'You thought it might be me driving it?"
'Of anyone, I knew I wouldn't put it past Yancie Dawkins to treat the firm's car as her own.'
'You were angry?"
'How could I be? At the thought that you couldn't be very far away, my heart was starting to speed.'
'Oh, how wonderful!'
'One way and another you've put me through hell, woman,' he growled. `I even thought I was going mad when I found a picture of you growing in my shrubbery!' Yancie laughed in utter enchantment.
Then, her eyes going dreamy, she confessed, `That night that night you wrapped your jacket round me because of the cold I knew then that I was in love with you.'
'Oh, Yancie! You knew then, that night? When we kissed, and loved, you knew?"
'Yes,' she sighed. Then recollected. `You called our lovemaking a non-event.'
'So I can lie too in extreme circumstances.'
'You lied?"
'Yancie, dear Yancie, the memory of that evening, your shyness yet eager loving, is etched for ever in my brain. You'd got me so that when I risked a goodnight kiss before I let you go I knew my self-control was hanging by a mere thread. The next morning, sanity returned, and I decided I had to keep some distance between us.'
This was all so wonderful, so unbelievable and yet, because of the integrity she had witnessed in him, Yancie joyously knew that she could believe him. `It must have thrown you when I turned up as the substitute driver to take you to Manchester,' she said impishly.
'I confess it was wonderful to see you again,' he replied, `but that night I so wanted to kiss you again, to feel you in my arms again, that the only way I could handle it was to keep myself aloof.'
'You were aloof in the bathroom the next morning too,' Yancie teased, trusting more and more in his love the more they spoke.
'Wretched woman. You stretch my selfcontrol to the limits.'
'You said `This won't do',' she remembered without any effort at all.
'Nor would it. While desperately wanting you, Yancie, I didn't dare make love to you. You'd been unsure before-how did I know you wouldn't regret it afterwards?"
'At the risk of sounding a hussy, I wouldn't have,' she murmured-and was soundly kissed for her trouble.
'You do love me!' he murmured, almost in wonder, when at last they drew a little way apart from each other.
'Is that so incredible?' she asked softly.
'In a word, yes,' he replied. `When we returned from Manchester, I tried to apply what logic I could find to this emotion that had erupted in me. I was in love with you, heart and soul. But the more I thought about it, the more I became certain that you would never love me. I decided to cut you out of my life.'
'How could you?"
'Probably, I never could. But, to my muddled thinking then, you could help there.'
'How?"
'I went over what I knew of you. There was a tremendous chemistry between us which had ignited a couple of times. But you are a proud woman. To my mind then, if you had the idea that I was seeing some other woman, you, in that pride, would mentally tell me to get lost. You would, in fact, help me to cut you out of my life, by…'
'By deciding to cut you out of my life,' Yancie finished, amazed now how easily she could hop onto his wavelength. `That was a pig of a thing to do!'
'Oh, sweet love, were you jealous?"
'Not at all,' she so obviously lied so that it couldn't be called a lie at all. `I just went and played cards with some other men I knew.'
'And I would much rather have been in that kitchen with you than in that recital.'
'You knew I was in the kitchen?'
'I was just coming out to check on you when I saw one of the maids and, reason telling me-depending on your degree of mutiny-that you might not yet have returned from where you'd taken off to, I asked her if anyone was looking after my driver.'
'She told you we were all having supper in a lovely warm kitchen?"
'She did, and at the end of the evening we dropped off Julia, and then I remember nothing else until I regained consciousness-and I was panicking about you.'
'And then there I was,' she smiled.
'And I was so full of joy to see you, I forgot totally all that guff about cutting you out of my life-and asked you to marry me.'
Yancie's smile became a beam. `That's what happens when you're caught with your defences down.'
Thomson smiled a loving smile at her. `The only problem with will-power versus a syringe full of something sleep-inducing. I managed to get the question out-but couldn't stay awake to hear the answer.'
Was he again asking her to marry him? Yancie felt that he was, and she now knew that, as she loved him, so Thomson loved her. But this totally alien shyness that seemed to go hand in hand with this love business was getting in the way again-and she was both shy and unsure.
But Thomson was looking at her, a touch of strain there in his look when, as she hadn't answered, he continued, `I thought, when you didn't come to see me again, that I had your answer, your refusal. But, given that you have come to see me now-in spite of my mother's interference-may I take it you don't believe I was engaged to someone else?'
Yancie took a deep and steadying breath. And repeated back a phrase he had used earlier. `While I'm willing to concede there's a vast amount I don't know about you, I think I've learned enough to know that…' she broke off to fly solo '…to know that your integrity is without question. And, while I'll agree that it took me a long while to get there, to get to see it-this love thing is a devil for clouding the issue-I just couldn't see that you would allow yourself to get in the situations we did, a couple of times, if you were serious about someone else.'
'Oh, sweetheart,' Thomson breathed. `Is it any wonder that I love you to distraction?' Yancie smiled a dreamy kind of smile-it all seemed so totally incredible. Thomson gave her a tiny shake. ` So-please-will you marry me?' he asked.
She let go a sigh of a breath. `Oh, Thomson,' she whispered, her heart in her eyes. 'I'm certain that if you can put up with my mother, then I can put up with yours.'
'I'm going to take that as a yes,' he stated positively.
Her heart was so full, she had trouble speaking. But she managed, `I'd be glad if you would.'
And Thomson, hearing her choky words, laughed a tender, joyous laugh and gathered her to him, his mouth against her mouth. `Life,' he murmured positively, `will never be dull again.'
A month later Ralph Proctor escorted his stepdaughter down the aisle. Behind them, dressed in scarlet silk and lace, and looking beautiful, were Yancie's cousins, black-haired Fennia and red-headed Astra. They had attended to her every need that morning. But now, as Yancie went down the aisle to the mann she would marry, Yancie could think of nothing but him.
Tall, dark and straight in his morning suit, he turned as she reached his side, and her heart almost stopped, he looked so handsome. His breath seemed to catch too when he saw her in her exquisite bridal gown. She wore a veil, but he was able to see into her face.
He caught her hand, and, as if he had forgotten the existence of anyone but her, he brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. `This has been the longest month of my life,' he breathed so only she should hear.
'For me too,' she whispered. And they smiled tenderly at each other, then Astra and Fennia together took charge of her bouquet, and the vicar stepped forward and, amongst joy, tenderness and love, Yancie Dawkins was married to Thomson Wakefield.
They posed for photographs afterwards. `Thank you for marrying me, Yancie Wakefield,' Thomson murmured lovingly, his arm firm about her waist.
'The pleasure was all mine, Mr Wakefield, sir,' she answered softly.
They both burst out laughing. Never had either of them been so wonderfully in tune-or so wonderfully happy.
Jessica Steele
***
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The Feisty Fiancée Page 16
