Façade

by Jessica Steele

  'Who else,' she asked lightly, 'but the man who pays for my flat, my car, my clothes…'

  She remembered Ellis had said, in a heated moment, admittedly, that he could not bear the thought of any man paying her bills. She guessed he was heated again. For his voice was little short of savage when, still demanding to be answered, he snarled the question:

  'You love him—this man?'

  She had been very fond of old Mr Ollerenshaw—she didn't think he would mind. 'Dearly,' she tossed at him.

  When Sorrel started- to walk, she found that Ellis was no longer in any mind to try and detain her. Her head high, she kept on walking until she reached the house.

  CHAPTER SIX

  There were a few sore heads around the breakfast table the following morning, but nothing Sybil proclaimed, that a good gallop would not cure. One and all agreed that it had been a super party.

  'Are you sure you won't come with us?' asked Rod beneath the hum of the general conversation going on. 'I can soon find you a mount. And I promise not to go off and leave you to cope on your own,' he tried to persuade.

  Sorrel shook her head, even as she was thinking what a likeable, considerate person he was. Not only was she averse to spoiling his fun by having to rein in his own horse to wait for her all the while, but neither did she want any special attentions from him.

  'I've set my heart on a walk,' she smiled.

  'Well, why not have your walk, then come over to Habberleigh and join us for lunch? You can take my car,' he said, and would have warmed to his theme. But again she was shaking her head.

  'It's ages since I took a really long walk,' she told him, and smiled again as Moira Drury looked her way. 'I've no idea where I might be come lunchtime.'

  'There's some lovely scenery around here,' joined in Rod's mother. 'But if you intend to be out that long, I'll get Mrs Richards to prepare you a packed lunch.'

  Not wanting to put anyone to any trouble—in Sorrel's view the staff had more than enough to do in putting the house to rights after last night's festivities without the extra work having a houseful of guests involved— she shook her head. But Moira would not listen to any protest, and when breakfast was over and people charged in all directions getting hard riding hats and anything else they needed, Moira went to consult with her housekeeper and Sorrel returned to her room.

  Having not thought when she had packed that she would be exploring the countryside on foot, she saw that her smart linen trouser suit would have to do stand duty for the jeans and shirt she would have preferred for her ramble. Though, thank goodness, she had thought to put in a pair of flat-heeled shoes.

  Rod was in the hall when she went downstairs again, and she went with him to the stables where, amid the sound of horses hooves and much jocularity, everyone moved off. Rod was the last to go, his smile trying to cover the wistful look in his eyes as he said:

  'I wish you were coming, Sorrel. But enjoy your walk.'

  'Enjoy your ride,' she returned, and as he and his horse started to move off, she went back to the house.

  Had Mrs Richards had her way, Sorrel would have set off for her walk with a fair-sized picnic basket in her hands. But, her lunch reduced to a manageable parcel of sandwiches with an outer covering of plastic because, according to Mrs Richards, 'It's going to rain,' she eventually left the house.

  For all the sun was refusing to shine, to her eyes it didn't look as though it was going to rain. But conceding that the housekeeper might well have a weather corn, within a very few minutes the weather was the last thing on Sorrel's mind.

  She hadn't seen Ellis again after she had told him that she dearly loved the benefactor of her flat, and everything else, and had walked from him. So whether he had cut across the lawn and walked home, or if he'd had to go to his car and had driven home, she had no way of knowing.

  Having taken a country path, when Sorrel spotted a house a short way up ahead, her footsteps halted. She had no idea if that house was Ellis's or if it wasn't. What she did know was that his house was in the near vicinity and that she had no wish to see him again. Within the next ten yards she had taken a sharp right turn—the house at the back of her was soon getting further and further away.

  Of course it was more than likely, her thoughts picked up her temporarily dropped subject, that Ellis had made some arrangement to meet that blonde who'd been hanging on to his every word the last time she had seen them dancing together. For she had been nowhere to be seen either when she'd made it back to the drawing room.

  It annoyed Sorrel that she should feel a dart of pain that Ellis might have kissed the blonde in that same beautiful way he had kissed her out there in the garden. Oh, damn him, she thought, a dry sob catching her out.

  For the next hour she trudged on, purposefully ejecting Ellis Galbraith from her mind whenever he tried to take over her thoughts.

  Discovering that she had been hurrying when she had all day for her walk and nothing to hurry over, Sorrel came to a stile, and finding she was quite hot, although the sky had now turned to a threatening grey, she took off her jacket and rested a while.

  When a few drops of rain fell to dampen her shirt, she found them welcome. She donned her jacket again only when her body heat had dropped. Her small parcel was starting to become an encumbrance, and for a moment or two she toyed with the idea of getting rid of it. The wildlife she thought, would soon demolish her sandwiches.

  Conscience pricking when she thought of Mrs Richards leaving what she was doing in what was sure to be a very busy day, to prepare the sandwiches, prevented her. That, plus the fact that not having her handbag with her or so much as a pocket in her jacket, she would have to carry her litter home with her anyway.

  Sorrel left the stile and for another half an hour she walked on. As Moira Drury had said, there were some beautiful views in this part of the world. But as rain started to fall again, thunder rumbling ominously in the distance, she was beginning to think she had better start looking for some kind of shelter.

  Shelter was at hand, she saw, when, as the heavens opened, she rounded a clump of trees. For, in view of the thunder rejecting to shelter in the trees, Sorrel saw not far away, in splendid isolation, a substantial looking house where she was sure that no one would mind if she stood under the eaves until this downpour was over.

  She was halfway between the house and the trees, the rain now coming down like hurtling stair-rods, when the thought she had had before, that Ellis had his home somewhere around here, stopped her dead.

  She was oblivious to the fact that the rain had taken on monsoon proportions and that her elegant suit was being soaked. Trepidation had her in its grip. She always felt like just so much jelly after contact with Ellis. Suppose it was his house? Suppose he was at home? Suppose…

  She stopped supposing when through rain-soaked eyelashes she saw the tall figure of a man coming from the house. That he was mindless of the torrents soaking his trousers and sweater was made plain when he began walking unhurriedly towards her.

  Recognising Ellis immediately, Sorrel was ready to run away—but pride came to halt her movement before she could take off. Already Ellis had suggested that she was not able to trust any man, and he was the cause. Thanks to Mr Ollerenshaw she had been able to put him right about her not letting any man get close to her since Ellis had parted company with her. But what would he think now if the moment he approached she took to her heels and bolted like some startled colt?

  She had left it too late to run anyway, she saw, for with his hair plastered wetly to his head—so lord knew what hers looked like—Ellis had already reached her. His face wore an inscrutable expression. No sign there of his being out of sorts with her or anything else that she could see, as, conversationally ignoring the fact that by now he was as soaked as she was, he commented laconically:

  'Out for a stroll?'

  Why that comment should amuse her, she couldn't think. He must have known that she had walked miles, but perhaps it did seem rather ridiculous to be en
gaged in what appeared to be a normal conversation when they were both becoming more and more saturated by the second.

  Without a smile, she answered, 'Everybody's gone riding for the day,' which sounded inane, even to her own ears. 'I thought I'd have a picnic,' she added, which sounded even more inane in view of the downpour, she thought, as she indicated the parcel in her hand.

  Ellis taking the parcel from her one hand, and taking hold of her other hand with one of his, set her heart bumping as he started to lead her to the house.

  'Where are we going?' she asked, and wondered then, since it was obvious where they were going, if the rain had dampened her normally brighter wits.

  'Standing about in all this sun isn't good for you,' said Ellis, his face deliberately solemn, she felt. And indicating the Georgian building in front of them, he added evenly, 'This is my house.'

  All sense of being amused rapidly left Sorrel. The appalling thought suddenly occurred to her that Ellis thought she had known where he lived when she had set out on her walk. That…

  'I wasn't coming to see you,' she blurted as they reached the gate he had left open.

  He favoured her with a tight-lipped look. 'I know that,' he told her tersely, and pushed her in front of him through the gateway.

  Her heart labouring, although Ellis had not hurried her in out of the rain, Sorrel stood dripping on his hall carpet, not liking to go into any of the other rooms, if the carpet in any of them was as lush and expensive as the one beneath her feet.

  'Your carpet's getting ruined,' she said, raising her eyes from the puddle she was making.

  'I'll take half the blame if you'll take the other half,' he said, his terse manner leaving him as his eyes flicked to the puddle of his own making.

  And suddenly, when Ellis chose that moment to grin, Sorrel forgot for a brief space, to be on the defensive. And like the sun coming out after so much rain, suddenly she was grinning too.

  Unaware as his eyes stared at her that her grin was reflected in the shine of her eyes, when Ellis's face abruptly sobered, a hoarse breath of a whisper involuntarily leaving him that sounded every bit as though she was hearing the words being wrenched from him of, 'God, how I love you!' Sorrel's grin swiftly disappeared.

  But even as her eyes started to widen in shock, she knew that she had heard him say nothing of the sort. For there was not so much as a hoarse thread in his voice when, his look as well as his tone matter-of-fact, Ellis said:

  'I'm going up to change.' And while her heart had not yet received the message her brain was sending that he hadn't said what she had thought it sounded like, and was giddily misbehaving itself, in a take-it-or-leave-it tone Ellis asked, 'A spare robe of mine or pneumonia?' leaving the choice entirely up to her whether or not she stayed in her wet things.

  'Er—do you have a tumble-drier?' she found enough wind to enquire.

  It was no help to her idiotic heart to see his grin quirk again, as he said, 'I'm sure I must have— somewhere.'

  'Try the kitchen,' she suggested.

  But he was already leading her to the stairs. 'I'll do that when I've got your gear.'

  Together they squelched up the stairs, Sorrel unable to find one single word to say as he led her along the landing and pushed one of the bedroom doors open, then stood back.

  His eyes on her clothes that had become cold as they clung to her, his voice was matter-of-fact again, as he instructed, 'Strip off—I'll throw you in a towel.'

  Never more needing to be by herself than at that moment, Sorrel wasted no time in entering through the open door and hastily closing it behind her. Without conscious thought to what she was doing, quickly, like some wound-up automaton, she obeyed his instruction to strip off.

  Her mind had no room then for anything but, even though she knew that he hadn't, to wonder crazily if he had said what so incredulously she had thought for a split second it had sounded like.

  Her thoughts chasing as fast as her fingers, she dropped her sodden jacket down on to a wide windowsill, her subconscious designating that area the place less likely to be ruined than the fine furnishings in the room.

  Her fingers went to the buttons on her shirt. Had he said, 'God, how I love you!' in that hoarse fashion her ears had picked up? Or was it that with her heart already playing silly devils to find that, like some homing pigeon, she had made it to his house in spite of having no wish to know where he lived, she had imagined he had said it?

  On the point of her imagination she thought, her shirt following her jacket as she slipped off her shoes and unzipped her trousers, she had more than sufficient reason to be wary. Her soaking trousers joining the bundle on the windowsill, Sorrel was remembering how at seventeen she had imagined that Ellis had been in love with her. In fact—a shiver took her as she stood in her lace-edged coffee-coloured cami-knickers—she had been certain, sure then, that Ellis loved her. But she had been mistaken.

  It was on the thought that she was not going to be mistaken a second time, that her imagination must have a third ear, a totally unsound third ear, especially since less than a split second afterwards Ellis's voice had been matter-of-fact rather than hoarse, that Sorrel decided that since anyway the words had been barely audible, her ears had played her false.

  The next moment she was becoming aware of her surroundings and the scantiness of her attire. And in the next second, as she remembered Ellis saying he would throw her in a towel, Sorrel was sent into utter confusion. For at that moment the door opened, and Ellis came in.

  Since she was standing at the opposite side of the room from the door and was taken by stunned immobility, it was left to Ellis to cross the floor to hand her the robe and the towel he had in his hands. But it was when he had come to within a yard of her, the clear light from the window showing the sudden rush of blood to her face, that Ellis froze, and was immobile too.

  When an astounded exclamation of, 'Good God!' broke from him, it did nothing to reduce the crimson colour she felt must be staining every part of her body.

  No way then could she pretend that she was anywhere near used to men coming up on her when clad only in her underwear that revealed her shapely thighs and her cleavage. And before she could get herself near to being collected, her sophistication stripped from her as she felt stripped, she saw that Ellis was recovering from seeing her blushing as if she was a schoolgirl, and had bent to pick up the soaking bundle from the windowsill.

  His back was to her, a gruff note in his voice, as he asked, 'Do you want that thing you have on to be dried?'

  'It—it's barely damp,' she replied, her voice choky.

  She was glad he did not delay his departure any longer than it took for him to receive her answer. Her limbs suddenly shaky, Sorrel was sorely in need of a sit-down.

  Oh, why, why had she had to blush like that? Why had she to go and give herself away like that when it was important that she show him a cool front?

  Cross with herself, Sorrel found it more than a little irritating that when she had once lain naked in his arms, his suddenly catching her in her underwear should make her face go a fierce scarlet.

  Though, on recalling that she had not been nearly so red-faced when Ellis had held her naked body to him, she saw that on that occasion passion had been there between them. Just now, she was then able to justify, it was no wonder she had blushed—Ellis coming in on her as he had, made it embarrassing that, passion absent, he should see her in nothing but her underwear.

  Beginning to wish she had settled for sitting on the back of some hack and was right at this moment at the Pig and Flute lunching with Rod Drury and his relations, Sorrel removed the pins from her hair and began rubbing her hair dry without thought that she hadn't so much as a comb with her.

  Oh God! she moaned, when it did dawn on her and she saw the resultant tangle in a dressing table mirror. Neither did she have a lipstick with her. And with the rain not caring that it had denuded her face of makeup, how on earth, the way she was looking now, was she going to show Ellis Ga
lbraith a cool sophisticated outer casing?

  To complete her far from sophisticated image, the robe Ellis had handed to her looked to be about ten sizes too big, the shoulders beginning somewhere down the middle of her arms, its hem flapping somewhere below mid-calf.

  Groaning anew, she rolled the sleeves back half a dozen times and raked her fingers through her hair to try and make it look somewhere near to being presentable.

  Wishing that she had never, in her opinion, so pathetically weakly allowed him to lead her into his home, she heard Ellis go by her door and down the stairs—taking, no doubt, she thought moodily, her trouser suit and shirt with him.

  But that her trouser suit was never going to look the same again was the least of her worries. Sorrel was bitterly regretting, for all it was only common sense, that she had ever parted with it.

  She played with the idea of remaining just where she was until, her trouser suit still warm from the tumble dryer, Ellis came up to her room with it. He couldn't, after all, want her there any more than she wanted to be there, she thought.

  For all she knew, he might well have a heavy date with that blonde this afternoon. She thought about that for a few moments, of the opinion then that when he had spotted her standing out in the torrential downpour, though taking her in and drying her off had not been in his schedule of things to do that day, but seeing that she was far from the Drury's home, she had left him with very little choice but to do what he had.

  Another ten minutes ticked by with Sorrel still loath to leave the room she was borrowing. But, as her nerves started a violent onslaught that Ellis might be fully expecting, might now be waiting, for her to go downstairs and join him, so—picturing him sarcastic and mocking if he took it into his head to come up and ask what was keeping her—Sorrel jumped up from the bed.

  Any sophisticated female would have joined him long since, she thought. And it was that thought that sent her out on to the landing.