His grey eyes came round to rest on her. 'A garden is a garden, isn't it?' he said in an indifferent tone.
'Of course not,' she replied a little impatiently. 'You can have a very formal garden, with the grass shaved right down, the plants set out in neat rows and absolutely everything in its place. Or you can go for a more informal effect, letting the roses ramble where they like, leaving the flowers in big clusters, and letting the daisies grow in the grass.'
'Do whatever you like,' he told her.
Rose looked at him a trifle disapprovingly. 'It's your house. You should be the one who chooses.'
Nathan's gaze became thoughtful. 'Which would you prefer?' Then, without giving her a chance to reply, he answered his own question. 'An informal garden, I should think.'
'How did you know that?' she asked curiously.
'Because you're a fairly informal type of person,' he replied in a dry voice. The moonlight was still bright enough to show her that his eyes had changed by now. His earlier indifference had disappeared without a trace, and his gaze was alert and unexpectedly intent. 'What else did you want to ask me?'
he went on.
'Er—was there something else?' Rose asked in a rather squeaky voice.
'You said there were a couple of things,' he reminded her.
'Oh—yes—I think I did,' she muttered, wondering why on earth she suddenly felt so nervous. 'I've forgotten what the other thing was, though. Anyway, it's getting late. I'd better get off to bed. I'm planning on making an early start in the morning. I want to make the most of this good weather, before it breaks.'
She knew she was beginning to waffle, but she couldn't seem to stop. And she didn't know why she was gabbling on like this. She just knew that there had been a subtle change in the atmosphere between them and, for some reason, it was making her very edgy.
As she began to walk towards the house, Nathan fell into step beside her. Rose stopped, and looked at him warily. 'I thought you wanted to stay outside for a while longer?'
'I didn't say that,' he replied easily.
'But—isn't a walk in the night air meant to be good for insomnia?'
'I've had a walk in the night air. It hasn't cured my insomnia, and I'm tired of walking round and round on my own.'
What was he saying? she wondered. That he wanted her to take a walk with him? Well, that was one invitation she wasn't taking up—not at this time of night!
Rose trotted on rather more briskly, hoping he would take the hint and go off in another direction. He easily kept pace with her, though, and seemed intent on following her right back into the house. Her pulse thumped a little harder. I'm not nervous, she told herself staunchly. I can cope with this man. They had reached the courtyard now, and Rose stopped again. In the moonlight, it looked impossibly romantic, with the tubs of ferns casting faint, fronded shadows in the silver light, while the darker mass of the house rose round them on three sides.
'Why did you buy this place?' she asked him suddenly.
She had no idea why she had asked him such a question, but she was suddenly very curious to hear his answer.
Nathan gave a brief shrug. 'I told the estate agent that I was looking for a secluded property in its own grounds, and this was the first suitable place that he came up with.'
'But even if he'd sent you a dozen suitable properties, this would have been the one that you finally chose, wouldn't it?' she persisted. 'I mean, it's so absolutely perfect.'
'Actually, I bought it without seeing it.' When she gazed at him incredulously, he gave another shrug. 'I was abroad at the time. I couldn't fly back and inspect every house that looked as if it might fit my requirements. This one seemed to have everything I needed, so I said I'd take it.'
'You must be every estate agent's idea of the ideal customer!' she said drily. She glanced up at him as she spoke, and she found that he was looking at her with that rather intent expression again.
'What is it?' she asked a little uneasily.
'I'm just beginning to realise how much you fit in with this place,' he said slowly.
'What do you mean by that?'
'You look as if you belong here. As if you've always been here.'
'I feel as if I belong here,' she admitted in a low voice. 'Although that's silly, because I only moved in a few days ago, and I probably won't be staying for very long.'
'Maybe. Maybe not,' Nathan said, rather cryptically.
Rose was about to ask him what he meant by that, but then decided that she would rather not know. There was something about this place at night that made conversation far easier than it was during the day. And she had the feeling that it could all too easily become an intimate conversation. Of course, all this moonlight didn't help. The pale silver glow that lit everything could have a very unsettling effect on the senses. She was already aware that she was becoming uncomfortably receptive to Nathan's changes of mood. She just hoped that he wasn't finding it equally easy to read her own thoughts and feelings.
She tried to say that she was going straight into the house now, but she couldn't quite seem to get the words out. Nathan wasn't helping, either. He kept looking and looking at her, as if he was really seeing her for the very first time.
'I wish you wouldn't keep staring like that,' she said at last, annoyance helping her to find her tongue. 'It's very
'
'Very what?' he prompted softly.
She had been about to say 'unsettling', but changed her mind at the last moment. 'Rude!' she muttered instead.
'I've never pretended to be particularly polite,' he said in a lazy voice. He sounded far more relaxed than usual, and in a totally different mood from the one he had been in when she had first approached him this evening. And that had been a mistake! she decided with a grimace. She should have stayed in her own room, and talked to him in the morning.
'I just don't know why you keep staring at me,' she said, a little irritably.
'Perhaps it's because you look different tonight,' Nathan replied after a short pause. 'And I can't quite figure out why.'
'Everyone looks different at night. It's a trick of the light. I'll look my usual boring self in the morning.'
'Maybe. But right at this moment, you don't look boring at all.'His tone had become silkier, which should perhaps have warned her. Stupidly, though, she let her curiosity get the better of her.
'If I don't look boring, how do I look?' she couldn't help asking. Nathan gave an odd smile. 'Like no one I've ever been involved with before.'
'Is that a compliment?'
'No,' he replied calmly. 'Just a statement. I don't go in for compliments.'
'Then what do you go in for?'
His slate-grey eyes seemed to turn almost silver as they reflected the light of the moon. 'Right now— this,' he said smoothly.
Afterwards, Rose realised that she had really been incredibly naive. She should never have asked that last question. It had just given him the opening he had been looking for. She genuinely hadn't expected to find herself in this sort of situation, though. After all, hadn't he told her earlier in the week that he wasn't interested in her? That she wasn't his type?
Well, for someone who wasn't his type, she was certainly now being very thoroughly kissed!
His mouth was warm and hard, and unexpectedly demanding. This wasn't a friendly sort of kiss. Or the sort of kiss given by someone who was only marginally interested, and just making the most of an advantageous situation.
This was the sort of kiss given by a man who had suddenly decided that he had been without female company for far too long. A man who wanted much more than she was prepared to give! When she tried to tell him that his kisses weren't in the least welcome, though, she didn't get very far. His lips easily stifled the words she was struggling to get out, and she had the feeling that he was quite deliberately preventing her from saying anything. She was flushed and hot by the time she finally managed to wrench her mouth free for a few moments.
'What do you think you'r
e doing?' she muttered at him.
Nathan lifted one dark eyebrow. 'I'd have thought that was perfectly obvious.'
'I do not want to be kissed!' she told him furiously. 'And especially not by you.'
'Why not?' he asked calmly. 'I'm quite proficient at it. Didn't you enjoy it?'
'That is not the point!' she almost howled.
'I should think it's very much the point. At least, it always is as far as I'm concerned. Do you ever kiss for any other reason except for pleasure?'
He was trying to side-track her, and Rose was determined she wasn't going to let that happen. A few moments later, though, the entire conversation became irrelevant as he moved forward in one supple movement, and kissed her for the second time.
She had thought that the first kiss was fairly devastating, but this one brought a definite tremble to her knees. And it wasn't just his mouth at work this time, endlessly moving on hers in a determined effort to force it into submission. His hands had joined in the assault—although Rose had the feeling that 'assault' didn't quite describe what was happening to her. Without the slightest hesitation, he headed his hands straight for her breasts. Rose winced slightly, and waited for him to show obvious signs of disappointment. Her breasts were very small—they always had been. Most of the men in her life—and, admittedly, there hadn't been very many—had skimmed over them fairly quickly, with little more than a perfunctory caress.
Nathan's hands stayed exactly where they were, though. It was such a novel sensation that Rose forgot to try and pull away. His fingertips lightly rubbed the little peaks into an unexpected hard tightness, which pushed eagerly against the thin cotton of her T-shirt, as if aching for more of this new attention. Then his palms cupped the slight swell underneath and, to Rose's amazement, he didn't seem to care that she lacked the heavy fullness that she sometimes—in fact, quite often—envied in other women.
Another kiss was being inflicted on her now—and she was horrified to find that her inclination to protest was growing fainter and fainter. Don't get carried away, she warned herself with a quick surge of alarm. None of this means anything— and especially not to Nathan Hayward. You don't mean anything to him. You're here, and you're female, and he's beginning to think you're available. That's as far as it goes. As far as it'll ever go.
When he released her mouth this time, needing air as much as she did, she was ready for him. One quick movement freed her from the touch of his hands, and two steps backwards put her out of the range of his dangerously expert mouth.
'I thought I wasn't your type,' she reminded him in a voice that came out far more breathlessly than she had expected.
'I thought that, too,' he agreed. His voice was soft, but there was something in the undertone that warned her she wasn't out of danger yet.
'You like women who are sophisticated. Experienced.' As she flung his own words back at him, she was surprised to find herself feeling slightly bitter that she was never going to fit into either of those categories.
'Right now, I want someone who isn't cool. Isn't blonde,' he said, his gaze very bright.
She remembered that he had told her once before that he was glad she wasn't a blonde. Her brief surge of anger began to drain away. Instead, she found herself looking at his mouth, which had set into a strange twist. And his eyes had become curiously distant.
'Are you all right?' she found herself asking, at last.
'Yes, I'm all right,' he said, after a long pause. 'I think that, finally, I really am all right. It was hardly fair to use you, just to prove that to myself, though.'
Rose shook her head a little impatiently. 'I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.'
'Of course you haven't.' He gave an odd smile. 'Perhaps you'd better go on up to bed. I think we've both had more than enough for tonight.'
With that, he turned his back on her and walked away. Rose stared after him, full of questions that she just didn't have the nerve to ask. What had that all been about?
She realised that her body had begun to shake gently with reaction. The night had held too many surprises, and she still felt as if she was in a faint sfate of shock. First, those kisses—and fairly unforgettable kisses they had been! Then the touch of his hands, awakening sensations that were virtually brand-new to her. And, finally, those puzzling remarks and his abrupt exit.She stood in the centre of the moonlit courtyard for a couple more minutes. Then she very slowly walked back to her room. Of course, she hadn't wanted things to go any further, she told herself more than once. After all, she was the one who had put a stop to the whole thing—wasn't she?
Or had Nathan simply run out of interest in her? For some reason, she didn't like that idea, and she quickly pushed it out of her head. Rose reached the door to the east wing, went through it, closed it behind her, and then hesitated for several seconds before finally locking it. Why bother? she asked herself. He won't be coming up here tonight.
And it was a little alarming how disappointed she was by that thought.
CHAPTER FIVE
ROSE didn't go to bed straight away. She felt too disturbed by the unexpected events of the night. She needed to sort out how she felt about this sudden change in their relationship before there was any chance of her getting to sleep.
She certainly knew how she ought to feel. Thoroughly outraged that he had jumped on her like that, and determined to leave Lyncombe Manor first thing in the morning. After all, what had happened once could very easily happen again.
Yet that prospect didn't frighten her half as much as it should have. Whatever else she felt about Nathan Hayward—and heaven knew, she seemed to have a whole jumble of feelings about him right now—he didn't scare her. Which was odd, really, considering that there were only the two of them in the house. A situation like this ought to make her feel extremely jumpy.
Rose wandered into the bedroom, and slowly stripped off her jeans and T-shirt. Her nightdress was lying on the bed, where she had tossed it earlier. Instead of putting it on, though, she turned to face the full-length mirror on the far side of the room.
She had never been very impressed by the sight of her naked body, and rarely bothered to look at it in any detail. She was a tall, angular girl, with small breasts, a narrow waist, a flat stomach and thin hips. Probably her legs were her best feature. They were long and graceful. 'Legs like a racehorse'
her father used to say.
Rose sniffed. Being compared to a racehorse really wasn't very flattering. She would much rather be well-rounded and voluptuous!
With a small sigh, she pulled on her nightie. She decided she would have to think about this new situation again in the morning. Obviously, there were decisions to be made, but she just didn't feel up to it right now. Perhaps after a long sleep, her head would feel clearer; she would be less confused by the memory of Nathan's hands moving with exquisite purpose-fulness over her body.
Although she hadn't actually expected to, she slept surprisingly well. And she woke up with a quite different attitude towards what had happened last night. It wasn't the touch of his hands that she remembered. It was the fact that he had had the nerve to try anything so intimate in the first place!
With rising indignation, she recalled the demanding fierceness of his kisses, and the way he had calmly assumed that he had the right to behave like that. Just because he had felt a passing twinge of desire, or lust, or whatever it had been, she had been expected to go along with it, to be as responsive as he had required her to be. She felt as if she had stopped being a person, and had become just a female body he had seized hold of to try and satisfy his sudden needs.
Rose knew perfectly well that she was being a little unreasonable, that it hadn't been quite like that. She had worked herself up into a state of self-righteous anger by now, though, and she wasn't ready to let go of it just yet.
She quickly washed and dressed, then she marched downstairs. Her anger deflated a little when she discovered that Nathan wasn't in the kitchen or the great hall. Then it p
uffed up again as she realised that he might be hiding from her.
He knew that he had been in the wrong last night, she told herself fiercely. And he didn't want to come face to face with her in case she forced him to admit it.
If she had been in a calmer mood, it might have occurred to her that it was highly unlikely that Nathan was afraid to face anyone, let alone a twenty-three-year-old girl. She was bristling with indignation by this time, though. And she was determined to find him, and confront him. There were several more rooms on the ground floor of Lyncombe Manor, and she set out to look in every one of them. If he wasn't there, she would scour the top floor of the house, and then thoroughly search the grounds. As it turned out, very little searching was necessary. A narrow passage led her to a room at the back of the house and, as she neared it, she could hear the sound of someone playing the piano in a rather desultory manner. Rose pushed the door open and found herself in a room that she hadn't been in before. The windows were opened on to the gardens, and scented air drifted in, mixing with the distinct smell of alcohol that permeated the room. The piano was situated in the far corner of the room. Nathan was sitting behind it, his hands idle on the keys now, and his gaze resting on her as she walked further into the room.
'Surely you haven't begun to drink this early in the morning?' she said with some disgust, noticing the nearly empty bottle in front of him.
'No, I haven't,' he replied in that unruffled tone that he sometimes used when he wasn't quite sober. 'I began last night. Soon after we parted, in fact.'
'Well, if you've been drinking for that long, then it's no wonder that you're sitting down,' Rose remarked in a totally disapproving voice. 'If you try to stand up, you'll probably fall over.'
'I never fall over,' Nathan stated calmly. 'As a matter of fact, I never get drunk, no matter how long or how much I drink. It blurs the world a little round the edges, though, and sometimes that's exactly what I need.'
Rose realised that she was getting side-tracked. She hadn't come here to discuss his drinking habits.
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