'Oh, this and that,' she said airily. Graciously then she retrieved her hand, presenting him with her profile as she turned to refuse Rod's offer of a sherry. Courteously she went over to have a word with her hosts.
Somehow she got through dinner that evening. Inwardly stunned, when she would by far have preferred to stay quiet and let everyone else do the talking, something in her pushed her not to let Ellis Galbraith have the smallest inkling of how seeing him again so unexpectedly had rocked her.
Never having thought she would be grateful to Cynthia Armitage for anything, memory stood her in good stead of the brittle chat that had gone on at her dinner parties when she had been roped in occasionally rather than have the table arrangements ruined when at the last minute someone failed to turn up.
More than once she was aware of Ellis's eyes on her as she joined in on any subject under discussion. It was almost as if he could not believe the tremendous change that had taken place in her—not only in appearance— from those days when it seldom had troubled her what she wore, to the not-a-hair-out-of-place, fashionable woman she had turned into.
'You live locally, Sorrel?' he asked her at one point when Rod's laughter had died away at some return she had made, and the subject matter swiftly faded from her mind at Ellis's abrupt question.
'I've always loved the country…' she said, and paused, smiling to Moira and Neville Drury as she only just managed to bite back the 'as you know' that so very nearly escaped her. 'But,' she added, a smile on her mouth as she turned back to him, his dark good looks so familiar to her yet absent for so long, 'London is where it all happens, isn't it?' she bounced back tritely.
'You live in London?'
His sudden interest, when for eight years he hadn't cared whether she was alive or dead, annoyed her. But she nodded, and found another insincere smile. 'And I love it,' she said, then smartly turned her attention to Moira Drury. 'Do you manage to get up to town very often?' she asked.
To Sorrel's great relief, the evening turning out to be more wearing than it had any right to be, in her opinion, as dinner drew to a close she heard Rod's father say there was a small business matter he and Ellis had to discuss, and charmingly he asked would they excuse them for half an hour.
Take a couple of hours, Sorrel wanted to say, but she smiled on as they moved to the drawing room with Moira chiding them not to be too long. 'I know what it is when a couple of redundant engineers get talking,' she joked.
'Redundant?' asked Sorrel, the moment the two men had departed.
'Ellis, like Neville, has had to leave the drawing board behind,' Moira explained. 'Nowadays, I believe, they both spend their working hours in the administration of their companies.'
It crossed Sorrel's mind to wonder how, with a head that had always been brimful of new ideas, Ellis had taken to being desk-bound. Although being desk-bound did not stop one from being inventive, she supposed.
'What would you like to drink, Sorrel?'
She looked up to find that Rod had come to stand near, but she shook her head. She wanted nothing to drink, rather did she want to be by herself.
'Nothing, thanks,' she smiled. 'Actually, all this country air has made me sleepy. I was wondering,' she added, turning to Moira, 'if you would think me rude if I didn't stay down too long?'
'Not at all,' Moira replied. 'As a matter of fact,' she confided, a warmth coming through that had not been there initially, 'since I like to have the horses exercised early, I rarely stay up late myself.'
That Rod looked disappointed that he would not have her sole company after his parents had retired had little effect on Sorrel. She liked him, as she was growing to like his parents, but that was all.
Though since she was his guest too, she stayed long enough to ask him if he had felt no inclination to join his father's firm.
'A sore point,' he admitted. 'Though I think Dad's got over it now.' And with a smile to his mother, 'It wouldn't have worked you know. I've no aptitude for the business.' And with a grin at Sorrel, 'I couldn't even put my bike chain on when it came off when I was a kid!'
Sorrel laughed lightly, and heard Moira telling her son that his father was keeping a place open for him in his legal department if he wanted it. But her interest was more in listening for sounds that would tell her that Ellis and Neville had finished their business.
They had been absent twenty-five minutes when Sorrel, after a small delicate yawn, latching on to the lead Moira had given that the two men could well not appear again until gone midnight, offered her excuses to them, and went to her room.
But, as in her heart she had known would happen, no sooner had she closed her door than she was travelling back to the time when, just seventeen, she had presented herself at the workshop-cum-office of Ellis Galbraith, and had instantly fallen in love with him. Day and night, then, she had thought and dreamed of nothing but him.
Ellis already had a worldly air about him in those days, a confidence that said he knew where he was going. He had qualified as an engineer, but where money had been tight when he had left university, he had had a whole wealth of inventive ideas that used to keep him working well into the night.
He had been twenty-eight when, totally frustrated at being unable to get any of the major firms interested in his inventions, he had scraped together every penny he could lay his hands on, going up to his neck in debt to his bank, to set up his own firm.
Within months he had been bogged down with paper work that interfered with the real work he should be doing. Already working over-long hours as he was, it was then that he had advertised for a Girl Friday, and she had gone to work for him.
And being in love with him, Sorrel had not minded what hours she put in either. For they had worked well together, she snatching at every crumb, hugging to her the moments when he would suddenly notice the time and say, 'Little Sorrel, I don't deserve you.' He would get out his beaten up old car then and insist on taking her home.
Oh, how she had loved those lifts home! They would talk all the way of the twelve-mile journey from the small town of Kinglingham to the tiny village of Salford Foley where she lived with her parents, and she would go up to bed and lie awake for hours, just thinking about him.
She had been strictly brought up, but her parents had met Ellis, and her father, a man who believed hard work was good for the soul, approved and applauded Ellis's industry and what he was trying to do. If Sorrel was often late home, then since she was working hard too, that was all right by him.
She had been working for Ellis for six months when the first breakthrough had come. Ellis had got a buyer for a small batch of his products. Vividly did she recall that day. It marked the day when she ceased to be just a pretty pair of ever-willing hands, to being a blossoming young woman with an eagerness to share with Ellis everything he could teach her.
Later she was to realise that he had hardly realised what he was doing when in his triumph after putting down the phone from that call that had given him his start, he had grabbed hold of her and had given her a rib-crushing hug in his exultation.
But her face had been near to his, and she was never afterwards sure whether he had kissed her, or if she had kissed him. But in any event, their lips had met, and she had clung to him, with no sign of backing away when he had raised his head and looked at her. What was in her eyes she had no way of knowing, but his quiet comment of, 'You're only a baby, Sorrel,' had seen her refusing to look away from his as she'd countered, 'For an inventor, you want your eyes testing!'
He had pushed her a little away from him, his eyes flicking to her burgeoning breasts to bring crimson colour to her cheeks, she recalled. But she had kept her hands on his shoulders, and as her blush had faded, so Ellis had kissed her again.
After that he had taken her out a few times, and she had begun to think of herself as his steady girl-friend. He would always kiss her when he took her home, either after a date or when he dropped her home when she had worked late. But that she had read far more in his off t
he cuff remarks than he had intended, only later, was she to crash back to earth and see how blind her love had made her.
Only later was she able to see that his, 'When I've enough black in that permanently red account at the bank, I'm going to do something about you, young Sorrel,' had not meant that when that day came he was going to ask her to marry him.
Painfully obvious later, she had come to see that all he had meant by that remark was that when funds permitted, Ellis intended to give her a whacking rise to make up for the small amount which was all he could afford by way of her salary each month.
But then all she had seen in his remark was what she wanted to see. Only she couldn't wait. She was seventeen, in love, and impatient to be Mrs Ellis Galbraith.
Remembering the confidence that had been hers at seventeen, the confidence that Ellis must love her, Sorrel winced again at the pain of it. For things had come to a head when he returned to his work as he always did after he had taken her home and the hours he put in had caught up with him, and he had overslept. That had been the morning when, arriving first, she had discovered she had left her keys at home and had gone round to the inexpensive flat where he lived.
He had come to the door with a hastily thrown on robe about him. And while she had stood there feeling excitement drumming through her veins that he didn't appear to have anything else on, he had exclaimed, 'Ye gods, is that the time!' and yanked her over the threshold, ordering her to make him coffee while he went and got dressed.
It was the first time she had been to his small flat. And because there was not enough room there in which to swing the proverbial cat, chasing to do his bidding, she had cannoned into him, and as he had spun round to save her from knocking into something solid, she had suddenly found herself in his arms.
'You smell gorgeous,' he had murmured, his face buried in her newly washed hair. And her heart danced a crazy rhythm as she had lifted her face for his kiss.
Though for one highly suspended moment she had thought he was not going to kiss her. Then a groan had broken from him, and heaven was hers, for his mouth was over hers, and as the heat of his body started to warm her, suddenly as she pressed to get nearer still to him, so, as another half-stifled groan left him, his kisses had thrilled her by changing and being different kisses from those kisses she had grown to know.
Desire for him was soon making itself felt in her. That same desire in him for her made her breathless as his hands had begun caressing her. Soon everything was forgotten between them, save that there was no need to stifle their need for each other, and Ellis took her with him to his bedroom. Sorrel knew then that she would have to be his, because it was what he wanted. For her part, never had she felt like this—she just had to have him too.
She had been sure then, as his hands had caressed her breasts, that she had his love. And, luxuriating in her full cup of happiness, she had stroked his shoulder as she had kissed his bare chest and breathed, 'I'm glad we don't have to wait until we're married.'
'Married!' Ellis had echoed, and with bewildering swiftness then his hands had left caressing her breasts to take her firmly by the shoulders.
But still she had smiled, not looking at him but guessing that with his business still not off the ground, he was about to tell her that he could not yet afford a wife.
'You won't need to pay me a wage when we're married,' she had gone blithely on, though she had then sensed that he was too proud to have her working for him for nothing. She was sure of it when abruptly he had brought her to sit up, his face stern and not at all that of the lover he had been.
'Listen to me, Sorrel,' he had begun sternly.
But she didn't want to listen to anything. She loved him, she was sure that he loved her, she wanted to be snuggled' up close to him again, to feel his hair-roughened chest beneath her cheek again. She had smiled, she remembered, a warm giving smile, ready then, wanting then, to give him her all.
'If you don't want marriage straight away,' she had said, knowing sufficient of him to know that his work had to come first, 'then we'll wait. But,' shyly she had smiled, 'but I love you so much—you must let me come and live with you until then.'
'Live with me!' Ellis had exclaimed.
But she in her confidence had thought she had known what his exclamation had all been about. 'Oh, you're thinking of my parents, aren't you?' she had said, still smiling because nothing else mattered but that Ellis loved her and she loved him. 'They'll be stuffy about it, of course and… and…' she had gone shy again, but had overcome it to tell him brightly, 'and we'll have to try not to have babies until we're…'
'Babies!'
It was his horror at the thought of babies that had finally got through to her that all was not as rosy as she had pictured it.
'D-don't you want babies?' she had asked.
Confirmation that he wanted neither marriage nor babies had been there in the way he had said harshly:
'Tidy your clothes, Sorrel, and get out of here.'
'Tidy…?' she had echoed, her cheeks going scarlet as at last it had hit her that Ellis wanted none of what she was offering. But still she had to ask, 'Don't you—want me?'
'For God's sake will you get out!' he had roared, leaving the bed, finding her handbag on the floor and pushing it at her.
'But—I love you,' she had protested, staggered. 'You…'
'I,' he said, his face a chiselled mask by that time, 'have no room in my life for you.'
Had he slapped her, that blow could not have been more painful. But it had the desired effect. In minutes she had raced out of his flat. She barely remembered where she had gone that day; it certainly hadn't been back on the next bus to Salford Foley, nor had it been back to work to await Ellis's arrival with the key.
But her confidence, which had taken a severe blow, was to surface the next morning. Once again she had begun to believe that, from the many loving looks Ellis had sent her way, he must be in love with her.
Throughout the long fretful night she had puzzled at his attitude, until in the end she had at last seen just exactly where she had gone wrong. By that time, though Ellis had told her very little about his parents or his brother and sister, Sorrel was cursing herself for the idiot she had been to talk of babies. From what Ellis had let fall she had known that his father, a man with a keen brain, had been forced to let his ideas stagnate when, marrying early, his first responsibility had been to his wife and the three children who had arrived in quick succession.
The next day Sorrel had gone to work with it all planned out in her head. There would be no more talk of babies, or marriage either. She and Ellis would go back to the way they had been, and she would be content to let things go on that way until Ellis decided the business was sufficiently off the ground for him to do something about the love they had for each other.
Only it hadn't quite worked out that way. For, before she could so much as tell him that she would rather that they forgot about yesterday, her startled eyes were to see that there was another girl sitting at her typewriter.
And while she was getting over the shock of that, a grim-faced Ellis was coming over to her and escorting her outside and out of earshot of the new Girl Friday, and he was gritting:
'I didn't expect to see you again.'
'You didn't…!' she gasped.
'I thought you'd realised yesterday that I no longer need you,' he had told her toughly.
And inanely, to her everlasting shame, Sorrel clearly remembered she had told him, 'But I love you, Ellis—I always will.'
'Don't,' he had said tersely. 'You're wasting your time,' and as a cutting afterthought, 'And mine,' he had tossed at her, and had gone inside to leave her staring at the door he had firmly closed to shut her out.
Somehow she had got home. But weeks had passed with her still clinging on to the hope that Ellis loved her. All hope had gone on the day she had heard that he was dating Jenny Pearson, a girl from her village. She had known then that Ellis had no regard for her whatsoever. She had s
een known then that she had imagined all she had in those smiling looks, and that there had been no sincerity in his love-filled glances. For, knowing she would soon get to hear that he was dating Jenny Pearson, never, if he had loved her, would Ellis let her be hurt as that news had crucified her.
The months that followed that dreadful time when her world had fallen apart were best forgotten. She had suffered a breakdown, and only later did she realise how supportive her strict parents had been in that they did not badger her with questions, but let her live through each day as best she was able.
Later it had been her mother who had seen the advert in the post office window that had announced that a nanny, previous experience unnecessary, was required by a lady in one of the big houses in the next village.
As she had trusted Ellis implicitly, Sorrel's faith in men was shattered. She had no wish to put herself in the position of repeating the bitter experience. To her mind then, children were by far the safer option.
So she had gone to look after the baby Arabella, and had learned in the next months to keep her sensitive emotions hidden. The Armitages, she had soon discovered, were a loose-living couple. And the way Leslie Armitage, as fickle as his wife for all he often appeared scared of her, went on did nothing to restore Sorrel's faith in the sincerity of men.
Often Sorrel would push baby Arabella to Salford Foley, and she was soon in receipt of all the news going. Jenny Pearson was no longer seeing Ellis Galbraith, but was going steady with some other man. Ellis, Sorrel heard, had left Kinglingham.
Over the next year she ceased looking for any redeeming light in the two adult Armitages. She was aware by then that the house belonged to Cynthia's father, though little comfort did he gain in his ailing years from having his daughter living with him. He was often ill, but because money went through her hands like water, the only time Cynthia went to sit by his bedside was when she wanted him to settle some of her outstanding bills.
With Cynthia openly telling Sorrel that, like a creaking gate, he could hang on for years and that she wasn't going to reduce her inheritance by paying a qualified nurse to wait on him, more and more of the responsibility for looking after him was placed on Sorrel's shoulders. And by the time she had been working for the Armitages for four years and baby Benjamin had come along, she had grown so fond of the old man that she was in a position of knowing it would be 'God help him' if she left, because neither Cynthia nor Leslie cared a button about him.
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