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‘Umm…’ he added, moving closer to the wall on which she was working. ‘It looks to me as though you could do with a plumb-line!’
‘A plumb-line?’ She stared at him.
‘Mm. If you’ve got a piece of string and some chalk I’ll show you what I mean.’
He turned round then and smiled at her, a warm gentle smile that made her heart turn over.
‘I am sorry,’ he apologised. ‘You must be wondering who on earth I am and what I’m doing barging in on you like this. I’ve just moved into the cottage at the bottom of the lane, only to discover that none of the services seem to have been switched on. I was hoping I could use your phone to make a couple of calls. My name’s Luke, by the way.’
‘Luke,’ Melanie repeated, automatically reaching out to shake the hand he had extended to her.
His grip was firm without being painful, the palm of his hand slightly callused as though he worked outside, and yet, for all the casualness of his jeans and shirt, there was an air about him which suggested that he was a man used more to giving orders than following them. But then, what did she know about men? Melanie derided herself a little forlornly.
‘Luke?’ she queried a little more firmly, determined to let him know that she wasn’t a complete fool.
‘Luke Chalmers,’ he told her easily, adding softly, ‘I hope you aren’t too angry with me for taking advantage of the opportunity that fate so generously gave me.’
Angry! Her heart skipped a beat. Anger wasn’t exactly how she would describe her confused and chaotic emotions, but from somewhere she found the presence of mind to respond drily, ‘Do you make a habit of going round demanding forfeits from women you don’t know?’
‘Only when they’re as beautiful and tempting as you,’ he told her gravely. ‘And that, fortunately, is very rare. So rare in fact that I’ve never known it to happen before.’
Her heart was thumping frantically again. She felt as though she was suddenly caught up in a new game—a game that was both wildly exciting and frighteningly dangerous.
‘You wanted to use the phone,’ she reminded him breathlessly. ‘It’s downstairs. I’ll show you.’
As she walked past him he caught hold of her arm, his fingers sliding almost caressingly over the softness of its inner flesh so that she quivered. His fingers encircled her wrist, holding her in bondage while his free hand moved up to her face.
He wasn’t going to kiss her again was he? He wasn’t going to repeat that mind-blowing, devastating caress? No, he wasn’t, it seemed. He reached out and removed something from her face, causing her to gasp a little as she felt a sharp sting of pain. She looked at him in surprise as he held a small snippet of her wallpaper between his fingers.
‘I believe that in the eighteenth century ladies used to stick false beauty-spots to their faces in order to draw attention to their eyes and mouth, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen wallpaper being used for the same purpose.
‘What a pity it was so close to your cheekbone and not your mouth,’ he added sultrily, ‘otherwise I might have been tempted to demand another forfeit.’
Melanie thought of all the sensible and authoritative things she ought to have said in response to this outrageous piece of male flirtation, but oddly all she could do was to gaze mutely at him, while inside she prayed desperately that he wouldn’t read into her silence the compliant eagerness of her body that he should adopt just such a course.
What on earth was happening to her? After Paul she had surely learned her lesson; had surely realised that it was idiotic to trust men so quickly, that it was dangerous to continue to believe in her childhood dreams and fantasies of finding love and living happily ever after.
‘The phone,’ she reminded him weakly. ‘It’s downstairs.’
‘Ah, yes, the phone,’ he agreed gravely. So gravely that she half suspected that he might be laughing at her. The thought made her face sting with embarrassed colour. Well, if he was she surely deserved it, allowing him to take advantage of her like that…allowing him to kiss her…to…to what?
Her bruised heart ached in panicky reaction to her susceptibility to him, reminding her of her vulnerability…reminding her of the close escape she had had from Paul’s deceit.
The telephone was in the sitting-room. She escorted him to it and then left him alone, retreating to the kitchen. When he rejoined her she would show him by her dignified silence, by her cool remoteness that whatever might have happened upstairs she was not the kind of woman to be easily influenced by his outrageous brand of flattery and flirtation.
He was a man who was obviously well versed in the ways of her sex, in its vanities and vulnerabilities, and it would be as well to ensure that he was aware right from the start that, close neighbours though they might be, she was simply not interested in the kind of flirtatious, meaningless affair in which he no doubt specialised and that he might just as well save his flattery and his kisses for someone more appreciative of them.
However, when he did eventually return he was looking so grave that she felt compelled to ask him anxiously, ‘Is something wrong?’
‘In a sense.’ There was no flirtatiousness in his manner now. ‘It seems that it’s going to be some weeks before the telephone people can put in a phone. Luckily the electricity supply should be on within the next couple of days. Unfortunately, however, my work does mean that I need a telephone.’
‘Your work?’
‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘I’m a private detective.’
Melanie stared at him. ‘A…a what?’
‘A private detective,’ he repeated casually. ‘I’m working on a case in this area. Naturally I can’t disclose any details. I rented the cottage, thinking it would give me a good base from which to work. It’s secluded enough to ensure that I don’t get too many people wanting to know what I’m doing here. That’s the trouble with country areas—people are curious about their neighbours in a way they aren’t in the city.’
‘Yes, they are, aren’t they?’ Melanie agreed. She too had discovered that, and it had thrown her a little at first, until she had sensibly realised that behind their curiosity was a very warm neighbourly concern for her well-being.
‘You’re not local, then?’ he asked her almost in surprise.
‘Well, no…actually I’m not.’
He paused as though inviting her to go on, and when she did not said softly, ‘Then it seems that we have something in common. Two strangers in a foreign land.’
For some reason his words conjured up a warmth within her, a sense of shared intimacy with him that made her react against it, to say primly, ‘I should hardly consider Cheshire a foreign land—’
‘You think not? The countryside is always a foreign land to a city dweller,’ he told her with a grin, adding, before she could respond, ‘Look, I’ve taken up enough of your time. I’d better go.’
To her horror, Melanie discovered that she was almost on the verge of protesting that she didn’t want him to leave; that she had to literally bite on the inside of her mouth to stop herself from uttering the betraying words.
Silently she accompanied him to the back door, only able to incline her head in assent when he told her smoothly, ‘You really should get that lock seen to, you know. I’m surprised a streetwise city girl like you hasn’t had that attended to already.’
The way he said the word ‘streetwise’ made her tense as though sustaining a blow, as though somehow the words had held an insult, a gibe; and yet when she looked at him the grey eyes were still smiling, the relaxed bulk of the male body carelessly at ease, so that she knew she must have imagined the toughness, the threat which she had momentarily felt lay beneath the words.
Melanie closed the door as soon as he had driven off, bolting it from the inside. He was right about one thing. She must get that lock seen to.
Although she went back upstairs, somehow wallpapering had lost its appeal and she discovered that she was wandering restlessly from room to room of her new domain, her thoughts not on the house and all that she had planned to do to it, but on the man who had just left.
She raised her hand to her lips, touching them questingly as though in search of the physical imprint of his. Even without closing her eyes she could recall every detail of those moments in his arms, every nuance of the sensuality of his unexpected kiss.
Stop it, she told herself shakily. Stop it at once. You know how stupid it is to daydream. It’s time you grew up…faced reality…accepted life for what it really is.
CHAPTER TWO
EASY enough to say, but far, far harder to do, as Melanie discovered that evening as she tried to concentrate on the gardening books she had borrowed from the local library with the praiseworthy intention of doing what she could to restore order to the wilderness that lay beyond the house.
As she closed her book she was aware of a deep, welling sense of pity and sadness for the man who had willed her this house. How lonely he must have been, and how alone. The house and its environs bore testimony to that solitude; and although it had been a chosen solitude it had not been a happy solitude, she was sure of that. A happy hermit would never have allowed the garden to become so overgrown, or uncared for; a happy hermit would never have turned his back on the comforts his modest wealth could have afforded him to live virtually in the kitchen and his bedroom, as the village gossip had informed her her benefactor had. No; these were the habits of a man whose aloneness, while chosen, was a burden to him, a burden chosen out of bitterness perhaps, out of misery and pain. And yet, why? Why choose to live in the way that he had? Why turn his back on humanity? Why leave his estate to her, a stranger? How had he chosen her—from a list of names which closed eyes and a pin? she wondered unhappily. She had no way of knowing. The solicitors denied any knowledge of how or why he had made his choice, informing her only that it was perfectly legal and his will completely unbreakable.
But what about John Burrows’s cousin? she had asked uncertainly. Surely he must have expected to inherit the estate?
Not necessarily, the solicitor had assured her, adding that the two men had quarrelled some years before, and that, besides, the cousin—or, more properly, second cousin—was wealthy enough in his own right not to need to concern himself with his relative’s small estate.
Even so, Melanie had not been able to shake off the feeling that somehow a mistake had been made; that she was going to wake up one morning to discover that there had been a mistake; that it was another Melanie Foden to whom John Burrows had intended to leave her inheritance.
Although as yet she had not told anyone so, not even Louise, she had decided that at the end of the summer when the cottage was put up for sale whatever monies it brought in she would donate to charity, along with her benefactor’s contribution to her substantial bank balance.
The reason why she had not mentioned this plan either to Louise or to the solicitors was that she suspected that they would try to persuade her out of such a decision, but her mind was made up.
Much as she was enjoying her occupation of the cottage, she intended to treat these next few months as a complete break from reality, a voyage of discovery and exploration; a time of healing and rejuvenation, but something apart from her real life to which she fully intended to return once autumn came.
Right now, though, autumn was a long time away and she had a good deal of work to do. Work that involved a careful study of the books piled at her feet and not daydreaming about Luke Chalmers.
Face it, she warned herself as her thoughts traitorously refused to respond to her exhortations. He probably treats every woman the way he did you. It meant nothing…nothing at all. By rights she ought to have stopped him the moment she’d realised he intended to kiss her, instead of standing there like a fool, practically inviting his embrace. And not just inviting it, but enjoying it as well, she acknowledged guiltily as her thoughts and her memories reactivated that wanton throbbing deep within her body which had shocked her so much when she’d been in his arms.
Such feelings were completely unfamiliar to her. Her upbringing in the children’s home had never allowed her to give full rein to her burgeoning sexuality, and oddly, although Paul had touched her emotions, kindling the same yearning need for commitment and sharing, for someone with whom she could share her love, which she had experienced so much during her growing years, he had never aroused within her the sensations she had experienced in Luke Chalmers’s arms.
Disturbed by the train of her own thoughts, she got up, pacing the sitting-room restlessly.
The cottage was old, its walls irregular and bumpy, its ceilings low and darkened by the heavy beams which supported it.
Like Melanie, it was desperately crying out for love and tenderness, she acknowledged, shivering a little. It worried her constantly, this need she sensed within herself, because she knew how vulnerable it made her, how much in danger she was of mistaking the reactions and responses of others.
Look how she had deceived herself into believing that Paul genuinely cared about her! No wonder that hand in hand with her need had always gone caution and wariness, her mind’s defences against the vulnerability of her heart.
She gave another, deeper shiver, wrapping her arms around her slim body as though trying to ward off the danger her mind warned her was waiting for her.
This was ridiculous, she told herself irritably. So Luke Chalmers had kissed her. So what?
So what? She knew quite well what, her mind jeered, while her heart trembled and her body was flooded with the echoes of the sensations he had made her feel.
It was almost as though, like the heroine of a fairytale, she was the victim of a powerful spell.
Nonsense, her brain denied acidly. Just because she had reacted sexually to the man, that was no reason to go investing him with magical powers.
Sex. A sad smile curled her mouth. Paul had accused her of being almost completely lacking in sexuality. She was cold and frigid, he had complained when she had refused to go away with him. Didn’t she realise how much he wanted her? Well, now she knew the true depth of that wanting, and it had been a very shallow need indeed. A need which, she suspected, would have been quickly quenched if she had given way to him.
Hopefully her response to Luke Chalmers was the same; something which would quickly fade if she ignored it and refused to give in to its insidious demand. A fire which would die down as quickly as it had arisen if she smothered it with common sense and hard reality.
And if she didn’t? She stood still, gazing blindly towards the empty fireplace, her heart thudding erratically, her whole body suddenly bathed in a fierce heat.
This was all nonsense, she told herself firmly. She would probably not even see the man again.
When he only lived less than half a mile away at the end of the lane?
He was here to work…just as she was herself. There was no real need for their paths to cross again, and, after all, wouldn’t it be better if they did not? The last thing she needed right now was the kind of highly charged sexual affair she was pretty sure was all he had to offer her.
The most sensible thing she could do was to forget she had ever met him and concentrate on all the work that lay in front of her, beginning right now by returning to those gardening books.
Louise had expressed doubt when Melanie had told her that she intended to tackle the wilderness that was the garden by herself, demurring that she felt that Melanie ought to ask around to see if there wasn’t someone in the village who could give her some help
‘The lawn will have to be scythed,’ she had warned Melanie, ‘and that’s no job for an amateur. And if you do intend to try and grow some salad stuff and soft fruits you’ll need someone to dig over the vegetable beds for you.’
‘I’m not sure if I can afford to employ someone to do that.’ Melanie had hesitated, not wanting to explain to Louise her reluctance to touch a penny of the capital she had inherited, wanting to donate it in its entirety to some deserving charity, which was why she had insisted on paying for her small car out of her own savings.
She wasn’t too worried about finding a new job once the summer was over. Without being vain, she knew she was a good secretary with excellent qualifications, and if the worst came to the worst she could always do some temping for a few months until the right job turned up.
In the meantime…in the meantime…She took a deep breath. In the meantime she had better get down to reading her way through that very large pile of books.
MELANIE DIDN’T go to bed until very late, determined to exorcise the memory of Luke Chalmers by forcing herself to concentrate on her reading. Eventually it had worked, after a fashion, although unfortunately it hadn’t been the chapters on vegetable growing which had caught her attention, but those on the flower borders traditional to cottage gardens, and she hadn’t been able to stop herself from daydreaming about how her own garden might look, transformed into such a vision of delight, its lawns smooth and green, its borders filled with silky-petalled poppies, the tall spires of dark blue delphiniums, the sturdiness of lupins and monkshood and the delicacy of the old-fashioned single-coloured ‘granny’s bonnets’ growing against a background of climbing roses and everlasting sweet peas. There would be a lavender hedge edging the path down to the front gate, mingling their scent with the rich clove-like perfume of the pinks that grew between them.
Dizzy with the headiness of her thoughts and plans, she went upstairs, and yet ironically, instead of dreaming of the perfection of the garden she wanted to create, she dreamed instead of Luke Chalmers.
SHE WOKE UP LATE, heavy-eyed with an aching head and a dull sense of bewilderment and confusion. Her dreams had disturbed her, leaving her feeling edgy and insecure.
Her bout of flu had robbed her of her appetite, making her lose weight so that Louise had clucked her tongue and warned her that she needed to eat more.
Melanie knew it was true, but she had no appetite for the toast she had made for herself, pushing the plate away with the bread barely touched. She was just sipping her coffee when the phone rang.
Her heart jolted to a standstill and then started to race so much that she was actually trembling as she went to answer it.
Why on earth she should think it might be Luke Chalmers she had no idea, but when she recognised that the male voice on the other end of the line belonged to a stranger, it wasn’t relief she felt, but something paralysingly close to disappointment.
‘Miss Foden?’ the caller enquired a second time, causing her to swallow hard and reply in the affirmative. ‘You don’t know me. My name is Hewitson, David Hewitson. Shortly before his death, John Burrows and I were having discussions about the sale of the cottage and the land to me. John had, in actual fact, accepted my offer, sensibly realising that he had reached an age at which it was no longer wise for him to live in such isolation. In fact, if it hadn’t been for his death, the sale would have gone through.’
Listening to him, Melanie frowned. For some reason, despite his calm, almost gentle voice, she felt as though David Hewitson was almost issuing a subtle threat against her; perhaps even suggesting that by rights he ought to be the owner of the cottage. Her frown deepened. The solicitors had said nothing to her about any such sale, which surely they would have done had it been so advanced that the actual paying over of the money was virtually only a final formality.
What they had said was that there had been several offers of purchase, which might or might not have been motivated by the fact that a proposed new motorway, if approved, could add dramatically to the cottage’s land value.
‘What I should like to do,’ David Hewitson was continuing smoothly, ‘is to call round to see you. I’m sure a girl such as yourself would much rather have a few hundred thousand in the bank than a decaying old cottage.’
It was said carelessly, arrogantly, contemptuously almost, so that Melanie felt an atavistic reaction to his suggestion so sharp and intense that it was almost as though she already knew and disliked the man. And yet she had never met him; knew nothing whatsoever about him, and for all she knew her benefactor might genuinely have come to some kind of gentleman’s agreement with him concerning the sale of the cottage prior to his death. In which case, surely she ought to honour it?
‘Yes, with that kind of capital behind you, a girl as clever as you could go a long way.’ There was a brief soft laugh. ‘After all, a girl clever enough to get an old skinflint like Burrows to leave her every penny he possessed must surely be wasting her talents in an out of the way village like Charnford.’
Melanie froze, unable to believe what she was hearing, what he was implying. Her body went cold and then hot as her skin crawled with revulsion and disgust. Her hand started to shake as she wondered sickly how many other people had jumped to that same horrible conclusion.
Summoning up every ounce of self-control she could, she said shakily, ‘I don’t think there’s any point whatsoever in your calling, Mr Hewitson. You see, I have no intention of selling either the cottage or the land.’
‘But Burrows and I had an agreement—’
‘Which, being merely verbal, is not legally binding,’ Melanie told him with what she hoped was conviction. Not for the world was she going to lower herself to deny the horrible untrue allegations he had made about her relationship with John Burrows, who had been only a few days short of his eightieth birthday when he died. Instead she said quietly, ‘Goodbye, Mr Hewitson.’
She was just on the point of replacing the receiver when the mask of cordiality was stripped from his voice to reveal its true acid venom as he told her savagely, ‘You think you’re being very clever, don’t you, trying to push up the price? Well, let me tell you, you’re playing a very dangerous game, little lady. A very dangerous game.’
She slammed down the receiver again without speaking to him again. She was shaking all over, as much with revulsion as anything else. His threat had barely sunk into her awareness. She was far too sickened by his earlier imputation about the reason why she had inherited John Burrows’s estate to be aware of anything else.
It was well over an hour before she felt calm enough to pick up the receiver and dial the number of the solicitors.
When she got through to the partner who had dealt with John Burrows’s affairs, she asked him without ceremony, almost brusquely, if he knew anything about an agreement John Burrows might have made to sell the cottage to David Hewitson.
When the solicitor confirmed that he had no knowledge of any such agreement, she discovered that she had actually been holding her breath. Had his reply been the opposite, she would have felt that she had no alternative but to allow the sale to go through, since it would have been what her benefactor had intended.
‘Why do you ask?’ the solicitor enquired.
Briefly she told him, leaving out David Hewitson’s imputations about her relationship with John Burrows.
