floor.
‘Good morning,’ he said quietly, and shot one brow into the thick hair over his forehead. ‘Are you the lady of the house?’
‘I suppose you could say I was,’ Tarin said, rather shortly, for she imagined a slight in the question, mostly because of that raised brow. ‘Can I help you, Mr. Bruce?’
‘Actually I wanted to see your uncle,’ he told her, and Tarin blinked her surprise. She had never known her uncle have anything at all to do with the Bruce family, and she could hardly believe he would willingly do so now.
‘Heâhe’s not here at the moment,’ she said, her reaction plain on her face. ‘Is it important? He’s at the office, but he’ll be home in about another hour or so.’
‘Not so important it won’t wait another hour,’ he said, and sent a swift appraising glance over her from that concealing scarf over her dark hair to the low-heeled shoes she wore. ‘I’d never have seen my very efficient Miss McCourt as a domesticated creature,’ he told her in a soft and very provoking voice, and Tarin was dismayed to feel the flood of colour that warmed her cheeks.
Maybe it had something to do with that very personal ‘my’, but she wished suddenly that she was more presentable. Being seen in an apron several sizes too large for her and with her hair bundled up in a scarf would not have been so important if the caller had merely been a casual tradesman, but to have Darrel Bruce see her looking like that was disconcerting to say the least.
She put up a hand and swiftly snatched the scarf from her head, letting the long thick silkiness of her hair swing down over her shoulders, shaking her head in a gesture that was partly defiant. ‘I’m sorry I look such a mess,’ she said in a betrayingly husky voice, ‘but I wasn’t expecting callers, and especially not you.’
He leaned himself against the jamb of the door with one long arm stretched upwards so that his hand touched the top of the frame, and looked at her for a moment in silence. But there was some inner glow that lent warmth to those brown eyes and gave her a strange curling sensation in the pit of her stomach.
‘I’m not complaining,’ he said softly. ‘But you do look very domesticated.’
‘And you don’t like domesticated women!’
The retort had been defensive, almost instinctive, and she saw the way his mouth tightened and the way his long body tensed suddenly as if he resented the retort. He straightened up and stood squarely facing her in the narrow confines of the little porch, his expression stern and unfriendly, and she felt an immediate regret for having brought about the change.
‘I don’t know whether it’s because you think you know me, or simply a natural cattiness that makes you say that,’ he told her coolly. ‘But I refuse to rise to your bait, Tarin!’
It was the very first time he had called her by her first name, and it would have to be in anger, she thought ruefully, shaking her head over her own impulsiveness. ‘IâI’m sorry,’ she said.
He continued to look at her steadily for a second, then seemed to make up his mind about something. ‘If I thought you meant that,’ he said quietly, ‘I’d ask to come in and wait until your uncle comes home. As it is I’ll come back later and see him.’
‘Oh, please!’ She looked up at him appealingly, appalled to think that he thought her so inhospitable. ‘Please come in and wait.’ she said, looking almost tearful in her earnestness, and stood back, holding the door wider in invitation.
For a moment she thought he was going to be persuaded and come in, but then he shook his head and a wry smile just touched his wide mouth as he turned away. ‘No, thanks, Miss McCourt, I guess maybe the hatchet isn’t as firmly buried as I thought. I’ll call back and see your uncle when he’s home.’
‘Oh, but what shall I tell him?’ she called as he went down the short front path in long-legged strides. ‘Why do you want to see him?’
He turned when he got to the gate, and one brow lifted for a second, making comment on her change of manner. ‘I’ll discuss that with your uncle,’ he told her. ‘That is, if he isn’t too proud to do business with a Bruce!’
‘IâI wish you’d wait.’
Her voice was wistful now, and she was quite unconscious of looking as soulful as she did, standing there in the doorway wrapped in the folds of that outsize apron. She bit her lip anxiously when he turned again and her eyes were as wide as a child’s, making her look much less than her years, meeting his gaze head on despite the more rapid state of her pulse.
Without another word he turned again and strode back up the garden path and she stood back, holding the door wide a tentative smile on her face. She indicated that he should precede her along the short hall way, but instead he made her go first, his fingertips just touching her bare arm where the flour smudges still showed white on her soft skin, and she breathed a sigh of thankfulness that she had finished in the sitting-room before he came.
The little sitting-room always looked bright and sunny, and particularly so now when it smelled of lavender polish, and the furniture gleamed from her recent ministrations, the cushions on the settee freshly plumped. She indicated that he should sit down, and despaired of her own weakness when she realised the way her legs were trembling.
Seated on their rather small settee he looked taller than ever, and sat with his elbows on his knees, leaning forward slightly. He looked just as much at home in the tiny sitting-room as he did in his own more palatial quarters, and she realised that he was a man who could adapt himself to almost any surroundings quite easily.
‘Can Iâwould you like some coffee?’ she asked, and he looked at her with a hint of a smile for a moment before shaking h
is head.
‘No, thank you,’ he said solemnly. ‘And please don’t let me interrupt your workâI’m sure you must be busy.’
‘Oh, I’ve finished now,’ she assured him. ‘I left this room until last so that I could keep an eye on theâ’ She put a hand to her mouth in dismay when she remembered her reason. ‘Oh no!’ she said despairingly. ‘My cake!’
Ignoring his politely raised brows, she dashed into the kitchen and flung open the oven door, making a small heartfelt moaning sound when an ominous charring smell tickled her nostrils. A thin wisp of dark smoke wafted out with the rush of heat that flushed her cheeks, and she could have cried to think what he must be thinking of her domestic skills.
‘Is it very bad?’
He must have followed her into the kitchen and he stood in the doorway just behind her when she turned a flushed face and suspiciously bright eyes to look at him. The nicely risen but too dark fruit cake sat in the oven looking horribly uneatable, and Tarin felt as if she could have burst into tears there and then.
‘It’s burnt to a cinder!’ she moaned dismally, and without thinking put her hands into the hot oven to take out the baking tin.
Her cry of pain coincided with the thud of the cake tin and its contents as they hit the floor and scattered charred crumbs in every direction. She was aware of him striding swiftly towards her as she thrust her stinging fingertips into her mouth instinctively, only to make the pain worse.
‘Don’t do that!’
He snatched her hands from her mouth and held them for a moment in his, looking at the moist red and sore tips, then he reached for a clean dry tea towel from the rack beside the sink and wrapped it carefully round her left hand with a gentleness she would never have believed him capable of.
‘Where do you keep the rest of them?’ he asked brusquely, and Tarin indicated with a nod of her head, the drawer where the clean tea towels were kept.
She was willing enough to let him take charge for the moment because she was too shocked to speak and her fingers were throbbing painfully, although the left one was already slightly less fierce and burning wrapped in the cool softness of the cloth. He took another tea towel from the drawer and wrapped it just as efficiently round her right hand, then reached round her to untie the apron strings.
The rather threadbare cotton ties tangled briefly and she was momentarily enveloped in a strong, spicy masculine warmth as he reached round her with both hands. Her face was close to the broad smoothness of his chest where the pale blue shirt opened and she felt her knees become so weak that she felt sure she must fall if he didn’t soon move away. Managing to free the apron ties at last, he pulled the apron over her head and flung it down on to a chair.
‘I’m taking you down to Doctor Robertson,’ he informed her without consultation, and led her to the door, unprotesting, until she realised what he had said.
‘No! No, there’s no need!’ she denied, pulling back against the hand that held her arm in a grip she could not hope to break. ‘I’m all right, I don’t need a doctor!’
He took not the slightest notice of her objections, as she might have guessed, but led her, still protesting, down the garden path to where his car was parked on the narrow winding road that led down to the village. It was a large, black, expensive-looking monster that the whole village was bound to recognise, and she could just imagine the gossip it would arouse if she was seen driving with him, even if it was only as far as Doctor Robertson’s house on the far side of the village.
He opened the passenger door and tucked her into the seat, carefully arranging her skirt over her knees before he slammed the door, and seemed quite unconcerned about what anyone thought, which, of course, was typical of him.
‘I really don’t need to bother the doctor with this,’ she insisted as he slid into the seat beside her, and he looked at her for a second down the length of his arrogant nose, his mouth showing that hint of a sternness again as he started the engine.
‘Don’t be heroic, Tarin,’ he told her coolly.
‘I’m not,’ she objected. ‘I just don’t want to make a fuss, that’s all.’
He sent the big car purring along the narrow road at a speed that was quite unnecessary in the circumstances, and spared a brief glance at her slightly bewildered face. ‘You’ve burnt your fingers quite badly,’ he told her with the air of explaining elementary points to a rather slow child. ‘I can’t have you laid up with your hands too badly hurt for work for goodness knows how long!’
Almost in tears from the pain in her hands, Tarin felt the first betraying drop tremble on her lashes when she heard his severely practical reasons for concern. ‘Oh, I see,’ she said in a small choked voice. ‘You’re worried about me not being able to workâI wondered why you were so concerned about me! I should have known, of course!’
‘Don’t you want to have them healed as soon as possible?’ he asked reasonably, not yet noticing the tears, and Tarin nodded.
‘Yes, of course I do, butâ’ She bit her lip, trying to do something about the tears that now ran down her face quite freely, using the tea towels that bound her hands to brush them away as best she could. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter!’
‘You’re crying!’
He sounded so surprised that she wondered if he imagined her some kind of curious creature who did the unexpected. It was surely enough to make any girl cry, first burning her hands painfully and then having her boss tell her that he wanted her to get well as soon as possible simply because he needed her to work for him.
‘What do you expect?’ she asked huskily, the tears still running down her cheeks. ‘My hands hurt and youâyou’re not exactly sympathetic, are you?’
‘Oh dear!’ She couldn’t see his expression very clearly for the tears in her eyes, but she thought he looked as if he was smiling, and that made her angry.
‘You are a self-centred, unfeeling creature!’ she accused recklessly. ‘You just don’t care about my feelings at all, do you?’
He said nothing for a moment, but drove the car in through a pair of slightly weather-worn iron gates that guarded Doctor Robertson’s untidy front garden. Turning in his seat after he stopped the car, he looked at her tear-stained face for a moment in silence, then swiftly, and quite unexpectedly, he leaned across and kissed her cheek lightly. His nearness brought again that spicy warm maleness that had enveloped her at the house when he untied her apron, and she stared at him for a moment, with her lips parted in surprise.
‘It’s too late to do much about it now,’ he said quietly, as he leaned further across and opened the door for her, ‘but I’ll see what I can do about impressing you with my sympathy after the doctor’s seen you.’
Doctor Robertson was a kind, elderly man, and Tarin remembered that he had once treated her for measles when she was quite small and staying with her uncle and aunt during the school holidays. He remembered her too, and clucked and frowned over her hands for several minutes.
‘It could have been much worse,’ he decreed at last. ‘You were lucky, my dear girl. But you must not use your hands for a day or two.’
Tarin looked not very pleased about that, but she had expected something of the sort so she could not pretend to be surprised by it. ‘That’s going to be difficult,’ she said while the doctor applied acqua-flavin to her fingertips. ‘But I suppose there’s nothing for it.’
He saw her out and exchanged a few words with Darrel, then reminded her again about not using her hands. ‘Oh, I have the week-end for them to heal,’ she told him, and glanced at Darrel. ‘I have to be ready for work on Monday morning.’
She heard his huff of impatience as she said it and he took her arm with a curiously disturbing air of possessiveness. ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ he told her shortly. ‘And stop trying to make me appear as some kind of inhuman monster, for heaven’s sake!’
Doctor Robertson raised one grey eyebrow and appeared to find their exchange of some interest, but Tarin was not prepared to let the pr
esent situation become the source of village gossip. The old doctor was known to be a notorious old gossip and she could see that he already had quite the wrong idea about her relationship with Darrel Bruce, an idea no doubt fostered by that possessive hand on her arm as he guided her across the surgery to the door.
‘I’m sorry if I gave that impression,’ she told him, then smiled at the old man again gratefully. ‘Thank you for seeing me out of surgery hours, Doctor Robertson,’ she told him. ‘I won’t use my hands any more than I can help, but it’s a bit difficult when I have to cook for myself and my uncle.’
Doctor Robertson looked at her from beneath his bushy brows and smiled. ‘Robert McCourt’s managed to survive on his own cooking for the past few years,’ he said. ‘He can manage again, I dare say!’
‘I suppose so.’ She sounded so unsure that the old doctor patted her arm consolingly.
‘Never you mind, lassie,’ he said kindly, ‘you’ll soon heal. You’re a healthy young girl and you’ll soon be working away as good as new in a wee while.’
He followed them out to the car and as they walked down the steps Tarin endeavoured to shake off that embarrassingly possessive hand on her arm. ‘I could walk back quite easily,’ she told Darrel, but he shook his head.
‘You could, he said bluntly, ‘but I’m seeing your uncle, remember?’
‘You’re visiting Robert McCourt?’ the doctor asked with deceptive mildness, and Tarin knew as well as anyone how unlikely that would sound to a local who knew all about the feud that had never ended as far as the McCourts were concerned.
Darrel smiled a little ruefully, knowing how that would be circulated round the village, with interest. ‘I have some business I want to discuss with him,’ he said. ‘That’s how I came to be on hand when Tarin hurt herself.’
