'My dear!' Vere exclaimed, but Fabienne had to hurry on while she still had the courage.
'So I rang Lyndon Davies-whose invitation to a jazz concert I'd turned down earlier-and accepted, if he'd let me take him to dinner first.'
'Sweetheart!' Vere cried in wonder. 'You love me!'
She had known that, with his quick-thinking brain, from her 'it hurt so much' he would soon have worked that out. But-and she owned everything
was happening so fast-she was more than a mite confused. Did he, with his, 'you who hold my whole heart', mean that he loved her?
'I f-feel the same way about you that you feel about me,' she told him nervously-and was gently but firmly drawn towards him.
'Then we, my love,' he breathed, his face close to hers, ,are in love with each other.'
'Vere!' she gasped.
'Fabienne, my love!' he murmured, and he lowered his head, and kissed her.
And, one kiss never enough, it was quite some while before, while still holding her in his arms, he drew back to look at her. Gently he traced the curve of her love-warmed face with a finger. 'My darling, we've so much to talk over-and here I am, yet again in danger of losing my head.'
'Oh, why not?' she gasped.
Vere laughed. 'My stars, did I say I was going to have trouble with you?' He did not wait for her reply but said, his laughter fading, 'First of all, let's establish that I love you with everything that's in me.'
'Oh, Vere,' Fabienne cried, and even though she had more confidence it still seemed impossible.
'And you-you love me?'
'Yes,' she replied-and discovered she was again strangely shy. 'You wouldn't like to say so, I suppose.'
'Oh, I do love you,' she managed bravely, and was oh, so tenderly kissed, a beautiful reward for her courage. 'How long?' Vere wanted to know.
Shyness, most peculiar when she had always considered herself thoroughly outgoing, was there to trip her up again. 'You first,' she pleaded. And Vere smiled down, more wonderfully understanding than she had realised and, tucking her securely in his right arm, he began. 'It had been growing, I now see, from that first meeting. Nothing one could take hold of, just having you on my mind, feeling unsettled waiting for you to turn up to start work.
Observing your fine sensitivity, the way that, without pressurising Rachel you seemed to be easing her out of herself.'
'I think my brother may have had a lot to do with that,' interrupted Fabienne, pointing it out on realising that it must be so.
'Don't underestimate your powers, sweet love. Though it was your power over me that, within the week, was causing me to doubt my judgement.'
Fabienne owned she was totally fascinated by what he had just said.
'How?'
'Do you remember the end of your first week here?'
'I've forgotten nothing,' she replied softly.
Vere dropped a light kiss to the corner of her mouth, and seemed to lose himself for a moment or two and looked lovingly into her face. Then he recollected, 'Then you'll remember we'd fired up at each other when you asked when your weekend started-and I again felt a nip of jealousy that you were rushing off to some man-friend.'
'Good grief!' she gasped. 'I can't believe it!'
'No more could I. Nor could I believe I could be so vile as to have dinner out, knowing perfectly well from what I'd seen of you that there was no way you would leave the children and go home to Lintham that Friday night with me not there.'
'You wretch!' she berated him-but was smiling.
'I agree,' he smiled back. 'But for my sins I felt more disturbed than young John that night.'
'He had a nightmare.'
'And you must have been into his room in a flash. You got there before me anyhow,' he recalled, 'and I looked at you and knew you were beautiful both inside and out.'
'Oh, Vere,' Fabienne sighed-no one had ever said such a lovely thing to her before.
'Is it any wonder,' he continued, 'that, after we'd left John, I should stand with you outside your room and feel such a desperate urge to take you in my arms that I just had to question whether you had been the right choice to bring into my home? Not from the point of view of the children-but mine, and my peace of mind.'
'And I never knew!' she gasped. 'Um--'
'Go on,' Vere urged. 'If you've a confession I'd love to hear it.'
'You're too smart,' she returned, but confessed, 'Um-if it's of any interest-without you so much as touching me that night I was never more aware of any man as I was you. I-er-think I wanted you to kiss me.' A superb grin lit his mouth, his eyes. 'Allow me to remedy that omission,' he breathed, and tenderly pulled her closer to him, his head coming down. Their lips met, and Fabienne went slightly out of control for long seconds as Vere moulded her to him-and passion soared as they kissed and kissed again. A shaken breath of sound left her when at last he broke his kiss and pulled back.
'Oh, Vere,' she gasped, her voice a mere thread of sound. 'I n-never knew I could, that you...that I...'
'It's pretty shattering, isn't it?' he agreed, giving her the tenderest of looks.
'But I'm being unfair, my darling.' Somehow they were half lying with each other on the couch. Manfully he moved them until they were both sitting more or less the same way they had been before they had lost their heads a little. 'Remind me where I was,' he growled.
'You expect me to remember, after that?'
'It's what you do to me, woman,' he declared throatily to her delight. She positively beamed at him for his trouble, but made tremendous efforts to recall, 'You said you wanted to take me in your arms that night John had a nightmare-so why were you like a bear with a sore head only a few hours later at breakfast?'
'You looked stunning-and were lippy with it-and I had just realised that I'd hardly seen you all week but, dammit, now that I was free for the weekend, you were off. I'd just realised I didn't want you to go away-how else should I act?' She could not help it-she just had to kiss him. 'Dear God,' he groaned, 'if ever there was a threat to a man's sanity, it's you.'
'You say the nicest things,' she murmured.
'Witch!' he tossed at her and kissed her nose. 'So I waited all that infernal, damp weekend,' he went on, 'and you, thank God, came back, and I'm at once alive again. There you are, all flashing eyes and temper-'
'Who provoked it?' she wanted to know.
'Who but me?' he agreed. 'Though I did get up on Monday feeling that there wasn't too much wrong with my world-and for a bonus went to work with the sound of your laughter in my ears. Laughter, I only then realised, had been a stranger at Brackendale recently. So,' Vere ended, looking adoringly at her, 'gradually, and without being aware of what was
happening, I began to fall more and more in love with this woman who turned my world upside-down.'
'Me?' Fabienne questioned cheerfully.
'Who else but you?' he laughed. 'Who else but you makes me want to kiss you one minute, and sort you out the next? Who else but you, after I have kissed you, makes me decide I'd better dine away from home just in case I can't resist the urge to do it again?'
'No!' she gasped. 'You dined out because of me?' .
'Frequently,' he admitted. 'And last Thursday, solely because of you, I didn't come home at all.'
'Because of me?'
'You, my dear, were really getting to me by then. But little good it did me not coming home Thursday, because by Friday I began to be afraid that you might have decided to leave for Lintham before I could get back. I rush back, hear from Mrs Hobbs that you're still here-and, incidentally, of your endless patience with the twins that day and the day before-then there you are, having come to find me in this very room. Yet, while I'm still delighting in having you so close, in how lovely you are, you dare to tell me that you'll be taking Kitty, John and Rachel to Lintham the next day-and nobody's asking me if I'd like to come, too.'
'You wanted to come with us!'
'I didn't see why I should be deprived of your company! Which, since to avoid
seeing you I'd deliberately not come home the night before,' he added with a
slightly self-deprecating look, 'was when I started to realise that something was happening to my powers of logic.' He smiled. 'I was not at all ready to admit the strength of the hold you had on me, yet couldn't help knowing how good you were with Kitty and John, and how only since you came Rachel seemed to be surfacing from her depression. And how-selfishly, I own, life was much smoother for me now that you were here.'
'I didn't know I was that good.'
'Minx. In my view, you were just about perfect for the job. Yet, if I allowed this spell you were weaving over me full rein, it could all end with you leaving.'
'How?' She asked her favourite question.
'How else? Just supposing,' he put to her, 'that-at its furthest extent-we had an affair. How would it end? Amicably? What if not? I'd noticed about you a fine sensitivity, and also a fire of splendid spirit. I neither wanted to hurt you-nor end up enemies.' Vere's look was steady on hers when he said, his voice throaty once more, 'Only recently, my very dear Fabienne, have I realised that it isn't an affair I want with you.'
'It-isn't?' she choked, her eyes glued to the sincerity in his.
Slowly, he shook his head. 'What I want, above everything, I've realised, is to-marry you.'
'Marry me!' she whispered.
'You wouldn't be so cruel as to tell me "no"?'
'I...' Her throat went dry and she could not continue.
'Please, Fenne,' he said grittily. 'Last night I knew I was not a man to-as you put it-beg for sexual favours. But if I have to beg you to marry me, that I will, willingly... '
'Oh, darling!' She hurriedly found her voice. 'You have to beg nothing from me.'
'You'll marry me?'
'Oh, yes, I'd love to.'
'Darling!'
There was silence in the room for a long time as gently he kissed her, and tenderly he whispered her name and showered her with endearments. 'Oh, sweet love.' He pulled back so that he could see into her face. 'I tried, one Sunday when you were later returning than I thought you should be, to lock you out of my house-and found, as I waited for you to come home, that I just couldn't lock you out of my head. I followed that up by intimating that I'd put an end to your walking-as you put it-the hallowed halls of Brackendale by sacking you, and for my sins grew terrified that you'd thumb your nose at me and wouldn't be there when I returned that night.'
'But you knew I would be-that was the day you rang to speak to Rachel.'
'That was the day I invented a need to speak to Rachel and rang, fearful that you'd already left. I just had to know that you were still there before I could find any sort of concentration to deal with anything. Even so, I had to leave the office early to come home to check that you were still here.'
'You love me that much!'
'Oh, so much more, but it was only on Monday-Monday morning to be exact-that I faced up to what has seen me jealous of every man you've been in contact with. Even Alex, until I learned from the twins that the man you were kissing was your brother.'
'That makes me feel a bit better for being jealous over Rachel.'
'Has it been hell for you too, love?'
'Murder,' she owned happily. But just had to ask, 'When, when did you know, Vere?'
'On Monday, my love,' he told her without hesitation.
'I'd had a foul weekend without you, and tried to take it out on you when everybody seemed as happy as the devil when you arrived from Lintham.
Crass, wasn't it?' He grinned. 'I'd ached for you all over the weekend, yet the moment I see you and what do I do but go for your jugular, talking all that rot about the children having to be up for school in the morning...'
'And hearing me boast that they would be, and-'
'And all the time we're arguing I'm fighting the alarming pull that's getting the better of me, to kiss you into submission.'
'Really!' she gasped. 'You ordered me out of your sight-fast,' she remembered.
'What else should I do? There I am fighting hard against the need to kiss you, when you deeply offend my manhood by thinking I might hit you-and yet still I wanted to kiss your rebellious mouth.'
'I'm sorry I offended you,' she apologised at once. 'If it's any consolation. I worked out during that long and sleepless night that you were probably as appalled as I was by the suggestion.'
Her apology was accepted unequivocally. 'You were sleepless, too'?' he smiled.
'I was awake for hours and hours,' she admitted, and added with a grin, 'Which is why I was sound away when you came into my room when you returned home for your briefcase.'
'Er-that was a lie,' he confessed. 'A lie?'
Vere nodded, but was not looking at all shamefaced as he further confessed, 'I returned home after dropping the twins off at school for no other reason than I had a compulsion-a compulsion so strong I could not ignore it-to see you.'
'Oh, Vere!' she cried on a sigh of a breath. "'Oh, Vere" it was, when-and I did knock at your door, albeit only lightly before I came in-I saw you lying there in sleep, your hair all mussed up, your face angelic. I don't know for how long I just stood looking at your beautiful face before I called your name. When you were awake and I came and sat on your bed-then I knew.'
'That you loved me?'
'Much more than that, my precious love. I discovered that I'm deeply in love with you, that I absolutely adore you, and I also discover-this never having happened to me before-that I just don't know how to deal with it.
So-' he smiled '-I tore myself away, thought about you all day, about how I hadn't known you for so very long yet how marvellous was every new thing I learned about you, and of how, whether I'd known you two minutes or two years, you were so right for me.'
'You came home early.'
'Since I've known you, it's started to become a habit.'
'You came home early to see me?' she queried, her heart racing in her delight.
'But of course. And,' he went on, 'had a splendid excuse to have a couple of days off work and to spend yet more time with you when Rachel said she would like to leave the children while she went and made peace with her parents.'
'Oh, how dreadful of me!' Fabienne exclaimed. 'I told you that wouldn't be necessary!'
'Not only that, heartless woman,' he complained, 'but, to add insult to injury, you caused me rage and jealousy such as I've never known by daring to take yourself off that night with another man!'
'Are you going to forgive me?'
'I forgave you the very next day when you and the twins came singing round the corner and, with my heart hammering like thunder, I thought I saw something in your unguarded look that said you might feel something for me that might-dare I hope?-be a little warmer than liking.'
'I did wonder if I'd been caught out,' she murmured, and Vere placed a tender kiss on the side of her mouth.
'Afterwards I couldn't be certain of what I'd seen,' he admitted. 'But, at dinner last night, I was aware of you every minute I was talking to either Kitty or John, and wondering how to get to know you better. I decided to ask you to join me in this room later.'
'You wanted to see me to get to know me better!' she exclaimed. 'That was one of the very good reasons,' he confirmed. 'The other was that having you in the same house was not enough. I wanted you in the same room with me. Though I wasn't above using the children as an excuse-even when I could see for myself how they were thriving,' he owned, going on to admit further, 'I, my darling, started to grow terrified of frightening you off if I said too much too soon.'
'You didn't.'
'Believe it,' Vere assured her. 'But so much for my thinking we'd get to know each other better. In no time jealousy is rearing its ugly head over your jazz concert friend. When you said something about there being a lot of things you liked of which I knew nothing I tried to get back to where we were. I was about to suggest that perhaps it might be an idea if I did get to know more of what you liked-that maybe we should get to know one another-when
you're on your feet and off to bed!'
'Not before I'd been served with a helping of jealousy myself.'
'How?' It was his turn to enquire.
'You told me Rachel had phoned, and-'
'My love-she only rang to ask if the twins were all right.'
'Which, of course,' Fabienne smiled, able then to own, 'is no more than any parent would do in the same circumstances.'
Vere looked tenderly at her, seemed unable then to resist kissing her, but was holding her safe in the harbour of his arms when he asked, 'Do I get to know when you knew you were in love with me?'
'Certainly,' Fabienne replied. 'Though from the very first there was something there-I found you a very disturbing man, Mr Tolladine.'
'I like it,' he grinned. She grinned, too. She could not help it-life was wonderful, Vere was wonderful. 'When?' he demanded.
'Sunday,' she replied at once.
'Last Sunday?'
Fabienne nodded. 'I'd driven from my parents aware of an anxiety to get back here-plagued by thoughts of whether Rachel and Alex had fallen for each other and how I didn't want you to be hurt-when suddenly there you were, and I knew then that it wasn't Brackendale I'd wanted to get back to, but you. That I was in love with you, and had been for quite some time.'
'Little love,' Vere crooned, and rained kisses over her face. 'That wasn't what you called me that night,' she smiled. 'Are you going to forgive me?'
'Done,' she obliged, and was kissed again before Vere pulled back and looked lovingly down into her face.
'That was another night when I didn't get much sleep,' he owned. 'Though, since knowing you, my sleep pattern seems to have gone totally haywire.'
'Was it because of me that you couldn't sleep last night? You-um-said that you couldn't.'
'Both before and after,' he replied meaningfully. 'Ah,' she murmured. , 'Indeed,' he smiled. 'Before, thoughts of you were haunting me, keeping me sleepless. Afterwards, when I'd left you, the hold I'd got on my sanity seemed very pre-carious. It just didn't seem possible from what I knew of you that you could respond the way you had and not feel something for me. True, you'd let me know in no uncertain terms that you'd prefer to have your bed to yourself. But whatever it was that had triggered your last-minute refusal-and jealousy over Rachel, I confess, was not one of the answers I came up with-' he paused and bestowed a light kiss to her
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