Valentine's Night
PENNY JORDAN
Penny Jordan needs no introduction as arguably the most recognisable name writing for Mills & Boon. We have celebrated her wonderful writing with a special collection, many of which for the first time in eBook format and all available right now.Sorrel Llewellyn was nothing if not determined. And she'd determined to marry dependable Andrew – despite her parents' strong reservations.Enter Val, a distant relative from Australia, with a will as strong as Sorrel's and designs on her heart. As there was no room for visitors at home, Sorrel and Val ended up sharing a Welsh farmhouse in the midst of renovation. Conditions were a bit primitive, but they'd manage.Or so Sorrel thought, until she found herself snowed in and sharing a bed with an attractive stranger who made thoughts of her fiancé fly out the window!
Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author
PENNY JORDAN
Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!
Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.
This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.
About the Author
PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.
Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.
Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Valentine’s Night
Penny Jordan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
‘WHAT on earth are we going to do? We simply can’t ask her not to come—not when she’s been to such trouble to find us. She’d be hurt. But she can’t stay here … not at the moment. The house is full to bursting point as it is.’
Sympathetically Sorrel watched the anxiety darken her mother’s eyes. It was true that the unscheduled visit could not have come at a worse time. With the twins home from university, and her newly married elder brother and his wife taking up temporary accommodation with her parents, and Uncle Giles more or less a permanent house guest, the farm was already bursting at the seams.
Add to that the fact that her father’s prize ewes were lambing ahead of time and he was consequently a little short-tempered with concern, and it was obvious that now was not precisely an ideal time for the family to receive into its bosom an unknown second cousin, heaven only knew how many times removed, from Australia. A cousin, moreover, whom none of them knew anything about, other than that her typed letter was written with such a breezy, not to say slightly overpowering, bonhomie, that made it very difficult for her mother to write back, and say no, they could not accommodate her as a guest.
‘Normally I’d have loved to have her staying here,’ her mother continued unhappily. ‘But …’
‘Why don’t you write and explain the situation?’ Sorrel suggested practically. They were sitting in the farmhouse kitchen, their conversation interrupted by the increasingly noisy protests of the orphaned lambs her mother was hand-rearing. ‘Suggest that she delays her visit until later in the year.’
‘I can’t,’ came the worried response. ‘The letter went to the old farm, instead of coming here. Val obviously doesn’t realise that we’ve moved and that the old farmhouse has been empty since Uncle Giles moved out. The letter would be lying up there yet if Simon hadn’t driven over to show Fiona the house.’
‘Oh, he’s shown it to her, then,’ Sorrel asked interestedly. ‘What did she think? It’s very remote, I know, and not exactly equipped with all mod cons …’
‘Oh, she came back bubbling over with enthusiasm, and I can understand why. It’s very hard to start off your married life living with your in-laws.’
‘Mum, you’ve bent over backwards to make her feel at home,’ Sorrel protested loyally.
‘Oh, she isn’t complaining—far from it, but I remember how I felt when I had to move in with Gran and Gramps. Of course, it was different for me. Unlike Fiona, I didn’t come from farming stock. She’s adapted marvellously well. She goes out in all weathers helping Simon and your dad with the stock, and she didn’t seem a bit put off by the old farm’s remoteness. I warned her that there are times when the snow closes off the road, and of course there’s no gas or electricity up there at the moment, but your dad was saying it would be worth while having them installed, because if Simon and Fiona did move up there it would mean they could make far more use of the high pastures than he’s been able to do.’
Sorrel was familiar enough with the complex family relationship which had led to her father inheriting not just his parents’ farm, but his maternal uncle’s as well. Since this latter farm was situated in the richer pastures of Shropshire, as opposed to his parents’ farm in the Welsh mountains, he had moved his family down into Shropshire when Sorrel was a little girl, leaving his uncle Giles to take over the running of the Welsh land. Two years ago, following a bad bout of pneumonia, Giles had finally admitted that the rugged life of a hill farmer was getting too much for him, and since then the farmhouse had remained untenanted other than during the summer months when Simon lived up there, watching over their sheep flocks.
They were an odd mixture, her parents: her father came from a long, long line of men who had been Welsh farmers; her mother had been a city girl who had fallen madly and illogically in love with the young countryman while he was visiting the Royal Show at Smithfield one year looking for a new pedigree ram; and their four children mirrored the quixotic blend of their parents. Simon, the eldest, whose feel for the land he had inherited fully from his father and who had never wanted to do anything other than follow in his footsteps. The twins: James the would-be scientist, who had always been irked by the constraining enclosure of the life his father and elder brother lived, who made no bones about his own desire to travel, to experience a wider knowledge of the world. Mark, the younger twin’s expertise with anything mechanical had led to him training for a career in the computer industry, and yet he had retained that same deep love of the land that was so strong in their father and Simon.
And as for herself—well, she loved the land as well, but her mother claimed that the artistic talent which had led to her starting her own small, successful business designing and selling exclusive knitwear came from her side of the family. Like the colouring which had given Sorrel her name—her mane of russet hair was considered a little flamboyant by her father’s family, as was her height and elegance of limb. Sorrel was not a Welsh Llewellyn, and yet—and yet she had a deep awareness of the richness of her heritage, of how lucky she had been born the child of two people each in their own way dedicated to bringing up their family in the kind of emotionally secure background that few of her peers had been privileged to experience.
Did the strength of her parents’ marriage mean that she was more or less well-equipped to deal with the problems that seemed to destroy modern relationships? she wondered—more so since she had become engaged to Andrew.
Andrew did not come from farming stock. His father had been a solicitor in Ludlow. He was now dead, and Andrew’s mother lived alone in their old family home. Andrew had an increasingly successful business in Ludlow buying and selling old books.
They had known one another since their schooldays, and if their relationship lacked a certain sparkle—a certain intensity—Sorrel knew she didn’t mind, and that it wasn’t possible to have everything in life. And besides, she had her own reasons for welcoming Andrew’s calm courtship.
She knew that her family weren’t entirely happy about her engagement to Andrew, but she was twenty-four, after all, and old enough to make up her own mind. If he sometimes niggled her with his pedantic, slightly old-fashioned ways—well, she reminded herself that she was far from perfect. But increasingly recently she had known that there was something vital lacking in their relationship … that their engagement was meandering towards no very certain conclusion, that Andrew’s reserve and surely too old-fashioned decision that they should not be lovers until they were married was not romantic as she had first assumed, but indicative of some very problematic areas within their relationship. As was her own reluctance to pressure him into making love to her.
Surely she ought to feel differently? Surely she ought to want him more on a physical level? Was there something wrong with her that made her different from other young women her age? Did she have a much lower sexual drive than her peers?
She didn’t have enough close female friends to know the answer. Those she had made at art college did not live locally, and the girls she had been at school with were now in the main married with families.
She knew the cause of her present dissatisfaction lay with her brother and his wife. No one seeing them together could doubt how they felt. Those looks they exchanged, those sneaked little touches … that flush that sometimes darkened Fiona’s skin when she looked at Simon. No one could observe them together and not know how they felt. It was not like that with her and Andrew.
She really ought not to be sitting here in the kitchen with her mother, but working in the outbuilding her father had converted for her when she’d first set up in business on her own. However, her mother was still frowning over the problem of this unknown Australian female, who had written to them announcing that she had traced a relationship with their family and that, since she had business in the UK, she was coming over early so that she could spend a few days getting to know her relatives.
‘So what are you going to do about her visit?’ Sorrel asked her mother, who was expertly finishing feeding one lamb and starting on another.
‘Well, it’s too late to put her off. She’s arriving the day after tomorrow. She says in her letter that she’s hiring a car and that she’ll drive straight here. Well, not here, of course, but to the old farmhouse.’
‘We’ll have to arrange to leave a message for her at the airport … explaining the position,’ Sorrel suggested practically, but for some reason her mother didn’t seem to find her suggestion acceptable.
‘Oh, we can’t do that!’ she exclaimed. ‘It would be so—so inhospitable. Think, darling, how you’d feel if you’d travelled all that way—’
‘Uninvited,’ Sorrel interrupted her drily, but her mother made no comment, saying instead,
‘And we can’t let her just arrive at the farm, driving all that way to find the place completely deserted. As you know, it’s barely even furnished. Just that one bedroom that Simon uses, and the kitchen. I wish there was some way we could put her up here, but it’s impossible—what with the twins at home and Uncle Giles and now Simon and Fiona, and it isn’t even as though we could get a spare bed in your room, and I won’t have the poor thing sleeping on a settee. What would she think of us? Of course, your uncle Giles is going to visit cousin Martha in Cardiff next week, and the twins are due back at university in three days, so it won’t be for very long.’
‘What won’t?’ Sorrel asked suspiciously, suddenly alerted to potential danger by the way her mother was deliberately avoiding looking at her.
‘Well, your father and I talked it over, and there’s really no reason why the two of you … Valerie and you … shouldn’t stay up at the hill farm for a few days. Simon could drive up there with plenty of supplies. The house is dry enough. The Aga still works, and there are the oil lamps.’
‘Mother, it’s impossible! There’s only one bed up there …’
‘Yes, but it’s a double bed, not like that tiny thing in your room. And besides, Valerie specifically said how much she was looking forward to seeing the farm. Did you know that her ancestor was born there? Imagine that—and then to travel all the way out to Australia.’
‘Mm. Willingly? Or was he one of the family’s black sheep?’ Sorrel asked wryly. ‘Mother, think, what if we don’t get on? We’ll be stuck up there for three whole days.’
‘Well, you could always come here for your meals.’
‘Mum, it’s a one-and-a-half-hour drive,’ Sorrel pointed out firmly. ‘I understand how you feel, but surely we could arrange for her to stay at one of the hotels in Ludlow for a few days?’
‘Impossible. I’ve already tried that. They’re booked up already with people getting ready for the festival.’
‘But that’s months away,’ Sorrel protested, and then, as she saw the tiredness and anxiety in her mother’s eyes, she suddenly relented. ‘Well, I suppose there’s no reason why I shouldn’t spend a few days up there.’
‘You used to love staying up there with Gran and Gramps,’ her mother reminded her eagerly.
‘Yes, during the summer, not in the middle of March, and in those days I think the main attraction was that I was madly in love with the history of the place, and spent most of my time daydreaming of border skirmishes and valiant Welshmen pitting their meagre forces against the might of their English overlords.’
‘And that’s another thing,’ her mother said brightly. ‘Your cousin says in her letter how much she’s looking forward to learning more about the area. She’ll love hearing all about its history, and you’ve always taken far more of an interest in that than the others. Not that I could send one of the twins up there to stay with her …’
‘Why not?’ Sorrel questioned mock-innocently. ‘She’s as much their cousin as she is mine.’
‘Sorrel, you know exactly what I mean. She’s a girl. It wouldn’t … it wouldn’t be proper. Not with only that one double bed up there,’ she said severely, breaking off as she heard Sorrel laughing. ‘Oh, you knew exactly what I meant all along! I …’
She stopped talking as her eldest son walked into the kitchen; Simon paused to remove his filthy wellington boots before turning round and saying to Fiona, who was standing behind him, ‘Give me the lambs and I’ll take them over to the Aga.’
‘Oh, not more,’ Sorrel complained, her heart stirred to pity, nevertheless, by the sight of the two tiny, immobile creatures.
‘Twins,’ Simon told her grimly. ‘We’ve lost the ewe, and by the looks of it we might lose these two as well. Dad’s going berserk. None of them should have lambed so early, and he can’t get hold of the vet.’
Expertly ministering to the two small creatures, Sorrel was relieved to see that they were still alive. Fiona came into the kitchen on the heels of her husband.
‘Simon, you’re going to have to drive up to the old farm when you can. Sorrel’s agreed to stay there a few days with Valerie, just until the boys are back at university and we can find room for her down here.’
‘Ma conned you into it, then, did she?’ Simon muttered sotto voce to his sister, and then, turning to his wife, said calmly, ‘Come on, cough up, that’s fifty pence you owe me.’
‘What? Oh, I might have known!’ Sorrel grimaced. Her mother was a great strategist, a compulsive plotter and planner.
‘Now, Simon, that’s enough,’ she told her eldest son firmly, but when he winked at Sorrel behind his mother’s bent back Sorrel had no doubts at all that she had well and truly been caught. And it was too late to back out now. Too late to protest as she ought to have done, that she was far too busy to spend three days with a completely unknown female with whom she most probably had nothing whatsoever in common, apart from their family name.
‘IT WON’T BE so bad,’ her mother consoled her over supper later on that day. ‘You’ll be able to show her the diaries. I’m sure she’ll love those.’ ‘Are they still up there?’ Sorrel asked her.
‘Mmm … packed away in the attic. I’ll ask Simon to bring them down for you when he goes up there.’
‘It’s a lovely old house,’ Fiona chipped in.
‘But very remote,’ Sorrel reminded her, adding with a grin, ‘but you won’t mind that, will you?’
And the whole family laughed at the look Simon and his new wife exchanged, although it was Simon’s turn to laugh when he told them smugly, ‘We may not be on our own for very long.’
‘Oh, Simon, it’s too soon yet to be sure,’ Fiona protested. Watching them, Sorrel felt an unfamiliar and unwanted sensation of envy clamp her heart.
What would it be like to love someone the way Fiona loved Simon? To want nothing other than to be a part of his life, to conceive his children …
Her relationship with Andrew wasn’t like that. She loved him, of course she did. He would make her an excellent husband, but when she didn’t see him for a few days, for instance, she had no yearning to do so. No sense of loss when he went away to one of his frequent conferences or sales. He was away at the moment; she hadn’t seen him for over a week, and yet she was quite content. She didn’t go to bed at night hungering for his unexciting kisses, wishing time would speed past so that they could be married, so that she could lie in his arms at night as Fiona undoubtedly lay in Simon’s. She felt none of the things so very evident in her sister-in-law’s rosy face, and until recently it hadn’t bothered her; but now for some reason it did, and illogically she decided that the root cause of all this dissatisfaction was the unplanned and unwanted visit of this Australian relative who was thrusting herself into their lives, claiming a kinship with them which might or might not exist. And now she had agreed to spend three days with her. How on earth was she going to keep her entertained?
Plas Gwynd was ten miles from the nearest farm and over fifteen from the nearest village. It clung to the hillside, gaunt and grey, weathered by over five hundred years of storms, a long, rambling collection of outbuildings and farmhouse which had housed her family for generation upon generation.
In the spring and summer, the garden bloomed so profusely that it took one’s breath away, and it was true that the lee of the hill gave the house some degree of protection, but there was nothing to protect the sheep from the winter snows, no one with whom to share the weather’s fierceness, and it was no wonder that her father had preferred to farm the much richer Shropshire pastures left to him by his maternal uncle rather than remain living in the remote Welsh farmhouse.
Hill farming was backbreaking, grinding work. No hill farmer was ever rich, and her father was fortunate in his fertile English pastures.
After supper, Sorrel went out to the barn which housed her knitting machine and design studio. She often worked best late at night when her thoughts became miraculously clear and concise, free of the clutter of the day.
Some of her inspiration came from what she saw around her, or what she had experienced as a child. Once she had realised how fascinating she found the design and execution of knitwear, she had spent several holidays in Scotland, studying the traditional knitting patterns and stitches they had used there for generations. Some of her designs, though, were very modern, incorporating innovative ideas and vibrant modern colours.
In her bedroom, thrown across her bed, was the woollen rug which she had designed herself at art school, and which she had kept for sentiment’s sake. She still designed such rugs and they sold well … as did the tapestry cushions she had started as a sideline two years ago and which were increasingly in demand.
Her glance fell on a tapestry frame holding the beginnings of a new design she was trying out. She could take that to the farm with her. It would give her something to do if her cousin’s company became too much.
The hill farm wasn’t even equipped with a telephone. There was no gas, no electricity, although apparently her father planned to have these services installed for Simon and Fiona. Sighing faintly, Sorrel switched off the lights and headed back to the house.
‘YOU’VE GOT everything, then? Blankets, sheets, towels, soap, the boxes of food? Simon says there’s paraffin and oil up there for the lamps, and he’s putting some bags of logs and fuel in the back of the Land Rover for the Aga.’
‘Ma, we’ll be there for three days, not three months,’ Sorrel reminded her mother patiently.
‘Yes, I know, but Giles said this morning that he fancied there was bad weather on the way.’
‘Well, if there is, there wasn’t anything about it on the farming forecast,’ Simon told his mother cheerfully.
‘Maybe not, but your uncle lived in the mountains for most of his life.’
‘He’s an old man, Ma,’ Simon said gently. ‘Sometimes he gets confused. Don’t start looking for problems. Ready, Sorrel?’ he asked his sister.
‘Just about,’ Sorrel agreed. She wasn’t looking forward to the next three days one little bit, but her mother was so relieved, so pleased, that she hadn’t the heart to back out. After all, they would probably pass quickly enough, and she had to admit that her mother did have a point. It did seem a little inhospitable after this Valerie had come such a long way to tell her that they didn’t have room for her. And who could tell … it might be rather nice having another female in the family; her bad mood of the previous evening was lightening. How old was she? Sorrel wondered, as Simon finished loading the Land Rover, and climbed into the driver’s seat.
‘Let’s hope she’s going to be able to find the place,’ she commented to her brother an hour and a half later as they turned off the country road and into the muddy, rutted lane that led to the farm.
‘Well, it’s well signposted enough, although she only needs to miss the turning in the village … What time is she due?’
‘I don’t know. Mum said her flight got into Heathrow at midday, so I expect it will be some time later this afternoon. Will you stay and meet her?’
‘Can’t,’ Simon told her, shaking his head. ‘Half a dozen more ewes are showing signs of starting with their lambs.’
He pulled up abruptly in the cobbled yard and opened the door. Sorrel shivered as she felt the drop in temperature. It was far colder here than it had been at home; the winter landscape bare of trees, rawly bleak. The mountains in the distance were snow-covered, as was the peak of the one behind the house, the ground underfoot frozen.
‘Let’s get this stuff inside,’ Simon announced, heaving down the sacks of fuel and carrying it into the lean-to porch that sheltered the back door.
The door opened straight into the stone-flagged kitchen, the stone floor striking chill through the thin soles of Sorrel’s boots and making her shiver.
‘It’s summer now in Australia, isn’t it?’ she asked through chattering teeth. ‘I wonder if this Val realises how cold it is here.’
‘It just feels it because the house has been empty. Wait until we’ve got the range lit.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Sorrel told him, knowing he was anxious to start back. ‘You bring the rest of the stuff in.’
She filled a small kettle and had just set it to boil on the emergency gas ring she had brought with her when Simon came in with the last load. The range was now lit and the chill just beginning to ease off the kitchen.
‘I’ll fill the lamps with oil,’ Simon told her. ‘I checked upstairs when I came with Fiona. The bedroom isn’t damp, so you should be OK. Remember to keep the range in, though, otherwise you’ll have no hot water.’
‘Don’t even mention it,’ Sorrel groaned.
‘Why don’t you light a fire upstairs?’
Sorrel had forgotten that the main bedroom had a working fireplace. In view of the unexpected iciness of the wind and the frozen ground outside, it seemed a good idea.
She made Simon a cup of tea while he checked that there was nothing left in the Land Rover and that she would be comfortable and safe.
Once he had gone, Sorrel didn’t feel alone, as she had expected. Perhaps because there was so much still to do.
The bedroom, as he had said, was dry but very cold. She lit the fire, and once she had assured herself that it was going properly, mentally thanking heaven for the convenience of modern firelighters, she set about making up the old-fashioned double bed with its wooden footboard and headboard. It had to be polished first, and the faint smell of beeswax that hovered in the air after she had finished this task reminded her very much of her childhood visits to her grandparents.
Her mother had wisely sent up a very large duck-down duvet and, a little to Sorrel’s surprise, the patchwork cover which had originally covered the bed and which had been made by her grandmother as part of her trousseau.
Once that was on the bed, the fire casting dancing shadows on the plain white walls, the room suddenly took on a cosy, homely look. Unlike the old-fashioned bathroom, which felt as though it was refrigerated, Sorrel reflected, her teeth starting to chatter before she had been in it for more than five minutes.
It needed, as her mother had forecast, cleaning, and by the time she had performed this chore she was beginning to feel a bit warmer. Even so, she did not envy her grandparents having to leave the warmth of their bedroom on a cold winter morning to come in here.
Downstairs the range was now thoroughly warming the kitchen, and Sorrel polished the large oak dresser which was set into one wall, unpacking the crockery from home and putting it on the shelves. It looked rather lost on a dresser designed to show off an entire family dinner service.
At first she was so busy that the sudden change in the quality of the light from outside didn’t strike her, and then a certain betraying silence, a certain inborn instinct, made her lift her head and go to the window. Her heart sank as she saw the snow swirling down outside.
Uncle Giles had been right, after all. She only hoped that it wasn’t snowing in Ludlow. If it was, her mother would be having forty fits of anxiety.
What time was it? She looked at her watch. Just gone four. Too early yet for the appearance of Valerie, if indeed she could still appear. If the weather deteriorated as dramatically as it could do at this height, the hill pass would soon be blocked and the farm would be cut off. It happened almost every winter.
Everything was ready now and there was nothing she could do other than wait … and hope that Cousin Val did not get stuck somewhere in the snow.
She lived in Perth, the beautiful town on the Swan River where Sorrel, whose knowledge of Australia’s weather was only sketchy, suspected they did not have the winters suffered by the Welsh hills. She wondered how Val’s parents felt about their daughter going half-way across the world to visit unknown relatives. What would she be like?
Sorrel filled the kettle and placed it on the hob of the old-fashioned range and then went to the window.
Already the landscape had turned white, the low stone walls thickly covered in snow. The wind had increased, driving the flakes into a frenzy of blizzarding white violence that eddied and whirled in front of the farm, changing the landscape as she watched.
Sorrel shivered. She was safe enough here inside the old farmhouse, and Simon would be back in three days, but she would hate to be driving in this weather. How far had her cousin got? To Ludlow perhaps, with its historic castle, now merely a ruin, but even in its destruction impressive, giving to the imaginative a strong sense of what its power must once have been. The redstone fortress on the River Teme conjured up to Sorrel’s eyes vivid impressions of all that it had once been.
Or had Val already driven through Ludlow and into the Welsh hills?
The kettle sang and Sorrel shivered. She felt restless and ill at ease in a way that was unfamiliar to her, alien to her normal placidity and calmness. Her placid nature was one of the things Andrew admired most about her. For some reason or other, that seemed to amuse her family. It was true that as a child she had often been driven to quick-tempered outbursts against her brothers, but she had outgrown such childishness long ago. She sat down in front of her tapestry, trying to concentrate on the stitches. It was an ambitious project, unlike any of her previous work—something she was doing purely for the creative pleasure it gave her; something along the lines of a medieval wall-covering, depicting the four seasons in relation to the traditional work of the farmer’s wife. She was doing it as a special gift for her mother, who had often remarked that the bare galleried landing of the old farmhouse cried out for some kind of tapestry.
The Shropshire farmhouse was even older than the Welsh one, but its Tudor-style beams and wattle and daub walls gave it a soft prettiness that the more sturdy stone Welsh building lacked.
The light was fading rapidly, and Sorrel had to get up to light the lamps and to go upstairs and check on the fire. The bedroom felt deliciously warm now, although the bathroom was still icy cold. She hadn’t investigated the other bedrooms, which she knew would be bare of their furniture and very cold.
Simon had brought down a box from the attic which contained the old diaries, and on impulse Sorrel kneeled down on the floor beside it and lifted one out.
It had been a tradition that the women of the Llewellyn family kept diaries, originally merely to record the events of their working year: to record details of their produce from the kitchen gardens, to list the ingredients of herbal remedies and the money paid out for those household necessities which could not be made at home.
Their farm had been a productive one compared with many, but even so it made Sorrel wince to realise how hard their lives must have been.
She was so deeply engrossed that it was gone six o’clock before she lifted her head from the book. She went to the window and could see nothing in the dark, so, picking up one of the lanterns, she opened the door.
The moment she opened the outer porch door, the wind blew in fierce eddies of snow, the lamp flickering wildly as she held it up.
Beyond the farmyard lay a sea of white. Deep drifts blocked the drive. No car could possibly get through them, and even a Land Rover would have had problems. There was no way Cousin Val was going to be able to make it to the farmhouse now and, mingled with Sorrel’s feeling of relief that she had been spared the three days’ intimate company of a woman she had no idea how she was going to get on with, she had a prickling sensation of apprehension as she wondered where on earth her cousin was.
And it wasn’t even as though the farm had a telephone and she could alert her family to the situation.
If anything, the temperature had dropped even lower, and just those few minutes’ exposure to the cold had turned her fingers numb and was making her shiver. Sorrel was glad to get back inside.
The remoteness of the farm caused her no fear, and neither did she find the thought of her own company disturbing. It struck her that by rights she ought to be yearning for Andrew to be with her, but when she thought of her fiancé it was in the knowledge that, if he were here, he would be alternately complaining and worrying.
Andrew was devoted to his business, fussy to the point of irritation about his appearance and that of the small flat above the bookshop. He would hate the farmhouse with its lack of amenities.
When they got married they planned to find a house in Ludlow, and she would then use Andrew’s present flat as her workshop; at least, that was what she had suggested, and Andrew had seemed to go along with her idea. It was odd, when she thought about it, how they had got engaged. They had been dating casually for a few months, and then Andrew had taken her to see his great-aunt, and it had been while they were there that the subject of an engagement had first come up.
The old lady had been extremely forthright in her views and speech, and she had commented that it was high time Andrew settled down and produced his family; he was too old to remain single any longer without becoming eccentric.
And then it had been on the way home that he had proposed to her … stumbling over the words a little, making her aware of both how much she liked him and how vulnerable he was. He had wanted to buy her a ring, but in the end they had decided to save the money instead. At twenty-four, she felt she was too mature to need the visible trappings of their commitment to one another. Only, recently that commitment hadn’t seemed quite so strong, on either of their parts.
The sudden sound of someone banging on the outer door made her jump. She got up uncertainly and hurried towards the kitchen door, opening it and stepping into the porch.
As she reached for the outer door, the knock sounded again, demanding impatiently that she hurry.
She fumbled with the lock and then turned the handle. The wind caught the door, pushing it back so hard it almost knocked her over, and a very Australian and irritable male voice proclaimed ‘At last! Thank heaven for that.’
Cousin Val … it had to be. But by no strength of the imagination was Cousin Val what she had expected … what any of them had expected.
‘This is the Llewellyn farm, isn’t it?’ the Australian voice demanded, and Sorrel nodded. Her own voice seemed to have deserted her for some reason. Temporary paralysis caused by shock, she told herself, as she stepped back into the kitchen. The shock of discovering that Cousin Val was not, as they had all supposed, a woman, but a man … Very much a man, Sorrel acknowledged as he followed her inside the kitchen, shrugging off a snow-covered sheepskin jacket as he did so, and then bending to tug off his wellingtons.
‘I thought I wasn’t going to make it,’ he told her calmly. ‘I had to abandon my car way down the bottom of the lane. Fact is, I had no idea there was going to be this kind of weather.’ He looked round the kitchen and frowned, picking up her tension.
‘Is something wrong? You did get my letter?’
‘Oh, yes, we got your letter,’ Sorrel told him bitterly. ‘But we assumed, because you signed it Val, that the Val was short for Valerie.’
‘Valerie?’ He stared at her. The snow had melted on his head, revealing thick black hair, well-cut and clinging damply now to his skull.
As he stood up, she realised how tall he was, how very broad-shouldered, even without the enveloping sheepskin.
‘We thought you were a girl,’ Sorrel told him tensely.
He gave her a slow look. His eyes, she realised, were grey—cool and hard as granite.
‘Did you, now?’ He seemed faintly amused. ‘I suppose I should have thought of that. The Val is short for Valentine … a family name on my mother’s side. She was part Russian. So you thought I was a girl. Well, as you can see, I’m not. It doesn’t matter, does it?’
Doesn’t matter? she thought! Just wait until he knew!
‘As a matter of fact, it does,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘You see, this farmhouse is no longer occupied and we didn’t realise you were planning to visit us until it was too late to let you know what a bad time you’d picked—’
‘What do you mean, it isn’t occupied? You’re living here, aren’t you?’
He seemed more annoyed than concerned, and for some reason that annoyed her.
He had walked past her without so much as a ‘by your leave’, and was standing in front of the range. The small canvas bag he had brought in with him was still on the floor, snow melting on it.
‘I left the rest of my stuff in the car. How long is this snow likely to last?’
‘I don’t know!’ Sorrel told him grittily. She had seldom experienced the antagonism towards anyone that she was experiencing now, and never without undue provocation. So what was it about this man, with his air of easy self-assurance, that so rubbed her up the wrong way? She could feel herself bristling like a defensive cat confronted by a large dog. She didn’t want him invading her space. She didn’t want him anywhere near her, she realised.
‘Mm … Well, someone must know. Where’s the rest of the family?’
‘Not here,’ Sorrel told him succinctly, and had the pleasure of seeing him momentarily disconcerted.
CHAPTER TWO
APART from the hissing of the kettle which Sorrel had filled automatically and set on the hob, the kitchen was silent with tension. Then Val broke the tension, saying curtly, ‘Let me get this straight. Your parents don’t have the room to put me up right now, so, thinking that I was a young woman, they press-ganged you into coming up here to welcome me and stay with me until such time as your twin brothers go back to university.’
‘I didn’t say I was press-ganged,’ Sorrel said stiffly.
‘You didn’t have to,’ came the dry response. ‘It was written all over you.’
‘Oh, I see. You only need to take one look at a person and you know immediately what they’re thinking, is that it?’ she snapped at him, and then was appalled with herself. How on earth had she allowed him to get so dangerously under her skin that he could provoke her this easily?
Dangerously under her skin? A tingle of apprehension shivered over her body.
‘It seemed the most sensible solution. If we’d had the slightest idea that you—’
‘Yeah, I know. Nothing would have persuaded you to come up here if you’d known you were going to have to spend three days alone with a man. Hell, I thought modern women were supposed to be fully emancipated. Let me tell you, lady, in Australia it’s the male of the species who needs to protect himself from the female, not the other way around, especially if he’s made himself a bit of money.’
‘Really?’ Sorrel looked down her nose at him. ‘Am I to presume that you’re speaking from personal experience or merely hearsay?’
There was a moment’s silence, during which he gave her a lightning look of such chilling intensity that she almost shivered. She had struck a nerve there, no doubt about it, and privately she was astounded by her own recklessness. It was completely out of character for her to behave like this.
‘Well, now,’ he told her in a calm drawl, ‘to use an American phrase, that’s for me to know and you—’
‘And you can keep the knowledge to yourself,’ Sorrel interrupted him, hot flags of temper burning in her cheeks. She wasn’t used to men who treated her like this: men who dominated their surroundings by their height and breadth, men who practically oozed sexuality in a way that was positively unnerving.
The kettle reached the boil and started to sing. Sorrel reached for it automatically, and then cried out as she forgot about the metal handle and scorched her skin.
Instantly Valentine was at her side, moving with surprising speed for such a large man, whipping up a cloth and removing the kettle from her burned hand, rushing her over to the sink to swish icy-cold water over her hot, blistered skin.
She tried to pull away, to regain control of the situation, but his body trapped her against the sink. She was a tall girl—taller, in fact, than Andrew and her father, but Valentine was at least a head taller. He made her feel fragile and vulnerable in a way that made her heart thump—or was that just the effect of the adrenalin released by her pain?
‘Have you anything to put on this?’ he asked her tersely.
Sorrel nodded. ‘There’s a medicine chest upstairs in the bathroom. I’ll get it. It will be quicker,’ she added, when she saw he was going to object. ‘It’s only a small burn.’
Once upstairs, she refrained from giving in to the cowardly impulse to shut herself in the bedroom and stay there. Her mother had never dreamed of this outcome when she had cosily announced that Sorrel and her cousin could share the large double bed.
Valentine would simply have to sleep downstairs. But on what? There were only a couple of easy chairs in the kitchen, and no spare bedding at all.
When she got back downstairs, she found him pouring out two mugs of tea. He handed her one of the mugs, and although the tea was rather stronger than she liked she took it gratefully.
‘So, how long are we likely to be cooped up here together?’ he asked her once she had assured him that her hand, although painful, was not badly burned.
‘Well, the twins go back to university at the end of the week, but I don’t know how long the snow will last. Simon should be able to get through with the Land Rover.’
‘But he won’t arrive for another three days?’
Sorrel shook her head.
‘Well, I guess unless the snow clears, we’re stuck with one another.’ He saw her face pale and raised his eyebrows.
‘Burn bothering you?’
‘No,’ Sorrel told him shortly, in a voice that announced that she didn’t like his questions.
‘Well, something is,’ he persisted, ignoring her coldness. ‘Look, it’s a long time since I last drove through snow, and since you’ve made it plain just how you feel about my company, if you could just show me where I’m supposed to sleep …’ He saw her face and frowned.
‘Now what’s wrong?’
There was no way she could avoid it. She looked at him and said hollowly, ‘There’s only one bedroom—furnished, I mean. You see, when Uncle Giles left, Mum and Dad moved the furniture out, just leaving the one bed for Simon when he comes here during the summer.’
His eyes narrowed disconcertingly, suddenly boring into her with an intentness nothing in his previous demeanour had led her to expect. She had the odd notion that she was suddenly seeing the real man, and that the cloak of bonhomie and laid-back insouciance he had shown her before was just exactly that. It gave her an uncomfortable jolt to be subjected to that hard grey stare.
‘What do you mean, one bed?’
‘Exactly what I said,’ Sorrel mumbled uncomfortably. ‘The old bed that belonged to Gran and Gramps was so heavy that Mum and Dad left it. I brought clean bedding with me, of course, but only enough for that bed.’
There was a long pause, and then he said softly, ‘I see … You mean that because your mother assumed that Val was short for Valerie and that I was therefore female, she saw no harm in the two of us sharing a bed.’
‘She was panic-stricken,’ Sorrel told him. ‘She had no idea what to do. It was too late to get in touch with you to let you know the situation.’
‘And that’s why you’ve been behaving like a cat walking on hot desert sand, is it? The thought of having to sleep with me …’
‘I am not going to sleep with you,’ Sorrel told him indignantly, her face flaming. ‘And yes, of course I was a little … embarrassed.’
‘No need to be on my behalf,’ he told her drily. ‘You won’t be the first woman I’ve shared a bed with.’
Sorrel stared at him, almost struck dumb with anger at his casual mockery of her. When she got her voice back, she said tightly, ‘No, I’m sure I’m not. But unlike you, I haven’t—’ She broke off abruptly, but it was too late.
‘You wouldn’t by any chance be trying to tell me that you’re still a virgin, would you?’
The way he said it made it sound as though she was some kind of freak, Sorrel thought wretchedly. Oh, what on earth had possessed her to be so stupid? Why hadn’t she just kept quiet? She ached to be able to make some light-hearted comment that would cover her mistake and deceive him, but one look into those steel-grey eyes warned her that it was impossible. It was like looking into the heart of a steel trap.
‘A virgin,’ he mused, watching her. ‘And you must be what … twenty-five—twenty-six?’
‘Twenty-four, actually,’ Sorrel snapped at him.
‘You’re not bad looking. Nice body … good legs,’ he added appreciatively, skimming her body with thoughtful scrutiny. It’s hard to guess what your breasts are like under that sweater, but my guess—’
He broke off as Sorrel gasped in indignation.
‘Something wrong,’ he asked her, lifting dark eyebrows.
‘When I want your opinion on my body, I’ll ask for it,’ Sorrel told him grimly.
‘No need to get so uptight. I was just curious to know why a woman like you hasn’t had a lover. When I was your age …’
He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, Sorrel guessed, although, with the deep tanning of his skin and the tiny lines that fanned out from his eyes, it was hard to be accurate. There was certainly no grey in his hair. No discernible excess of flesh on his hard-muscled frame.
‘I have no wish to know about your sexual experiences,’ Sorrel told him frigidly.
‘No man in your life, eh? Now …’
Sorrel had had enough. ‘As a matter of fact, there is a man in my life. I’m engaged to be married, and if Andrew has too much respect for me to … to rush me into bed, then …’
She broke off as she heard his laughter. Hot spots of colour burned in her face as she glared at him.
‘Too much respect? More like not enough guts,’ Val told her forthrightly. ‘What kind of man is he?’
‘A decent, respectable, hardworking kind,’ Sorrel told him grittily. ‘Not that it’s any business of yours.’
He was looking at her rather oddly, an almost devilish glint of amusement in his eyes.
‘I see. And I suppose the sober, respectable … worthy fiancé would not approve of you spending the next three days and nights alone here with me?’
Sorrel opened her mouth to protest that Andrew would understand, and then she remembered how very narrow-minded he could be on occasions, how much importance he placed on respectability, and she swallowed back the words. He would understand, of course he would. And no one outside the family need know. The kind of speculation and gossip that Andrew would abhor wasn’t going to arise because no one outside the family would ever know, would they?
She looked up and found that Val was watching her with cool amusement.
‘Of course Andrew would understand,’ she lied, tilting her chin and staring him down. ‘He trusts me implicitly, and besides, there’s no question of anything … well, illicit. It’s just that there’s been a mistake.’
‘He trusts you, but he doesn’t desire you. Sounds an odd basis for a lifetime commitment to me.’
‘Just because sex isn’t the most important part of our relationship, that’s no reason to sneer at it,’ Sorrel told him angrily.
‘As far as I understand it, sex doesn’t form any part of your relationship,’ Val threw back at her. ‘Lord, I thought your kind had gone out with the Victorians. What do the rest of the family think about this engagement?’
‘They … they like Andrew,’ Sorrel fibbed valiantly.
‘You don’t sound so certain. It seems to me that this engagement of yours has been a bad mistake.’
Sorrel couldn’t believe her ears. She knew that Australians believed in frank speaking, but this was sheer rudeness. Thoroughly affronted, she opened her mouth to tell him that her private life was no concern of his when he forestalled her by changing the subject and saying, ‘Any chance of anything to eat? We were late landing at Heathrow, and I never eat plane food.’
He made it sound as though he travelled a great deal, and Sorrel felt a faint unwanted stirring of curiosity about him.
His clothes, now that she looked at him properly, were expensive and well-tailored, despite their casual appearance. Looking at him, it would be impossible to judge just where he was from or what he did for a living.
‘I’ve got a home-made shepherd’s pie I could heat up. It will take about half an hour in the range.’ She went to put it in. ‘Your letter said that you had to come to England on business,’ she went on abruptly. ‘What kind of business?’
‘I have a boat-building business in Perth, and I’m over here to check out a new British technique for making super-lightweight craft.’
‘And you thought you’d look us up … just like that?’
Her aggression made him smile mockingly at her. Was there no way she could get under his skin the way he did hers? Sorrel thought crossly as she got the pie and put it in the oven, this time taking care to use protective oven gloves.
‘Ancestry’s very big back home at the moment. Something to do with the recent bicentennial fever, I guess. I knew that my family came originally from Wales, and I thought it might be interesting to have a go at seeing how far I could trace it back.’
‘Llewellyn’s a very common Welsh name,’ Sorrel pointed out.
‘I have a great-aunt who swears that she remembers hearing from her grandmother how her husband’s father came originally from this part of Wales. He was a Daniel, too, like your father. And the family diaries—’
‘Your family keep diaries, too?’ Sorrel’s face lit up, her animosity forgotten. ‘Oh, I’d love to see them. Ma asked Simon to bring ours down. She thought you might be interested in reading them. It’s a tradition that the women of the family always keep a diary.’ She stopped, annoyed with herself for forgetting how much she disliked him.
‘What’s this?’ he asked her suddenly, staring at her tapestry frame.
She told him reluctantly, but her love and enthusiasm for her craft refused to give way to her desire to be abrupt with him.
‘I’ve done the first three seasons,’ she heard herself telling him, in a voice that was suddenly, for no reason at all, slightly breathy. It couldn’t be because he had bent his head over her work, just in the direction she was pointing, so that his dark hair brushed against her wrist, causing tiny tingling sensations to race along her veins, heating her entire body, could it? No, of course not. It was unthinkable … ridiculous … impossible that she should react to this abrasive Australian in a way that she had never reacted to Andrew, the man she had agreed to marry.
Various alien and disturbing thoughts filled her mind, making the colour come up under her clear Celtic skin.
‘And the final season?’ Val prompted.
‘Winter,’ she told him curtly.
‘Yes … The last time I experienced snow like this was in the Canadian Rockies during my university days. I hadn’t realised you could have this kind of weather so late in the year.’
‘Half a dozen or more climbers who think the same thing lose their lives in these mountains almost every year,’ Sorrel told him. ‘You were lucky not to be trapped inside your car. Why did you go to university in Canada?’
He raised his eyebrows a little but, if he could ask her impertinent questions about her relationship with Andrew, then she was quite sure that she could reciprocate. It was odd how curious she was about him. Dangerous, too. She shivered a little, a tiny frisson of unfamiliar apprehension-laced excitement going through her.
‘I wanted to study geology, and I spent a postgraduate year in the Rockies doing fieldwork.’
‘Geology? I thought you said you built boats.’
‘I do—now. The pie smells as though it’s ready.’
In other words, no more questions. He was adroit at concealing more of himself than he revealed, and even more adroit at getting her to reveal far too much, she acknowledged as she went over to the oven.
The pie was almost ready. There were fresh vegetables to go with it, and rhubarb fool for pudding.
‘We ought to be toasting our new-found cousin-ship,’ Val remarked as he asked Sorrel where he could find the cutlery. ‘Is there anything to drink?’
Her mother had packed a couple of bottles of her home-made wine, and Sorrel produced one of them. She saw his eyebrows lift in a way that was becoming familiar as he studied the label, and she explained to him what elderberry wine was.
‘A resourceful woman, your mother.’
‘She’s a home-maker,’ Sorrel told him, ‘and she thrives on hard work. She’s spent her life doing all the things we’re told turn the female sex into drudges, and yet I’ve never met a more fulfilled woman than my mother. She’s interested in everything and everyone … and she knows so much about the history of the wife’s role in the running of a farm like ours. She sometimes gives talks on it to local WI meetings. She loves it … standing up on the stage, talking to them … and they love her. I asked her a few years ago if she had ever thought what she might have done if she’d had a career. She laughed at me. She said that being married to my father gave her the best of everything: a man whom she loved, his children, the pleasure of running her own home, and the business aspects of keeping the farm accounts, of being free to order her own day, to enjoy the countryside. I know what she means … I don’t think I could ever work for a large organisation with regimented rules and regulations after being my own boss.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Val told her, surprising her. ‘When I started off in mineral exploration, it was very much a free and easy life. You got a job working for a newly formed company. They bought the mineral right to a certain tract of land and sent you out to discover what, if any, value it might have. You lived in the outback … often for weeks at a time, turning in a report when you’d finished the job. But once the boom came, the pleasure went out of it.’
‘Was that why you build boats instead?’
‘Sort of. This wine smells good … Not quite up to our better Australian vineyards’ products, of course.’
‘It’s very potent,’ Sorrel warned him, dishing up their meal and putting a plateful of food in front of him.
It had surprised her a little that he had so readily and naturally helped her with the preparation of the meal, but perhaps if he had lived alone in the outback he was used to fending for himself. She had always thought that Australian men were very chauvinistic, and considered women to be little more than chattels.
Fair-mindedly, she acknowledged that she did not really know enough about the continent or its inhabitants to separate truth from myth, and it was probable that Australian men, like any men, were a mixed and varied bunch of human beings who should not be typecast.
‘This is good,’ Val told her appreciatively, tucking into his food. ‘Your mother’s an excellent cook.’
Sorrel bent her head over her own plate, not telling him that she had made the pie. She enjoyed cooking, and firmly believed that any form of creative achievement could be satisfying when one was well-taught. Although her mother was what was normally referred to as a plain cook, she took a pride in the meals she placed before her family, and she had passed on that pride to Sorrel.
Val had poured them both a glass of wine, and now he put down his knife and fork and picked up his glass, motioning to Sorrel to do the same.
‘To you, Sorrel Llewellyn,’ he toasted her softly. ‘I’m delighted to make your acquaintance … Drink it,’ he urged her when she barely touched her lips to the glass. ‘Otherwise I’m going to think it’s poisoned. You certainly looked at me as though you’d have loved to slip me a glass of hemlock when I first arrived.’
‘It was a shock to discover you were a man,’ Sorrel protested, letting the warming wine slide down her throat. It tasted delicious but, as she well remembered from past occasions, she really did not have a strong enough head to cope with her mother’s potent home-made brews.
Over their meal they talked, or rather Val talked and she listened, so that by the time they were ready for their pudding she was beginning to feel almost lazily content.
She started to get up to take their plates to the sink, but Val forestalled her, announcing that it was his turn to do some work.
As he walked past her chair he refilled her glass and she stared at it owlishly. Was that the third or fourth time he had filled it? She felt too pleasantly hazy to worry … too interested in the stories Val was telling her about his research into the family.
He had already explained to her that his name was Russian in origin, and that his mother had Russian blood. He had three sisters, he had informed her, all of them older than him and all of them married with families.
‘It’s a wonder I didn’t grow up in terror of the female sex,’ he told her with a grin as he handed her a generous helping of rhubarb fool. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much they bullied me.’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Sorrel agreed darkly. ‘They probably spoiled you to death.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ he assured her with a grin.
‘What did they think of you coming over here to meet your English relatives?’
‘Oh, they were all for it,’ he told her promptly. ‘In fact, they bet me that I’d probably go back with a …’
‘With a what?’ Sorrel asked him, curious not so much to know what he had been going to say, but the reason he had stopped so abruptly, giving her a look that was almost wary.
‘An English wife,’ he told her smoothly. So smoothly that she felt sure, for some reason, there was something he wasn’t telling her.
But the wine had made her feel so woozy and relaxed that it was too much of an effort to hold on to the thought, and so she let it slip away, asking instead, ‘Why should they think that?’
‘Because that’s what our original Llewellyn ancestor did. He was shipped over as a convict. He stole a loaf of bread. He was lucky it was only one loaf, otherwise he’d have been hanged and not transported, and that would have been the end. He was lucky in being chosen as an overseer by one of the colonists, mainly because he had some knowledge of farming methods—and after he’d served his seven years, he came back to England.’
‘To find a wife?’ Sorrel asked him, fascinated, but for some reason Val seemed reluctant to tell her any more.
‘This is delicious,’ he told her. ‘Is there any more?’
‘Yes. I’ll get you some.’ She stood up and then sat down again abruptly as her legs turned weak and wobbly and the room spun dizzyingly around her.
‘Something wrong?’
‘The wine. I’ve drunk too much of it … It’s so strong.’ And yet it didn’t seem to have affected him, Sorrel noticed.
What she needed now was a couple of cups of strong coffee to sober her up, but when she tried to say as much the words became hopelessly tangled.
‘I think you’d better just come and sit down by the fire,’ Val told her, grinning at her.
‘Not the fire,’ Sorrel mumbled, ‘fresh air.’
‘In this weather? You’re kidding!’
‘Fire needs stoking. Upstairs as well,’ Sorrel told him as she tried to stand up for a second time.
‘Leave everything to me. Hey, it has gone to your head, hasn’t it?’ she heard Val saying in a voice that seemed to hold more of a suspicion of laughter than concern, and then she was swept up into his arms and deposited in front of the range in one of the two easy chairs, her head spinning so badly that she closed her eyes and moaned faintly. It was the wine, of course, and nothing to do with the wholly unexpected sensation of being picked up and carried in Val’s arms, her head resting against his shoulder, her face turned into his skin so that her lips were almost touching the warm brown column of his throat. His skin fascinated her. She wondered woozily if he was tanned all over, and then blushed guiltily at the wantonness of her thoughts.
‘Fire too hot?’ she heard him asking her solicitously, and she opened her eyes reluctantly to find he was leaning over her, arms braced either side of her on the arms of the chair.
His shirt was open at the throat and she was sure she could see dark hair growing there. She had an odd squirmy feeling in her stomach—a sensation hitherto unknown to her. Andrew’s torso was almost hairless, his skin very pale. He hated sunbathing and she remembered had only reluctantly removed his shirt when they had spent a day in Pembrokeshire, walking along the cliffs with Simon and Fiona during the summer. Her brother had laughed at him, Sorrel remembered, and although she knew she hadn’t been meant to see it she had not missed the look of pity Fiona had given her.
Perhaps it was true that Andrew wasn’t a very male man, certainly nothing like as male as Val. She gave a tiny shiver and, to her consternation, felt the hard, calloused weight of Val’s palm against her forehead.
‘Just checking to see if you had a fever,’ he told her when her eyes opened wide.
‘If anyone should have a fever, it would be you,’ she told him crossly. ‘Walking through that snow …’
‘What would you have preferred me to do? Stayed in my car and frozen to death?’
The sensation of pain that struck her astounded her. She looked at him with confused, anguish-glazed eyes and suddenly his face came properly into focus and in his eyes she saw a predatory male look that made her body tense; then she blinked and it was gone, and she knew that she must have imagined it.
‘Bed for you, I think,’ she heard him saying wryly, ‘before you pass out on me down here.’
‘Won’t pass out,’ Sorrel told him indignantly. ‘Can’t—can’t go to bed … not with you …’
She thought she heard him chuckle as he bent to pick her up, but her head was whirling round so much that she had to concentrate all her attention on that.
‘If it bothers you that much, I can always doss down on the floor. It won’t be the first time. I slept rough often enough when I was prospecting.’
‘Prospecting?’ Sorrel questioned him drowsily as he headed for the stairs. She could get quite used to being held in his arms, she decided woozily. There was something very pleasant about the sensation of him all around her. She liked the scent of his body, the maleness of him. It made her want to nestle and cuddle up against him.
‘I’m a geologist, remember?’ he told her.
The stairs were steep, but he reached the top barely out of breath, Sorrel recognised admiringly. She tried to imagine Andrew picking her up and carrying her to bed once they were married, but the image refused to form, and the wine-induced elation spinning through her body suddenly turned to dejection.
She wanted to marry Andrew, she reminded herself. And there was more to marriage than having a husband strong enough to pick her up in his arms. Andrew had different strengths … far more important strengths. But, dredge her brain though she did, she couldn’t for some reason recall just what they were.
‘This looks cosy,’ she heard Val say appreciatively as he carried her into the bedroom.
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