A Kiss by Candlelight

by Joanna Mansell

  Then she flounced out of the kitchen before he could make any more of his highly unsettling observations.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Halfway through the morning, Cathryn heard Mandy leave the flat. A couple of minutes later, Nicholas came limping into the drawing-room looking much relieved.

  ‘I thought I was never going to get rid of her,’ he said, slumping into the nearest chair. ‘The girl’s like a leech once she’s attached herself to someone!’

  ‘You shouldn’t be so irresistibly attractive to women,’ remarked Cathryn, her eyes gleaming.

  ‘Until now, I didn’t think I was,’ he replied drily. Then he glanced at his watch. ‘Now that I’ve finally managed to shift her out of here, I’ve got a suggestion to put to you.’

  Cathryn was instantly on her guard. ‘What sort of suggestion?’

  ‘Charles’s flat is very comfortable, but I’m sick of staring at four walls all day. I want to get out of here.’

  That didn’t seem completely unreasonable to Cathryn. ‘What do you want to do?’ she asked. ‘Go out for lunch? Or for a drive somewhere?’

  Nicholas’s green eyes glinted in the way that she was already beginning to distrust.

  ‘I’d like to go for a drive,’ he told her.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Cornwall,’ he answered calmly.

  Cathryn’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Cornwall?’

  ‘I’ve a house down there,’ he replied, to her surprise. ‘I want to go and stay there for a couple of days. I can’t get there, though, unless someone drives me.’ Then a light frown suddenly furrowed his forehead. ‘I suppose you can drive?’ he questioned her.

  Cathryn considered lying to him, and telling him that she couldn’t. She was sure that he would know she was lying, though; she had never been any good at it. Something in her face always gave her away.

  ‘Yes, I can drive,’ she said reluctantly. ‘But I’m not volunteering to take you to Cornwall,’ she added very firmly.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked reasonably. ‘You’d like it there.’

  ‘I like it here! Your brother’s flat is very comfortable.’

  ‘It’s also stifling,’ Nicholas growled. ‘I look out of the window, and there’s nothing to see except more houses. I step out of the door and there are city smells instead of fresh clean air.’

  Cathryn looked at him rather sceptically. ‘I didn’t know you were a nature lover! Anyway, didn’t you tell me that you had a flat in London? You can’t hate it here so much if you choose to live here.’

  ‘I need a base in town when I’m working. And yes, there are times when I like city life. But I’ve spent the last three months staring at the walls of a hospital room,’ he muttered. ‘And now I’m cooped up here, in Charles’s flat. I’m beginning to feel so damned claustrophobic that it’s driving me crazy!’

  He slammed his fist down with some force on the arm of his chair, making Cathryn jump. There was a contained violence in this man that might have frightened her if it hadn’t been obvious that most of the time he kept it well under control. It broke out in small bursts now and then, but never so fiercely that it seriously scared or worried her. It simply rattled her nerves, which made her feel even more irritable herself.

  ‘I can understand why you want to get out of here, but I really don’t think this is a good time to go shooting off to Cornwall,’ ,she said, annoyed that he had even had the nerve to ask her.

  ‘Give me a good reason why not,’ he challenged her.

  ‘Well—your brother expects you to stay here,’ she said, aware that was a pretty feeble argument. ‘He might ring up to check that you’re all right. He’d get worried if he found you weren’t here. Besides that, there are plenty of doctors on hand in London, if anything goes wrong—if you need them,’ she finished, glancing at him slightly nervously since she knew that was beginning to tread on rather delicate ground.

  Unexpectedly, though, Nicholas didn’t take offence at her remarks. ‘You mean, if I go completely ga-ga?’ he said with some amusement. ‘Are you expecting me to do that? What on earth has Charles been saying about me?’

  ‘Not very much,’ replied Cathryn, picking her words extremely carefully. ‘He just said that you were still suffering—well, after-effects. That’s hardly surprising. Getting blown up is a pretty traumatic thing to happen.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he agreed. ‘But Charles seems to be under the impression that it’ll take only a minor setback to send me completely out of my head. Delayed shock doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ Cathryn said doubtfully. ‘I don’t really know much about it.’

  ‘I do,’ came Nicholas’s rather dry answer. ‘During the course of my work, I’ve seen it in others plenty of times. Bad dreams, the shakes, spells when you get disorientated—and there are plenty of other symptoms you can get. There’s not much you can do about them, either. You just have to sit it out, and wait until it works its way out of your system.’

  ‘And not get too excited,’ Cathryn reminded him, her eyebrows lifting gently.

  ‘That, too,’ he agreed with an unexpected grin. Then his expression changed again. ‘I’m sure the doctors would approve of a change of scenery. So—will you drive me down to Cornwall?’ he asked, looking at her directly.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ Cathryn said decisively. ‘I really think it would be better if you stayed here.’

  Nicholas’s good humour instantly vanished. ‘I didn’t ask you to make decisions about what was good for me. I’m quite capable of doing that for myself. All I wanted from you was a simple favour.’

  ‘Simple?’ Cathryn echoed indignantly. ‘There’s nothing particularly simple about a very long drive to the back of beyond!’

  ‘Cornwall isn’t completely beyond the bounds of civilisation. You can take the motorway for much of the journey. It’s a fairly straightforward drive.’

  ‘Straightforward er not, I’m not going,’ Cathryn declared flatly. ‘Your brother asked me to stay here with you, at this flat, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.’

  She had expected an outburst of temper, and perhaps even threats. Instead, though, Nicholas seemed to take her refusal very calmly. He levered himself to his feet and then looked down at her.

  ‘If you won’t drive me, then I’ll just have to try and drive myself,’ he said in a cool tone.

  Her gaze immediately slid down to his injured leg. ‘You can’t!’ she said in alarm. ‘If you get into a car, you’ll probably end up killing yourself. Or, worse still, you’ll kill someone else!’

  ‘That’s a possibility,’ Nicholas agreed smoothly. ‘Of course, there’s one way you can make sure neither of those things happen.’

  ‘That’s blackmail!’ she accused. ‘I don’t like that.’

  ‘Nor do I, usually. But I really do need to get away from here for a couple of days.’

  There was a raw note in his voice now, that hadn’t been there before. Cathryn glanced uneasily at him, and found his features were set in a dark, rigid pattern. She realised that he did need to get out of here. He was beginning to look like a caged animal that was growing quite desperate for freedom. But what would Sir Charles say if she went ahead with this? Would he hold her responsible if anything happened to his brother?

  She gave a brief sigh. Was she really considering agreeing to this crazy plan? What was it about this man that could sometimes get to her?

  ‘Like it or not, I feel responsible for you. That means I’d have to stay in Cornwall with you,’ she said with a complete lack of enthusiasm. ‘I couldn’t just take you there and dump you.’

  ‘I don’t particularly want you hanging around, but if those are your terms for taking me then I suppose I’ll have to go along with them.’

  ‘You know perfectly well that I don’t want to go at all,’ she retorted. ‘Quite apart from anything else, I don’t like the country. I’m a city girl. And I promised your brother—’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ interrupted Nicholas.
To be honest I’m getting a little tired of hearing what you promised my brother. This whole set-up was absurd in the first place. I don’t need a nursemaid, but I went along with it because I felt I owed my brother something for getting me out of that hospital.’ He limped restlessly over to the window and stared out, like a prisoner searching for a glimpse of freedom. ‘Well?’ he said, turning back to face her. ‘Will you take me?’

  Cathryn definitely wanted to say no. She knew that if she refused, though, Nicholas was crazy enough to try and drive himself all that distance. And although it wouldn’t really be her fault if anything happened, she would end up haunted by feelings of guilt.

  ‘What if your brother rings?’ she queried unhappily. ‘He’ll wonder where on earth we are.’

  ‘I’ll leave a message for him on the answerphone. Anyway, we’ll only be away for a couple of days. A short break’s all I need to get me back to some kind of sanity.’

  Cathryn gave another sigh, only deeper this time. Somehow he was managing to make the whole thing sound so reasonable! He had a clever way with words—which was hardly surprising, considering his job.

  ‘Are we leaving, then?’ Nicholas challenged her softly. ‘If we can get away during the next half-hour we should be there before dark.’

  ‘I don’t think this is a very good idea,’ she warned him. ‘And I definitely don’t like the way you’re forcing me into it.’

  ‘Stop arguing, and go and throw some clothes into a suitcase,’ Nicholas told her.

  Cathryn shook her head. If only there were some way she could get out of this! She couldn’t seem to think of any, though. Not without declaring outright that she wasn’t going, and letting Nicholas go careering off on his own.

  Part of her wished that she could do just that. It was really inconvenient, having this strong sense of responsibility. She felt a great surge of resentment towards Nicholas Ellis, and wished she had never even heard of Sir Charles’s brother. He was managing to turn her life upside-down, and she had only been here a couple of days so far!

  With great reluctance, she went to her room and packed. When she trudged out into the hall with her case, she found Nicholas was already waiting for her.

  ‘I wish you’d change your mind about this,’ she said, frowning at him.

  ‘I’m not going to do that, so let’s get moving.’

  ‘Whose car are we going to use?’

  ‘My brother’s,’ replied Nicholas. ‘It’s in the garage round the back. Here are the keys.’ He tossed them over to her.

  Cathryn stared at him uneasily. ‘I don’t think we should use Sir Charles’s car. Don’t you have one of your own?’

  ‘It’s been garaged while I’ve been in hospital. By the time we’ve gone halfway across London to collect it, the best part of the day will be gone. We won’t be able to reach Cornwall before dark.’

  ‘I still don’t like it,’ she insisted. ‘I mean, we don’t have permission to use it. And what about insurance?’

  Nicholas began to look extremely impatient. ‘Charles always insures everything very comprehensively, and that includes his cars. Incidentally, he’s got three cars in all, and he rarely uses any of them. He goes everywhere by taxi. He certainly won’t miss one of them for a couple of days.’

  ‘That isn’t the point,’ she persisted.

  ‘Then what is?’ came his impatient growl. Nicholas looked as if he was getting very close to exploding, but that didn’t deter Cathryn.

  ‘Technically, it’s theft,’ she told him stubbornly.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ came his caustic retort. ‘Spend the rest of the day trying to get hold of my brother on the phone, so he can tell you himself that it’s all right?’

  ‘That would certainly make me feel a lot better about the whole thing,’ Cathryn said, standing her ground even though the fierce blaze of Nicholas’s eyes made her knees quiver.

  He scowled irritably, and snatched up the phone. ‘I’ll make one try to get through to Charles. If I can’t reach him, we’ll simply take the car.’

  ‘If you can’t get hold of him, we’ll cancel the trip until you can speak to him,’ Cathryn said, her voice a lot firmer than her still shaking legs.

  Nicholas flicked through the list of telephone numbers that his brother had left behind, and then dialled one of them. Cathryn wandered restlessly up and down while Nicholas spoke curtly to someone at the other end. Then she remembered the time difference between England and the States.

  ‘It’ll be very early in the morning over there,’ she warned him.

  ‘Fine,’ said Nicholas grimly. ‘We’ll get Charles out of bed. And if he isn’t at all pleased at having his sleep disturbed, remember that you’re the one to blame.’

  Cathryn indignantly began to deny it—after all, she wasn’t the one who wanted to go haring off to Cornwall—but Nicholas didn’t hear her. He was already speaking to someone at the other end.

  ‘Yes, please keep ringing,’ he said in a terse voice. ‘I don’t care if you wake him up.’ There was another pause, rather longer this time, and then Nicholas said, ‘Charles? Yes, I do know what time it is. I’m ringing to ask if we can use your car. Cathryn will be driving it, of course.’ He listened to something that his brother said, and the taut line of his mouth relaxed a fraction. ‘Yes, I do know that it wasn’t necessary to call you at this time in the morning to ask you that, but I couldn’t convince Cathryn of that fact. Do you want to speak to her?’ Nicholas held the receiver out to Cathryn. ‘My brother would like a word with you.’

  Cathryn took it with some trepidation. ‘Hello?’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘Cathryn, what on earth is this all about?’ To her relief, Sir Charles sounded resigned rather than angry.

  ‘Nicholas wants us to use your car, but I didn’t like to take it without your permission,’ she explained apologetically.

  Sir Charles gave a sigh. ‘Where does Nicholas want you to take him?’

  ‘Er—Cornwall,’ she told him.

  ‘What the hell does he want to go there for?’ asked Sir Charles in a baffled voice.

  ‘Apparently, he’s got a house there.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Sir Charles, after a brief pause. ‘But then, there’s a great deal I’ve never really known or understood about my brother,’ he said a trifle bitterly. ‘What does he want to do? Stay at this house of his?’

  Nicholas had moved out of earshot now, so Cathryn felt she could talk freely as long as she kept her voice low.

  ‘Just for a couple of days. He says this flat is making him feel claustrophobic.’

  ‘Nicholas never did like staying in the same place for too long,’ commented Sir Charles. ‘I suppose that’s why he does the sort of job that he does. How do you feel about this trip, Cathryn?’

  ‘Not too thrilled,’ she admitted. ‘But I’ll stick with him, since I promised you that I would.’

  ‘You’re worth your weight in gold,’ he said gratefully. ‘Look, get the address of Nicholas’s house and leave it in my diary on the desk. And when you get down there, see if there’s a phone. If there is, give me a ring and leave the number. That way, I won’t feel so out of touch with you.’

  ‘OK, I’ll do that,’ she agreed.

  ‘How are you coping in general?’ he asked.

  ‘About as well as I thought I would,’ Cathryn said drily.

  Sir Charles chuckled at the other end. ‘As bad as that? I did warn you Nicholas wasn’t an easy person to get along with.’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t think he really needs me here,’ she said. ‘He’s short-tempered, and he doesn’t seem to be sleeping very well, but I don’t think it’s anything he can’t handle on his own.’

  ‘He may well stay fine,’ agreed Sir Charles. ‘Especially if he takes his medication regularly. But the specialist at the hospital did warn that there was a chance he could hit a really bad patch. And if that happens, he’ll need someone around.’

  ‘I don’t know what
I could actually do about it,’ said Cathryn doubtfully.

  ‘I don’t expect you to do anything,’ said Sir Charles. ‘Just get him medical help as quickly as you can. The number of the specialist is in the phone book. Ring him, and he’ll arrange to have Nicholas immediately readmitted to hospital.’

  ‘But we’re going to be in Cornwall,’ Cathryn pointed out uneasily.

  ‘I know,’ said Sir Charles, the tone of his voice clearly telling her that he wasn’t very pleased about that particular arrangement. ‘Can’t you talk him out of it?’

  ‘I’ve tried,’ she said ruefully.

  ‘And you didn’t get anywhere?’ guessed Sir Charles with a great deal of resignation.

  ‘With or without me, he intends to go.’

  ‘Then take the number of the specialist with you,’ Sir Charles told her. ‘If anything happens, they’ll arrange for a private ambulance to bring Nicholas back to London.’

  Cathryn was beginning to get alarmed by all these rather elaborate arrangements. ‘Is anything likely to happen?’ she said. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Sir Charles assured her. ‘Nicholas will probably be fine. I just feel I need to take these precautions in case something out of the ordinary happens.’

  ‘I think you worry too much about your brother,’ Cathryn said bluntly. ‘To be honest, he seems perfectly capable of looking after himself.’

  There was a short pause from the other end. ‘I don’t really know what Nicholas is like nowadays,’ Sir Charles said slowly, at last. ‘But when he was younger—when we were closer—he always used to have a vulnerable side to him. Perhaps it isn’t there any more. Maybe the nature of the work he does has knocked it out of him. But if he does still occasionally need someone to turn to, I want someone reliable to be there for him.’

  ‘And I’ve been nominated as that person?’ Cathryn said wryly.

  ‘Only because I know that you won’t let me down. There aren’t many people I feel I can rely on completely, but you’re one of them, Cathryn. And I really do appreciate everything that you’re doing. I know that you can’t be finding it at all easy.’