An Exception to His Rule

by Lindsay Armstrong

  He shrugged after a moment. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you laugh since you demolished the gatepost.

  ‘But look, I’ll obviously be here at times. If you’re worried I’m liable to harass you on the subject of...on any subject, don’t be.’

  Harriet turned her attention to Tottie, still sitting patiently beside the bed, and wondered at the reaction his statement brought to her. It had a familiar feeling to it...

  But Damien didn’t elaborate. He felt in his pocket for his phone, and glanced at the screen. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I need to take this. Sleep well.’ And he walked out, switching off the overhead lights so that she only had her bedside lamp to deal with. Tottie pattered after him at a click of his fingers. He closed the door.

  She lay back after a moment and turned the bedside lamp off. And she pulled the spare pillow into her arms and hugged it as she examined that familiar feeling she’d experienced only minutes ago on hearing he didn’t intend to harass her.

  Why should that make her feel hollow and lonely at the same time as she felt ruffled and restless? It didn’t make sense. She should be relieved if anything. The last thing she should feel like was crying herself to sleep.

  It could never work—any other arrangement with Damien could never work; she knew that in her heart and soul, didn’t she? It would hurt her dreadfully if she came to be mistrusted because he couldn’t help it now; if she could never get right though to him, if she lost him...

  But how to cope with this hurt. Living in the same house with him, even if he wasn’t home a lot, wanting him, wanting to be special to him, loving him...

  CHAPTER TEN

  THREE MONTHS LATER there were no more wheelchairs or crutches at Heathcote.

  Both Charlie and Harriet were recovered, Harriet completely, Charlie almost there; and Damien Wyatt had been as good as his word. Then again, he’d hardly spent any time at Heathcote at all.

  But he came home one evening, three months on, with the news that he’d swung his South African deal at last, which was exceedingly good news, he told them, but he needed a break.

  ‘So I’ll be home for a while,’ he said, laying his napkin down on the table. He still wore a grey suit with a blue shirt but he’d discarded his tie. ‘By the way, that dessert was almost up to your standards, Harriet,’ he added.

  ‘It was up to her standard—it was hers,’ Isabel said.

  Damien looked down the table at Harriet. ‘How come?’

  ‘Uh...’ Harriet hesitated.

  ‘The new cook proved to have light fingers in more ways than one,’ Charlie said. ‘She was a good cook, made marvellous pastry, actually, but when we began to discover we were missing minor amounts of money—you know what it’s like, at first you think maybe you were mistaken and you didn’t have it or you’d spent it or whatever, but then not only did it happen more often but she got bolder and took larger amounts.’

  ‘So you fired her,’ Damien said to Isabel.

  ‘I didn’t exactly fire her; she has an elderly mother to support. I...I let her go. I haven’t found anyone to replace her yet, so Harriet very kindly stepped into her shoes.’

  ‘What would we do without Harriet?’ Damien murmured. ‘But what is it about Heathcote that attracts either arsonists or petty thieves?’

  ‘Cookie wasn’t really an arsonist,’ Isabel argued. ‘Just...careless.’

  Damien grimaced then pushed back his chair. ‘OK, well, thanks, Harriet. And could you spare me a few moments of your time? I’ll be upstairs in my study.’

  * * *

  Isabel said she would deal with the dishes and Harriet closed herself into the flat above the studio. She’d insisted on moving out of the house once she was mobile again.

  Her emotions now, three months on and having received what had almost amounted to an order to beard Damien in his den, were hard to define.

  He’d almost made it sound, she marvelled with clenched fists, as if she’d gone out of her way to make herself indispensable to the Wyatt family; as if she had a secret agenda to her own advantage.

  When, if she was honest, the last three months had had a secret agenda, they’d been mostly sheer torture for her.

  When he’d been home she’d had to use all her willpower to be normal and unaffected in his presence. When he’d been gone, it had taken all her willpower not to pack her bags and run for cover. But that would have meant deserting not only Brett but Charlie.

  The other sticking point had been the Heathcote paintings. Her estimation of a month to clean them had proved to be optimistic. Even if she’d worked as tirelessly as she had for the most part over his mother’s treasures, she’d have taken longer than a month.

  But trying to keep Charlie occupied at the same time—until she’d had a brainwave—had slowed her down a lot. The brainwave had been to introduce Charlie to Brett. They’d hit it off immediately.

  Her other sticking point with the paintings had been the generous amount she’d already been paid—Damien had simply paid the money into her account without consulting her.

  The result was she felt honour-bound to either finish the job or pay the money back. But Brett still had some treatment to go through...

  All this, though, she reasoned as she pulled on a blue cardigan over her shirt and jeans, was minor compared to the other inner havoc she’d experienced. The lonely nights when he was only a few steps away from her—that knowledge had kept her tossing and turning.

  The lonely nights when she had no idea where he was—or who he was with.

  The frisson that ran though her every time she walked through the dining room and recalled their first meeting and that passionate embrace. Recalled the feel of him, the taste of him, his wandering touch that had lit a fuse of sensation within her—if he had a problem with the lounge, her nemesis was the dining room, the memory had never gone away...

  And now this, she thought.

  A hard, bright, difficult Damien who’d ordered her up to his study as if she were a schoolgirl. A room she hadn’t been in since the night Charlie...don’t even think about it, she warned herself.

  Despite the stern warning to herself, she stood outside the study for a couple of moments, trying to compose herself. Then she knocked and went in. Tottie followed her.

  He was lounging behind his desk. There was a silver tray with a coffee pot and two cups on the desk. The windows were open on an unusually warm spring night and there was the sound and the salty air of the sea wafting in.

  ‘Ah,’ Damien said. ‘I see you’ve brought your reinforcement.’

  Harriet pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘If you don’t want her here—’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind her being here,’ he said irritably. ‘She is my dog. Sit down.’

  Harriet looked around and froze. There was no longer the settee where they had... She stopped that thought in its tracks. Instead there were two elegant chairs covered in navy leather.

  ‘You... I...’ She turned back to Damien. ‘I mean...nothing.’ She swallowed and pulled one of the chairs up but was unable to stop herself from blushing a bright pink as she sat down. Tottie arranged herself at her feet.

  Damien steepled his fingers beneath his chin and studied her meditatively. ‘You think I should have kept it, the settee? As a memorial of some kind?’

  Harriet’s blush deepened but she said, ‘No. I mean—’ she gestured ‘—it was entirely up to you. What did you want to see me about?’

  He stared at her then said abruptly, ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Do?’ Harriet blinked.

  ‘I hesitate to remind you, Harriet Livingstone, but that’s exactly what you said to me once before in highly similar circumstances. The day we first met here.’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘I asked you what we wer
e going to do and you repeated “do” as if—as if nothing had ever happened between us or, if it had, it meant nothing,’ he said savagely.

  ‘Y-you—’ her voice quivered and, to her amazement, she heard herself go on ‘—got rid of the settee. As if it meant nothing.’

  ‘I didn’t get rid of it,’ he denied. ‘I had it moved to my bedroom, just in case I should be plagued by any erotic images of you during a business meeting.’

  Harriet blinked and this time her cheeks grew so hot she had to put her hands up to cover them. ‘I can’t believe I...said that.’

  He looked darkly amused for a moment. ‘Maybe your innermost sentiments got the upper hand. Harriet, we can’t go on like this. I can’t anyway.’

  He sat back and Harriet was suddenly shocked to see how tired he looked.

  She opened her mouth but he waved a hand to forestall her. ‘Don’t say it. I know what you’ll say anyway. You’ll offer to go, just like you did the last time. Well, it’s been a couple of times now but I can’t guarantee a gatepost for you to drive into this time.’

  ‘Wh...what do you suggest?’ she asked. ‘You say we can’t go on like this but you don’t want me to go.’

  ‘Marry me,’ he said after a long tense pause. ‘I’ve given you three months to recover from Simon Dexter and your best friend Carol.’

  Harriet gasped. ‘You didn’t have to—’ She stopped abruptly. ‘I mean...I mean there’s still Veronica, there’s still the way you feel—’

  His dark eyes were mocking. ‘You have no idea how I feel. I had no idea what it was all about so there was no way you could have known,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Harriet blinked almost frenziedly.

  ‘Then I’ll tell you.’ He sat forward. ‘I can’t cope any more.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Harriet—’ he fiddled with a pen for a long moment then looked into her eyes ‘—can I tell you a story?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I couldn’t...right from the beginning I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I told you that was why I agreed to see you again?’

  ‘Two months later, though. I mean—I don’t mean to nit-pick but it was that.’

  He grimaced. ‘You’re entitled to nit-pick. But from then on I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I couldn’t believe you were still driving that ghastly old tank and I had to do something about it. I couldn’t believe how much I worried about you. I couldn’t believe how I kept coming up with jobs for you. I couldn’t believe,’ he said dryly, ‘how the thought of your legs kept interfering with my sex life.’

  Her lips parted. ‘You mean...?’ She looked incredulous.

  ‘It’s true. After I kissed you the first time,’ he said wryly, ‘I decided I’d either gone a bit mad or I needed some nice girl who understood the rules—no wedding bells, in other words—and I found a couple. But the trouble was, they had ordinary legs.’

  Harriet put a hand to her mouth. ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said indistinctly.

  ‘You should,’ he replied. ‘Of course, it wasn’t only their legs. I simply didn’t seem to be attracted to anyone any more—anyone who wasn’t you, that is.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  He studied her wide eyes and the look of shock in them. ‘I’ve never been more serious, I’ve never been as confused, as I was for a while, in my whole life. I’ve never felt as rejected as I did the night of Charlie’s accident when you...’

  ‘Don’t.’ Harriet closed her eyes briefly. ‘I felt terrible then, and the night of his birthday party.’

  ‘Good,’ he said gravely but his eyes were wicked.

  She bit her lip. ‘I did seriously not want to be on your conscience, though, I still do,’ she said then with more spirit. ‘I mean I still don’t want to be—there,’ she elucidated.

  ‘I know what you mean and you’re not. It’s something else altogether and it only started to come home to me when you ran into the gatepost.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t bring up those things. They meant nothing.’

  ‘Maybe not to you but they did to me. They were all part of the picture, you see.’

  ‘What picture?’ She frowned at him.

  ‘The picture I loved. I loved you, Harriet Livingstone. That’s why I cared so much about you. The thing I’d thought could never happen for me, had snuck up and hit me on the head, and I realised I was going to spend the rest of my life worrying about you.’

  They gazed at each other and she thought he suddenly looked pale.

  ‘And loving you because I just can’t help myself. All the rest of it, all my grudges and heaven knows what else, they suddenly counted for nothing.’

  ‘Damien,’ she whispered.

  ‘Nothing had the power to change that or flaw it or make the slightest difference to how I felt about you. Remember the night you told me you weren’t pregnant?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I couldn’t believe how disappointed I was.’

  Harriet stared at him with her lips parted. ‘But...but you went away. You told me you wouldn’t be harassing me on—on any subject.’

  He grimaced. ‘And I even managed to stick to that. But don’t forget you told me that same day that you’d be a fool to want to be married to me after Veronica and how it had left me. You also hadn’t had time to absorb the news about Simon Dexter and your best friend. And I thought—’ He stopped abruptly.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘That I could never get you to believe me.’ He looked suddenly irritated to death. ‘Especially after I’d told you why it was no good us contemplating any future together.’ He gestured. ‘I was also afraid that you could never love me.’

  ‘Never love you?’

  He froze as she repeated the phrase as if it had never occurred to her.

  ‘Harriet,’ he said ominously, ‘you told me at the beginning that you were quite happy to remain fancy-free and you never, even after you slept with me, changed your position other than to a slight tinge of regret when I told you about Veronica!’

  ‘Damien,’ she said, ‘can I tell you my story? It’s not as long as yours but that slight tinge of regret you sensed when you told me about Veronica was in fact a torrent of sudden understanding. I was determined to stay “fancy free”, I’d fooled myself into thinking I had but it suddenly hit me—that I’d fallen head over heels in love with you and it was the saddest moment of my life.’

  He got up and came cautiously round the desk, almost as if he was feeling his way in the dark. ‘You said you were sad about Simon.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I was sad for Carol.’ She shrugged.

  ‘So.’ He sat down on the corner of the desk. ‘Have I been living in hell for these long months because I was a blind fool?’ He pulled her upright and into his arms.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. I guess we both had our demons.’ She put her hands on his upper arms and all restraint suddenly vanished as they were consumed by an overwhelming hunger.

  Harriet felt the blood surging through her veins as if she were on fire at his lightest touch. She felt incredibly aware of her body and of his. But it was more than that for Harriet, more than a sensual arousal that rocked them both; it was a feeling of safety, as if she’d come home, as if a part of her that had been wrenched away had been restored to her.

  And when they drew apart she was crying as well as laughing, she was in a state of shock that told Damien more than words could how deep her feelings were.

  ‘Harriet. Harriet,’ he said into her hair as he cradled her in his arms, ‘it’s OK. We’ve made it. Don’t cry.’

  ‘I can’t help it. I’m so happy.’

  ‘Come.’ He picked her up.

  ‘Where?’ she queried.

 
‘You’ll see.’

  * * *

  He took her to his bedroom, not the one his parents had used, not the one he’d shared with Veronica—a different room but with a familiar settee along one wall.

  ‘See?’ He put her down on it and sat down beside her.

  Her tears changed to laughter. ‘I couldn’t believe how that upset me, the thought that you’d got rid of it!’

  His lips twisted. ‘You’ve no idea how good that is to hear.’

  ‘Why?’ she queried innocently

  ‘Well, this old settee has brought back some memories.’ He allowed his dark gaze to roam over her figure.

  ‘I thought it might be something like that.’ Her eyes glinted with humour but only for a moment, then desire replaced the humour and she put her hands on his shoulders, and hesitated.

  He frowned. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Some other memories. The first time you kissed me it crossed my mind that you knew how to make love to a woman in a way that thrilled her and drove her to excesses she didn’t know she could reach... I was right. That night and this settee proved it to me. It had never happened to me like that before. I didn’t—’ she smiled wryly ‘—quite recognise myself, even if I had believed I was an all or nothing person.’

  Damien stared into her eyes for a long, long moment.

  ‘Harriet,’ he said finally, in a husky voice unlike his own, ‘if you continue to make incendiary statements like that—we may never get off this settee.’

  She laughed then they sobered and their need for each other was so great it wasn’t only the settee that became involved but the floor then the bed.

  ‘So you will marry me?’ he said when they were lying in each other’s arms, sated and in the dreamy aftermath of their passion.

  ‘Yes.’ She ran her fingers through his hair.

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  Harriet laughed softly. ‘I don’t think you can do it that fast but if you could I would.’

  ‘On the other hand, coming back to reality, if we’re going to do this,’ he reflected, ‘we might as well do it with style. Not big but with style.’